A taboo-breaker and a great provocateur, George L. Mosse (1918–99) was one of the great historians of the twentieth century, forging a new historiography of culture that included brilliant insights about the roles of nationalism, fascism, racism, and sexuality. Jewish, gay, and a member of a culturally elite family in Germany, Mosse came of age as the Nazis came to power, before escaping as a teenager to England and America. Mosse was innovative and interdisciplinary as a scholar, and he shattered in his groundbreaking books prevalent assumptions about the nature of National Socialism and the Holocaust. He audaciously drew a link from bourgeois respectability and the ideology of the Enlightenment—the very core of modern Western civilization—to the extermination of the European Jews.

Acknowledgments                             
Introduction: The Serpent and the Dove                               
            The "Eternal Emigrant"
            Why an Intellectual Biography of George L. Mosse?
            The Link between Life and Work
            Machiavellism and the Holocaust
            The Great Provocateur
Chapter 1. From Machiavellism to Totalitarianism                          
            Political Concerns
            Thomas Hobbes as the "Voice of the Future"
            The Serpent and the Dove: The Question of Political Morality
            From Machiavellism to National Socialism
Chapter 2. Beyond the History of Intellectuals                                
            From Ideas to Ideologies: The Turn to Popular Culture
            Between Consensus, Nihilism, and Propaganda
            From Nihilism to Liturgy: The Religion of Fascism
            Beyond the History of Intellectuals
Chapter 3. The Roots of the Anthropological and Visual Turn                                
            The Anthropological Turn: Myth
            Anthropology and Mass Movements
            Between Rationalism and Irrationality
            History and Psychology: Rationalizations, Motivations, Perceptions
            Anthropology and Historicism
            The Visual Turn: Aesthetics and Architecture
            Toward New Perspectives
Chapter 4. The Dark Side of Modernity                               
            The "Failure of the Enlightenment"
            Nationalism, Racism, and Respectability
            Modernity and the Great War
Chapter 5. From Machiavellism to the Holocaust                            
            Nihilism and the Holocaust
            Respectability and the Holocaust
            Reconsidering the "Ideal Bourgeois"
Chapter 6. The Missing Link: The Nationalist Revolution                           
            The Fear of Ideology
            The Building Blocks of a General Theory: Fascism as Revolution
            The Missing Link: Fascism as a Nationalist Revolution
            The World through the Eyes of Its Faiths
Chapter 7. The "True Mission of Judaism"                          
            George Mosse, Zionism, and the Reality of Israel
            A Heritage Rediscovered: Redemption by Judaism
            Between Nationalism and Patriotism
            The "True Mission of Judaism"
Chapter 8. The Granitic Foundation of a Faith                                 
            The Meaning of History
            The Devil's Advocate
            The "History of Perceptions"
Conclusion: George L. Mosse's Legacy                                 
            Mosse's Work between Recognition and Neglect
            Mosse as Émigré Historian
            The Message of a Life
 
Notes             
Index