Making of the Modern World

1
Making of the Modern World
Lecture Fascism Between Nationalism and Total
War
2
Schedule

• Introduction
• What is Fascism?
• Fascist Movements
• Fascist States
• Fascism and War
• Interpretations
• Conclusion

3
Schedule

• Introduction
• What is Fascism?
• Fascist Movements
• Fascist States
• Fascism and War
• Interpretations
• Conclusion

4
Fascism - Etymology

• from fasces (rods bundled around an axe) In
  ancient Rome a symbol of the authority of the
  magistrate, lictors carried them in front of the
  magistrates
• Symbolism strength through unity

5
Fascism difficult to define

• Not a coherent ideology
• Big differences between Nazism, Italian Fascism
  and other fascist states and movements
• Some characteristics in common with other
  authoritarian regimes
• Extreme left, extremism of the centre or extreme
  right?
• Inflationary use of the term to slander political
  enemy, has become a term of political conflicts

6
FascismA collectivistic, nationalistic,
authoritarian ideology based on

• Anti-communism (-socialism, -Marxism)
• Anti-liberalism (-democracy, individualism)
• Anti-capitalism (only until in power)
• Anti-semitism (only in Germany)
• (Anti-egalitarian, anti-intellectual,
  anti-pacifist)

• The idea of regeneration, rebirth and youth
• The nation (as the eternal embodiment of the
  collective spirit)
• Corporatism (Italy) organic organisation of
  society, harmonised by state
• Community (in Nazi Germany Volksgemeinschaft)
• Racism (more in Nazism)
• Leadership cult
• Imperialism and expansionism

7
Syndicalism a set of ideas, movements with the
aim of transforming capitalist society through
action by the working class. For syndicalists,
trade unions are the potential means both of
overcoming capitalism and of running society in
the interests of the majority. Industry and
government in a syndicalist society would be run
by trade union federations. National syndicalists
imagined that the liberal democratic political
system would be destroyed in a massive general
strike, at which point the nations economy would
be transformed into a corporatist model based on
class cooperation, contrasted with Marxist class
struggle.
8
Corporatism or corporativism (Italian
corporativismo) a political or economic system
in which power is given to unelected civic
assemblies that represent economic, industrial,
agrarian, and professional groups to exert
control over their respective areas of social or
economic life. In Fascism corporations
represent the interests of their members in
relation to the state and are at the same time
instruments of control of the state Alternative
to class struggle Fascism should rightly be
called Corporatism as it is a merge of state and
corporate power. Benito Mussolini
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The keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its
conception of the State For Fascism the state is
absolute, individuals and groups are relative
The State, as conceived and realised by Fascism,
is a spiritual and ethical entity for securing
the political, juridical, and economic
organisation of the nation The State is not only
the present it is also the past and above all
the future. Transcending the individuals brief
spell of life, the State stands for the immanent
conscience of the nation. Benito Mussolini, The
Doctrine of Fascism (1932)
For the Fascist, everything is within the State
For Fascism, the State is an absolute. Giovanni
Gentile (1932)
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In the state it the völkisch idea) sees on
principle only a means to an end and construes
its end as the preservation of the racial
existence of man. Thus, it by no means believes
in an equality of the races, but along with their
difference it recognises their higher or lesser
value and feels itself obligated, through this
knowledge, to promote the victory of the better
and stronger, and demand the subordination of the
inferior and weaker in accordance with the
eternal will that dominates this universe. Adolf
Hitler, Mein Kampf (1925)
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Fascism Modernisation

• Fascism as backward-looking force (Lipsett)
• Social protection of middle classes against rise
  of organised capital organised labour, but de
  facto support of big business (rearmament)
• Means ends modern means to archaic ends
• Multiple paths to modernity technological,
  economic, political
• Horkheimer Adornos Auschwitz paradox height
  of barbarism achieved with factory-like
  precision scientists of death working for
  perfectibility of man a perverted
  Enlightenment project
• Nazism as reactionary modernism (Jeffrey Herf)
• Mass media tomorrow will highlight use of film
  radio

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Schedule

• Introduction
• What is Fascism?
• Fascist Movements
• Fascist States
• Fascism and War
• Interpretations
• Conclusion

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Fascist regimes
Fascist movements

• Some examples
• Britain British Union of Fascists (Oswald
  Mosley)
• Norway Nasjonal Samling (Vidkun Quisling)
• Romania Iron Guard
• Hungary Arrow Cross

• Italy (Benito Mussolini) 1922-1943/45
• Germany Nationalsozialistische Deutsche
  Arbeiterpartei (Adolf Hitler) 1933-1945
• Austria (Dollfuß) - 1938
• Spain (Franco) -
• Portugal (Salazar and Caetano)

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Italy

• Fascist regime 1922-1943 (1945)
• Benito Mussolini (Il Duce)
• March on Rome, October 1922
• Socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti murdered by
  fascists, June 1924
• Mussolini deposed August 1943
• Saló Republic 1943-1945

Benito Mussolini (1883-1945)
March on Rome, 1922
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Germany

• NSDAP formed 1920
• Failed beer hall coup, Nov. 1923
• Played no important role in 1920s
• After Great Depression fast growth of influence,
  1932 strongest party
• Hitler becomes chancellor in Jan. 1933
• Night of the Long Knives, June 1934 against
  SA-leaders who wanted to continue
  National-Socialist revolution and criticised
  Hitlers alliance with the conservatives and the
  traditional elites

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Schedule

• Introduction
• What is Fascism?
• Fascist Movements
• Fascist States
• Fascism and War
• Interpretations
• Conclusion

