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How do you account for the rise of Fascism in the inter-war years?
The end of the First World War seems to mark the future of Europe. The successful confrontation of the liberal democracies against the expansionist policy of the authoritarian empires, established a firm belief for the prevalence of stability and democracy in the continent. However, soon after, these hopes proved to be vain, giving place to instability, political erosion, social turbulence, economic penury and a series of several acute inter-war crises. One of the most severe effects of these crises was the demise of European empires and the fact that a noticeable number of countries, the most prominent of which Italy and Germany, abnegated their adherence to the fundamental principles of Western European societies: the democratic system, the parliamentary form of government and the economic liberalism.
But was initially the support from the petit bourgeois class, which have started feeling the draught due to its proletarianization, to spread-eagle and totalitarian political solutions, in the broader context of political and economic fluidity, adequate reasons to lead to the emergence and final dominance of the fascist regimes? The answer should be emphatically positive, considering the cases of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, which having gained substantial growth in the postwar period of the Great war, they fully exerted their totalitarian control, having caused an endless bloodshed and convulsing the foundations of modern order, with the conduct of another world war.
Much of the study about the rise of fascism, exposed the problems of approaching the contradictoriness of its ideas, arguing that, the above term describes only the Italian version, where fascism was originally launched as a movement. Historians of fascism, gave emphasis on arriving at a decision regarding the definition of fascism, while revisionist attempts focused on the core of fascist ideology and its interpretation, as Gregor’s apposite remark on the term as ’the third way of politics’.
The analysis which follows, emerging from the bibliography regarding the works of distinguished historians of fascism, is an attempt to set fascism in its historical context; it will first deal with the turning point of the interwar years and the series of crises that came about in Europe - the main theatre of operations of the First World War and main hard-pressed of the following decay, which had almost wiped her off the map. In the main, it will focus comprehensively on the duet of the most notorious cases of fascist regimes: Italy and Germany; it will examine the prevailing circumstances in their interior which formed the substratum for the consolidation of fascism. In Italy, where fascism was originally launched as a movement after the ‘mutilated victory’ of the First World War, to employ Roger Griffin’s useful phrase and in Germany, where after the mortifying peace treaty, the disordered situation of the infant Weimar Republic was rapidly deteriorated by a general crisis, rested on political and ideological grounds.
In the post-war period of the First World War, a close association existed between the nationalistic sentiment, now in process with the political and financial interests, within the framework of social unrest, volatile political situation and economic crisis- which eventually resulted in the Great Slump of 1929 in America; in the same breath, occurred an internationalization of the crisis which have shaken the foundations of the European’s ‘artificial prosperity’, as she was to be proved, as well as the affluent society’s itself. An upsurge of social abjection followed on, unemployment shot up and a large proportion of the population of liberal democracies, have suffered privations due to their reduced circumstances. In Germany, where a considerable industrial development took effect thanks to the American funds, the crisis was more acute, while in Italy the peasants were indignant with the government on the score of the latter’s breach of pre-war promise, regarding the distribution of the landholders’ landed property to them.
On the whole, the middle class is driven in despair, mostly due to galloping inflation and gradually, the economic crisis was turning into an ideological crisis; a discredit towards the parliamentary democracy, the liberal economic policy and the society of industrial development, has just begun to break out in Europe.
The unstable equilibrium in the 1920’s onwards, revealed the fragility of the democratic system and the aim of the adherents of the authoritarian regimes to overthrow the liberal democracies; they have also taken advantage of the widely increasing disenchantment and the accusations levelled the governments about economic scandals, their impotence to carry out a governmental programme and meet the exigencies of time. In parallel with the widespread fear of proletarianization and the lack of any ideological guidance, authoritarian, nationalistic movements emerged, pressing for the sedition of newly established liberal democracies, an endeavour, which they eventually carried into effect by the imposition of dictatorial and anti-liberal regimes, virtually supported in most of the cases, by the army, the church, the landholders and the big business establishments.
