Rethinking the Nature of Fascism
Edited by Antonio
Costa-Pinto
(Palgrave,
‘Ideology, Propaganda,
Violence and the Rise of Fascism’
Roger Eatwell
‘If Fascism has been nothing but castor oil and the
truncheon, and not a superb passion of the finest Italian youth,
the guilt is mine...I am responsible for this, because this
historical, political and moral climate was created by me with propaganda that
goes from the intervention crisis to today.’
Benito Mussolini
(speech inaugurating dictatorship), 3 January 1925
‘When I hear the term [German] “High Culture”, I remove the safety-lock from my Browning.’[1]
Hanns Johst, Schlageter (1933), Act 1.
The Ideological Turn
The nature of fascism has been one of the most hotly
contested issues in twentieth century historiography. Many historians even
reject the claim that a ‘generic fascism’ existed in inter-war
Yet since the late 1990s, Roger Griffin has argued that a
‘new consensus’ is emerging about generic fascism.[2]
Shortly before,
Griffin subsequently sought to bolster the explanatory power
of his approach by aligning with those, like Michael Burleigh and Gentile, who argue
that fascism was a manifestation of a fanatical ‘political religion’.[5]
According to this approach, fascism arose against a background of a
‘sense-making crisis’, which led the masses to seek transcendence by adopting a
new identity.
There is no doubt, that Griffin’s work has been a major contribution to the ‘post-structural’, ‘cultural turn’ in fascist studies, which has helped to refine earlier approaches and inspired further fertile works.[7] However its methodology, blending a history of ideas concern with texts with social science influenced comparativism and taste for definitions, has left many historians cold.
A recent exchange between Robert Soucy and Serge Berstein offers a good illustration of the continuing importance of national historiographies (and ‘hot’ academic debate!) Soucy challenges the ‘French consensus’ that fascism was only a marginal movement in the inter-war Hexagon by portraying it as a form of conservatism, which allows large groups like the Croix de Feu to be classed as ‘fascist’. In reply, Berstein stresses the importance of a ‘scientific’ approach, but makes no effort to use any form of comparative analysis to define fascism in a clear way.[8]
Moreover, Nazism and ‘culture’ are still mainly seen as
oxymoronic. Nazi ‘ideology’ is typically viewed through a lens whose focus has
hardly changed since apostate Hermann Rauschning wrote The Revolution of Nihilism (1938). Thus Richard Bessel has recently
written of Nazism that what was ‘unique to Germany’ was
that ‘a band of political gangsters, inspired by a crude racist ideology, was
able to capture power in one of the world’s most developed industrial nations’.[9]
There are also significant differences of
view among those who were part of the 1990s’ revival of fascist studies. For
example, I have argued that the highly syncretic nature of fascist ideology
means that it is better analyzed within a matrix, rather than seen as an
ideal-type. Whilst, there were some constants in the fascist world view, such
as the celebration of leadership and belief that war was endemic to the human
condition,[10] its Weltanschauung could produce different
responses to core questions. These included: was the nation based on blood or culture?; did the fascist new man involve the transformation of an
elite more than the masses?; and was the role of the Third Way state intended
to make capital responsive to the nation, or achieve a significant
redistribution towards the workers.[11]
I will not expand on these arguments here other than to make an important point about Robert Paxton’s claim that the ideological approach is static, ignoring the changing faces of fascism from birth to final Götterdammerung.[12] A matrix, which can encompass both diachronic and synchronic differences, reveals that fascism could vary notably even within Paxton’s five stages of development. For example, Italian Fascism was founded by a disparate group of nationalists, linked mainly by their contempt for the liberal political order. This included: former syndicalists; fringe intellectuals such as the Futurist, Filippo Marinetti; and those who were attracted by the charismatic appeal of Mussolini, which can be discerned even before the First World War (not least in the admiration of a young Antonio Gramsci, whose later views on ‘hegemony in civil society’ echoed aspects of Mussolini’s growing concern with propaganda).