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I swear by God this sacred oath I will render
unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler, the
Führer leader of the German nation and people,
Supreme Commander of the armed forces, and will
be ready as a true soldier to risk my life at any
time for this oath.
Oath sworn by German soldiers after 1934
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Führer principle
The Führer is supreme judge of the nationThe
Führer is not backed by constitutional clauses,
but by outstanding achievements which are based
on the combination of a calling and of his
devotion to the people. The Führer does not put
into effect a constitution according to legal
guidelines laid before him but by historic
achievements which serve the future of his
people Constitutional law in the Third Reich is
the legal formulation of the historical will of
the Führer. Justice Minister Hans Frank in a
speech in 1938
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Schedule

• Introduction
• What is Fascism?
• Fascist Movements
• Fascist States
• Fascism and War
• Interpretations
• Conclusion

20
ans Baumann
A Nazi war song
"If all the world lies in ruins,What the devil
do we care?We still will go marching on,For
to-day Germany belongs to usAnd to-morrow the
whole world."

21
Fascism, War Empire

• Mussolinis hopes to recreate Roman Empire
  Mediterranean Mare Nostrum
• 1935 invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) 1940
  stalling of Greek Egyptian campaigns

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Nazism, War Empire

• Hitlers admiration of American Russian
  continental powers with natural resources
• Mein Kampf (1925) criticises Kaisers
  Weltpolitik
• Lebensraum Germany crowded people seeking
  continental empire in E. Europe/Ukraine
• Volksdeutsche mission to reunite lost
  territories of Greater Germany Aryanisation
  schemes
• World ambitions future confrontation with USA?

23
The foreign policy of a völkisch state is
charged with guaranteeing the existence on this
planet of the race embraced by the State, by
establishing between the number and growth of the
population, on the one hand, and the size and
value of the soil and territory, on the other
hand, a viable, natural relationship Only a
sufficiently extensive area on this globe
guarantees a nation freedom of existence.   B. 
1924, Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf. 8th Edition (New
York Houghton Mifflin, 1939), p. 935.
24
The enslavement of the slavic peoples
The Slavs are to work for us. In so far as we
dont need them, they may die. Therefore
compulsory vaccination and German health services
are unnecessary. The fertility of the Slavs is
undesirable. They may use contraceptives or
practise abortion, the more the better. Education
is dangerous. It is enough if they can count up
to one hundred. Every educated person is a future
enemy As for food, they wont get any more than
is absolutely necessary. We are the masters. We
come first. Letter from Martin Bormann, 1941
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Schedule

• Introduction
• What is Fascism?
• Fascist Movements
• Fascist States
• Fascism and War
• Interpretations
• Conclusion

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Some American historians (strange revival 10
years ago by Daniel Goldhagen)

• Nazism as culmination of centuries of German
  history
• From Luther Fredrick the Great of Prussia
  Bismarck and William II Ludendorff/Hindenburg
  Hitler

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Conservative German historians after 1945
(Gerhard Ritter, Friedrich Meinecke)

• State oriented historians
• Aim to save the German past
• Nazism as a complete break with the German past
• Nazism as part of an European trend of the
  collapse of moral and religious values in and
  after the Great War
• Demonizing of Hitler who is held responsible for
  the German catastrophe

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Revisionist view

• German territorial war aims in the Great War
  similar to those of Hitler (Fritz Fischer in
  1960s)
• Tradition of German expansionism
• Continuity of social structures and power of
  traditional elites
• In another step Germanys special path ( late
  industrialisation, no successful bourgeois
  revolution)
• Some historians see Nazism as unique
  (anti-Semitism and racial theory and Holocaust)
  and fundamentally different from Italian fascism

29
THE DEBATE ON THE FUNCTIONING OF THE THIRD REICH
http//www.colby.edu/personal/r/rmscheck/GermanyE5
.html
30
Synthesis (according to Bracher and Jäckel)
Hitler derived much of his strength from the
rivalry and the overlapping responsibilities of
state and party institutions. He thus could
assume the role of a mediator. Single offices
competed to win him over to their policies. Often
they tried to implement what was considered to be
his wish ...
http//www.colby.edu/personal/r/rmscheck/GermanyE5
.html
31
Fascism theory

• Stresses the similarities between Italy Germany
• Imperial expansion as inherent
• War as overall goal
• Close relationship with capitalism
• Fascism as faith-based political religion,
  placing willpower over material constraints

32
Fascism is the open terroristic dictatorship of
the most reactionary, most chauvinistic, and most
imperialist elements of finance capital.
Comintern leader Georgi Dimitrov on the
occasion of the VIIth Congress of the Communist
International 1935
33
Totalitarianism theory

• Mussolini, 1925 our totalitarian fascist will
• Theory in 1950s with Cold War comparison to
  Soviet Russia
• Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
• Carl Friedrichs six points
• An official ideology
• A single mass party
• Terroristic police control
• Monpoly control over the media
• A monopoly of arms
• Central control of the economy
• Criticisms static does not take account of
  radical, self-destructive tendencies of Italian
  Fascism and German National Socialism

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Schedule

• Introduction
• What is Fascism?
• Fascist Movements
• Fascist States
• Fascism and War
• Interpretations
• Conclusion

35
Fascism vs. Totalitarianism

• Fascism is a useful category to compare the
  origin and nature of right wing, authoritarian
  regimes with mass support in the historical
  context of post-World War I Europe
• Totalitarianism is useful to compare how power
  was exercised in Nazi-Germany and Stalinist
  Soviet Union, but should not be applied to the
  post-Stalin Soviet Union
• All theorizing and comparison should not blur
  differences, especially the unique and radical
  character of the Nazi extermination policy