This situation occurred in Hungary with Admiral Horty in 1920, when at the same time in Germany, took place an abortive attempt against the Weimar Republic by devotees of monarchy and extreme nationalistic groups. In 1923 general Primo de Rivera in Spain, had abolished parliamentarism and imposed a dictatorship of the traditional ruling class, while tree years later in Poland, Marshal Pilsudski, supported by the army after heading the ‘March on Warsaw ‘ and imposed a military dictatorship. Moreover, the authoritarian regimes that Salazar established in Portugal in 1933, Metaxas in Greece in 1936 and General Franco in Spain in1939, constituted representative samples of a constellation of fascist movements or semi-fascist corporate states.
In contrast with the rest of the authoritarian regimes lacking in ideological substratum and just aiming at the rectification of a traditional state of affairs, the new form of dictatorship, Fascism, possessed a firm ideology, declaring the total obedience of the individual and his values, to the will of the mighty fascist state, the authority of which is infallible and indisputable.
But how can we define Fascism and which was its ideological substance? Most historians can’t agree on a common, coherent theory, while some of them argue that the term ‘fascism’ can only describe the Italian case due to its differences with the rest of the totalitarian regimes. Besides, Mann argues that these forms of totalitarian regimes, like the Fascist Italy and the Nazi Germany, should be examined within:’ the precise twentieth century social location and structure’, in order to distinctively draw them apart from the rest of the authoritarian movements, which do not incorporate the same sociological grounds nor the same popular-backed social vision .
Fascism was originally brought into being by a former official of the Italian socialist party, Benito Mussolini. According to its ideology, fascists should violently fight both, civic democratic and communist regimes, and aim at the same time to allure the citizens with extreme nationalistic and anti-capitalist slogans. Meanwhile, it intends to establish a dictature, capable of turning Italy into a forceful, dominant power with a view to take a hand in European affairs. This authoritative regime based on: the dominance of a single, unopposed party, the nationalistic uplift and the constitution of trade association, dominated in Italy from 1922 to 1943.
A question for the interwar period therefore is: which were the propitious circumstances for the rise of fascism in Italy? By looking the situation in 1919, Italy was going through an anxious time. The nation was swaying on the score of major domestic problems. The prevailing circumstances immediately after the First World War and the consequential political, social and economical crisis seriously afflicted the stability of the country.
Although Italy ranked among the winners of the First World War, the rather backward political, social and economical structure of the country was exerting enormous pressure on her social life. This backwardness resulted to a conflict of interests between the bourgeoisie, which was representing the industrialized North and the class of the major landholders, which was representing the feudalistic South, due to the former’s efforts to seize power. In order to seize power, the bourgeoisie relied on the support of the land holders of the South. The recompense for this political support seemed to be the non-advance of the agrarian reform, a fact that set up a chain reaction, which resulted in a mass manifestation of discontent, in the form of hundreds of agrarian strikes, involving in 1920 half a million peasants. The aforementioned issue emphatically demonstrated that the civil regime in Italy didn’t rest on firm grounds, an impotence which rendered the regime indefensible to the economic and ideological crisis. At the same time, the labour union was unable to intercede due to its domestic quarrels, regarding the opposition between the social democrats and the communists.
The starting-point of the social crisis was the impotence of the Italian bourgeoisie to establish a firm civil regime and a stable capitalist economy. The economy was mostly standing on foreign operating capitals (french, british, german). Hence, a forward collection of monopolistic capital came into being, whereas the country still hasn’t gone through the form of an integrated phase of a liberal capitalist competition and as a result, both the Italian capital and state became indebted to foreign creditors. Under these conditions, the economic crisis in Italy was becoming even more acute, while at the same time, processing and cottage industry, the main features of the Italian economy were seriously afflicted by the monopolistic capital.
As already mentioned, Italy’s ‘mutilated victory’ of the First World War, on the score of the frustration emerging from her allies’ unfulfilled promises for expansion, the strong bitterness due to the peace conference, the restrictions regarding migration and finally the romantic, yet widely supportable action of the Italian nationalist poet Gabriele D’Annunzio, who seized the disputed are of Fiume, as the leader of the volunteer army of the arditi in the late 1919, intensified the pre-existent ardent nationalism, sparked off a severe moral crisisand went a long way towards the enfeeblement of Italy’s weak liberal substructure. Mussolini took advantage of the nationalists’ demand towards the annexation of Istria and Dalmatia and tried to manipulate people’s discontent against the winning and benefited from the war, allied Powers, in order to achieve power.
