Timothy Mason

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 specialized in the social history of the Third Reich, especially that of the working-class. Mason's mo... more

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 specialized 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... less