Hitler's Germany
Origins, Interpretations, LegaciesBy Roderick StackelbergRoutledge
Copyright © 1999 Roderick Stackelberg
All right reserved.ISBN: 0415201152
Chapter One
Fascism and the conservative tradition
Fascist ideology, constituency,
and conditions for its growth
National Socialism may be best understood as a radical and peculiarly German formof fascism, a movement and ideology that gained millions of adherents in manyEuropean countries in the era of the two world wars of the twentieth century.The term "fascism" was first used in early 1919 by the former socialist BenitoMussolini who had left the Italian Socialist Party in protest against their anti-warpolicy in the First World War. The name was derived from the Latin fasces, the ceremonialbundle of rods and an axe that symbolized the unity and power of theRoman Empire. Mussolini turned his National Fascist Party into a militantly nationalistorganization that attacked the "weakness" of liberal democracy. Its chief target,however, was the international socialist movement reinvigorated and radicalized bythe Bolshevik revolution in Russia in late 1917. Movements similar to ItalianFascism emerged all over Europe in the years that followed, particularly inGermany, Spain, Portugal, Romania, Hungary, and Croatia, but also in Poland,western Europe, and even in the US, where, however, fascist ideas never becamedominant. Fascist movements inevitably differed from one another because eachwas dedicated to the revival of its own particular national culture. Thus ItalianFascists evoked the glory of ancient Rome while German Nazis extolled thesplendor of the medieval Hohenstaufen Empire as well as the mythical past of theNordic tribes who first settled northern Europe. But all fascist movements sharedcertain political values, beliefs, and methods, and common enemies.
Historical antecedents
Although fascism was a twentieth-century movement that developed in the specificcircumstances of Europe after the First World War, its roots lie in the nineteenthcentury. To understand fascism, it is helpful to examine its historical antecedentsand genealogy, which may be traced back to the great French Revolution that beganin 1789. Out of this extraordinary convulsion there emerged the three majorpolitical ideologies that viewed the Revolution in very different ways and competedfor power and dominance in European countries in the nineteenth and twentiethcenturies. These ideologies, though by no means monolithic or unchanging, may bebroadly designated as conservative (or monarchist), liberal, and socialist, respectively.The strength of each ideology differed widely from country to country, as did itsinternal unity. In some countries, differences on specific policy priorities led to theformation of more than one political party within each ideological camp. Althoughthese ideological movements and their political programs changed over time(which accounts for why the terms "conservative," "liberal," and "socialist" sofrequently cause confusion today), each movement subscribed to certain fundamentalgoals and values that put it in conflict with the other two ideologies.
Monarchical conservatism
Today the term "conservative" is often used in a very general sense to describe acautious political style. "Conservatism" as the designation for a broad ideologicalmovement in nineteenth-century continental Europe means more than merely acautious attitude toward political change, however; it stands for a substantivepolitical doctrine and set of values that few conservatives share today. Nineteenth-centuryEuropean conservatives viewed the French Revolution with loathing anddisdain. In France conservatives sought to reverse the changes it had brought aboutand to restore the ancien régime (the pre-revolutionary monarchical system). In othercountries conservatives sought to preserve the old order against the onslaught of revolutionaryideas. Conservatives favored a strong hereditary monarchy, aristocraticprivilege (special rights for elite groups), and an established (i.e. state-supported)Church. They believed in a divinely appointed natural order of authority and subordination.They desired a strong state that would mold character and use censorshipand surveillance to uphold timeless moral and religious standards. Quite unlikeAmerican and British conservatives today, who advocate a free market economy,nineteenth-century continental European conservatives favored an economyorganized and regulated to enhance the power of the state. They valued unity,authority, order, hierarchy, duty, and discipline, for which a powerful monarchprovided the best guarantee. The main support for monarchical conservatism camefrom aristocrats and untitled elites who benefited or hoped to benefit from theirroles in a monarchical system, but conservatism also drew support from ruralpopulations distrustful of changes in traditional practices or of challenges totraditional mores.
