This small edition allows a flashback to the "origins" of Hannah Arendt's analysis of totalitarianism. The pieces of text removed by the author from the first English-language edition of the totalitarianism book, the answer to Eric Voegelin's review and the correspondence with Voegelin from 1951 are helpful for anyone who wants to get to know and evaluate Arendt's totalitarianism concept and its development in more detail. These documents and the related texts by Ursula Ludz, Ingeborg Nordmann and Michael Henkel help to clarify Hannah Arendt's ideas about totalitarianism as a form of rule that are still subject to misunderstandings in the German discussion.