Max Weber’s pioneering analysis saw the charismatic leader as a man capable of arousing intense affective support at a time of great crisis. However, as I have argued elsewhere, this approach offers little insight into the rise of fascism. Rather, it is more helpful to distinguish between three dimensions of charisma: ‘coterie’, ‘centripetal’, and ‘cultic’.[13] The first refers to the ability of the mission-driven leader to inspire and unite an inner coterie. The second refers to the way in which propaganda can help a leader to become the embodiment of a movement, attracting remarkably diverse support by appealing both to the politically apathetic and by diverting attention from dissonant aspects of fascism’s programme. Cultic charisma is more a feature of all totalitarian regimes, in which a new liturgy and symbolism depict the leader in almost God-like terms.
I will again not expand on previous writings here, other than to stress that conceiving charisma in this way does not imply endorsement of political religion approaches, which in their more sweeping forms make claims such as Nazi believers inhabited ‘a mythic world of eternal spring, heroes, demons, fire and sword – in a word a fantasy world of the nursery.’[14] Whilst an element of cultic charisma developed among the German masses, the Hitler myth was always multi-faceted. Before 1933, this included a strong focus on his role as man of destiny who was above divisive party politics; later dimensions encompassed mastermind of the economic miracle and military genius. Both before and after coming to power, Hitler attracted support for remarkably diverse reasons. For example, in the late 1930s many associated him with the benefits provided (or promised) by the Strength through Joy Organization (KDF).[15] By 1939, this owned the largest hotel in the world and was responsible for delivering the cheap Volkswagen car – a consumer-good that was designed with a simple air cooled engine which allowed for easy conversion to military use in a geopolitical-anti-communist war of expansion in the East![16]
In the pages which follow, I will expand on these opening
comments about generic fascism by focusing on the rise of fascism within two
broad frameworks. First, I will seek to show that fascist ideology was
especially sophisticated in terms of its views about propaganda and mass
persuasion, seeking to deploy a variety of other themes and selective appeals.
Second, whilst fascists saw violence as an important part of their armoury in
the quest for power, both ideologically and tactically conceptions of violence
owed more to rationality than nihilism or religious fanaticism. Examples will
mainly be taken from the two countries where major fascist movements emerged:
Propaganda
In a recent work on the rise of fascism, Michael Mann accepts that it is possible to identify a serious fascist ideology, stressing five main themes: nationalism; statism; transcendence; the need for the cleansing of enemies (Marxist as well as racial ones); and para-militarism.[18] Nevertheless, he argues that culturalist approaches to fascism accord to ideology excessive power compared to other influences (Mann has developed an ‘IEMP grid’ which highlights four forms of power: ideological, economic, military, and political). Mann is certainly right to point to the dangers of according culture excessive power, but he largely identifies ideology with a sweeping Weltanschauung rather than praxis. In so doing, he fails to appreciate that early fascist thought concerned itself more with developing a relatively sophisticated conception of the role of the political party than with the refinement of a broad programme (although specific programmatic appeals were an important part of propaganda tactics), yet alone with the refinement of an underlying philosophy.
Between the founding of the Italian Fascist ‘movement’ (movimento) in March 1919 and the March on Rome in 1922, several of the main Fascist local ras, like Roberto Farinacci, Italo Balbo and Dino Grandi, became effectively full-time officials in the Fascist Party (PNF). The party, which was formally established in 1921, was backed not only by a small army of squadristi but also by staff, and in some cases even local newspapers and Fascist-created unions.[19] Although the term ‘movement’ remained important in propaganda, connoting dynamism and desire to operate above the divisive old parties, organization had become central in the quest to build a mass base
After the failure of the 1923
In the nineteenth century, European political parties had
been mainly based on notables who were more interested in office-holding than
programme, and whose election campaigns were based on clientelistic networks.
However, by the turn of the twentieth century new forms of party were emerging.
The most radical were socialist parties with close ties with working class
civil society organizations, a linkage which meant that politicization
reinforced social cleavages. Polarization was further reinforced in countries
like
In political terms, the right responded with the formation of
the first overtly anti-semitic parties in
There is no doubt that some right-wing elites sought to use
fascists for their own purposes. In turn, successful fascist leaders came to
court Establishment support.
