Notes on
THE ANATOMY OF FASCISM
by Robert O. Paxton
Tinfoil preamble: Can a dissertation on fascism be trusted if it was funded, in part, by the Rockefeller Foundation? Let’s give it a shot.
Chapter 1: Introduction
Section 1: The Invention of Fascism, pp 1-15
· Fascism was the major political innovation of the 20th century: Dictatorship against the Left abetted by mass public approval.
· The first fascists were socialists and “syndicalists” (union members) with nationalist sympathies, right-wing attitudes and ambitions for reform. They also shared a belief in war as a transformative force; part of an anti-intellectual, “cult of action” mindset.
· They were kind of like the “bikers” to the socialists’ “hippies”, in that both bikers and hippies shared certain core beliefs, wanted to change things from the ground up, but by very different means. – YOPJ
· The Futurists were, in many ways, the Neoconservatives of Italian fascism; reactionary intellectuals frustrated by the weakness and compromises inherent in parliamentary government.
· The birthday of fascism: March 23, 1919, when Mussolini and his Arditi (activist front-line veterans from World War I) staged a literal and deadly attack on Italy’s press in the form of Milan’s Avanti newspaper. Four were killed, and the presses were smashed.
· German Novelist Thomas Mann on Hitler’s rise: “Without underlying ideas, against ideas, against everything nobler, better, decent, against freedom, truth, justice, the common scum had taken power, accompanied by vast rejoicing of the masses.”
· Italian philosopher Croce on Mussolini’s rise: “Mussolini has added onagrocracy to Aristotle’s tyranny, oligarchy and democracy. Rule by braying asses.”
· Marxists consider fascism to be the instrument of the Big Bourgeoisie, used to fight the proletariat when legal means of state are insufficient. “It is the most open, terroristic dictatorship of the most reactionary, chauvinist, imperialist elements of finance capital.”
· The Cult of Personality theory is more useful as an after-the-fact excuse for actions that are viewed as reprehensible in historical hindsight than it is a valid way to understand fascism.
· Anti-Semitism is not central to fascism. Antagonism towards “the Other” – or multiple “Others” – is.
· Fascists made many promises of land reform and capital redistribution, but when in power, never made good on those promises. Instead, they made labor action (strikes, work stoppages) illegal, dissolved labor unions, lowered workers’ earning power and spent the national treasure on instruments of war.
· Fascists criticized capitalism not because of its exploitation, but because of its materialism. They never altered the social hierarchy, which they believed to be natural and necessary. They also believed that “national producers” – industrialists and financiers – would form the “new base” of a re-invigorated fascist civil society.
· In this regard, fascism can be seen as both hostile to socialism and liberalism (in the 19th century sense), but also more than just a more muscular conservatism.
· Fascist paradoxes: Hatred of cities and modernity combined with unbridled lust for technology. Sophisticated propaganda techniques used to appeal to a largely unsophisticated public. Anti-modernist traditionalists striving for a never-before-seen alternative modernity.
· Kristalnacht was an important turning point in Germany. Many citizens had been grumbling about the state’s actions up until then, but when the Night of Broken Glass happened, and no opposing action was taken, the fascists knew they could do whatever they wanted.
· The Fascist Minimum: Defined essentially as “a self-declared ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism.” This is controversial among scholars of fascism.
Section 2: Strategies, pp 15-20
· Other ideologies – liberalism, conservatism, socialism – emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries, a time when politics was a gentleman’s business. Fascism on the other hand came later, during a new era of mass politics.
· Fascism is not an ideology that rests on philosophy, but popular feelings about a) master races, b) the nation’s unjust lot, and c) their people’s rightful predominance over “inferior” peoples.
· For fascists, ideologies and specific policies are less important than aggressive pursuit of the national destiny; the flexing of national muscles and will.
· Walter Benjamin believed fascism had transformed politics into aesthetics, and that the ultimate expression of the fascist aesthetic was war. “The fist is the synthesis of our theory.”
· For fascists, it’s power first, then doctrine.
· Fascism’s relationship with its intellectuals was even more troubled than that of communism with its thinkers, because while communists could spend forever arguing theories, fascists sought a more direct route to the “instrumentalization of truth”.
· Early on in fascism’s history, intellectuals helped weaken elite attachment to Enlightenment principles and values, thus making it possible to “imagine” fascism. It opened a window.
· Ideology returns again at the end of the fascist cycle, in the killing fields of war.
· In the middle, there is much compromise.
· Fascists hated liberals as much as they hate socialists, but for different reasons. They saw liberals as the enablers of socialism.
· Fascism rejects any value other than the success of a chosen people in a Darwinian struggle for primacy. Therefore, unlike with communism, there was no such thing as a “Fascist International”.
Section 3: Where do we go from Here? pp 20-23
· Paxton posits 5 STEPS in the evolution of fascist movements.
· 1. Creation 2. Rooting 3. Seizure 4. Exercise. 5. Duration.
· Most modern societies spawned fascist movements, but few of these movements evolved into full-fledged regimes.
· Seeking a following, forming alliances, bidding for power, exercising it… not all fascist movements got to do these things.
Chapter 2: Creating Fascist Movements
Section 1: Creation, pp 24-28
· Early on, fascism sprang up around Europe in various places, but most visibly in Italy with Mussolini’s Fasci Italiania Combattimento.
· Hungary lost more territory and population than any other nation in the aftermath of World War I. With the Habsburg Empire dissolved, 70% of their territory was parsed out to new nation-states under the terms of the Treaty of Trianon (June 4, 1920), and with it, two-thirds of their population.
· Karolyi: attempts at reform and democracy failed to mollify allied invader/occupiers. (Hungary)
· Bela Kun: Communist revolutionary takes control, declaring Hungary a Soviet Republic in May of 1919.
· Hungarian elites bide their time while the Romanians chase away Kun (August of 1919). This leads to a bloody counter-revolution led by 1) traditional elites (Admiral Horthy) and 2) military radicals (Captain Gombos).
· Gombos was a nationalist, and sought nationalist renovation. He was anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic. He served under Horthy between 1932-1935.
· German nationalists of the dissolved Habsburg were influenced by the pan-Germanism of George von Schonerer.
