In three essays written after the outbreak of the war in 1914 – Gedanken im Kriege [de] ("Thoughts in Wartime" [August/September 1914]), Gute Feldpost ("Good News from the Front" [October 1914]) and Friedrich und die große Koalition ("Frederick and the Great Coalition" [September to December 1914]) – he defended German warfare and first promulgated his support for the Ideas of 1914 [de].

[4] This reproach was a major impulse for Mann to begin writing the Reflections; he specifically answered Rolland in the chapter called "Against Justice and Truth".

[2] The impulse for authoring the book was intensified by an essay on Émile Zola written by his brother Heinrich Mann, which appeared in René Schickele's pacifist journal Die Weißen Blätter in autumn 1915.

[2][6] The writing (fall 1915 to February 1918)[7] of the Reflections has been divided into four phases by Alexander Honold [de]: first, the beginning of the drafting process in the wake of Thomas Mann's war essays in the second half of 1915; second, his engagement with the Zivilisationsliteraten ("Civilization's Literary Men") and the elaboration of the dichotomy between "culture" and "civilisation", which deals with his brother after the publication of the Zola essay; third, the long discussion of a set of typological dichotomies; finally, the incorporation of aesthetic considerations (for example, the discussion of Hans Pfitzner's opera Palestrina).

According to Tobias Boes, the non-translation of the work during his lifetime was intentional on Mann's part due to chauvinistic content of the book which could have led to his abandonment by the American public.

[12] Thomas Mann saw his work as "intellectual military service" in the confrontation between German "culture" and French and British "civilisation".

Mann provides the main reasons for the writing of this long treatise and introduces its main themes: The difference between intellect and politics includes that of culture and civilization, of soul and society, of freedom and voting rights, of art and literature; and German tradition is culture, soul, freedom, art, and not civilization, society, voting rights, and literature.

[16] In the chapter titled "Soul-Searching", Mann explains the significance of the "triumvirate" of Arthur Schopenhauer, Richard Wagner and Friedrich Nietzsche as the inspirators for his thinking.

[17] He then turns to deliberations inspired by Emil Hammacher and Paul de Lagarde about Bismarck, the state, conservatism, suffrage, democracy, politicised art and Germany in 1914.

[17] Thomas Mann never fully denounced the views espoused in the Reflections, even after the 1929 Nobel laureate[18] had become one of the main opponents of Nazism among German expatriates in the United States.

[19] Christopher Beha argues that the Reflections are "a strange, frequently off-putting book, a 500-page assault on democracy, enlightenment and reason", but sees value in the idea that "we do damage to life's most important elements when we use them instrumentally, for political ends".