In recent historiography, the old view of Mussolini as a bombastic buffoon with a hypertrophied taste for violence has largely been supplanted by an appreciation that he read widely and was a talented socialist journalist.[23] Three main thinkers are typically seen as key influences on the future Duce. The first was Friedrich Nietzsche, especially his view of the need for a ‘superman’ who would overcome the decadence of contemporary society; second was Gustav Le Bon, whose early works stressed the power of forceful leaders to sway the emotional crowd; third was Georges Sorel, who is best known as the advocate of the power of political myths. Certainly, Mussolini was influenced by all three thinkers.[24] But it is important to add a variety of caveats to this simplistic depiction of influences.
Firstly, although Mussolini certainly learned lessons from
the theatrical Nietzsche-admirer, Gabriele D’Annunzio, who briefly established
himself as the dictator of Fiume in 1920, his views on leadership were
influenced by several major thinkers. Mussolini appears to have attended some
of Vilfredo Pareto’s lectures while in
A second caveat is that Mussolini’s views on crowd
psychology, like those of Sergio Panunzio who was later also to hold a Chair at
Thirdly, Mussolini’s reading of
‘To every peasant his land [.] To every peasant the entire fruit of his sacred work’.
This promise, like much fascist propaganda, blended both affective and rational appeals. Whilst Mussolini saw the importance of economics, he also was aware of the need to appeal to the different sides of ‘man’. As he was to later write:
‘Man is integral,
he is political, he is economic, he is religious, he is saint, he is warrior.’[29]
Hitler did not exhibit Mussolini’s talents as a journalist, but he undoubtedly read widely. His mentors included Paul de Lagarde, who anticipated the emergence of a ‘singular man with the abilities and energy’ to unite the German peoples, and Artur Schopenhauer, whose views about the force of great men’s ‘will’ in shaping the world were later to influence Nietzsche.[30] Although some of the seminal writers who influenced the emerging Nazi Zeitgeist were different to those who guided early Italian Fascism, the lessons drawn were often similar. For example, Ferdinand Tönnies was another early student of ‘public opinion’, and his distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft is a further example of the way in which social and political thought around the turn of the twentieth century was turning from communities towards a concern with the isolated individual. The Nazi utopia promised to create a ‘Volksgemeinshaft’, which would end anomie and banish alienation (and those who were not part of the true racial-community!)
Moreover, Italian Fascism was seen as a model by many leading
Nazis. One crucial interlocutor was Kurt Ludecke, who after the failure of
Yet another major change concerned the development of the
Führer cult. Analyses of Hitler’s views on leadership have frequently pointed
to the importance of Austrian and German forebears, especially in teaching
lessons about the language and style of such leaders. Certainly Hitler was
influenced by Luger and Schönerer, especially their use of a low rather than
high political language to appeal to the masses.[36]
However, Hitler was influenced too by the success of the March on
A further external influence on Nazi views was British propaganda during the First World War, which had demonized the ‘beastly Hun’, even portraying Germans as sub-human in a fashion not dissimilar to later Nazi portrayal of Jews.[37] Hitler specifically refers in Mein Kampf to the power of British propaganda, describing Prime Minister Lloyd George’s speeches as ‘psychological masterpieces in the art of mass propaganda.’[38] Moreover, Goebbels possessed in his personal library a copy of Crystallising Public Opinion (1923), by E.D. Bernays, who had played a major part not only in establishing the pre-war American public relations industry, but also in American wartime propaganda.