Liberalism
Liberals, on the other hand, supported the French Revolutionary call for individualliberty and limitations on the arbitrary power of the monarchical state. Liberalismis historically defined by three major commitments: commitment to civil libertiesor human rights, including freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedomof worship; commitment to a constitutional and representative form of government(entailing a separation of powers and an elected legislature); and commitmentto private property and free economic activity. England developed a liberal systemafter the defeat of Stuart absolutism in the late seventeenth century, and the UnitedStates has never known any other system (which is one reason why many Americanshave difficulty understanding European monarchical conservatism and the systemof aristocratic privilege). In France liberal institutions did not emerge until theRevolution. In Germany the liberal movement was much weaker and monarchicalconservatism correspondingly stronger than in western Europe for reasons thatwill be examined in more detail in Chapter 2.
Even in France the struggle of liberals against absolute monarchy was notdefinitively settled in the great Revolution, as conservatives sought to salvage orrestore as much of the absolutist system as seemed feasible under the changed post-revolutionaryconditions. The conservative restoration after the overthrow ofNapoleon in 1815 extended the struggle into the nineteenth century and led torenewed revolutionary outbreaks in Europe in 1830 and 1848. Liberalism originallydefined itself by its opposition to the overweening monarchical state, whichhad led John Locke to enunciate his famous liberal principle: "That government isbest which governs least." For early liberals the sole function of the state was theprotection of life, liberty, and property (or, in Thomas Jefferson's words, "thepursuit of happiness"). Liberals advocated individual rights, a secular (nonreligious)state, equality of opportunity for all citizens, and equality under law. Theysought to replace the absolutist system of privilege based on birth with a system ofopportunity based on talent or merit. They believed in the possibility, indeed theinevitability, of progress, both social and technological, through the use of humanreason. Liberalism drew its main support from the rising middle class of businessand professional people (the bourgeoisie) — people of "common" birth but often ofconsiderable wealth or property who chafed under their lack of freedom and politicalrepresentation in absolutist monarchies.
Socialism
Toward the middle and late nineteenth century, as continuing industrialization ledto the rapid growth of a new industrial working class and an organized labor movement,many self-styled liberals came to see socialism and the extension ofdemocratic rights to the working class as a greater threat to their interests thanweakened monarchical absolutism. The socialist movement formed the third greatpolitical ideology of the nineteenth century. Its modern origins may be located inthe radical phase of the French Revolution. For socialists, equality, even more thanliberty, became the overriding revolutionary ideal. It is partly in response to socialistpressures that many countries, including the United States, eventually introducedchanges that transformed free-market liberalism into the modern liberal systemsometimes referred to as the "welfare state" (which is one reason why the term"liberal" is today, in the US, associated with support for the welfare state, whilesupporters of nineteenth-century free-market principles are generally labeled"conservative." In the context of the great European ideologies of the nineteenthcentury, however, American "conservatives" are merely conservative liberals.Because most Americans support its liberal institutions [separation of powers andelected legislatures] the political debate in the US is almost entirely fought outwithin the liberal camp.)
The defining characteristic of socialism, as formulated by its leading theoretician,Karl Marx, is the elimination of private property in the means of production(commerce, industry, finance, agriculture, and natural resources). It is this fundamentalprinciple that distinguishes socialism from all forms of liberalism, includingthe "welfare state." According to socialist belief, only the socialization or nationalization(state ownership) of wealth-creating property can assure the equality ofcondition (i.e. economic equality) that the liberal principles of equality of opportunityand equality under law cannot guarantee because they do not prevent thestrong from economically exploiting the weak in the free marketplace.
