Mosse describes his parents, who practised Reform Judaism and were anti-Zionist, as being, in their own minds, completely integrated as Germans (""gänzlich eingedeutscht""). He suggests that they did not take seriously the threat posed by Hitler until henchmen of the new regime forced his father, on the point of a gun, sign over their control of the publishing house. Mosse may have been speaking metaphorically: his father in April 1933 had left for Paris seeking refuge, not only from the Nazis but also from business creditors. In the wake of the global financial crisis, these had foreclosed on the publisher the previous autumn.