It could be consequently argued at this point, that the favourable circumstances for the rise of fascism nearly came to maturity. Furthermore, we have to take into consideration the deplorable situation of the economy, the dearth of labourers and raw materials in industrial units, due to the hecatomb and heavy casualties that the war left behind on the one hand and the dereliction of the north provinces of the country by reason of military operations, on the other hand. The government was compelled to adopt an inflationary policy because of the war expenditure that leaded to, a rise in prices and to a proportional wage demand by the working population, an exacerbation of inflation and an unemployment explosion, which pushed matters in a state of disorganisation and rioting.
We should also count in, the fact that the soldiers who returned from the front, were ill-disposed towards the regime, which they considered responsible for the evils that ensued from the war and at the same time, incapable of providing them the necessary means towards their assimilation in the social system.
Sterhell argued that, on the eve of the accession to power of Italian fascism, the cult of violence, danger and adventure, became the high-spot of a society, uniting all the dissident groups.
Within the parameters of social unrest, economic crisis and ideological instability from 1919 onwards, moderate political circles have begun to gang up against the communists, who in all likelihood, would have been in course of preparation to seize the opportunity, owing to the general crisis. Consequently, the widespread fear of Bolshevism and the propagation of its revolutionary ideas all over Europe from 1918 onwards, in combination with the prevailing social disorder in the Italian society of the 1920, run to extremes and leaded the mainstream of the political thought, big business, the landholders and the Church towards the finding of an influential man, who could have been the tenacious bond between the masses, the petit bourgeois class and the radical social element of the soldiers, who have returned from the front and were thirsting for some action. At that crucial moment fascism, emerged as the only progressive movement which could defend the country from the danger of a communist revolution and strongly be regarded as the stronghold of the national modernization.
The fascist movement was founded in the early 1919 by Benito Mussolini and its fundamental concern was the terrorization of the communists, socialists, labour leaders and the politicians who were shaping the party politics. The economic crisis of 1920-1921, enabled Mussolini to recruit new members to the National Fascist Party, more typically known by its Italian acronym, PNF (transformation into a party occurred in autumn 1921) from the unemployed classes, who they beneficially used later on as strike breakers.
Before Mussolini turned the fascists into a party, fascists, were organized in hit teams - squadre, proceeded from the fasci Italiani di combattimento, pre-war ginger groups formed by Mussolini. The fascist squads, took action against their political opponents, mainly against the communists. The activities of these disciplined paramilitary organizations of the black-shirted squadristi, encompassed the elimination of the political opponents, like communist and socialist leaders, they set afire intellectual clubs and labour centres in the industrial zones of the North, they attacked the agriculture combinations and the organized labour and they launched a persecution of dissidents coming from the liberal circles. Mussolini himself belauded the use of violence, for the attainment of the movement’s political objectives and he invoked its use in the summer of 1920 when the factory occupations and various waves of strikes were taking place. In spite of the fact that fascism seemed to be a force of stability and even though the social crisis as well as the series of strikes, instigated by the revolutionary syndicalism, has passed, the fascists alleged the necessity of taking precautionary measures and incited to counter-revolution.
However the events that took effect during the biennio rosso,‘the two red years’ of political convulsions, numerous strikes and of a constant, widespread fear of a revolution were a turning point regarding the formation of fascism’s ideological concepts and the accession of mass numbers of devotees to the movement.
While in its preliminary stages, the fascist ideology encompassed beliefs of the extreme left, aside from the principles of the radical right, the uplift of the patriotic sentiment in the interwar years and the smouldering threat of a communist revolution, changed the movement into a strong adherent of the nation’s protection and a stronghold of social stability in case of a renewed outbreak of revolution. As Nolte commented: ‘There is no Fascism without Marxism and Fascism is at the same time closer to and further from communism…that it shows an inclination toward a radical ideology.’ From this point of view, we can explain how fascism came into shape in its ‘place of birth’ and its transformation from a revolutionary movement into a counter-revolutionary one.