· German decline after World War I made many turn to extremism of both the Left and Right. Some joined the Fatherland Front to fight “internal enemies”. Others joined the Freikorps mercenary units, attacking socialist parties and governments. Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebnecht were killed by such a group. Skirmishes with Polish and Soviet troops along the Baltic border continued well after the “end of the war” in 1918.
· The Germany army sent Hitler to spy on the German Workers Party (begun by Anton Drexler). He liked what he saw, quit the army, and joined as member #555.
· February 24, 1920: Hitler presents his 25 Points to two thousand Nazis gathered at a German beer hall.
· Italy, Germany, Hungary, Austria and France all saw the growth of fascist type movements, even as the post-WWI situation began to normalize and stabilize.
Section 2: The Immediate Background, pp 28-32
· World War I didn’t create fascism, it opened a number of windows for it: Culturally, socially and politically.
· Culturally: It changed Europeans’ collective views on human nature.
· Socially: It created a disgruntled warrior caste.
· Politically: It created economic and social strains apparently beyond the ability of existing institutions to resolve.
· Some say the Great War spawned both fascism and Bolshevism. Many Europeans believed that World War I was proof that civilization, itself, had failed.
· All belligerent governments of the time experimented with manipulation of public opinion, and experimented with methods of shaping citizens knowledge and opinions.
· After World War I, Europeans were caught between an old world that couldn’t be revived and a new one about which they disagreed bitterly.
· In the aftermath, wartime economies were cranked down too quickly, causing staggering inflation that made a mockery of thrift and savings (two cornerstone bourgeois conceits).
· Divisions between soldiers and citizens, the frontline and the home front, arose. Veterans felt they had earned a greater and more legitimate right to rule.
· Italo Balboa believed it was better to “smash and rebuild” than to return to a corrupt parliamentary system that wasn’t worth the horrible blood sacrifice of war.
· Three Grand Principles vied for influence in postwar Europe: Liberalism, Conservatism and Communism.
· Liberalism as enunciated in American president Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points.
· Conservatism as exemplified by Clemenceau’s wartime rule in France.
· Communism as expressed in Bolshevism.
· The mutual failure of these ideologies (the collapse of liberal/conservative postwar treaties, Russian socialism’s effective containment) left political space open for fascism as a Fourth Principle.
Section 3: Intellectual, Cultural and Emotional Roots, pp 32-42
· The late 19th century saw a revolt against liberalism, individual liberties, reason, natural human harmony and progress.
· What did fascists read?
· Mussolini read Nietzsche, LeBon, Sorel.
· Hitler read Nietzsche, von Schonerer, Chamberlain, Leuger.
· Nietzsche believed God was dead, Christianity was weak, Science was false, and Will was all.
· LeBon’s tome, The Psychology of Crowds (1895) was an influence on Mussolini, who used it almost like a textbook.
· Also influential were Vilfredo Pareto’s theories about electoral and parliamentary practices being essentially worthless in the face of the permanent power of elites.
· The ideas of Henri Bergson and Sigmund Freud made people aware of the existence of the subconscious, thus casting doubt on the belief that people choose freely, thus casting doubt on the idea of democracy, itself.
· Bad science, misused and popularized, led to Social Darwinism, the myth of the Euro-Aryan, eugenics and the idea of racial struggle.
· If the nation was mankind’s highest achievement, then war was ennobling. Some found beauty in war, the masculine ideal, will and endurance, the testing of limits.
· Fears are more telling than are the ideologies spawned by those fears.
· Europeans feared the loss of community under the weight of liberal individualism.
· Nazis considered Thomas Carlyle an important forerunner. Carlyle thought about a multi-layered welfare dictatorship led by Great Men in the Cromwell/Frederick the Great mold.
· Urban sprawl, industrial conflict, immigration… at the turn of the century, diagnosis of the ills of community became the stuff of sociology.
· Durkheim’s anomie: The purposeless drift of people without social ties.
· Organic (family, tribe, community) Solidarity vs. Mechanical (ideology, propaganda, advertising) Solidarity.
· Tommies’ Geneinschaften und Gesellschaften (natural versus mechanical solidarity).
· Decadence anxiety: Spengler’s idea that all great civilizations are doomed by comfort, complacency, and the declining birthrates that invariably accompany those things.
· Ages of Culture (heroic) move into Ages of Civilization (corrupt), with their rootless masses, unconnected to the soil, thinking only of money, incapable of great actions. A conservative, Spengler suggested “heroic Cesarism” as an antidote.
· Enemy anxiety: Fascists saw enemies everywhere, both internally and externally.
· Making an ideal of homogeneity invariably makes a suspect of difference.
· Cultural modernism was seen as a threat because of its subversive nature. Books and art were burned because they were a threat to the culture’s purity.
· Purity anxiety: The 19th century discovery of germs and genes brought with it a growing fear of disease-carrying, hereditarily “unfit” people. Sterilization of offenders and the unfit became commonplace. Nazis carried this to its ultimate extreme with the Final Solution.
· Southern Europeans were not so inclined towards this obsession with purity. And elsewhere, Catholics were less so than Protestants.
· The Italians believed that, because elites always rule anyway, it was necessary to forge a worthy new elite to lead public opinions, by myths if necessary.
· Enemy Anxiety: Germany feared Jews, Gypsies, Slavs. Italy feared Slavs, Slovenes, socialists, Libyans and Etheopians. In the United States, it was Blacks, Jews and sometimes Catholics.
· Isiah Berlin saw the roots of fascism in De Maistre, who advocated for the supremacy of Church and Crown.
· There is no linear intellectual pedigree leading from fascist ideologies to fascist states.
· Intellectuals, even those of the Right, fare poorly in fascist states. Few sign on.
· Fascism seeks out in each national culture those things that are best capable of mobilizing a mass movement of regeneration, unification and purity directed against liberal individualism and constitutionalism and against leftist class struggle.
· Early on, fascism had a “latitudinal hospitality to disparate intellectual hangers-on.” Vorticists Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis were sympathetic to Italian fascism in the 1920s.
· Once in power, fascists left their intellectuals behind, for the most part. No thinkers ever bothered to put together a philosophical system to support fascism.
· Fascism is very much about mood.
· At bottom, fascism is a passionate nationalism allied to a conspiratorial and Manichean view of history as a battle between good/pure and evil/corrupt, in which one’s community/nation has become a victim. These are fascism’s “mobilizing passions”.
