Fallen Soldiers, p.65:War as a communal experience wasperhaps the most seductive part ofthe Myth of the War Experience,enabling men to confront and tran-scend death, and the idealizedcommon soldier was an indispen-sable part of this myth, as well asan example of the new man whowould redeem the nation.

Nazi Culture, p.xxiv:In the world that industrialism hadproduced, the individual was alien-ated not only from his society, butalso from his rational nature. Thiswas the all-encompassing prob-lem, and Sorel as well as Le Bonenvisioned the specter of a wild ir-rationality, which had to be di-rected by a leader into positive,constructive channels..... Hitler’sunderstanding of this approachenabled him to take the road topower in a nation ravaged by crisesand defeat. 

Toward the Final Solution, p.xiii:Racism needed a secular base suchas the Enlightenment or modernnationalism in order to overcomethe implications of the Christianmeaning of baptism and conver-sion, for the racially inferior mustbe locked into place and all escaperoutes closed.

Germans & Jews, p. 174:[Pragmatism] is the shirking ofthought dressed up as doctrine.

From a 1991 interview with GM byIrene Runge & Uwe Stelbrink, p. 11:The things that Adorno andHorkheimer wrote about NationalSocialism can make your hair standon end. They understood nothingabout popular culture.... they con-sidered mass culture a form of op-pression and stultification.

Germans and Jews, p.225The important search for a newsociety continues despite past fail-ures and the hitherto insolubledilemmas that are intrinsic in thisattitude to man, the world, and society.

Confronting History, p.4“Why then write this book?...Thephrase “Life and Times” has beenoverused in the biographies of thelast century, but it must neverthe-less be true of a life which encom-passes the now-vanished life styleof the German Jewish wealthy andestablished middle class, a suddenexile, a rude political awakening, animmersion in the life—and even tosome extent in the politics—of theAmerican Middle West.”

Confronting History, p.219“The issues of the Third Reich werewrit large in my consciousness, a partof my personal transformation fromthe irresponsibility of youth, a pastwhich had to be faced. I had rejectedthe worlds of my past and hadsought to transform myself, but inmy anxieties, fears, and restlessness, Iwas still a child of my century.”

You Had To Be There: George Mosse Finds Himself In History is a publi ca tion of the George L. Mosse Program in History(http://mosseprogram.wisc.edu/). Copyright 2014 Nick Thorkelson. Thanks to Martin Janal, Joan Wallach Scott, and David Wagner.