Both Mussloni and Hitler made opposition to communism a major element of their ideologies. Fascism and Nazism gained popularity as defenders against the Communist menace with the successful advent of communism in Russia that threatened to take away private property.
In the 1920’s Mussolini provided a compromise between uncontrolled capitalism and the uncontrollable materialism of communism. Fascist Italy provided the necessary amount of order and state control without severe interference with the old economic system. Sociologically, fascism meant a blurring of what had been rigid class distinctions and a lessening of monarchial power. Culturally fascism celebrated the artist, the athlete, the worker and the soldier.
Both were considered in the inter war years to be ‘have not’ nations, without the national resources of England, France or the USA an ideal fostered by both. Germany considered itself to be the heartland of the Eurasian land mass and Italy the ‘owners’ of the Mediterranean. Both saw the best political arrangement as the state and national identity, a group that has common language, culture and history. This drew upon the Hegelian (1770-1831) ideas that the state was organic, not subject to external law, in which war developed the personality of the state and the individual was subservient to the state and its historic destiny.
As guarantors of order and economic security, defenders against impending bolshevism and upholders of sacred national purpose, both states offered an alternative to the indecision and ineffectiveness of parliamentary democracy. The leader interpreting the ‘will of the people.’
Both men posed as upholders of the ‘glorious tradition’ and followers of national destiny, Mussolini as the colossus of the New Rome, Hitler donning the armour of a Teutonic knight promising national hope and glory.
Both appeared to be efficient with Mussolini draining swamps and building public buildings, Germany was clean with the trains running on time. Winston Churchill remarked that had he been Italian, he would be a Fascist.
The truth was soon learned. Both dictatorships:
- Were not very orderly and were extremely oppressive.
- Police used not for maintenance of public order but its destruction.
- Political opposition were exterminated or imprisoned.
- Censorship was rigidly imposed
- Strict supervision of the young
- Elevated propaganda
Despite the comparisons, there were some obvious distinctions between the two national societies.
Italians never generated the spirit for racism that was so profoundly important in the ideology and practices of Nazi Germany. Mussolini was critical of racial interpretations of the nation, defining it in non-racial terms and was hostile to the Nazi race theory. He used the term race as a synonym for nation or people not to denote a hierarchy of peoples based upon biological differences. There were Italian Fascist racist factions and Mussolini exhibited racial assumptions towards the indigenous populations in Africa but these were not central to their ideology.
It could be argued that the foundations of Nazism was Social Darwinism, but not those of Italian Fascism which accepted though it accepted the existence of laws of nature there would be little scope for biological determinism (outside effects). In addition whilst placing a high value on struggle and conflict, Fascists did so for non-Darwinist reasons i.e. to display heroic qualities. Nazism also stressed heroic order but within the context of natural order and the salience of race. Race was genetically based and hence hereditary, produced by selection and adaptation, threatened by miscengation (interbreeding). The struggle for survival justified the most radical measures in eugenics and racial hygiene.
The success of race, a central role in Nazism ideology, encouraged imitation in Italy. The anti-Semitic legislation of 1938 was criticised by some Italian Fascists was not an integral part and the concept of national identity less rigid than Nazism.
National Socialism drew on more political ideas and concepts and is more totalitarian as an ideology, more embracing of society, a master race of Aryans surrounded by conquered inferior people. Italian Fascism is more pragmatic (practical) more about the importance of power and a strong leader. Mussolini, ‘The Fascist state is will to power and domination.
Italian Fascism produced a less effective, less repressive and therefore less socially destructive ‘new order’ than Nazism. The Catholic Church played an institutional role which forced some concessions from the regime.
The Italian army never had the reputation for efficiency that the German army had.
Add this to the differences in industrial capacity between them and the effectiveness of its bureaucracy and the national frustration over its defeat in the world war then the differences in real power and public attitudes in both countries is discernable.
Mussolini repudiated pacifism stating that war, ‘puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it. Hitler believed that wars were good for a nation encouraging more children and should occur every 15-20 years, the ‘ultimate test of a nations capabilities and moral fibre.’ However the enhancement of the nations effectiveness became the rationale for the eugenics and euthanasia programs, Compulsory sterilisation from 1933 for categories of people suffering hereditary illnesses, (criminals, mental defectives, alcoholism and homosexuality) and extermination of the mentally handicapped, and the sub-human (Jews, Slavs and gypsies) from 1939-45. ‘All who are not of good race in this world are chaff,’ and the policies of the National Socialists since 1933 was to separate out the chaff.
Mussolini was the first individual to make dictatorship successful in a modern European state and Hitler stated that Mussolini was his model. Fascism gained appeal by their theory of the ‘corporate state’ in which labour and management would act together nationally and class conflict was removed by governmental institutions as a means to greater production and internal harmony and power. This being said, the regime was inefficient and disorganised.
Nazi Germany was ruthless, with political opponents tortured and exterminated. The creation of racist doctrine and policy, the existence of the Aryan race destined to rule the world. The infamous ‘Crystal Night’ in November 1938 and the Judenfrage ( the Jewish question). The Nuremberg Laws, which denied them citizenship, prohibited intermarriage and set in motion the Holocaust.
The agencies of the state could reach into all matters of private life controlling by force or control. The individual was now only significant in so far as their integration into the total system, political or social, and serve it. The regime destroyed the organisations, professional bodies and unions that stood between the individual and the state.
The totalitarian state stood as the antithesis of the liberal state. Whilst the latter upheld the importance of the autonomous individual who was to enjoy a maximum of personal freedom guaranteed by the states benign maintenance of domestic order based on parliamentary compromise, the former denied all personal freedom and
demanded complete political submission depending on force and terror.
The most unique political institution whether Fascist, Nazi or Stalinest was the single legal party that alone accounted for political activity.
Conclusion:- There is no doubt that the nineteenth century was the seedbed of fascism but it was the conditions caused by the First World War that generated the climate in which Fascism and nazism were to thrive, as the last hope between economic chaos and communism, promising social justice and full employment in the new order of things. Democracy appeared inefficient and cumbersome, unsuited to modern times and Fascism and Nazism were the response to the complex existence. As Hitler said, I simplified the problems and reduced them to the simplest terms. The masses realised this and followed me.’