The emotional foundations of fascism are:
1. A sense of overwhelming crisis.
2. The primacy of the nation/community.
3. A sense of victimhood granting carte blanche for retaliation.
4. Dread of group decline due to liberalism, class conflict and Otherness.
5. The need for a closer form of community.
6. Respect for authority by “natural leaders”. Leadership cult.
7. A belief that the leader’s instinct trumps reason and logic.
8. A belief in the beauty of violence and efficacy of will, in the service of the group.
9. The chauvinist belief that the chosen can do whatever they deem necessary to “Other” nations. “Do what thou will.”
Section 4: Long Term Preconditions, pp 42-44
· Mass Politics. Involving the average citizen in political decisions was unheard of until the mid-19th century. The first experiments with manhood suffrage followed the revolutions of 1848.
· Most conservatives and “cautious” liberals both generally tried to limit who could vote.
· A few bold and innovative conservatives chose to gamble on accepting a mass electorate and trying to manage it.
· Louis Napoleon (III), Emperor of the Second French Republic, was elected by manhood suffrage. He pioneered the use of simple slogans and symbols appealing to the poor and uneducated. Bismarck did so as well, in Germany. Though not fascists, they pioneered a path that fascists would master: Manipulation of the masses, instead of disenfranchisement.
· After WWI, when so many common people were sent to fight and die over politics, it became impossible to remove them from politics. So the fascists gave the vote to a very wide spectrum of citizens, even women in many cases, at least until they could abolish voting altogether.
· The democratic and socialist Left had to split before fascism was possible. Fascists can find their space only when socialism has become powerful and entrenched enough to disillusion its working class and intellectual clientele. Angered by the unavoidable compromises that take place in free and open governments, these turned to the extremes of Bolshevism or fascism (via national syndicalism).
· The success of Lenin in 1917 set panicked middle and upper-class people in search of an alternative response.
· The three key liberal institutions – parliament, the market and the school – were faring poorly with the crises of the times.
Section 5: Precursors, pp 44-49
· The first globalization crisis occurred during the decade of the 1880s. An influx of cheap foods and manufactured goods made possible by advances in transportation caused a collapse of the artisanal economy. An influx of immigrants escaping persecution from the East increased paranoia (and, to be fair, crime).
· Manhood suffrage meant that, for the first time, modest people entered into politics for the pay. These were the West’s first professional politicians.
· Some of these new politicians built political machines based on social clubs, like Freemasonry (France’s Gambetta is a case in point).
· In France, General Boulanger was perhaps the first populist “outsider” politician, supported by conservative Monarchists and Bonapartists because they knew he would damage the Republic. He eventually fled to Belgium and committed suicide.
· Boulangism: Mass-based populist cult of personality.
· The Dreyfus Affair: When a document used to incriminate Dreyfus (a Jewish staff officer) in an espionage case was proved to be a fake, Charles Maurras (of Action Francaise, arguably the first authentic fascist movement) said it was a “patriotic forgery”.
· Karl Lueger was the mayor of Vienna. He was invincible until his death. A proto-fascist, anti-Semitic socialist.
· The Cercle Proudhome (Valois). The first example of a National Socialist movement in practice. In France, it united nationalists and left-wing anti-democrats. A break-away movement from Action Francaise, because they disapproved of AF’s Marxism.
· Marquis de Maure: a French anti-Semite who, upon his return from a failed ranching venture in the United States, became leader of a thug mob who dressed up as cowboys, assaulting people of whom they did not approve. He was killed by his Touareg guides in the Sahara.
· Possibly the very first fascist movement in the world was the Ku Klux Klan.
· After the American Civil War, former rebels set up militias to restore an overturned social order. They constituted an alternative civic authority. They had uniforms, and justified their violence as being necessary “for the good of the group” (in this case, white Christians). These are all elements central to the fascist movements that would pop up across Europe between WWI and WWII.
· France and the USA, precocious in democracy, were also precocious in fascist movements.
Section 6: Recruitment, pp 49-52
· If fascist movements relied solely on soldiers, they never would have gotten anywhere, because there weren’t enough of them.
· The young were targeted.
· This seems to be a way of taking advantage of their lack of first-hand historical memory. – YOPJ
· Fascist parties were largely middle-class. But then again, so were most other political parties.
· From the working class, fascists took the unemployed and disinvested, those who were not part of the growing socialist culture. Those who stood outside.
· Most of the unemployed, however, turned to communism.
· The British Union of Fascists and the Hungarian Arrow Cross both courted the working class heavily.
· Did fascists appeal to reason or emotion? This is a hot debate. Saying fascism is a mental illness is dangerous. Fascism is, in fact, “utterly normal.”
· “Most fascist leaders were thrust into positions of extraordinary power and responsibility by processes that are perfectly comprehensible in rational terms.”
· Many high-ranking fascists were odd ducks. Hitler was a failed Boho artist. Mussolini was an unemployed school teacher. Himmler was a failed farmer. Goebbels had his literary ambitions.
Section 7: Understanding Fascism by its Origins, pp 52-54
· Most studies of fascist movements concentrate on their beginnings and less on their evolution. Perhaps this is because a lot of the key elements are present at the start, while studying the whole power-attaining enterprise seems boring and tedious by comparison.
· Most fascist movements never got far enough to become involved with the electoral process.
CHAPTER 3 – TAKING ROOT
Section 1: Successful Fascisms, pp 55-58
· Between WWs I and II, nearly every nation on Earth – and all those with mass politics – generated some intellectual current or activist movement akin to fascism.
· The Greyshirts of Iceland and the New Guard of New South Wales of Australia are two remote examples.
· Others, by becoming carriers of substantial grievances and interests, and by becoming capable of rewarding political ambitions, were able to take root in political systems.
· To take root, early fascist movements had to make choices. They had to make themselves useful in measurable ways, prove their worth to significant partners.
· They had to make their priorities clear. It is at this point that we can begin to test fascist rhetoric against fascist action. See what really counted for them.
· Fascist anti-capitalism was highly selective. The “socialism” of even the most radical national socialist was one that denied property rights only to foreigners and other enemies.
· Fascism cherished its “national producers”.
· Fascism found a space, above all, by offering an alternative to socialist revolution.
· Fascist pragmatism was driven by a desire for success and power.