Several social groups concurred to the rise of fascism and its accession to power: the industrial circles which couldn’t forget the factory occupations, the major landholders who were contrary to the agrarian reforms, the Church which detested materialism and the communists and mainly, the class of the petit bourgeois, which was afraid of the Labourite proletariat. Fascism rapidly conceived the dynamic of the petit bourgeois’ discontent, as well as the agrarian society’s increasing disenchantment, stemming from the government’s social policy. These social groups, were the main recipients of the economic crisis, and given that they hadn’t developed a class conscience, they formed the most conducive part of the Italian society for the acceptance of fascism; the latter assured them a social certitude, adopted a new agriculture policy and convinced the members of these social groups that fascism himself existed as a moral and social revolution against communism and the international capital.
Consequently, the nation and its citizens formed the main features of the fascist ideology, which was giving to the masses the impression of active participation in a mission which had to be accomplished, only within the scope of a totalitarian, anti-liberal and anti-communist state.
In 1921 a key development took place. The Fascist Party, which by that time ran into three hundred thousands members, won thirty-five seats in the May elections, something that ensured them a participation in Giolitti’s government. Their propaganda presence in the parliament, was useful both for the fight against the left and for the consolidation of the undertone that they would soon rise to power.
The delusion of the ruling class and the prime minister himself that they were capable of manipulating the Fascist Party towards the safeguard of the privileged ruling class, in combination with the inability of the aforementioned controlling factors to realize the dynamism and the potentiality of the Fascist Party, which threatened to engulf them, resulted one year later to the ‘March on Rome’ and to the imposition of a ‘lawful dictatorship’.
While the cases of fascist violence were increasing and the social crisis was getting worse, thousands of fascists, after the suppression of a strike instigated by the socialists, attempted the ‘March on Rome’ in October 1922, ‘a political gimmick’, whose objective was to terrify and exert pressure on the politicians and the king, so that the latter would delegate the formation of the government to Mussolini. After King Vittorio Emanuele acceded to the demands of the fascists, Mussolini assumed the reins of a constitutional government and in the elections of 1924 the coalition controlled by the fascists gained the absolute majority. The finishing stroke against the liberal democracy was the assassination at the same year, of Giacomo Matteotti, a socialist leader who dared to ventilate his grievances against Mussolini. In 1925 the fascist leader imposed a repressive regime in Italy and by the following strict enforcement of the leggi fascistissime, ‘fascist laws’ in 1926 concluded the transformation of the regime into a totalitarian regime. For the first time in history, a fascist dictatorship replaced a democracy.
The prevailing circumstances in Germany after the First World War were in favor of the formation of a revolutionary movement. The country was bedeviled by an acute economic crisis and inflation; the sharp rise in the prices of the consumer goods was disproportional with the rise of wages, resulting to the strong discontent by the working classes, the class of the petit bourgeois and the peasants, the main recipients of the crisis. The middle class, like in Italy, couldn’t play an intermediary role just like it did in other developed countries. The transition from feudalism to capitalism and the liberal democracy didn’t occur after a democratic revolution from the bourgeoisie but it was imposed from above, due to the Bismarckian policy towards the unification of the country under the guidance of the bourgeoisie. The highly developed Labor union, on the score of Germany’s advanced industrialization, was capable of threatening the dominance of the bourgeoisie. This fact drove the latter to join forces with the major landholders, in order to become able of holding in the political control.
The situation in Germany in 1919 was worlds apart from the pre-war one. Before the Great War, Germany was a big industrial power and its monopolistic capital was one of the most influential ones in the world market. In the turn of the decade however, Germany was obliged to pay dearly for war reparations, thus was changed over, from creditor to debtor. In order to attain its economic development and stability, Germany was also obliged to borrow capitals from the United States. The economic crisis of 1919 afflicted Germany more than any other country and even though the economy has achieved a fast recovery, presented at the same time several faults. The transition to monopolistic capitalism created an imbalance regarding the growth between the industrial and the agricultural sector. Hence, a significant decline in the prices of agricultural products has appeared which compressed the home market, since the peasants didn’t possess a great purchasing power. The monopolistic capital reacted to a prospective rise in the prices of agricultural products, because it would have been obliged to concur to the workers’ wage claims.
