Timothy Mason

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Timothy Wright Mason , Tim Mason for short (born March 2, 1940 in Birkenhead , † March 5, 1990 in Rome ), was a British Marxist historian. Mason presented a standard work on the social history of Nazi Germany as well as essays on the driving forces behind the foreign policy of the Nazi regime and the role of the working class in the fascist states of Europe. In 1981 he coined the terms intentionalism and functionalism , which have largely established themselves as terms for the two competing mainstreams of Nazi research .

Life

Mason grew up in a family of teachers. He studied at St Antony's College of Oxford University and taught ibid 1971-1984 German and European history. In 1976 Mason was one of the founders of the History Workshop Journal , which in the early years saw itself as a journal for socialist historians. In 1984 he moved to Italy, where he accepted a teaching position at the University of Trento . He first published many of his larger works in German. Mason suffered from depression and committed suicide in 1990.

plant

As a young historian, Mason became known after his first publications in the magazine Past & Present for his criticism of early Marxist analyzes of National Socialism, which Hitler and the NSDAP interpreted as dependent representatives of the political and economic interests of the monopoly bourgeoisie. For Mason, history was basically the history of class struggles, but in his opinion, German fascism ultimately did not apply to the primacy of (capitalist) economy, but rather to the primacy of politics (which, however - which is often overlooked - according to Mason, in turn, did not apply “From politics”, but primarily from the specific economic contradictions and crises of the 1930s). For Mason it was “obvious” that “the domestic and foreign policy of the National Socialist leadership from 1936 onwards became increasingly independent of the determination of the economically ruling classes, and even ran counter to their interests in essential points.” This was “unique in the whole History of civil society ”, and this is where the real need for explanation is. Mason did not justify his view theoretically, but referred strictly empirically to the sources. The GDR historians Eberhard Czichon , Dietrich Eichholtz and Kurt Gossweiler attempted in 1968 to refute Mason's argument in detailed essays.

Mason's main work is the extensive study of the working class and the national community (1975, 1977 reissued without the source part as social policy in the Third Reich , see the note below). In it he formulated the thesis that, even after 1933, the Nazi leadership had always reckoned with the possibility of a revolution supported by the working class based on the model of 1918 . This disposition would have gained in importance towards the end of the 1930s, since full employment had undermined the authoritarian “control over the labor market”. After 1918 the labor movement challenged the state and the employers about this control, but then lost it again: “Together with the workers' parties and the works councils they forced the employers to share control of the labor market with them. With 1 million unemployed this position could still be maintained; at 6 million it was hopelessly lost. And the employers were determined not to let their temporary recapture of the labor market, guaranteed by mass unemployment, be disputed. ”Under fascist conditions, however, every demand for a wage increase and improvement in working conditions developed politically explosive; this latent crisis played an essential role in the decision to go to war. This argument sparked an extensive debate - including with Richard Overy - about the question of whether the economic situation in Germany was decisive for the decision to go to war.

As a Marxist “functionalist” Mason radically rejected intentionalist approaches in Nazi research, which he accused of a fundamental methodological circularity : “The view that Hitler's ideas, intentions and deeds were decisive is not presented as an argument in these works, but rather as something that is both a premise and a conclusion. (...) If practically all of modern social science is not an epochal blind ally, then 'Hitler' cannot be a complete or adequate explanation, not even for himself. "

In the last years of his life, Mason invested a large part of his labor in dealing with revisionist currents in Italian fascism research. He was also involved in the debate about the American historian David Abraham . Mason did not perceive the criticism of Abraham as a harsh professional controversy among historians, but saw the "zeal of the critics" as a symptom of the looming renewed marginalization of Marxist historians. Against this background, one of his last essays ( Whatever happened to 'fascism'? ) Pleaded for a revitalization of comparative research on fascism.

Monographs

  • Working class and national community. Documents and materials on German workers policy 1936–1939 . West German publishing house , Opladen 1975
  • Social Policy in the Third Reich. Working class and national community , Opladen 1977 (2nd edition 1978)
  • Nazism, Fascism, and the Working Class. Essays by Tim Mason . Edited by Jane Caplan, Cambridge / New York 1995.