· The more pure the ideology, the less likely to succeed at the ballot box.
· Two examples of pure fascist figures who were also failures are Primo de Rivera (Falange Espanole) and Ferenc Szalasi (Arrow Cross).
· Hitler and Mussolini felt destined to rule, it’s true, but they were not purists. They had no problem competing in “bourgeois” elections. They set out to make themselves indispensable.
· Becoming successful in politics brought in a lot of new people but also lost a lot of “purists of the first hour”.
· Party politics signals talk over action, deals over principles, competing interests over a united nation. Early fascist saw themselves as an anti-party.
· Posing as an anti-party, doing anti-politics, was especially effective with people whose main political motivation was scorn for politics and politicians.
· Fascists could tailor their message to all people (with the exception of socialists and communists), thus pioneering the first European “catch-all” politics of populist engagement.
· They appealed via “the swell of their social base” and the intense activism of their militants.
Section 2: Po Valley Italy; 1920-22, pp 58-64
· Italian fascism moved from Left-nationalism to the Right soon after the electoral defeat of 1919. D’Annunzio’s taking of the port city of Fiume, rewarded to the newly formed Yugoslavia after WWI, was an important to Mussolini. On all Left issues – atheism, land reform, the monarchy – Mussolini (and the party literature) proved very flexible, in the service of nationalism and an increased number of votes.
· Squadristi – Activist smashers centered in rural northwestern Italy. Started in Trieste, attacking Slovenes, burning down the Balkan Hotel. These were the infamous Blackshirts.
· D’Annunzio led a band of nationalists into the (now Yugoslavian) town of Fiume, declaring it the Republic of Carnaro. As a writer, poet and adventurer, he brought bombast and theatricality to politics, and Mussolini adopted these elements. D’Annunzio also pioneered the use of uniforms, ceremonial parades, speeches delivered from balconies, and the “Roman salute”.
· When the occupation of Fiume turned sour, d’Annunzio defied his nationalist conservative backers as well as the then-socialist government of Italy. Thus he fell out of favor. He held on to power there for a while, authoring a constitution (the Charter of Fiume) and ruling over a martial populist Republic.
· After Italian PM Giolitti negotiated a settlement with Yugoslavia, making Fiume an international city, and sending in the military to disperse d’Annunzio’s troops. Although he was sympathetic to d’Annunzio (he later took Fiume by force) Mussolini said little about this humiliation, because he saw d’Annunzio’s failure as his gain.
· After d’Annunzio’s humiliation, many of his followers returned to Mussolini’s fascist fold. They abandoned purity for pragmatism in the quest for power.
· Like the veterans, land owners in the Po Valley hated the socialists who had organized landless laborers and establish de facto control over the agricultural wage-labor market.
· The Big Planters turned to the Blackshirts, who invaded city hall in Bologna, November 21, 1920, killing six. They went on to sack and burn labor exchanges.
· In 1921, they went on a rampage, burning down establishments housing people they didn’t agree with – socialist party headquarters, radical unions – killing many.
· Eventually, the fascists established their own monopoly over the farm labor market. They began to supplant the state in organization of public life and infringe on its monopoly of force. They occupied whole cities. The fascist city leaders were referred to a “Ras”, after Ethiopian Kings.
· Fascists had the sympathy and cooperation of police and army commanders.
· Some early fascists complained about the movement becoming “the bodyguard of the profiteers”. These purists eventually left to create their own, pure, unsuccessful parties (or anti-parties as the case may be). They were replaced by the sons of land owners, young police officers, army officers and assorted thugs. Thus did Mussolini’s brand of fascism thrive.
· Squadrismo altered the movement’s social composition, moving it to the Right. The first idea to disappear from fascist party literature was the rejection of war and imperialism. After supporting the League of Nations, they came to attack it. From calling for a return to a defensive army, they called for expansion of territories and military growth. From supporting economic reforms such as tax hikes and the nationalization of some industries, they went to rejecting these ideas as “confiscatory” and “a discouragement to initiative.” From being a staunch anti-clerical atheist, Mussolini came to refer to the Church as a manifestation of “the Latin and Imperial Tradition of Rome.” Even fascism’s view of the monarchy changed dramatically. All in a few short years. The revolution had mutated.
· Anti-socialism became Mussolini’s one guiding principle. And it became a success because of this. Without Po Valley, Mussolini’s party would probably have been a historical footnote.
Schlesweig-Holstein, Germany 1928-33, pp 64-68
· The only state to give the Nazis an outright majority in any free election was Schlesweig-Holstein. 51% in 1932.
· During the first post-war crisis (1918-23), the Freikorps failed to establish itself as a political power. The next opportunity was the Great Depression.
· Having done poorly in the cities, they turned to the farmers. An influx of cheap foods had decimated the agri-industry. The 1929 crash was the last straw.
· Farmers were traditionally conservative voters who supported the DNVP. They lost faith in this party after the crash.
· To the farmers, Weimar was triply damned: Centered in distant Prussia, seen as too attached to decadent Berlin, and too tolerant of communists. Farmers turned to the Landbund, a violent peasant’s self-help league.
· Landbund was ineffective, so the farmers then turned to the Nazis. Farmers were in the process of turning away from Hitler when the Nazis froze things in 1933.
· The Nazi growth between ’29 and ’32 showed Hitler’s success in exploiting grievances and directing appeals to specific constituencies.
· Hitler brought panache and star power to German politics. Drama. He promised something for everyone (except the commies). They didn’t care about contradicting themselves. And neither did the voters.
· Marxists believed German businessmen paid the bills for Hitler’s enterprise in an attempt to have their very own anti-communist army. Fritz Theissen’s book “I Paid Hitler”, seemed to hint as much.
· Most German businesses hedged their bets, however, donating to all non-communist parties, and almost always contributing more to traditional conservative parties.
· An important share of Nazi funds came from entry fees at mass rallies, the sale of Nazi pamphlets and small contributions.
· By 1932, Hitler had built the first catch-all party in German history and the largest ever seen there. He combined violent attacks on socialists (Storm Troopers), electioneering and direct action to appeal to the disgruntled.
· By 1932, though the Nazis were powerful, they were not yet all-powerful. They were merely an indispensable part of the anti-socialist coalition. But they were losing momentum, and money was running out. Hitler was being courted by other conservative parties who wanted to use its muscle for their own purposes. Nazism would have been a historical footnote if it wasn’t for the all-or-nothing gamble on the Chancellorship. But more on that later.