The indigence of the peasants, the unemployment of the laborers, the increasing influence of the monopolistic capital in the financial position of the country and the concomitants social effects, a middle class manipulated by the major landholders who possessed key positions in the German army, were all factors which contributed to the country’s impotence to develop a normal capitalist system and a consistent civil society; these are the explosive problems that the German society had to deal with in the inter-war years, through which Hitler and Nazism came up. The working class, like in Italy, was unable to interfere because of her inexperience and internal disputes.
The weakness of the infant Weimar Republic, which had run into inextricable difficulties at her very beginning, leaded to the point of her total collapse, in the turn of the first decade of the twentieth century. The dire economic instability fell in step with constant political storms, labour agitations, strikes and convulsive upheavals in the industrial zones; trade boards were founded on the model of the Russian ones, while the communist leaders gave the signal for a general strike and armed uprising.
This first revolutionary attempt against the government in the late 1918, as well as the following attempts from groups of nationalists in Berlin in 1920, as we mentioned before and in Spandau, a west borough of Berlin in the late 1923, shook the foundations of the Republic and brought to the surface the subject-matter of the equivocal attitude of the army towards the attempts of the nationalists rather than the communists, to seize power.
Unfavorable post- World War One economic, political and social conditions had produced scores of people who had trouble finding their place in German society, the most illustrative example of which was the middle class, main victim of the boom in the rise of prices, the reevaluation of consumer goods and the devaluation of mark. The public opinion was in desperate need of a new political regime to replace the failing Weimar Republic and extricate the country from the deep crisis.
In 1919, Adolf Hitler, a recent recruit of the German Workers’ Party (DAP), a radical right, nationalist, racist group, was quickly becoming the main speaker of the party; he achieved within two years time to assume the party’s leadership and rename it to: ‘National Socialist German Workers Party’, more typically known by its German acronym, NSDAP. This alteration came about in order to emphasize the chauvinist and anti-capitalist character of the party, define the party’s nationalist goals based on a twenty-five-point programme and finally dissociated itself from the ‘cosmopolitan and erosive socialism’, whose doctrine of class struggle and international solidarity would have been an obstacle for the unification of the German nation and its restoration in a key position regarding the world affairs.
Hitler and the National Socialists, widely voiced the general feeling of disappointment and anger, emerging from the mortifying defeat of 1918 and the following collapse of the imperial Second Reich- proceeded from the humiliating acceptance of the Treaty of Versailles; the local warfare that passed off between Germany and the newly formed Republic of Poland regarding the disputed ground of the Polish corridor of Danzig and the occupation of Ruhr- Germany’s main centre of coal, iron and steel production by the French-Belgian troops, forged the ultra-nationalistic sentiment towards the abrogation of the peace settlement of 1918-1920.
National Socialism or Nazism emerged as the radical populist response to the crisis of a bourgeois society and the backwardness of the political culture of the country. It promised to create a new, stronger Germany although initially, the way in which it was going to achieve this was kept vague. It decisively intercalated its political proposition between the faltering liberalism and the deeply divided German socialism, whose internal political dispute, had eventually resulted to the Civil War between the ‘Spartacists’, a group of radical socialists and the Social Democrats, who joined forces with the conservative political powers.
National Socialists took advantage of the failure of the socialists to establish a national communist regime and at the same time were getting organized in hit-teams of the ‘Brownshirts’ or ‘Storm Detachment’ (SA), on the model of the Italian ‘squadistri Blackshirts’, in order to clash with the communists and cross out the overhung danger of Bolshevism along with the potential threat of imposition of a dictatorship of the proletariat.
Having considered the situation within the framework of the growing social tension and the ‘paroxysm’ of nationalism, it was a matter of course the next attempt of capturing power, an event that took place in the form of the ‘Beer Hall putsch’ in 1923 in Munich; an unsuccessful attempt of the Nazis backed by other radical right-wing movements and leaded by First World War General, Ludendorff and Hitler, who was arrested and sentenced for five years imprisonment.
Surprisingly, the publicity gained from the putsch and the publication of ‘Mein Kampf’, Hitler’s own work, which became the ‘bible of Nazism’, gave a new impetus to the Party. The Nazi theory revealed ideological and institutional continuations saturated with passion and firmness, resting on the racial radicalism and the cult of violence and power. Their social policy, which had proved a great political potential weapon, aimed towards the establishment of Volksgemeinschaft, a traditional society that promoted the national spirit rather than the individual, based on the racial purity and the supremacy of the Aryan race. The undertone of anti-Semitism which prevailed in the interwar Germany, regarded Jews as a threat for the nation and embodiment for all the inflictions put upon the Germans, a fact that the Nazis artfully exploited through their propaganda campaigns, achieving in that way to broaden their electoral basis.
The temporary resurgence of the economy and social stability of 1924- 1928, has contributed to the oblivion of Hitler and the National Socialists. However, the crisis in the agricultural and industrial section in 1928 and mainly the Great Slump of 1929 resurrected the Nazi Party and signaled the beginning of the end of the Weimar Republic. The emergence of an unprecedented inflation, which was threatening the foundations of the middle and lower classes, the exponential rise of unemployment and the ever worsening economic situation, have generated favourable social conditions for the rise of messianic movements like the Nazi Party.
The latter’s strong organizational structure interrelated with its powerful propaganda effect, by way of major party rallies, recruiting campaigns, a major newspaper network, in combination with the party’s political manoeuvring and the efficiency of the paramilitary force of the SA which ‘conquered the streets’, eliminating the party’s political opponents, rendered NSDAP a nation wide mass political and social movement.
Counting in, Hitler’s charismatic leadership, among with his extraordinary demagogic powers that mobilized the masses and his elective affinity with the movement, we can easily understand how the efforts of the National Socialists had eventually born fruit in the elections of 1932, where the NSDAP won the support of about 14 million voters. Hitler is any longer supported by the capitalist and militarist circles; his aggressive ultranationalist ideology and practice, was fascinating the formers and was reassuring the latters, regarding the future of the German heavy industry. In 1933, the ‘Bohemian corporal’ was formally appointed chancellor and one year later he became the president and Fuhrer of the Third Reich. The German democracy had died and was replaced by the Nazi regime.
Get help with your essay from our expert essay writers...To summarize, there are some points with essential significance to be noticed so that more useful conclusions may be drawn. Without doubt, fascism was the ‘legacy of the First World War’, emerging from a series of crises in the economic, political, military and ideological field, which the liberal democracies proved unable to tackle. The revolutionary mass movements of the radical right, under the charismatic leaderships of cunning demagogues like Hitler and Mussolini, capable of compounding all of the pro-fascist gregarious tendencies in a potent ideology that mobilized the national communities, became nation-wide mass parties which were promising to give effective solutions to the consequential problems of the Great War, according to the ‘people’s will’. It could be consequently argued that fascism was not only a negative ideology, anti-liberal, anti-communist, anti-conservative but the extreme culmination of the democratic political system which replaced the failing liberal democracies and its parliamentary institutions.
Fascism exploited the situation which came before in the interwar era, with the emergence of two successional crises in the time frame of a decade and the smouldering discontent of the middle and lower classes, which not only paid the lowest deference to the liberal democracies and its representatives coming from the dominant classes, yet, they were more than willing to support any movement that would improve the conditions for the many, by radically running on the crises, eliminating the everpresent danger of a communist revolution and most of all, restoring the position of their nations in key-positions regarding the European and even world affairs.
This kind of ‘social contract’ that the Fascists in Italy and the Nazis in Germany had signed with the youthful proletariat, the uniformed working classes, the peasants, the small business, the women and the petty bourgeoisie, along with the efficient paramilitary ‘pressure’ of the parties’ hit-teams that eliminated the political adversaries and the tremendous effect of the fascist propaganda, had created a firm substratum that effectively contributed to the rise and consolidation of these two European Dictatorships in the mid-1930’s. A few years later, the fascist regimes, by the driving force of the ‘Rome- Berlin Axis’, had brought about and conducted the Second World War against the liberal democracies, which have caused an endless bloodshed and threatened humanity with total devastation.
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