ABSTRACT
Who was Stefan Possony? According to Mirowski and Plehwe, ‘the power behind Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars project’.5 This was the final outcome of a long career begun in the post-imperial Austria, half a century before. Born in Wien, in 1913, to a Jewish father, Ernst,6 Possony was awarded a PhD on 23 December 1935, defending a thesis entitled ‘Die Bedeutung der Wissenssoziologie für die Erkenntnistheorie der Geschichte’.7 After the German invasion of Austria, he first fled to Czechoslovakia and then in August 1938 took part in the Walter Lippmann colloquium. The Wehrmacht forced him to move a second time, this time from Czechoslovakia to France. In 1940, after France had surrendered to Germany, and after many vicissitudes, he was able to reach Unites States,8 where he became an important advisor on strategic issues.9