An Unsuccessful Fascism: France 1924-40, pp68-73
· Even the victor nations in World War I saw fascist movements arise. Studying their failure can teach us what is needed for such movements to succeed.
· Despite France’s reputation as the seat of liberalism, home to the Rights of Man, the Bastille and the Marseillaise, it has always had an authoritarian, nationalist, monarchist undercurrent. The inter-war period, with its German menace, its economic depressions and its socialist revolutionary threat, sparked disaffection. The extreme Right flourished in France.
· On February 6, 1934, the Right proved strong enough to bring down a French government, but not strong enough to install a new one. 16 died in the riots. The French were appalled.
· In the aftermath, the Left got more votes, a coalition of socialists, radicals and communists. Paramilitary leagues were outlawed in 1936, something Weimar Germany failed to do, with disastrous results.
· Any assessment of fascism in France turns on LaRocque and his Parti Social Francais. A career army officer from a monarchist family, LaRocque took over the Croix de Feu veterans association. He grew the organization from its original, Croix-de-guerre-winners-only membership. They decried the weakness of parliamentarism and the dangers of Bolshevism. They advocated an authoritarian state and justice for workers.
· Their militia was called the Dispos, after Disponible (ready). They were put out of business after the Left coalition came to power.
· LaRocque changed his group into a political party, which grew in popularity. If the 1940 election hadn’t been cancelled by the war, he may have won.
· Vichy France was run by traditional conservatives, not the fascist Far Right. After WWII, the Far Right was reduced to the status of a sect in France.
· In France, the Depression had not hit as hard. Mainstream conservatives did not feel sufficiently threatened to turn to fascists.
· The Greenshirts were a farmer’s movement in Northwest France in the ‘30s. As in Germany and Italy, fascism found its first and most vigorous footholds in rural areas. The collapse of farm prices had disastrous consequences.
· Fascist interlopers cannot easily step in when a political system is working reasonably well.
Some Other Unsuccessful Fascisms, pp 73-75
· In descending order of electoral success…
· The Arrow Cross Hungarist Movement of Ferenc Szalasy.
· The Legion of the Archangel Michael in Romania.
· Leon Degrelle’s Rexist movement in Belgium.
· Duct NSB National Socialist “Beweging”.
· Norway’s Vidkun Quisling Nasjonal Samling.
· Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists.
· All prove that it’s difficult to keep momentum going. One big vote rarely allows a fascist party to take root.
· Sir Oswald Mosley was a leftist British minister who started out a Leftist before visiting Mussolini, who convinced him that fascism was the wave of the future.
· The Daily Mail infamously became a fascist paper.
· British Blackshirts beating people up in the streets proved a bad move. Their popularity plummeted. And after the Night of the Long Knives in Germany, 90% of the BUF membership walked away from it.
· Ireland had Blueshirts, who sent troops to fight in Spain… for Franco.
· All these movements remained “pure” and relatively insignificant. Sometimes because there was a lack of opportunity, among other things.
Comparisons and Conclusions, pp 76-86
· All European nations had intellectuals with fascist leanings. But not all got fascist parties, or even fascist movements of much note.
· Fascism thrived on the crisis of liberalism. The laissez-faire state essentially ceased to exist during WWI, with the massive mobilization, and there was no going back.
· Between the wars, parliamentary systems were converted into authoritarian regimes in Spain, Portugal, Greece, Poland, Yugoslavia, Romania, Estonia and Lithuania.
· Crisis of Transition. Nations that industrialized late faced larger hurdles. The speed of the transition was accelerated, thus compounding the pain.
· Higher levels of social turmoil required new forms of social control.
· Three crises…
· Crisis of mass nationalization – mass politics.
· Crisis of transition.
· Crisis of cultural modernity.
· Cultural conservatives felt extremely threatened by artistic experimentalism and popular culture. Weimar Germany was a center of cultural experimentation.
· The map of fascist success follows closely but not exactly the map of defeat in World War I.
· Spain, no… but they were still suffering the generational humiliation of empire loss during the Spanish American War.
· Fascist success also follows closely the map of Bolshevik revolution attempts.
· In settings where large masses of landless peasants added force to revolutionary movements, and where large portions of the middle class were still struggling with elementary rights, things tilted far to the Left.
· Before fascism could emerge, become a serious contender, one chief would have to emerge as the “gatherer”. The problem was not a lack of Fuhrers, but a plethora of them.
· A successful chief was able to reject “purity” and engage in the compromises and deals needed to fit in the space available.
· In Italy, the Fascist Party saw that the left-nationalist space it coveted was already occupied by the Left. So it underwent the necessary transformation to become a local power in the Po Valley. The Nazis did the same with German farmers. Mussolini and Hitler trimmed their movements to fit the space available to them.
· Polarization was in the interests of both communists and fascists.
· Fascist violence had a 3-pronged target: to show that communist violence was rising, that the liberal state was ineffectual, and that the fascists were tough enough to deal with the problem. They wanted conservatives and the middle class to see fascist violence as necessary in the face of Leftist provocation. It helped that most people didn’t fear fascists, who mostly targeted enemies and minorities (the despised).
· The legislation of violence against a demonized internal enemy brings us close to the heart of fascism.
· Many otherwise ordinary people get a vicarious thrill from the “beautiful” selective violence of fascism.
· Polarization was dangerous, as it might send people to the Left. But Hitler and Mussolini understood that the Left mostly appealed to blue collar workers (not all of them). Fascism appealed broadly across class lines. In post-revolutionary Europe, polarization worked in fascism’s favor.
· Parallel structures: An outsider party that wants to claim power sets up organizations that replicate government agencies (Think tanks? Faith-based initiatives?) The Nazi Party, for example, had its own foreign policy agency that, at first, soon had to share power with the traditional Foreign Office. Ribbentropp eventually became foreign minister in 1938, and the Foreign Office was soon being purged of career diplomats in favor of Nazi hacks. (Think tanks of the Right now populate the Federal bureaucracy, especially the Pentagon).
· After achieving power, the party could substitute its parallel structures for those of the state. It is one of the defining characteristics of fascism.