Essays

  • Some Origins of the Second World War , in: Past and Present 29, 1964, pp. 67-87.
  • Labor in the Third Reich , in: Past and Present 33, 1966, pp. 187-191.
  • The primacy of politics. Politics and Economy in National Socialism , in: Das Argument , 8, 1966, pp. 473–494.
  • Nineteenth Century Cromwell , in: Past and Present 49, 1968, pp. 187-191.
  • On the emergence of the law for the order of national work , of January 20, 1934. An experiment on the relationship between “archaic” and “modern” moments in recent German history , in: Hans Mommsen , Dietmar Petzina and Bernd Weisbrod (eds.): Industrielles System and political development in the Weimar Republic. Düsseldorf 1974, pp. 322-351.
  • On the situation of women in Germany from 1930 to 1940. Welfare, work and family, in: Society. Contributions to Marx's theory, 6 , Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1976, pp. 118–193.
    • English: Women in Germany, 1925-40. Family, Welfare, and Work, in: History Workshop Journal , Heft 1, 1976, pp. 74-113 and Heft 2, 1976, pp. 5-32
  • National Socialism and the German Working Class, 1925 - May 1933 , in: New German Critique 11, 1977, pp. 49-93.
  • Workers' Opposition in Nazi Germany , in: History Workshop Journal 11, 1981, pp. 120-137.
  • The taming of the working class in National Socialist Germany , in: Carola Sachse , Tilla Siegel, Hasso Spode Wolfgang Spohn : Fear, reward, discipline and order. Mechanisms of rule under National Socialism . Opladen 1982, pp. 11-53
  • Injustice and Resistance: Barrington Moore and the Reaction of the German Workers to Nazism , in: Ideas into Politics: Aspects of European History, 1880-1950 edited by RJ Bullen, Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann and AB Polonsky, 1984, pp. 106-118 .
  • Mass resistance without organization: Strikes in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (PDF; 165 kB) ", in: trade union monthly magazines , 32, 1984, pp. 518-532
  • Workers without trade unions: Mass resistance in Nazi Germany and in Fascist Italy , in: Journal für Geschichte , 1985, pp. 28–35.
  • History Workshop , in: Passato e Presente 8, 1985, pp. 175–1986.
  • Il nazismo come professione , in: Rinascita 18, May 18, 1985, pp. 18-19.
  • The Great Economic History Show , in: History Workshop Journal 21, 1986, pp. 129-154.
  • Italy and Modernization , in: History Workshop Journal 25, 1988, pp. 127-147.
  • Gli scioperi di Torino del Marzo 1943 , in: L'Italia nella seconda guerra mondiale e nella Resistenza . Edited by Francesca Ferratini Tosi u. a., Milan 1988, pp. 399-422.
  • Debate: Germany, 'Domestic Crisis and War in 1939': Comment 2 , in: Past and Present , 122, 1989, pp. 205-221
  • Whatever Happened to 'Fascism'? in: Radical History Review 49, 1991, pp. 89-98
  • The Domestic Dynamics of Nazi Conquests: A Response to Critics , in: Reevaluating the Third Reich . Eds. Thomas Childers, Jane Caplan, 1993

literature

  • Obituary by Lutz Niethammer , in dsb., Ego history? and other memory attempts , Böhlau, Wien 2002 pp. 268f.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Tim Mason: The primacy of politics. Politics and Economy in National Socialism , in: Das Argument 8 (1966), pp. 473–494, p. 474.
  2. ↑ See Czichon, Eberhard, Der Primat der Industrie im Kartell der Nationalozialistische Macht, in: Das Argument 10 (1968), pp. 168–192 and Eichholtz, Dietrich, Gossweiler, Kurt, once more: Politics and Economy 1933–1945, in : Das Argument 10 (1968), pp. 210-227.
  3. ↑ Mason, Timothy W., Working Class and National Community. Documents and materials on German workers policy 1936–1939, Opladen 1975, p. 45.
  4. ↑ Mason, Tim, Intention and Explanation: A Current Controversy about the Interpretation of National Socialism, in: Hirschfeld, Gerhard, Kettenacker, Lothar (eds.), Der "Führerstaat": Mythos and Reality. Studies on the structure and politics of the Third Reich, Stuttgart 1981, pp. 23–42, pp. 29f.
  5. ↑ Maier, Charles S., obituary for Timothy W. Mason, in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 17 (1991), pp. 399-402, p. 401.
  6. ↑ available in Google books online
  7. ↑ On the relationship of the 1975 book to this Mason writes: This book is the revised version of the introduction to the source edition Arbeiterklasse und Volksgemeinschaft. Documents and materials on German workers' policy 1936-1939 For the new publication of the introductory part, which is hereby presented separately, I have almost completely rewritten Chapter 2 and expanded it considerably; Otherwise I took the opportunity to make numerous small improvements of various kinds and to add to the bibliography. But the writing has retained the character of an introduction to a large extent. It is self-contained and understandable insofar as the main lines of presentation and interpretation emerge clearly even without the files published in the large edition. But it is important that the book encourages the reader to read those documents and materials, among other things, because they convey a comprehensive, detailed and at the same time vivid picture of the social history of National Socialist Germany that no academic monograph can produce. For this reason, the comments on this book do not refer to the original document and where it was found, but to the publication in the working class and the national community : "Cf. Doc. 154" means z. B. that the document in question can be found as No. 154 in the aforementioned volume of documents. To make such references clearer, a complete index of the 244 documents presented in the source edition is attached to this book as an appendix (on p. 323 ff.).
  8. ^ David Schoenbaum : Review of Nazism, Fascism and the Working Class (5 pages pdf), in: H-Net Reviews , January 1996.
personal data
SURNAME Mason, Timothy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mason, Timothy Wright (full name); Mason, Tim
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British historian
DATE OF BIRTH March 2, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Birkenhead
DATE OF DEATH March 5, 1990
Place of death Rome