At the outbreak of the First World War, an entire generation of young men charged into battle for what they believed was a glorious cause. Over the next four years, that cause claimed the lives of some 13 million soldiers--more than twice the number killed in all the major wars from 1790 to 1914. But despite this devastating toll, the memory of the war was not, predominantly, of the grim reality of its trench warfare and battlefield carnage. What was most remembered by the war's participants was its sacredness and the martyrdom of those who had died for the greater glory of the fatherland.
War, and the sanctification of it, is the subject of this pioneering work by well-known European historian George L. Mosse. Fallen Soldiers offers a profound analysis of what he calls the Myth of the War Experience--a vision of war that masks its horror, consecrates its memory, and ultimately justifies its purpose. Beginning with the Napoleonic wars, Mosse traces the origins of this myth and its symbols, and examines the role of war volunteers in creating and perpetuating it. But it was not until World War I, when Europeans confronted mass death on an unprecedented scale, that the myth gained its widest currency. Indeed, as Mosse makes clear, the need to find a higher meaning in the war became a national obsession. Focusing on Germany, with examples from England, France, and Italy, Mosse demonstrates how these nations--through memorials, monuments, and military cemeteries honoring the dead as martyrs--glorified the war and fostered a popular acceptance of it. He shows how the war was further promoted through a process of trivialization in which war toys and souvenirs, as well as postcards likethose picturing the Easter Bunny on the Western Front, softened the war's image in the public mind.
The Great War ended in 1918, but the Myth of the War Experience continued, achieving its most ruthless political effect in Germany in the interwar years. There the glorified notion of war played into the militant politics of the Nazi party, fueling the belligerent nationalism that led to World War II. But that cataclysm would ultimately shatter the myth, and in exploring the postwar years, Mosse reveals the extent to which the view of death in war, and war in general, was finally changed. In so doing, he completes what is likely to become one of the classic studies of modern war and the complex, often disturbing nature of human perception and memory.

The Culture of Western Europe, George L. Mosse's sweeping cultural history, was originally published in 1961 and revised and expanded in 1974 and 1988. Originating from the lectures at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for which Mosse would become famous, the book addresses, in crisp and accessible language, the key issues he saw as animating the movement of culture in Europe. Mosse emphasizes the role of both rational and irrational forces in making modern Europe, beginning with the interplay between eighteenth-century rationalism and nineteenth-century Romanticism. He traces cultural and political movements in all areas of society, especially nationalism but also economics, class identity and conflict, religion and morality, family structure, medicine, and art. This new edition restores the original 1961 illustrations and features a critical introduction by Anthony J. Steinhoff, professor in the department of history at the UniversitE du QuEbec A MontrEal, contextualizing Mosse's project and arguing for its continued relevance today.

Just two weeks before his death in January 1999, George L. Mosse, one of the great American historians, finished writing his memoir, a fascinating and fluent account of a remarkable life that spanned three continents and many of the major events of the twentieth century. Confronting History describes Mosse's opulent childhood in Weimar Berlin; his exile in Paris and England, including boarding school and study at Cambridge University; his second exile in the U.S. at Haverford, Harvard, Iowa, and Wisconsin; and his extended stays in London and Jerusalem. Mosse discusses being a Jew and his attachment to Israel and Zionism, and he addresses his gayness, his coming out, and his growing scholarly interest in issues of sexuality. This touching memoir-told with the clarity, passion, and verve that entranced thousands of Mosse's students-is guided in part by his belief that ""what man is, only history tells"" and, most of all, by the importance of finding one's self through the pursuit of truth and through an honest and unflinching analysis of one's place in the context of the times.

Originally published in 1970, Germans and Jews brings together George L. Mosse’s thoughts on a critical time in German history when thinkers on both the left and the right shared a common goal. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, intellectuals across the political spectrum aimed to solve the problems of contemporary society by creating a force that would eliminate both state Marxism and bourgeois society: a “third force” beyond communism and capitalism. This pervasive turn in ideology had profound effects on German history. In Mosse’s reading, left-wing political efforts became increasingly unrelated to reality, while the right finally discovered in fascism the force it had been seeking. This innovative perspective has implications for understanding not only the rise of fascism and Nazism in Germany but also the rise and fall of the New Left in the United States and Europe, which was occurring at the time of Mosse’s writing. A new critical introduction by Sarah Wobick-Segev, research associate at the University of Hamburg, places Mosse’s work in its historical and intellectual contexts and draws lessons for students and scholars today.

