This union produced one son, Apollinaris, and at least two daughters: Sidonius mentions in his letters Severina and Roscia, but a third, Alcima, is only mentioned much later by Gregory of Tours, whom Theodor Mommsen has speculated may be identified with one of his other daughters.

However, Theodor Mommsen has shown that the Mathesis was composed in the year 336 and not in 354 as was formerly held, thus making it an earlier work than De errore profanarum religionum, and could have been written prior to Firmicus ' conversion to Christianity.

As early as 1890 Mommsen postulated a Theodosian ' editor ' of the Scriptores ' work, an idea that has resurfaced many times since.

( The biography of Marcus Aurelius's colleague Lucius Verus, which Mommsen thought ' secondary ', is however rich in apparently reliable information and has been vindicated by Syme as belonging to the ' primary ' series ) The ' secondary ' lives allowed the author to exercise free invention untrammelled by mere facts, and as the work proceeds these flights of fancy become ever more elaborate, climaxing in such virtuoso feats as the account of the ' Thirty Tyrants ' said to have risen as usurpers under Gallienus.

The Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, begun by Mommsen and other scholars, has been published in Berlin since 1863, with wartime interruptions.

The case of Goerdeler has been used by the historian Hans Mommsen to support his view of " resistance as a process ", with Goerdeler going from an ally of the regime to increasing disillusionment by Nazi economic policies in the mid-1930s, and finally becoming committed to the regime's overthrow by 1937.

Despite some disagreements, Kerhaw has called Mommsen a “ good personal friend ” and an “ important further vital stimulus to my own work on Nazism ".

Yet Mommsen characterizes Fischer's " central notion of Germany's will to power " circa 1911 to 1915, as being seriously flawed, as here Fischer " has allowed himself to be carried away ".

Mommsen has written books condemning appeasement.

The picture Mommsen has consistently drawn of the Final Solution is of an aloof Hitler largely unwilling and incapable of active involvement in administration who presided over an incredibly disorganized regime.

Mommsen has forcefully contended that the Holocaust cannot be explained as result of Hitler alone, but was instead a product of the fractured decision making process in Nazi Germany which caused the " cumulative radicalization " which led to the Holocaust.

As such, Mommsen has denied that Hitler ever gave any sort of order for the Holocaust, written or unwritten.

Starting with his 1966 book, Beamtentum im Dritten Reich ( Civil Servants in the Third Reich ), Mommsen has argued for the massive involvement of various elements in German society in the Third Reich, as against the traditional view in Germany that Nazi crimes were the work of a few criminals entirely unrepresentative of German society.

Mommsen has argued that the differences between the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the National Socialist German Workers Party are such as to render any concept of totalitarianism moot.

Writing in highly aggressive language, Mommsen has from the mid-1960s argued for the " weak dictator " thesis.

Mommsen has argued that both domestic and foreign policy in the Third Reich were merely a long series of incoherent drift as the Nazi regime reacted in an ad hoc fashion to crisis after crisis, leading to the " cumulative radicalization ".

Mommsen has argued against the " Master of the Third Reich "/ intentionalist thesis by arguing that the Holocaust can not be explained as the result of Hitler's will and intentions.

In Mommsen's view, the evidence is simply lacking that Hitler or anyone else in the Nazi regime had any sort of masterplan, and instead Mommsen has contended that the Third Reich was simply a jumble of rival institutions feuding with one another.

Mommsen has pointed out that on the economic and Church questions, Hitler was not the leading radical, and that for historians it is too easy " to emphasize as the final cause of the criminal climax and terroristic hubris of National Socialist policy the determining influence of Hitler ".

Moreover, Mommsen has maintained that because the role of Hitler has been inflated by historians, the role of traditional German elites in supporting the Nazi " restoration of social order " has been accordingly overlooked.

Mommsen has argued that historians should not reduce the study of the Nazi period to " the Hitler phenomenon ", but must take a broader look at the factors in German society which allow the Holocaust to occur.

In Mommsen's view, it was these power struggles that provided the dynamism that drove the German state into increasingly radical measures, leading to what Mommsen has often called the " realization of the unthinkable.

In particular, Kershaw subscribes to the view argued by Broszat and the German historian Hans Mommsen that Nazi Germany was a chaotic collection of rival bureaucracies in perpetual power struggles with each other.

In an article entitled " Neither Denial nor Forgetfulness Will Free Us " first published in the Frankfurter Rundschau on December 1, 1986, Mommsen argued that Historikerstreit was a result of the failures of modern society Mommsen argued that in the prosperous 1950s-60s, most Germans were happy to forget about their recent past, and looked forward to a brighter future Starting with the oil shock of the early 1970s and the rise of fundamentalist Islam in the late 1970s, Mommsen argued that the idea of a progressively better future was discredited, leading to a pessimistic public mood, and the a renewed interest in history This had occurred in tandem in a period when German historians had started to make a more critical examination of their recent past As a result at the precise mood when public demanded a past that could make them feel good about being Germans, German historians came under attack for not writing the sort of history the public wanted Mommsen argued that the work of those like Ernst Nolte was intended to provide the sort of history that would allow Germans feel good about being Germans by engaging in “… an explanatory strategy that … will be seen as a justification of National Socialist crimes by all those who are still under the influence of the extreme anti-Soviet propaganda of National Socialism " Mommsen charged that Ernst Nolte was attempting to egregiously whitewash the German past.