· Differs from Bolshevik use of parallel structures because once commies took over, the party apparatus took over. The fascists retained both the state and parallel structures.
· The final essential pre-condition of successful fascism: descision-makers ready to share power with fascist challengers.
CHAPTER 4: GETTING POWER
Section 1: Mussolini and the March on Rome, pp 87-91
· Contrary to popular mythology, Mussolini didn’t seize power during any “march” on Rome.
· Italy’s government was paralyzed by the cleft in the Left.
· The Cleft in the Left: Socialist Catholics vs. atheist Marxists. This split allowed a heterogeneous coalition of liberals and conservatives to rule without a solid majority. Giolitti made the mistake of bringing the Fascists in on his ticket (National Bloc).
· Via the crises of general strike, revolution and all the other aforementioned elements, Mussolini took his shot. The government was ready to stop the march on Rome by force, but King Victor Emmanuel III refused to sign the emergency orders. He offered the Prime Ministership directly to Mussolini. It remains a mystery as to why the King gave in to Mussolini’s demands, although some say it was because the generals told him the troops were sympathetic to the Blackshirts.
· The March on Rome took place only after Mussolini had assumed command. October 28 became the Fascist New Year’s Day.
Section 2: Hitler and the Backstairs Conspiracy, pp 91-96
· Hitler, taken in by Mussolini’s myth, attempted a march of his own. November 8, 1923, he attempted to kidnap leaders of the Bavarian government and force them to participate in a coup d’etat against the federal government in Berlin. He wanted to take Munich and establish it as the new German capital, and assumed the army would be sympathetic because he had a war hero by his side (Ludendorff). The Beer Hall Putsch was a humiliation. Hitler was thrown in jail.
· Hitler’s opportunity came at the next crisis, the crash of the 1930s. The Italian model made Fascism seem plausible again.
· Weimar had never been seen as legitimate in Germany. Attacked from Left and Right, the fragile coalition of disparate parties was easily felled.
· Reparations and the xxx Plan caused nationalist outcry. October 1929, the Wall Street Crash. By March 27, the Great Coalition fell. Three years of emergency government followed, with Hindenberg signing into law many acts that didn’t have majority assent.
· The Nazi’s fortunes were rising. They went from 12 to 107 seats (out of 491). The government after that would either have to include Nazis or the Left. And Hindenberg hated the Left.
· The Left thought Hitler could only come to power via a coup.
· A small cadre of people held the fate of Germany in their hands. Hindenberg, the putschist Von Papen and Kurt Von Schleiber. Conservative gentlemen, they didn’t like the idea of bringing in this corporal, fascist commoner. That Fall, Hitler played poker… all or nothing. He didn’t want a vice-chancelorship.
· At the next election, the Nazi Party became #1 in Germany. Soon, his popularity was slipping again. But a bit of backstairs chicanery between Von Papen, Hindenberg and Von Schlieber (whom Hindenberg thought was out to depose him) led to Hitler’s ascent to the Chancellorship.
Section 3: What did not happen – Election, Coup D’Etat, Solo Triumph, pp 96-98
· Hitler never got a majority. July 1932, he got 37.2%. November ’32, he got 33.1%. March ’33, he got 43.9% (with Storm troopers intimidating people).
· Both Mussolini and Hitler were invited to take office as head of government by heads of state in the legitimate exercise of his official functions, on the advice of civilian and military councilors.
· This was at a time of crisis; in Italy’s case, crisis created by the Fascists.
· Fascist coup attempts always fell to conservative repression. Romania’s Legion of Archangel Michael attempted coups, and were crushed. Austria too was crushed (Nazis held them in check). Conservatives accepted violence against socialists and communists, but not against the state.
· Since the fascist route to power has always been through cooperation with the conservative elites, the strength of the movement itself is merely a variable.
Section 4: Family Alliances, pp 98-102
· Conservatives didn’t create fascists, they just let them get away with too much, until they became too big to ignore (by a mix of electoral appeal and violent intimidation).
· Despite some reservations and attempts at restraint, conservatives came to see the Fascists had more to offer as part of a coalition and lots of trouble if left to their own devices.
· Conservatives complicit in fascist ascendancy were of several types.
· First: Complicity in violence against the Left. Second: The gift of respectability.
· Conservatives were the main recipients of industrial largesse in Germany, until Hitler gained power. At that point, Hitler got much cash.
· The more of less protracted period during which fascists and conservatives hammered out a power-sharing arrangement was a stressful time for both sides. Considering the alternatives (military dictatorship or revolutionary Leftism) they worked it out.
· Herrschaftskonpromiss: a compromise for rule when idealists are cast out and areas of agreement are forged.
· Mussolini was more beholden to his “ras” than Hitler was to the SA, because Hitler’s party was more important. These militant purists caused some trouble for both during negotiations for power. Hitler faced outright revolt by Storm troopers and hardline SA.
· Ultimately, conservatives chose the fascist option over cooperation with the moderate Left, or continued reliance on emergency measures.
Section 5: What Fascists Offered the Establishment, pp 102-104
· A mass following sufficiently numerous to permit conservatives to form parliamentary majorities without any Leftist partners.
· Fresh young faces to a public weary of an ageing establishment.
· Another way of belonging, a deeper commitment and discipline in an era when conservatives feared dissolution of the social bond.
· A way to wean workers from Marxism, by taking advantage of the 20th century notion that Nation was stronger than Class (a result of, or truth exposed by, the first world war).
· A way to overcome the disorder (that they, themselves, had caused). They promised to restore order.
· “Being in the center of the movement,” Hanna Arendt wrote: “the Leader can act as though he were above it.”
· While some conservatives were worried about fascist anti-capitalist rhetoric, Mussolini made it clear that he would be a “productivist” and Hitler (in his January 26 Dusseldorf Industrialist Club speech) that he was a Social Darwinist in the economic realm, as well.
· Hitler and Mussolini were the first lower-class “adventurers” to reach power in major European countries. Conservatives thought they would be know-nothings, easy to control.
· In sum, fascists offered a new recipe for governing with popular support but without any sharing of power with the Left, and without any threat to conservative social and economic privileges and political dominance. The conservatives, for their part, held the keys to the doors of power.
Section 6: The Pre-Fascist Crisis, pp 105-106
· Similarities between the 2 crises that spawned fascism: Post WWI shocks and economic collapse.
