Abstract

Carl Schmitt's work on the international order during the Second World War has been comparatively neglected. There is, however, a strong connection between Schmitt's understanding of political concepts and the nature of the political and his writings on the international order. In order to understand those writings and the contemporary response that they provoked it is necessary to set them in the context of the dilemmas of Nazi occupation policy. This article concludes that Schmitt failed to resolve those dilemmas but also that his attempt to solve them reveals the deficiency of Schmitt's understanding of the nature of political concepts