His dissertation, on Max Weber and German politics, published in English in 1984, revolutionized the "understanding of the 20th century's most influential sociologist by setting him firmly in the context of his times, and showing him to be a liberal nationalist and imperialist, much to the horror of many of his admirers.
He went on to demonstrate that a knowledge of Weber's political thought and action was essential if one were to grasp accurately his theory of power.
The Mommsens were related to Weber by marriage, so there was something particularly iconoclastic in Wolfgang's book, which caused a huge storm when it first appeared.
Furthermore, the November Revolution of 1918 did not go far enough and allowed the pre-1918 elite to continue to dominate German life, thus leading inevitably to Nazi Germany.
[citation needed] In the Historikerstreit ("historians' dispute"), Mommsen took the position that the Holocaust was a uniquely-evil event and should not be compared to the Stalinist Terror in the Soviet Union.