Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars was published by Oxford University Press in 1990, and it addresses one of the central questions of twentieth-century cultural history: how did European societies make sense of the unprecedented slaughter of the World Wars? How was mass death transformed from horror into meaning?
Mosse’s answer is “the Myth of the War Experience” — a complex of ideas, images, and rituals that transformed industrial killing into heroic sacrifice. The myth claimed that soldiers died willingly for the nation; that their death had meaning and purpose; that the war was a test of national character that the nation had passed; and that the dead had achieved a kind of sacred status that obligated the living to honor their sacrifice through continued national commitment.
This myth was constructed through war memorials, military cemeteries, commemorative ceremonies, war literature, and the cult of the unknown soldier — all of which Mosse examines in detail. He argues that the myth served essential psychological functions (allowing survivors to bear their grief) but also dangerous political ones: by glorifying war and death, it prepared populations for the next round of violence. The “brutalization” thesis — that the experience and mythologization of World War I prepared the way for World War II — has been widely debated but remains influential.
Collecting Fallen Soldiers
First edition (Oxford University Press, New York, 1990): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $20–$50
- Without jacket: $8–$15