Mommsen argued that Nolte was attempting a " justification " of Nazi crimes and making " inappropriate " comparisons of the Holocaust with other genocides.

* Mommsen, Hans " German Society And The Resistance Against Hitler, 1933-1945 " pages 255-276 from The Third Reich The Essential Readings edited by Christian Leitz, London: Blackwell, ISBN 0-631-20700-7.

* Mommsen, Hans Alternatives to Hitler German Resistance Under the Third Reich, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-691-11693-8.

However functionalist historians such as Timothy Mason, Hans Mommsen, and Ian Kershaw argue that the document shows no such plans, and instead contend that the Hossbach Memorandum was an improvised ad hoc response by Hitler to the growing crisis in the German economy in the late 1930s.

Since most of the early functionalist historians were West German, it was often enough for intentionalist historians, especially for those outside Germany, to note that men such as Broszat and Hans Mommsen had spent their adolescence in the Hitler Youth and then to say that their work was an apologia for National Socialism.

At the same time, Kershaw sees considerable merit in the work of such historians as Timothy Mason, Hans Mommsen, Martin Broszat and Wolfgang Schieder, who argue that Hitler had no “ programme ” in foreign policy, and instead contend that his foreign policy was simply a kneejerk reaction to domestic pressures in the economy and his need to maintain his popularity.

Furthermore, for Mommsen, Hitler played little or no real role in the development of the Holocaust, instead preferring to let his subordinates take the initiative.

Mommsen wrote that Hitler was the " ideological and political originator " of the Holocaust, a " utopian objective " that came to life " only in the uncertain light of the Dictator's fanatical propaganda utterances, eagerly seized upon as orders for action by men wishing to prove their diligence, the efficiency of their machinery and their political indispensability ".

Mommsen is best known for arguing that Adolf Hitler was a " weak dictator " who rather than acting decisively, reacted to various social pressures.

Mommsen was the first to call Hitler a " weak dictator " when he wrote in a 1966 essay that Hitler was " in all questions which needed the adoption of a fundamental and definitive position, a weak dictator ".

In a debate with Klaus Hildebrand in 1976, Mommsen argued against " personalistic " theories of the Third Reich as explaining little and providing an attempt to retroactively provide Hitler with a sense of vision that he did not possess.

Mommsen argued that Hitler did not have a set of rational political beliefs to operate from, and instead held a very few strongly held, but vague ideas that were not capable of providing a basis for rational thinking.

Mommsen argued against Hildebrand that Hitler operated largely as an opportunistic showman concerned only with the best way of promoting his image in the here and now with no regard for the future.

* Intentionalist historians such as Andreas Hillgruber, Eberhard Jäckel, Klaus Hildebrand and Karl Dietrich Bracher have criticized Mommsen for underestimating the importance of Hitler and Nazi ideology.

The Swiss historian Walter Hofer accused Mommsen of " not seeing because he does not want to see " what Hofer saw as the obvious connection between what Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf and his later actions.

The Israeli historian Omer Bartov wrote in 2003 about Mommsen ’ s functionalist understanding of the Third Reich that :" In this reading, ideology is recognized and then dismissed as irrelevant ; the suffering of the victims is readily acknowledged and then omitted as having nothing to tell us about the mechanics of genocide ; and individual perpetrators from Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heyrdrich to the lowliest SS man are shoved out of the historical picture as contemptible, but ultimately unimportant pawns in the larger scheme of a “ polycratic state ” whose predilection for “ cumulative radicalization ” was a function of its structure rather the product of intentional planning or self-proclaimed will ”

Neither did Theodor Mommsen.

In comparison Wolfgang J. Mommsen did not regard the councils as a homogenous focussed movement for democracy but as a heterogeneous group with a multitude of different motivations and goals.

In regards to the debate about foreign policy, Mommsen has argued that German foreign policy did not follow a " programme " during the Nazi era, but was instead " expansion without object " as the foreign policy of the Reich driven by powerful internal forces sought expansion in all directions.

Hildebrand is pleased that Nolte denies the singularity of the Nazi atrocities ” Hans Mommsen defended Habermas against Hildebrand by writing :“ Hildebrand ’ s partisan shots can be easily deflected ; that Habermas is accused of a “ loss of reality and Manichaeanism ”, and that his honesty is denied is witness to the self-consciousness of a self-nominated historian elite, which has set itself the task of tracing the outlines of the seeming badly needed image of history ” Writing of Hildebrand's support for Nolte, Mommsen declared that: “ Hildebrand ’ s polemic clearly suggests that he barely considered the consequences of making Nolte ’ s constructs the centrepiece of a modern German conservatism that is very anxious to relativize the National Socialist experience and to find the way back to a putative historically “ normal situation ” In another essay, Mommsen wrote that Hildebrand was gulity of hypocrisy because Hildebrand had until 1986 always claimed that generic fascism was invalid concept because of the " singularity " of the Holocaust Mommsen wrote that " Klaus Hildebrand explicitly took sides with Nolte's view when he gave his previously stubbornly claimed singularity of National Socialism ( failing to appreciate that was, as is well known, the standard criticism of the comparative fascism theory )" Martin Broszat observed that when Hildebrand organized a conference of right-wing German historians under the auspices of the Schleyer Foundation in West Berlin in September 1986, he did not invite Nolte, whom Broszat observed lived in Berlin.