Most continental European socialist parties in the nineteenth century calledthemselves "social democratic." From their point of view socialism was the mostdemocratic system because it extended equal economic benefits to all members ofsociety. Alter the Russian Revolution in 1917, the cataclysmic event that producedthe first socialist state in history, hard-line socialists under Lenin adopted the label"communist" to distinguish themselves from social democrats who wanted tocombine a socialist economy with a democratic form of government. Leninistsbelieved that only an authoritarian political structure and one-party rule couldsuccessfully impose and defend a socialist economy under the conditions of earlytwentieth-century Europe. European Marxism was thus torn between the social-democraticand the Soviet communist models, and adherents of these two differentforms of Marxism became bitter foes. In the Cold War between the liberal West andthe socialist Soviet Union after the Second World War, European social democratsabandoned their commitment to socialism (the public ownership of the means ofproduction) in favor of democratic process and welfare-state liberalism.
The left-right political spectrum
Historians usually describe the great nineteenth-century ideologies of conservatism,liberalism, and socialism with the help of a conceptual model that placesthese movements on a continuum from right to left in accordance to their preferencefor the hierarchical status quo (the right) or liberalizing and equalizing reform(the left). At the end of the twentieth century, with the eclipse of both the historicalleft (socialism) and the historical right (monarchical conservatism), the categoriesof "left" and "right" no longer seem as clearly definable as they were at the beginningof the century. The left-right distinction also seems dated today because of the newprominence of environmental issues, partially supplanting questions of economicdistribution on which the left-right distinction has historically been based. A fundamentalassumption of nineteenth-century industrial capitalism and its socialistcritics — that continuous economic accumulation and expansion is possible — mayno longer obtain today. Yet the left-right distinction retains its usefulness for understandingthe fundamental goals and values of political movements in the nineteenthand the twentieth centuries.
The left-right terminology originated in the National Convention of the FrenchRevolution. The more revolutionary factions sat to the left of the presiding chair,the more conservative deputies sat on the right. Deputies on the left favoredreforms leading to greater liberty and equality, deputies on the right preferredmore traditional arrangements and less radical change. On the far left were movementsthat favored enforced economic equality; on the far right were royalistswho wanted to restore aristocratic privilege and the absolute power of themonarchy.
Equality was the fundamental value that determined the location of movementson the political spectrum. The greater the commitment to achieving full equality,the further to the left that movement was situated in the perception of contemporaries.The left advocated progress toward a more democratic society, the rightstood for the maintenance or restoration of traditional hierarchies and social relations.On the extremes of the spectrum were those factions that advocatedrevolution — whether, on the left, to achieve equality and break down hierarchy or,on the right, to restore hierarchy and prevent equality.
What complicates this conceptual model, however, is the contradiction betweenrevolutionary ends and means that emerged in practice after the RussianRevolution in 1917. For Bolsheviks (communists) on the far left the commitmentto egalitarian social revolution was so great that virtually any means — violence,demagoguery, terrorism, dictatorship — seemed acceptable for the achievement oftheir ends. This readiness to resort to extreme methods leads to the paradox,frequently observable in history, that the radical methods of revolutionaries of theleft often undermined their proclaimed egalitarian and democratic goals.
Fascism as a movement of the far right
Because fascists, too, stopped at nothing in the pursuit of their ends, their methodsand revolutionary rhetoric often resembled (sometimes deliberately so) those oftheir opponents on the extreme left. From the perspective of liberals, who valueindividual freedom and democratic process more than either economic equality orracial hierarchy, the similarities between extremist movements on left and rightmay even seem to outweigh the differences, and liberals often lump fascism andcommunism together under the heading "totalitarianism." Because fascists oftenappropriated the vocabulary of socialism to enhance their appeal to industrialworkers, many scholars have chosen to describe the fascist program as a mixture of"right" and "left." In terms of their fundamental goals, nowever, the crucial determinantof location on the political spectrum if "left" and "right" are to retain theirconceptual usefulness, fascism and communism belong on opposite extremes. It ishelpful to conceptualize fascism as an extreme right-wing movement not onlybecause it was dedicated to the destruction of Marxism and communism (after all,two movements of the extreme left, Chinese Maoism and Soviet Communism, couldalso be violently opposed to each other), but because of its fundamental opposition tothe value of equality. Fascists regarded egalitarianism in any form, but particularly inthe form of racial equality, as the source of the ruination of humankind. It was thisopposition to equality and democracy that made fascists so congenial to the traditionalright-wing elites on whose help they depended to obtain power. In theperception of its contemporaries, fascism was a movement of the far right.
Location on the political spectrum is, of course, crucially dependent on thevantage point of the observer. Liberals of the Anglo-American and westernEuropean parliamentary tradition were perceived as "leftists" by continentalEuropean conservatives in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but they wereperceived as "rightists" by socialists or communists. Liberals can legitimately layclaim to the center of the ideological spectrum, for although committed to equalityof opportunity and equality under law, both of which were anathema to right-winghard-liners, liberals oppose the infringement on personal liberty and freedom ofchoice that the left-wing effort to ensure full social and economic equality (throughthe abolition of private property, in the case of socialism or communism) necessarilyentails. From the perspective of the far right before 1945, however,committed as they were to privilege on the basis of birth or race, liberalism andsocialism appeared to be related by virtue of their commitment to some form ofequality or democracy. It is no coincidence that Nazi Germany and Fascist Italyfought against both the liberal West and the socialist Soviet Union in the SecondWorld War.
After the destruction of European fascism in 1945, liberal and socialist societieswere ranged against each other as mortal adversaries in a Cold War that ended withthe collapse of communism in the 1990s. Because of the Cold War and its aftermaththe historical affinity of liberalism and socialism as movements that emanatedfrom the Enlightenment and the democratic revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies is less obvious today than it was to earlier generations. Despitetheir fundamental difference in respect to private property, however, both movementsshared a commitment to the "democratic" values of the French Revolution,though liberals exalted personal liberty while socialists gave precedence to socialequality. Nineteenth-century liberals were not necessarily democrats, if democracyis defined by universal suffrage. But they certainly wished to "democratize" theabsolutist monarchies of pre-revolutionary Europe.
Fascism, on the other hand, may be viewed as the radical culmination of themovement to resist the emancipatory and egalitarian currents emanating from theFrench Revolution and accelerated by the Industrial Revolution. Throughout thenineteenth century, conservative elites, nostalgic for the social privileges of the prerevolutionaryancien régime, fought a rearguard battle against democracy, a strugglethat became more radical as industrialization increased the pressures for democraticparticipation and reform. Against the revolutionary ideals of liberty andequality, aristocratic conservatives invoked the traditional institutions of a strongcentral monarchy and privilege based on birth.
Continental European conservatives opposed the social consequences thatindustrialization invariably entailed: the transfer of wealth and power from thelanded aristocracy to the industrial and commercial middle class, and the growth ofan industrial working class increasingly conscious of its own specific interests.Of course, middle-class liberals and working-class adherents of socialism wereincreasingly at odds with each other as well in the nineteenth and early part of thetwentieth centuries. But from the point of view of unreconstructed opponents ofthe French revolutionary tradition, both movements shared an invidious dedicationto liberalizing or leveling change. Fascists, the radical twentieth-century heirs to theanti-revolutionary tradition, viewed liberals, despite liberal dedication to privateproperty, as the culprits who unwittingly or deliberately opened the floodgates tothe advancing Red tide.
The relationship of fascism to traditional conservatism
This ideal-type reconstruction of the genealogy of fascism in terms of the historicalconflict between right and left cannot do full justice to a complex reality in whichindividuals frequently change their political allegiance, and political movementsshare overlapping characteristics and aims. Many early fascists, including Mussolini,came from the left and brought with them — despite their disillusionment with left-wingpolicies — a revolutionary mentality and populist sympathies. One must becareful not to tar nineteenth-century conservatism with the fascist brush, nor toexculpate fascists by equating their more radical aims and methods with those oftraditional conservatives. Fascists were certainly not conservative in the sense ofwishing to defend existing institutions or return to the failed nineteenth century;rather they worked with radical fervor for a change of course that would root outthe corruptions of modernity (foremost among them the movements of the left)and prepare the ground for national and racial regeneration. But one can hardlymake sense of fascism if one tails to place this movement in the historical context ofthe long struggle waged by European conservatives against democracy of both theliberal and socialist varieties. In an article in the Nazi Party newspaper VölkischerBeobachter on 6 June 1936 Hitler called himself "the most conservative revolutionaryin the world."
Fascists were quite different from traditional conservatives in morals and temperament,but they carried on the conservative campaign against democracy, albeitin very activist ways: they did so in the radical fashion required for success in an ageof mass politics. It is no accident that in the countries where fascists came to power,they did so with the indispensable support of conservative elites. Fascists sharedwith traditional conservatives not only their opposition to liberal or social democracy,but also their attachment to authoritarianism, nationalism, militarism, thearistocratic concepts of rank, pedigree, and birthright, and the martial virtues ofheroism, courage, duty, obedience, discipline, and self-sacrifice.
The relationship of fascism to communism
In their fundamental goals and values, fascists and communists were fundamentallyopposed to each other. Just as twentieth-century communism is ideologicallylinked to the nineteenth-century socialist tradition, so fascism represents a radicalizedstrand of the European conservative tradition. The inherent elitism ofaristocratic conservatism made it difficult for conservatives to gain the kind of masssupport needed to continue to wield power in an age of representative governmentand popular suffrage. To compete successfully with the new middle- and working-classparties that emerged in Europe in the latter part of the nineteenth or early partof the twentieth centuries, conservative groups increasingly experimented withvarious techniques of mass appeal, some of them pioneered by the left-wing partiesthey opposed. In fascism, the most radical experiment in mass mobilization foranti-democratic ends, these techniques were perfected to an unprecedenteddegree. If they bore a strong resemblance to the techniques of the radical left, this isnot surprising, for fascists set out to combat communists with their own weapons.To compete effectively with socialists and communists for worker support fascistssought to adopt socialist slogans and symbols for their own ends. Fascist mobilizationof the masses through propaganda, mass rallies, paramilitary formations, andorchestrated violence transgressed against traditional standards of political conductin much the same way that communist practices did.
The fascist constituency
Yet the segment of the population from which fascism drew its maximum supportturned out to be not industrial workers (who were under-represented both infascist parties and in their electoral constituencies), but rather the numerically largelower middle-class groups, such as white-collar employees and small proprietors,including peasant-farmers, who feared the loss of their property and status, such asit was, if the socialist labor movement should become dominant. The fascist massconstituency included malcontents from all classes, including non-unionized andunemployed workers, but fascism primarily attracted groups such as small shopowners, self-employedcraftsmen, and subsistence farmers who feared both organizedlabor and the competition of big business in an unregulated economy. To occupationgroups whose livelihood seemed threatened in an increasingly industrial society,fascism seemed to offer a "third way" between a socialism that favored wage-earningworkers and a liberal capitalism that favored the rich. While fascists defended propertyrights and a competitive economy, they rejected the capitalist ethos of valuingprivate profit above the good of the nation as a whole. Nonetheless, fascism gainedat least the tacit support of economic elites fearful of the labor movement and liberalizingsocial change. Fascism appealed especially to groups to whom socialism andliberalism seemed only to offer the prospect of economic and social decline.
Nationalism
Through nationalism and racialism fascists sought to counter liberal and socialistappeals. Here, too, fascists were the heirs of a radical nationalism harnessed to theconservative cause in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Modern nationalismhad originated as a democratic movement in the French Revolution. Democraticrevolutionaries exalted the welfare of the nation above the narrow interests of theroyal dynasty. But by the end of the nineteenth century nationalism had become avehicle of conservative politics in Europe. The process by which nationalism, traditionallysupported by liberals, was exploited by conservatives to weaken liberalismdiffered in each country, but was particularly pronounced in Germany and Italy,where national aspirations for unity had been frustrated for decades.