Whilst it is not clear to what extent Bernays’s writings directly influenced Nazi propaganda, there are notable similarities. For example, Bernays stressed the importance of targeting a clear enemy and dichotomising choices.[39] A good example of both is the Nazis’ July 1932 election slogan: ‘Now it comes down to Bolshevism or National Socialism’. Bernays also taught the need to tailor messages to the susceptibilities of the audience. In this context, it is interesting to note that the Nazi use of anti-semitism as a campaign theme before 1933 was often linked to the resonance of such propaganda within specific localities and among particular groups. Although anti-semitism is typically seen as a core aspect of Nazi ideology, it did not feature as an election issue in many areas of Nazi strength in 1932.[40]
It is worth adding in connection with the influence of the
rise of the American public relations industry, that Mussolini’s mistress,
Margherita Sarfatti, had close links after he became Prime Minister with
representatives of the
However, it is important not to deduce from this, and the
arguments above about the sophistication of fascist propaganda, that Renzo De
Felice is necessarily correct in arguing that by the mid-1930s Italian Fascism
was backed by a widespread consensus.[41]
As well as the need to probe whether ‘consensus’ means active engagement or a
more passive acceptance, it is also vital to remember that Mussolini’s regime
had a panoply of forms of covert and overt coercion in order to minimize
dissent and reinforce an appearance of conformity. The Italian Fascist state
was less totalitarian than the Nazi one, in particular in its use of violence
against its own citizens. But it was a dictatorship none the less.[42]
Violence
In a recent work A.J. Gregor has written that no major Italian Fascist intellectual celebrated violence for its own sake, and that those who are commonly cited as champions of violence, like the Futurist Marinetti, were marginal to the movement and regime.[43] Although a useful corrective to the continued tendency to see fascism as a ‘revolution of nihilism’, Gregor’s claim relates mainly to the writings of Fascist regime theorists like Gentile. However, even within this context he ignores the way in which the clear Fascist commitment to an imperial war of aggression was linked to domestic socialization, especially the militarization of new generations through a panoply of youth organizations as well as compulsory military service. Indeed, the importance of military service to forging a post-bourgeois youth was deeply imbedded in turn of the twentieth century radical nationalist thought – a view epitomized by Maurice Barrès’s resonant epitaph for French manhood: ‘born a man, died a grocer’.
Moreover, Gregor glosses over the celebration
of violence in the writings of key thinkers who influenced early Italian
Fascism. In particular,
The philosopher Martin Heidegger, another late convert to
Nazism, openly defended the former type of violence in a speech on the tenth
anniversary of the death of Albert Schlageter, a Freikorps member-turned Nazi who was condemned to death for
sabotage by the French during their 1923 occupation of the
‘Schlageter walked these grounds as a
student. But
In his inaugural address as Rector of Freiburg University the following day, Heidegger talked of the need for universities not so much to train as to lead, stressing centrality of ‘Führung’, a key Nazi concept, as crucial to creating a new Volskgemeinschaft.
The precise relationship between Heidegger’s thought and Nazism remains contested. Supporters have argued that Heidegger’s philosophy cannot be considered as fascist, and that speeches such as the eulogy to Schlageter at most point towards an opportunistic desire to jump on the Nazi bandwagon by contributing to martyrology.[44] However, Heidegger appears to have genuinely admired Hitler as a leader, and to have read into Nazism traits which he identified with his own quest to transform existence (Dasein). Moreover, as well as the eulogy to Schlageter, other speeches at this time are full of forceful language, including terms such as ‘discipline’, ‘fierce battle’, ‘fighting-community’ and ‘storm’ (the last of these had clear connotations with the Sturmabteilung, or SA). The language is especially interesting as Heidegger had not fought in the First World War.
Academic studies of fascist violence typically pay significant attention to the human impact of the First World War. One approach stresses the impact of fighting on Germans, which allegedly left a group of men like Schlageter psychologically traumatized and only too happy to murder and violate in groups like the Freikorps after 1918.[45] In other cases, the emphasis is placed more on a lingering quest to restore a deep communal bond, which some had found amid the dangers of war. Thus some early Italian Fascists adopted a slogan which was taken from the Arditi elite commando group - ‘me ne frego’ (I don’t give a damn). Violence is thus seen at best as constitutive of individual identity, and at worst as mindlessly destructive.
