The Nazi as the ‘ideal bourgeois’: respectability and Nazism in the work of George L. Mosse

Abstract

With its definition of fascism (and particularly National Socialism) as an ‘anti‐bourgeois revolution of the bourgeois’, the provocative work of the historian George L. Mosse helped cast some light on the contradictory nature of the phenomenon. On the one hand, fascist respectability stems from bourgeois morality, and the Nazi can be regarded as the ‘ideal bourgeois’ (Mosse). On the other, fascist respectability is rather a corrupted version of its bourgeois ancestor and, though retaining very important features of it, can be considered as something new, which highlights the ‘dual moment’ (Aschheim) within National Socialism, where violence and respectability co‐exist side by side.