Nationalism lent itself readily to the struggle against liberalism and socialism.From a nationalistic perspective these movements could be condemned as selfish,materialistic, and anti-national. Conservative nationalists accused liberals of givingthe selfish profit motive and individual rights priority over the interests of thenation. Socialists, on the other hand, could be condemned for their selfish pursuitof the interests of a single class, the proletariat, and for their potentially treasonousadvocacy of worker solidarity across national boundaries. Nationalists called for thesubordination of individual and class interests to the interests of the nationalcommunity.
Nationalism and racism were particularly well-suited to mobilizing masssupport for illiberal ends, because they diverted popular energies from demandsfor reform and structural social change. Nationalists denounced liberal and socialistadvocates of reform for supposedly undermining the unity of the nation by pittingindividuals against each other or inciting class against class. Nationalism provided away of integrating lower income groups into an hierarchical social structure byoffering them membership in a powerful national community as psychologicalcompensation for the lack of material improvement in their lives. From the nationalistperspective the tycoon and the wage laborer, notwithstanding the differencesin their material conditions, were by virtue of their common ethnic origins equallyhonored members of the national or racial community, each contributing theirspecific services (albeit for very different remuneration) to the overriding nationalcause. Distributional conflicts about property and income resulting from liberal orsocialist reform efforts could be made to seem petty, selfish, and anti-national. Infascism the demagogic possibilities of nationalism were exploited to their fullestpotential. Fascism generated a kind of egalitarian consciousness of national or racialcomradeship to compensate for the lack of true social or economic equality.
Preconditions for the rise of fascism
The social and economic roots of fascism lie in the nineteenth century, but it is thespecific conditions of the twentieth century that made possible its rise and triumphin Italy and Germany. Fascist movements of varying strengths emerged in allEuropean countries in the 1920s and 1930s (and in the United States as well in theform of movements like the Ku Klux Klan and the ideas of radio preacher FatherCoughlin). The only exception was the Soviet Union, which, however, underwentthe ordeal of Stalinist dictatorship in the same period.
1 Thwarted nationalism
Three major factors fostered the growth of fascism in the era after the "Great War."The first factor was thwarted national aspirations. Fascism in Italy and NationalSocialism in Germany fed on the frustrations of nationalists who deplored thefailure of their country to achieve the glorious objectives for which they hadentered the war. Nowhere was disillusionment greater than in defeated Germany.But in Italy, too, which had fought on the victorious side, nationalist disillusionmentwith a peace settlement that failed to award Italy its promised territorial spoils inthe Balkans promoted Mussolini's cause.
Fascists and Nazis thought of themselves as continuing the war at home to amore successful conclusion. The enemies now were the internationalist, pacifist,and democratic forces that supposedly weakened and betrayed the nation in itscontest with other nations. The war itself had provided a training ground for mobilizingthe nation in a unified cause. The army, with its ethos of discipline andunquestioning obedience, served as the model for fascist organization. Disgruntledveterans returning from the front provided the manpower for fascist parties andparamilitary formations such as the Free Corps in Germany, Hitler's SA, andMussolini's Fasci di combattimento.
2 A perceived threat from the left
The second and in some ways most important factor in the rise of fascism was thechallenge posed by the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917. Fascism representeda violent backlash against the extraordinary threat that Marxist socialism seemed topresent to traditional European institutions now that it enjoyed, for the first time inhistory, a national power base. Fascist parties were founded in the aftermath of theworld war to offer workers an alternative to Marxist socialism and to lure them intothe national camp; their proclaimed mission was to eliminate the radical left by"fighting fire with fire." It was mainly this anti-Marxist function that attracted thesupport of traditional conservatives and even some conservatively minded liberals,who in Italy and Germany gave the fascists the aid they needed to obtain power.