There is no doubt that fascism was attractive to those who sought to preserve a world of male camaraderie, who even found violence attractive as part of this bonding – men like Hanns Kallenbach, a member of the Stosstrupp Adolf Hitler 1923.[46] Ernst Röhm, a Freikorps veteran who was to lead to SA before his killing in the 1934 Night of the Long Knives, was a homosexual who clearly never adapted to civilian life after 1918. He has been described by Richard Evans as having a ‘penchant for mindless violence’, a man who ‘had no interest at all in ideas’.[47] Certainly Röhm’s biography gives no cause for thinking that Nazi leaders were ‘intellectual’, consisting of chapters with titles such as ‘War School’, ‘Leader of the 10th Company’, ‘The Epp Fighting Brigade’, and ‘The 8 and 9 November 1923’ [Munich putsch].[48]
However, it is also instructive to consider the case of Julius Schreck, a Freikorps veteran who became the leader in the early 1920s of the Stabswache, which later grew into the SS. This followed the Freikorps in adopting the silver death’s head symbol (Totenkopf). Although often seen as further evidence of the fascist death-cult, this pre-1914 symbol of the aristocratic cavalry had during the war been adopted by elite ‘Stormtroops’ who included all classes. The Totenkopf after 1918 was, therefore, a symbol of both militarism and a new egalitarian-elitism. Similarly, the Arditi, whose symbol was a skull with a dagger in its teeth, were based on a relatively classless ethos of martial superiority. In the German context, this formed part of a wider celebration of ‘blood socialism’, a romanticized, disciplined but egalitarian conception of communal life at the front which some sought to recreate amid the post-war chaos.
Moreover, recent historiography has tended to portray the Freikorps as part of a wider
revolutionary society, in which violence was widely perceived as legitimate.[49]
Indeed, the Freikorps were briefly
used by the Social Democrat Party (SPD)-led government to help suppress more
radical left-wing groups, such as the violent German Communist Party (KPD).
Whilst, it is important not to see fascist violence as a mainly defensive
reaction to the left, a form of cumulative extremism took place in countries
like
The SA had an insurance scheme for members who were injured or killed. Between 1927 and 1932, claims rose from 110 to 14,005, mainly following clashes with communists. During 1930-32 several hundred Nazis were stoned, shot or knifed to death by members of the KPD paramilitary organization.[51] The bloodiest incident immediately prior to Hitler becoming Chancellor took place in July 1932, when the Nazis marched into Altona leaving eighteen dead, three of whom were Nazis. However, part of the point of this incursion was to show middle class voters that the Nazis could combat the growing KPD in a way which the traditional, notable-based, Mittelstand parties could not.[52] In Schleswig Holstein, the only region in which the Nazis won over 50 per cent of the vote in free elections, violence was mainly used where propaganda and the penetration of civil society groups had failed. Even in a region where there had been widespread and tempestuous farmers’ protests only shortly before, violence risked losing rather than gaining support.[53]
Increasingly
after the failure of the
Mussolini’s views on violence also changed from the pre-war era when he was a firebrand socialist revolutionary, although in his case there was a less clear cut epiphany. A recent work has noted that in a 1918 Popolo d’Italia article he argued: ‘violence is immoral when it is cold and calculated, not when it is instinctive and impulsive.’[55] Certainly at the time of his founding of the Fascist movement, Mussolini’s views had similarities with the Arditi’s self-image as a fighting vanguard (a reflection of a distinctly non-populist contempt for the typical peasant Italian soldier).[56] He sought to found the Fascist movement on a ‘trenchocracy’ of ex-combatants, a new elite which had emerged from a baptism of fire (ironically, his own war record was less than heroic!). However, Mussolini’s views on violence were changing, a process which had begun after the failure of the socialist wave of violence during 1911-12. Among the lessons Mussolini drew from this, was the need for propaganda to prepare mass opinion and the threat from the repressive power of the state.
It is not clear that even in 1919 Mussolini sought to use violence to launch a coup d’état. Certainly one of the features of his leadership as electoral support began to grow after 1920 was his attempt to demonstrate that Fascism could defeat the left, which launched a major wave of factory occupations during 1920, whilst controlling violence to limit the risk of repression by the Janus-like Italian state. By 1921, Mussolini even thought that the long-standing tradition of trasformismo could lead to the PNF entering government constitutionally. This sometimes led to tensions between Mussolini and ras like Farinacci, who held more crude views about violence. But in general, Mussolini managed to control violence targeted at the state, and even the centre-right parties.[57] Partly as a result, the ‘forces of law and order’ often turned a blind eye to intimidation, and sometimes even aided and abetted the fascists - for example, by the police or military providing trucks to launch punitive raids against socialists and communists.[58]
‘Only’ a few thousand suffered a violent death through
political violence in
Fascist violence in
The French case further underlines the importance of
understanding how the state responded to fascism. After the major riots in
Many of these points about the nature of fascist violence are
borne out if the focus turns to
However, Mosley failed to see that British attitudes towards
public order were changing. Whilst rowdyism, even limited violence, had been a
feature of pre-1914 politics, a variety of factors - not least the rise of
communism and fascism abroad - meant that by the 1930s such traits were far
more likely to lose support than gain it. This clearly happened after the
much-publicized violence at Mosley’s large 1934
Conclusion
In a speech to the Chamber of Deputies on
The last point is not meant to imply that a Fascist ideology did not exist before 1925. Mussolini’s speech of 3 January specifically refers to his belief in the Fascist movement’s potential to become the ‘superb passion of the finest Italian youth’. Well before 1925, Mussolini believed that he had a special mission to create a strong Italian nation, led by ‘new men’, who would forge a state which could secure both prosperity and social unity. However, as the new Duce made clear in this speech, previously his main focus had been on establishing a powerful fascist organization rather than on delineating a broad programme yet alone underlying fascist ideology (although this strategy was related to wider ideological issues, such as the importance of leadership and views about the role of violence within the liberal state).
This point about the importance of fascism qua organization can be seen by examining more closely one of the most infamous Nazi aphorisms:
‘When I hear the word “culture”, I reach for my revolver’.
These words are often misattributed to Goebbels or Göring as part of an attempt to depict the nihilism of fascism. In fact, they come from a play written to celebrate Hitler’s forty-fourth birthday in 1933 by the Nazi intellectual, Hanns Johst.
Moreover, the quote in the previous paragraph is a
mistranslation. The second part should read: ‘[…] I remove the safety-lock from
my Browning’. This implies a possible measure of consideration, rather than
trigger-happy riposte of the unthinking killer. Indeed, the only violence which
takes place in the play is when a French firing squad execute Schlageter. The
fact that the safety lock is being removed from an American-designed Browning
is also intriguing. Is this an allusion to the fact that the Browning was
carried by some lower ranks in the
Fascism was undoubtedly influenced by intellectuals and cultural trends, but it plundered eclectic sources. The resulting fascist ideology was a remarkably syncretic mix, which helps explain the rise of fascism as it was possible to read notably different conclusions into this mercurial brew. Thus both Hitler and Mussolini were able to appeal to members of the Establishment as representatives of new forms of traditional values, while appealing to others as harbingers of both a new spiritual community and national prosperity.
Put another way, fascism is better seen as a political rather than cultural movement. It was a paradoxical anti-party party, whose organization and tactics need to figure prominently in both ideological analyses of ‘the nature of fascism’ and more concrete analyses of why fascism succeeded, and failed, in specific national contexts.
[1] ‘Wenn ich
Kultur höre, entsichere ich meinen Browning!’
[2] For example, R. Griffin (ed.), International Fascism (London: Edward Arnold, 1998); R. Griffin, ‘The Primacy of Culture. The Current Growth (or Manufacture) of Consensus within Fascist Studies’, The Journal of Contemporary History, 37, 1, 2002.
[3] R. Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (London:, Pinter, 1991), p.26.
[4] E. Gentile, Le Origini dell’Ideologia Fascista (1918-25) (Rome: Laterza, 1975), p .205. See also G.L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1964), A.J. Gregor, The Young Mussolini and the Intellectual Origins of Fascism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), and Z. Sternhell, Ni Droite, Ni Gauche (Paris: Le Seuil, 1983).
[5] M. Burleigh, The
Third Reich. A New History (
[6] R. Griffin, Modernism
and Fascism (
[7] A major
historian clearly influenced by
[8] R. Soucy, ‘La Rocque et le fascisme français’, Vingtième Siècle, 95, July-September 2007, pp.219-236; S. Berstein, ‘Pour en finir avec un dialogue de sourds’, ibid., pp.243-246.
[9] R.
Bessel, Nazism and War (
[10] One leading Nazi even prophetically warned in the 1930s of ‘the fanatical spirit of Mohammed’ against the ‘white races’: A. Rosenberg, The Myth of the Twentieth Century (Torrance, Ca: Noontide Press, 1981 English ed.), p.420.
[11] R. Eatwell, ‘Towards a New Model of Generic Fascism’, Journal of Theoretical Politics, 4, 2, 1992; R. Eatwell, ‘Natur des “generischen Faschismus” – das “faschistische Minimum” und die “faschiisische Matrix”’ in U. Backes (ed.), Rechsextreme Ideologien im 20 und 21 Jahhundert (Munich: Bohlau, 2003).
[12] See especially R. Paxton, 'The Five Stages of Fascism', Journal of Modern History, 70, 1, 1998.
[13] R. Eatwell,
‘The Concept and Theory of Charisma’, in A, Costa-Pinto, R. Eatwell and S.U.
Larsen (eds), Charisma and Fascism in inter-war Europe (
[14] Burleigh, op. cit., pp.8-9.
[16] Cf Griffin who sees the ‘Beetle’ in terms of
modernity, describing it as ‘sleek in design’ and ‘advanced in its technology’.
[17] Z. Sternhell with M. Sznajder and M. Asheri, The Birth of Fascist Ideology (Princeton: Prnceton University Press, 1994).
[18] M.
Mann, Fascists (
[19] L. Santoro, Roberto Farinacci e il Partito Nazionale Fascista 1923-26 (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2007); C.G. Segrè, Italo Balbo: a Fascist Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
[20] M.H. Kater, Doctors under Hitler (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989).
[21] J.
Sneeringer, Winning Women’s Votes. Propaganda and Politics in
[22] For example, W.D. Irvine, The Boulanger Affair Reconsidered: Royalism, Boulangism and the Radical Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); cf the perceptive G. Eley, Reshaping the German Right: Radical Nationalism and Political Change after Bismarck (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980).
[23] Cf D.
Mack Smith, Mussolini (London:
Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1981) with the excellent D. Musiedlak, Mussolini (
[24] See for instance, S.
Dauguet-Gérard (ed.) Mussolini parle
(Paris: Tallandier, 1932), pp.20-1- and
62-3.
[25] M.G. Sarfatti, Mussolini. L’homme et le chef (Paris: Albin Michel, 1927), especially p.117ff.
[26] For this argument and wider thoughts about parties in English see R. Michels, ‘Some Reflections on the Sociological Character of Political Parties’, American Political Science Review, XX1, 4, 1927, pp.753-772.
[27] Although Le Bon presented a more refined view in his later book, La psychologie politique et la défense sociale (Paris: Flammarion, 1910).
[28] W. Brustein, ‘The “Red Menace” and the Rise of Fascism’, American Sociological Review, 56, 4, pp.652-64.E. Spencer Wellhofer, ‘Democracy and Fascism: Class, Civil Society and Rational Choice’, American Political Science Review, 97, 1, 2003, pp.91-106
[29] B. Mussolini, Fascism.,
Doctrine and Institutions (Rome: Ardita, 1935), p.59.
[30] A.
Miskolczy, Hitler’s Library (
[31] K.G.W. Ludecke, I Knew Hitler (New York: Scribners, 1937), pp.80-2, 141.
[32] G. Bastianini, Oumini,
cose, fatti: Memorie di un ambascitore (Milan,: Vitagliano 1959).