· Both seemed beyond the scope of existing institutions to deal with. Both caused parliamentary gridlock, both gave a boost to the revolutionary Left, political polarization, desperation among conservative elites.
· Italy had just experienced “biennio rosso” (two red years) with socialist mayors, land grabs, strikes, occupied factories in Turin (Sept 1920). Russia was Ground Zero. Italy’s “maximalists”, however, didn’t know how to proceed.
· Chabod said: middle class fear of communism peaked after maximalism had subsided.
· In Germany, 1931, there was a fear of communist revolution. The Boxheim papers show that the Nazis were preparing for this and saw it as a great opportunity to prove their worth.
· Vivarelli: “The collapse of the liberal state occurred independently of fascism.” However we interpret the deadlock of democracy, no fascist government is likely to reach office without it.
Section 7: Revolutions After Power: Germany and Italy, pp 106-110
· Conservatives brought Hitler and Mussolini into power quasi-constitutionally, within coalition governments that the fascists did not wholly control. Their power was limited in the first days, in that they had to rule a coalition within their conservative allies.
· Soon, both turned their toe-holds into full-fledged dictatorships. The real seizure of power was transforming their quasi-constitutional office into unlimited personal authority. This was massively illegal. They still needed allies, but all they needed was for them to acquiesce.
· For Hitler, the Reichstag fire provided the perfect opportunity. Feb 28, ’33.
· Dutch communist dimwit Marinus van der Lubbe may or may not have started the fire. Regardless, Hitler used the incident to give himself almost unlimited power. He declared war on communist “terrorism”. Conservatives gave him a free hand, and the organizations of civil society met him half-way.
· On Feb 28, Hindenberg’s Reichstag Fire Decree suspended all legal protection of free speech, assembly, property, and personal liberty. Terrorists could be arrested at will. Federalization of law enforcement.
· Few Germans were prepared to resist when Brownshirts stormed courts, removing Jewish lawyers, or sacked Left-leaning newspaper offices.
· Once again failing to get a majority (in deeply flawed elections), Hitler proposed an Enabling Act that would empower him to act free of parliamentary interference for 4 years. It was called the “Law to Relieve the Distress of the People of the Reich”.
· After arresting communist deputies, Hitler was able to get the 2/3 vote required. Catholics voted for it, reflecting Pius XI’s belief that communism was worse than Nazism. Hitler repaid this kindness with a Vatican Concordat promising to leave Catholics alone of they stayed out of politics.
· Conservatives turned a blind eye to Hitler’s “revolution from below”, even as the first concentration camp was opened at Dachau, for political opponents, in 1933 (March).
· In 1937, Hitler extended the Enabling Act another five years, instead of resigning like he promised he would. Again, indefinitely, in 1942 (because of the war). He coveted the legal cover of the Enabling Act, illusory as it was.
· In June 1934, the Night of the Long Knives helped placate and pacify antsy Nazis and Nazi supporters who thought they deserved more power. 200 SA leaders and a number of recalcitrant conservatives were killed.
· Mussolini’s second revolution was far less decisive and more gradual. His government pursued conventionally conservative policies. The menace of Blackshirt violence was, however, ever-present. The Acerbo election law helped Mussolini re-organize parliament into a more or less subservient configuration… quasi-normalcy.
· That all changed with the murder of socialist reformist Matteoti, after he had presented evidence of Fascist corruption. A close personal associate of Mussolini was fingered for the murder. Many called for an end to Mussolini’s reign.
· After several months of stalemate, Mussolini was confronted by his Ras. They told him to crush his opposition or they would do it without him. He did so.
· Over the next two years, Mussolini replaced elected mayors with “podesta”, re-introduced the death penalty, dissolved all parties except the PNF, censored and shut down opposition newspapers, and instituted a single-party dictatorship by 1927.
· Conservatives accepted this, because they STILL thought the alternative was too terrible.
Section 8: Comparisons and Alternatives, pp 110-118
· “Only in Germany and Italy have fascists so far fully grasped the reins.”
· Third stage, taking power. Most movements never make it to electoral legitimacy. Most that made it were subsumed by authoritarian conservative regimes.
· Fascists play second fiddle very poorly.
· The liquidation of the Legion of the Archangel Michael in Romania, 1941. Franco and Salazar reduced fascist parties to powerlessness with less bloodshed. Vargas crushed the Brazilian fascists after tolerating them for a while.
· Well entrenched conservative elites have provided unfavorable terrain for fascism to reach power. If conservatives could rule alone, they did so.
· The only other way fascist governments seem to have come into power was after the nation had been conquered by a fascist army, and even then, things were iffy.
· The main role Hitler gave foreign fascists was the chance to die on the Russian front. Belgium’s Degrelle and France’s Doriot both took him up on this offer.
· Hitler preferred to deal with authoritarians. Antonescu’s 30 Romanian legions did far more good for Hitler than the crazy legionnaires.
· In Hungary, Hitler didn’t replace Horthy with Sealing (Sp) until the last seconds of the Russian advance.
· In Croatia, the Ustashi murdered 500,000 Serbs, 200,000 Croats, 90,000 Bosnian Muslims, 60,000 Jews, 50,000 Montenegrans, 30,000 Slovenes… even the Nazis were appalled.
· None of the Fascist regimes survived beyond the collapse of their Axis protector regimes. Franco and Salazar maintained their conservative authoritarian regimes for decades.
· Comparison suggests that fascist success depends more on crisis levels than on the qualities of fascist thought or chiefs.
· So why didn’t conservatives just remove a major fascist selling point by crushing the Left? Some did. Spain, for instance, crushed the socialists and thus was able to marginalize the Falangists. But this tact was seen as being a good way to give “the street” to the Left. It was too late, German and Italian conservatives surmised, to reduce the public to 19th century deference.
· It is difficult to imagine how Hitler and Mussolini could have come to power without forming alliances with powerful, traditional elites.
· The Kerensky Scenario: A Russian general who in 1917 found the Parliamentary Regime of Kerensky to be ineffectual. He marched on Petrograd but was stopped by the Bolsheviks. If he’d succeeded, Russia would have been a simple military dictatorship, for democracy was still too new for Russia to furnish the mass counterrevolutionary mobilization characteristic of a fascist response to a weak social democracy about to be overwhelmed by Bolshevism.