Max Nordau was a famous writer, a practicing physician, a bourgeois examplar of enterprise and energy when his Degeneration appeared in Germany in 1892. He argued that the spirit of the times was characterized by enervation, exhaustion, hysteria, egotism, and inability to adjust or to act. Culture had degenerated, he said, and if criminals, prostitutes, anarchists, and lunatics were degenerates, so were the authors and artists of the era. Degeneration, and the controversy it aroused, served to define the fine de siecle. Its targets included Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Richard Wagner, Zola, and Walt Whitman. The book was enormously influential. Nordau anticipated Freud in describing art as a product of neurosis, and he set a precedent for psychological and sociological critiques of literature. You may wish to talk back to "Degeneration," as George Bernard Shaw did, but you will be entertained by its vitality. Holbrook Jackson, in "The Eighteen Nineties," called the book "an example of the very liveliness of a period which was equally lively in making or marring itself."

First published in 1975, The Nationalization of the Masses is George L. Mosse’s major statement about political symbols and the means of their diffusion. Focusing on Germany and, to a lesser degree, France and Italy, Mosse analyzes the role of symbols in fueling mass politics, mass movements, and nationalism in a way that is broadly applicable and as relevant today as it was almost fifty years ago. In this analysis Mosse introduces terms like “secular religion,” “political liturgy,” “national mystique,” “the new politics,” and “the aesthetics of politics” that are now standard in studies of nationalism and fascism, demonstrating the importance of his cultural, anthropologically informed lens to contemporary discourse. This new edition contains a critical introduction by Victoria de Grazia, Moore Collegiate Professor of History at Columbia University, contextualizing Mosse’s research and exploring its powerful influence on subsequent generations of historians.

This new edition revisits the renowned historian George L. Mosse's landmark work exploring the ideological foundations of Nazism in Germany. First published in 1964, this volume was among the first to examine the intellectual origins of the Third Reich. Mosse introduced readers to what is known as the vOElkisch ideal-the belief that the German people were united through a transcendental essence. This mindset led to the exclusion of Jews and other groups, eventually allowing Nazi leaders to take their beliefs to catastrophic extremes. The critical introduction by Steven E. Aschheim, the author of Beyond the Border: The German-Jewish Legacy Abroad and many other books, brings Mosse's work into the present moment. George L. Mosse (1918-99) was a legendary scholar, teacher, and mentor. A refugee from Nazi Germany, in 1955 he joined the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was both influential and popular. Mosse was an early leader in the study of modern European cultural and intellectual history, fascism, and the history of sexuality and masculinity. Over his career he authored more than two dozen books.

The Fascist Revolution is the culmination of George L. Mosse's groundbreaking work on fascism. Originally published posthumously in 1999, the volume covers a broad spectrum of topics related to cultural interpretations of fascism from its origins through the twentieth century. In a series of magisterial turns, Mosse examines fascism's role in the French Revolution, its relationship with nationalism and racism, its use by intellectuals to foment insurrection, and more as a means to define and understand it as a popular phenomenon on its own terms. This new edition features a critical introduction by Roger Griffin, professor emeritus of modern history at Oxford Brookes University, contextualizing Mosse's research as fascism makes a global resurgence.

This landmark work by George L. Mosse, first published in 1985, examines the history of sexuality through the lens of bourgeois respectability and nationalism. Using a daring breadth of German and English sources, Nationalism and Sexuality pioneered the use of gender stereotypes as a methodology for studying the history of sexuality in mainstream European history. Mosse’s innovative inquiries on gender remain central to discussions about modern constructions of national belonging and the workings of the state. This edition of Mosse’s classic volume includes a new critical introduction by Mary Louise Roberts, whose books include What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France.

Originally published in 1978, Toward the Final Solution was one of the first in-depth studies of the evolution of racism in Europe, from the Age of Enlightenment through the Holocaust and Hitler's Final Solution. George L. Mosse details how antisemitism and dangerous prejudices have long existed in the European cultural tradition, revealing an appalling and complex history. With the global renewal of extreme, right-wing nationalism, this instrumental work remains as important as ever for understanding how bigotry impacts political, cultural, and intellectual life. This edition of Mosse's classic book includes a new critical introduction by Christopher R. Browning, author of Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland.