One of the major monographs on German cinema and Siegfried Kracauer's (1889–1966) most famous book, this work was written in exile and published in the United States in 1947. The author, a sociologist and theorist of cinema and culture, analyzes the internal attitudes and patterns of German society, objects of collective repression, reflected in classic films of the pre-Hitler era. For Kracauer, cinema is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon; he wrote about its various aspects (Weimar Essays, Film Theory, etc.). In this book, cinema is, above all, a manifestation of mass culture, an a priori collective art form that, as the fruit of collaborative efforts, both satisfies and provokes the hidden desires of a wide audience.

The 1977 Soviet edition of "From Caligari to Hitler" was incomplete. In addition to the appendix "Propaganda and Nazi War Film," the text has been partially edited out, including an assessment of the political situation in Germany and Russia, some commentary on Soviet films and filmmakers, and a number of details from the history of the Weimar Republic. This edition fills these gaps and restores authorship to the Russian translator (whose name was omitted from the Soviet edition)—Gennady Grigoryevich Shmakov, a renowned translator, ballet critic, and cinephile.