non-German bankers and academics. Criticism of Ernst Nolte on the Holocaust Mason was a leading advocate of comparative studies in fascism and, in the 1980s, strongly criticised the German philosopher Ernst Nolte for comparing the Holocaust to events that Mason regarded as totally unrelated to Nazi Germany, such as the Armenian genocide and the Khmer Rouge genocide. By contrast, Mason argued that there was much to learn by comparing Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy to produce a theory of generic fascism. In Mason's view, Nazism was only part of a wider fascist phenomenon: If we can do without much of the original contents of the concept of "fascism", we cannot do without comparison. "Historicization" may easily become a recipe for provincialism. And the moral absolutes of Habermas, however politically and didactically impeccable, also carry a shadow of provincialism, as long as they fail to recognize that fascism was a continental phenomenon, and that Nazism was a peculiar part of something much larger. Pol Pot, the rat torture and the fate of the Armenians are all extraneous to any serious discussion of Nazism; Mussolini's Italy is not. Denouncing Thatcher government and leaving Britain In 1985, Mason decided that the government of Margaret Thatcher was the harbinger of fascism, advised trade union leaders to start making preparations to go underground and moved to Italy. After battling severe depression for many years, he died by suicide in Rome on 5 March 1990. Works "Some Origins of the Second World War" pages 67–87 from Past and Present, Volume 29, 1964. "Labour in the Third Reich" pages 187–191 from Past and Present, Volume 33, 1966. "Nineteenth Century Cromwell" pages 187–191 from Past and Present, Volume 49, 1968. "Primacy of Politics: Politics and Economics in National Socialist Germany" from The Nature of Fascism edited by Stuart J. Woolf, 1968. Arbeiterklasse und Volksgemeinschaft: Dokumente und Materialien zur deutschen Arbeiterpolitik, 1936–39, 1975. "Innere Krise und Angriffskrieg, 1938–1939" pages 158–188 from Wirtschaft und Rüstung am Vorabend des Zweiten Weltkrieges edited by F. Forstermeier and H.E. Vokmannn, Düsseldorf, 1975. Sozialpolitik im Dritten Reich: Arbeiterklasse und Volksgemeinschaft, 1977. "Women in Germany, 1925–40: Family, Welfare, and Work" pages 74–113 from History Workshop Journal, Issue 1, 1976 and pages 5–32 from History Workshop Journal, Issue 2, 1976. "National Socialism and the German Working Class, 1925 – May 1933" pages 49–93 from New German Critique Volume 11, 1977. "Worker's Opposition in Nazi Germany" pages