Fascists were particularly valued as allies in situations where the left threatenedto gain power. They also benefited from the popular perception that liberals andtraditional conservatives were too squeamish and genteel for the task of combatingthe revolutionary threat from the left. Where conservative elites were deeplyentrenched and strong enough to suppress the left on their own, as in southeasternEurope, fascists were dispensable and fascist parties were correspondingly weak.Fascism was also weak in countries with strong liberal systems, such as westernEurope and the United States, where democratic institutions proved adaptableenough to meet the challenge of the radical left without surrendering to the radicalright.
3 Economic difficulties
Neither thwarted nationalism nor militant anti-communism might have resulted inthe triumph of fascism in Italy and Germany if it had not been for a third majorprecondition for fascist success: economic contraction and depression. It is unlikelythat Hitler would have obtained power legally if the economy of Weimar Germanyhad not been gravely weakened by the Great Depression. Mussolini, too, benefitedfrom the social strife that economic hardship precipitated in Italy after the FirstWorld War. The services of his strike-breaking squadristi would not have beenneeded in a time of labor peace.
It is not surprising that the same conditions of scarcity and inequity that give riseto revolutionary movements on the left should also spawn counter-revolution onthe right. Nothing radicalized members of the middle classes to a greater degreethan the prospect of continued economic decline and the threat of a lower-classrevolution. Just as economic crisis tended to radicalize wage-earning workers tothe left, so people with status or property to defend were radicalized to the right.Fascism offered the promise of radical but non-Marxist solutions to the problems ofcapitalist economies at a time when the laissez-faire principles of classical liberalismseemed to hold out less and less hope for the "common man." If communists offereda way out of economic crisis through the abolition of private property, fascistsoffered a way out through the revival of national power.
Fascism defined
It may be useful at this point to risk a working definition of fascism, always bearingin mind that concrete manifestations invariably deviate to some extent from the"ideal type." The rise of fascism can be best understood in the context of the greatsocial transformations brought about by the democratic and industrial revolutionsof the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and accelerated by the First WorldWar. Fascism was a political movement (and later a system of rule) to generatemass support by radical and violent means for anti-democratic and counter-revolutionaryends. It gained its adherents mainly among those groups that stood tolose ground as a result of the continued growth of movements identifying progressnot only with technological advance, which fascists favored as well, but withincreased democratization and the more equitable distribution of material goods.Fascist ideology invoked the virtues of nationalism, authoritarianism, and militarismagainst the revolutionary values of liberty and equality.
If, nonetheless, there were substantial differences among the various nationalversions of fascism, this is in large part due to the fact that it is in the nature of allnationalisms to glorify their own inherited institutions and traditions. As a radicaldefense of their ethnic customs and traditions against the challenges of modernityand contamination from outside, fascism always appeared to embody the culturaltraditions of the country in which it took hold. Thus Italian Fascists looked to theRoman imperial past for inspiration, while National Socialists exalted Germanictribalism, and leaders of the Ku Klux Klan idealized the "slave-holder democracy" ofthe pre-Civil War South. So strong are nationalist loyalties among fascists, in fact, thatsome French fascists joined the resistance when Germany occupied France in 1940.
The radicalism of fascist movements was often linked to the scale of theperceived threat from the left. A form of racism and xenophobia was common to allfascist movements. Their search for ethnic purity led to their rejection of racialmixing and racial equality. But anti-Semitism often varied in proportion to thepopular perception of Jews as leaders and beneficiaries of the progressive movementsthat fascists set out to destroy. Although the radical dynamic of fascismeventually led to the destruction of traditional institutions and class structure in theSecond World War, this unintended denouement should not obscure the roots offascism in the nineteenth-century opposition to liberal and social democracy. Allfascist movements shared in common a determination to reverse the modern trendtoward greater democratization. Insofar as traditional institutions, such as the aristocracy,proved inadequate to or uncooperative in this task, they, too, weresacrificed to fascist counter-revolution.
Why did the most extreme and virulent fascist movement emerge in Germany?And why did this radical variant of fascism succeed in gaining power in Germanywhile fascist movements in most other countries did not? The peculiarities ofGerman history may help to provide answers to these questions.
Continues...
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