Book Review - Fascism and the Right in Europe

However, before Blinkhorn explores the movement of fascism within inter-war Europe, he sets within his first two chapters “Foretastes of fascism” and “Inter-war Europe in Crisis”, the historical context that ‘fascism’ emerged within. Blinkhorn effectively argues how ‘fascism’ very much appeared as a ‘product’ of the First World War as he illustrates that if people had not witnessed their experiences of social and economic conditions within this era, “Fascism/Nazism/Other movements of the Inter-war European Right – would not have appeared as they did”. As a result it was the “First World War and the new world which it created that truly forged fascism out of the primitive pre-war ore”.

 It is in his chapters “Fascist and Right-Wing Movements 1919-1939” and “Fascist and Right-Wing Regimes” where Blinkhorn establishes his central argument. Blinkhorn conveys in the former chapter how different right-wing movements occurred between Inter-War Europe, in countries such as Italy, Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Britain and Ireland. He argues that although many of these movements gained “genuine mass support and political potency”, it was only Mussolini’s ‘Italian Fascist Movement’ and Hitler’s ‘German National Socialist Party’ that had won “political power in what might be termed ‘normal’, that is to say peacetime conditions”. These were then able to establish ‘fascist’ regimes.

Blinkhorn effectively compares and contrasts the experiences of fascism within Italy and Germany, and hence uses this to reflect upon other right-wing movements and regimes within the Inter-War Period.  Blinkhorn regards Fascist Italy as a “starting point and a model against which to examine other dictatorships of the political right, the Third Reich included”. He agrees that fascism originated in Italy and this influenced Nazi Germany and other right-wing movements, particularly, Sir Oswald Mosley’s ‘British Union of Fascists’.

However, although Blinkhorn agrees that Fascist Italy had influenced many other right-wing movements, he argues that “The Italian Fascist Regime was least ‘fascist’ than it appeared” because like other right-wing movements that were suppressed by establishments already in place, Mussolini’s “constitutional position remained ultimately subordinate to the crown.”

One interesting point Blinkhorn highlights is the juxtaposition of ‘Italian Fascism’ and its German variant, Nazism, as he suggests how although ‘Italian Fascism’ may have been subjected to its established institutions, mainly the King and the Catholic Church, German Nazism was extremely different as “Hitler –in sharp contrast to Mussolini – was constitutionally unchallengeable as Fuhrer and Chancellor”. He also argues that due to both regimes’ differing racial policies, “Nazism at its most extreme – and fascism at its most extreme – reached its logical, whether or not inevitable, destination in what we know now as the Holocaust”.

Blinkhorn’s chapter “Theories and Interpretations” questions the definitions of fascism and its relationship with the right-wing dictatorships of the Inter-war era, as he uses these final pages as an arena to battle other historians of fascism. Blinkhorn offers and challenges an array of viewpoints as he cynically views ‘Marxist Interpretations’ of fascism and suggests that

 “from a turn-of-the century perspective it is clear that the cruder Marxist analyses of the inter-war years, more or less equating fascism with capitalism or at least regarding fascism as capitalism were always unsound”.

 Blinkhorn, in this chapter, puts forward a thoughtful viewpoint in helping us to understand how ‘fascism’ as an ideology is extremely complex.

Blinkhorn, in “Fascism and the Right in Europe 1919 – 1945” has produced a short, yet very detailed book that brings new insight to the current

historiography on fascism. It is an ideal text amongst academic students of fascism, who wish to actively engage with and understand its subject.

 Blinkhorn has effectively differentiated between the two major fascist regimes in Italy and Germany, and those less successful movements and regimes like Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria and Romania, whose ‘fascist states’ were born through the intervention of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. However, Blinkhorn has furthermore explored how Fascism in Italy and Germany were extremely different, the latter being more radical and exceeding the boundaries of ‘fascism’.

 Blinkhorn’s contribution to fascism’s history raises questions for modern democracy. He fears that with the rise of more recent ‘fascist’ and ‘national socialist’ movements to prominence (like Austria’s freedom party) “as a new century and a new millennium dawn, and as the memories of fascism’s heyday recede, it would be dangerous to conclude that new versions of this menace will never re-appear to threaten the safety and the lives of minorities, and the safety of democracy”.

Bibliography

Department of History, Professor Martin Blinkhorn, Lancaster University,  , (date accessed 22/11/2008)

Blinkhorn, Martin, Fascism and the Right in Europe 1919 – 1945, (Longman, 2000), ISBN 0-582-07021-X, hardback: 192 pages

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