<p>Hannah Arendt’s posthumous influence continues to be enormous even though her best-known claims have been refuted by new evidence. Since her death a youthful diary shows Arendt precociously aware of a choice between two possible futures. Either she would choose a natural future unfolding with harmonious openness or else attain public influence by advancing unsupported claims. In fact Arendt lived both futures successively. In early essays she held ex-Nazis responsible for their war crimes and depicted Martin Heidegger her former teacher and lover as a nihilist whose philosophy led directly to his Nazi commitment. Yet later she portrayed Adolf Eichmann the official who implemented the Holocaust as a mindless “banal' bureaucrat. And she later exonerated and celebrated Heidegger even using his coinages in arguments that lifted responsibility from bad actors. Arendt left a paper trail of documents for us to decode. The real story of a talented woman—simultaneously sustaining a hidden love affair and maintaining the posture of a disinterested public intellectual—is also a story of moral upendings and reversals. It is the back story. It is time for thoughtful readers to know it.</p>