· Polarization, deadlock, mass mobilization against internal and external enemies, complicity by existing elites.
· The Balkan scenario of the 1990’s provides a different model of fascist power-taking: the transformation of a regime already in place.
· Post-communist dictators learned to play the card of expansionist nationalism as a substitute for discredited communism.
· A trick for fascists was to cause disorder without actually doing too much of it, themselves. If they did, the elites would scorn them (and did). Propaganda and symbolic gestures thus became important.
· Fascism, it should be noted, takes advantage of – but is not the sole cause of – liberal state decline.
· After being absorbed by elites (co-opted), fascism’s goals became clear – break a logjam in national politics by means which excluded socialists.
· What else could the elites of Italy and Germany have done?
· Left-center coalitions, with Church socialists and reformists.
· Technocracy, non-party experts.
· Military dictatorships.
· Always, in Germany and Italy, at all junctions, elites have chosen the anti-socialist solution.
· Luck played a role. Mussolini’s rise to power depended on the whim of a King. Hitler benefited from elite rivalries.
· Crises in the political and economic systems created a space for Mussolini and Hitler, but it was the unfortunate choices of a few powerful Establishment leaders that actually inserted the fascists into that space.
CHAPTER FIVE: EXERCISING POWER
Section 1: The Nature of Fascist Rule, Dual State and Dynamic Shapelessness, pp 119-128
· The myth of the Leader lingers because of Allied awe at the Axis military juggernaut and Axis elite excuse-making. But no dictator rules alone. Military, judiciary, civil servants, law enforcement (agencies of rule) and economic/social elites all have to participate.
· This degree of obligatory power-sharing with pre-existing conservative establishment differentiates fascist dictatorships from, say, the communist totalitarian dictatorship of Stalin.
· There has never been an ideologically pure fascist REGIME.
· In the 40’s, Franz Neuman argued in Behemoth that a cartel of party, industry, army and bureaucracy ruled Nazi Germany, held together only by “profit, power, prestige and especially fear.”
· Bracher: “National Socialism came into power underconditions that permitted an alliance between conservative-authoritarian and tech(?) nationalistic and revolutionary dictatorial forces.”
· Mommsen: “Alliance between ascending fascist elites and traditional leadership groups, interlocked, despite differences, common project, etc.”
· There was evolution in fascist regimes, not just pageantry, history’s end.
· Italy evolved toward authoritarian militarism. Germany radicalized toward unbridled party license. Never static.
· Fraenkel saw it all as a party/state conflict, seeing Germany as a dual state.
· In Germany, the Nazi prerogative state (emergency measures) slowly encroached on the normative state. The war meant total domination by the Nazis.
· Mussolini was less antagonistic to the normative state for many reasons. He was saddled with a King, whereas Hindenberg died in ’34.
· Still, there were important prerogative elements in Italy. The Secret Police (OURA), controlled press, economic baronies, African fiefdoms. The war, here, too, helped.
· Brzezinski and Freidrich: “Islands of separateness” were elements of civil society that survived totalitarian dictatorships. The Nazis tried to overcome the elements with “coordination” or “leveling”.
· The Church remained an Island of Separateness in fascist Italy, even after labor hunions, the media and all political parties were brought into line.
· Leader/Party Apparatus/Civil Society. In fascist regimes, a tug-of-war between these elements. 4-way tension.
· The Dopolavoro was Fascist Italy’s attempt to compete with the local boss or priest for authority by providing sports, leisure and entertainment. The people took advantage without necessarily swallowing the propaganda.
· Parallel structures: The Nazi Party had 1) its own military force, 2) police, 3) youth movement.
· Charisma fueled the fascist project AFTER partnerships and compromises were made to achieve rule. Hitler was actually quite incompetent, obsessed with designing future cities and plotting his 1000 year Reich. His delegating powers probably contributed to the radicalization of the party. He was basically a lazy Bohemian art-student whose ego was allowed to run rampant.
Section 2: The Tug-of-War between Fascists and Conservatives, pp 128-131
· Von Pappen and other conservatives thought they would be able to control Hitler at first. Hitler was their face-man. They figured they would run things behind the scenes. They were wrong.
· The Communists also thought Fascism would be a flash in the pan. They believed the excesses of fascism would speed progress towards the proletarian revolution. They were wrong. Hitler soon had total personal authority. He brought enemies and ostensible conservative allies into line.
· Keys to Hitler’s success: Audacity, drive, tactical agility, skill at manipulating the threat of communist “terror”, a willingness to murder.
· After the law creating a one-party state, conservatives were left to fight a rear-guard action to prevent Nazi parallel organizations from taking over their remaining centers of power:
· The Army from the S.A.
· State governments from the Gauletiers.
· Civil service from the party hacks.
· The Church from “Nazi Christianity”.
· The Night of the Long Knives was the “one” in the “one-two punch” against conservatives. Hindenberg’s death was the “two”.
· Eventually, the Army was overtaken and they had to swear allegiance to Hitler (as they previously had to the Kaiser). The Foreign office was taken over by Ribbentrop, the diplomatic corps filled with S.A. men.
· At each new escalation of atrocity and illegality, conservatives looked the other way.
· A small cadre of conservatives did, however, almost kill Hitler on July 20, 1944.
Section 3: Tug-of-War Between Leader and Party, pp 131-133
· Party radicals are always hard to please. Hitler confronted dissent with bloodshed. Mussolini was more conciliatory.
· He also held them in check by his own personal control, success, and by outlets like war and the extermination of “undesirables”. The Eastern Front, especially, was a horror show.
· Mussolini had periodic episodes of radicalization and state normalization.
Section 4: Tug-of-War Between Party and State, pp 133-135
· Hitler and Mussolini used force to make the State work for them. They made the apparatuses of State their “bitches”.
· The police were the key agency. Hitler brought them under the control of the S.S. Himmler became chief of the whole German police system by 1936.
· One of the biggest differences between the Nazis and the Fascists was the Italian police remaining a civil service organization, run by non-party bureaucrats. Italy’s OURA was tiny compared to Germany’s Gestapo.
· Doctors and the medical establishment were fine with Nazism. They appreciated the “scientific” and hygienic nature of the Nazi program.
· In the final summation, the struggle between Party and State was the least tumultuous. The State rolled over like a log for the Party.