[33] Propaganda Abteilung, Propaganda (Munich: Reichs-Parteiletung des NSDAP, 1927); available online at http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/prop27.htm
[34] A. Dresler, Mussolini als Journalist (Essen: Essener Verlagsantalt, 1939).
[35] On
totalitarian theory, see A.J. Gregor, Mussolini’s
Intellectuals (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); and D.D.
Roberts, The Totalitarian Experiment in
Twentieth-Century Europe (
[36] A. Hitler, Mein Kampf (London: Hutchinson, 1969), p.s.
[37] For
instance, a cartoon which shows an ape-like German prisoner being told: ‘You
have murdered eight children and five women! What was your occupation before
the war? “I vos professor of morals” replies the wretch’, The
Passing Show,
[38] Mein Kampf, p.433.
[39] L. Tye, The
Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations (New
York: Crown Publishers, 1998), especially p.89 and 111.
[40] See for example, W.S. Allen, The Nazi Seizure of Power (London: Eyre and Spottiswode, 1966).
[41] R. De Felice, Gli anni del consenso 1929-26 (Turin: Einaudi, 1974).
[42] P. Corner, ‘Italian Fascism: Whatever Happened to Dictatorship?’, The Journal of Modern History 74, 2, 2002, pp.325–351.
[43] Gregor, Mussolini’s Intellectuals, pp.250-1.
[44] See R. Wolin (ed.), The Heidegger Controversy: a Critical Reader (Boston: MIT Press, 1992).
[45] For instance. K. Theweleit, Male Fantasies (Cambridge: Polity, 1987).
[46] For example, see H. Kallenbach, Mit Adolf Hitler auf Festung Landsberg (Munich: Parcus and München, 1933).
[47] R.
Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich
(
[48] E. Röhm, Die Geschichte eines Hochverräters (Munich: NSDAP Central Publishers, 1934).
[49] For
instance, B. Scott, ‘The Origins of the Freikorps: a Re-evaluation’, Journal of Contemporary History, 34, 1,
2000; E. Traverso, The Origins of Nazi
Violence (
[50] P. Merkl, The Making of a Stormtrooper (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).
[51] R. Bessel, Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), p.105.
[52] A. McElligott, Contested City: Municipal Politics and the Rise of Nazism in Altona, 1917-37 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998).
[53] T.A. Tilton, Nazism, Neo-Nazism and the Peasantry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), especially p.69.
[54] For example, Mein Kampf, p.471ff.
[55] P. O’Brien, Mussolini
in the First World War (
[56] The nationalist intellectual, Giovanni Papini, provocatively summed up the character of ordinary Italians in 1914 when he wrote that the country was founded on shit ‘and shit is has remained for the last fifty years.’ Cited in R. de Grada (ed.), Lacerba (Milan: Mazzotta, 1970), p.305.
[57] D.S. Elazar, ‘Electoral Democracy, Revolutionary Politics
and Political Violence: the Emergence of Fascism in
[58] For example, P. Corner, Fascism in Ferrara (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975).
[59] Valois
was particularly influenced by
[60] K.
Passmore, ‘Boy-scouting for Grown-ups? Paramilitarism in the Croix de Feu and
PSF’ French Historical Studies, 19, 2, 1995, pp.527-57; D. Leschi,
‘L’étrange cas La Roque’, in M. Dobry (ed.), Le myth de l’allergie française au fascisme (
[61] S. Kitson, ‘Police and Politics in Marseille, 1936-8’, European History Quarterly, 37, 1, 2007, pp.81-108.
[62] As does S Cullen, ‘Political Violence: The Case of
the British Union of Fascists’, Journal
of Contemporary History, 27, 2, 1993, pp.245-67.
[63] See for example, J. Becket, ‘Why I Joined the
Blackshirts’, Fascist Week, 2-8 March
1934. See also D. L. Baker Ideology of Obsession: A.K. Chesterton &
British Fascism (London: I.B.
Tauris, 1987) and his forthcoming major monograph on fascism.
[64] See for
example, J. Lawrence, ‘Fascist Violence and the Politics of Public Order in
[65] Mussolini, op. cit., p.31.