Timothy Mason
| Timothy Wright Mason | |
|---|---|
| Born |
2 March 1940 Birkenhead, United Kingdom |
| Died | 5 March 1990 (aged 50) Rome, Italy |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Historian |
| Known for | Arguing for a "primacy of politics" approach to Nazi Germany and for World War II being caused by an economic crisis in Germany. |
Timothy Wright Mason (2 March 1940 – 5 March 1990) was a British Marxist historian of Nazi Germany.
He was born in Birkenhead, the child of school-teachers and was educated at Birkenhead School and Oxford University. He taught at Oxford from 1971–1984 and was twice married. He helped to found the left-wing journal History Workshop Journal. Mason specialised in the social history of the Third Reich, especially that of the working-class. Mason's most famous books were his 1975 work Arbeiterklasse und Volksgemeinschaft (The Working Class and the National Community), a study of working-class life under the Nazis and his 1977 book, Sozialpolitik im Dritten Reich (Social Policy in the Third Reich). Unusually for a British historian, most of his books were originally published in German first.
Mason saw his role as developing history that was flexible, humane and analytical. Mason wrote about the historians' role in 1986: "If historians do have a public responsibility, if hating is part of their method and warning part of their task, it is necessary that they should hate precisely". Mason's interest as a Marxist historian were in writing history that was not deterministic, and in revising the views about fascism. As part of his efforts to develop a broader picture of the Third Reich, Mason approached such topics as women in Nazi Germany, a critique of "intentionalist" views of the Third Reich, and theories of generic fascism as an analytical tool.
In Social Policy in the Third Reich, Mason unlike his counterparts in East Germany did not focus just on resistance movements within the German working class, but sought a comprehensive picture of working class life with how the working class viewed itself, and by the Nazi regime. Mason argued that the Nazi leadership was haunted by the memory of the November Revolution of 1918, and so the Nazi dictatorship was prepared to make no small material allowances in the form of social policy, a reluctance to impose material shortages, and a hesitation to bring in a total war economy.
Besides his studies in working-class in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, Mason was noted for his break with previous Marxist interpretations of fascism that saw fascist regimes as the servant of capitalist interests. Mason argued instead for the "primacy of politics" by which he meant that although fascist regimes were still capitalist regimes in his opinion, they possessed "autonomy" in the political sphere and were not dictated to by capitalist interests. In a 1966 essay, Mason wrote "that both the domestic and foreign policy of the National Socialist government became, from 1936 onward, increasingly independent of the influence of the economic ruling classes, and even in some essential aspects ran contrary to their collective interests" and that "it became possible for the National Socialist state to assume a fully independent role, for the 'primacy of politics' to assert itself"
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