Regime comparison

Question 1

Bessel - can the two be meaningfully compared?

Answer 1

Terrible violence unleashed by National Socialism had no parallel in the history of Fascism

Centrality of race to Nazis in their monstrous attempt to racially restructure Europe

Question 2

Bessel - Burleigh and Wipperman

Answer 2

Concluded in the Racial State that everything was subordinate to social policy, which was to create a hierarchical racial order

Question 3

Bessel - necessity of comparison

Answer 3

True that Germany committed unparalleled crimes under analogous circumstances to Italy

However, there must be an element of comparison, even if it is to note that assumed similarities are misplaces

Question 4

MacGregor Knox - similarity in claims of regimes

Answer 4

Leaders of Germany and Italy claimed a common origin and destiny for their two regimes

Question 5

MacGregor Knox - difference in overall war effort

Answer 5

Italy’s effort collapsed within six months of June 1940 beginning; staggering defeats from Brits and Greeks; dissolved mutely in 1943; Salo republic restoration rested on Germans

Germany 1938-42 subjugated much of Europe; then resisted over 3 years of concentric ground and air attack from 3 world powers’ only disintegrated after Hitler’s suicide

Question 6

MacGregor Knox - compromise in the regimes

Answer 6

Both depended on compromises between revolutionary movements aiming at total power and establishment shaken by WW1 and mass politics

These founding compromises and their root cause (survival of functioning civil societies) thwarted revolutionaries thereafter

Mussolini and Hitler could not write upon a social and political tabula rasa

Question 7

MacGregor Knox - indirect road to power

Answer 7

Led to war, not merely because both movements celebrated the right of the stronger

War was an instrument as well as a goal - to tame or destroy remaining institutions that blocked their paths at home

Rather than avert revolution, the dictators wanted to make it

Explains thirst for high-risk policy gambles and dialectical interaction of foreign and domestic policy

Question 8

MacGregor Knox - three categories for factors explaining difference in power

Answer 8

Expansionist zeal, fighting power and staying power determined by:

Underlying or inherited structures and forces

Structures and forces connected with the regimes themselves

Events and their sequence

Question 9

MacGregor Knox - Italy time behind and literacy

Answer 9

Italy was 30-50 years behind Germany in becoming an industrialised society

Italy 1/3 industrial workers compared to 42% in Germany

Literacy 90% in north in 1931, 79% in centre and 61% in south and islands

Illiteracy vanished in Germany by 1900

Question 10

MacGregor Knox - difference in inherited political structures

Answer 10

Not so different - foreign and military policy formed a preserve of royal and ministerial quasi-absolutism

Both had parliaments 1918/19 that were unrepresentative or the electorate could not initiate policy

However, Italy’s ruling groups were bound together by Masonry and Catholicism; German showed a tendency towards fragmentation

Question 11

MacGregor Knox - differing effects of the war

Answer 11

Paralysed and destroyed parliamentary institutions in both, but Italian military corps survived the wat

Social conservatism of Vatican and deep Italian Church roots tenacious forces against change

Meanwhile, in Germany war intensified the polycratic nature of the state and left a vacuum at the top of the Weimar from Nov 1918

Italy therefore faced far more tenacious establishment opposition

Question 12

MacGregor Knox - military-economic potential difference

Answer 12

In 1938, Germany’s was over 4 times that of Italy

Abundance of coal while 85% of Italy’s imported, 10 times steel production by 1939

Also far stronger military tradition - military positions honoured and generals given far greater autonomy within orders

Question 13

MacGregor Knox - different level of myths

Answer 13

Italian urban intelligentsia felt Italy was incomplete, yearning for a ‘new state’, but weak dictator tradition in Rome due to importance of law and papal influence

Sterner German myths prioritising cult of the leader, Germany’s leading position, and an apocalyptic tradition

Great War gave Germany a taste of unity as a militant egalitarian Volksgeimeinschaft; Italy’s move to war was bitterly resented and chastened Italy

Question 14

MacGregor Knox - myth of the war’s end

Answer 14

German Dolchstosslegende emerged effortlessly and commanded widespread assent

Italian ‘mutilated victory’ failed to command the same audience

Question 15

MacGregor Knox - factors affecting expansionist zeal in the countries

Answer 15

Depth of ideological conviction

Scope given to individual initiative

Ability and willingness to use terror

Question 16

MacGregor Knox - impotence of Fascist ideology

Answer 16

Celebrated force, but lacked a teleological mechanism that rooted the dictator’s geopolitical and internal goals in the historical process

‘Fascist idea’ competed with monarchy, officer corps and notables

‘Fascist faith’ failed to inspire the working classes of the north, and scarcely reached southern and island peasantry

Mussolini regarded Hitler as a doctrinaire - testimony to his own nature

Question 17

MacGregor Knox - strength of German ideology

Answer 17

Hitler had a strong force of conviction and comparative clarity and consistency in his ideology

Resonated with older nationalist-racist movements

Promise to reverse 1918 verdict evoked enthusiasm, and decapitated state and mutual church rivalry removed competition for popular loyalties

Question 18

MacGregor Knox - difference in rise to prominence

Answer 18

Mussolini took place after ending ‘red years’ - violence and disorder was not seen as necessary afterwards

Mussolini also did not subordinate state to party - wanted to gradually fuse the two, unseating all his rivals

Hitler came to power in an atmosphere of apocalyptic crisis - allies willing to overlook violence against left until it was too late

Question 19

MacGregor Knox - lack of Italian terror

Answer 19

Clumsy murder of Giacomo Matteotti weakened regime

From 1926, ‘Special Tribunal for the Defence of the State’ put to death only 9 men in peace and 22 at war

Italian army condemned to death only 92

Question 20

MacGregor Knox - German extent of terror

Answer 20

SA and SS and Gestapo created outside or above the law from the beginning, judiciary followed suit

By 1944, civilian courts condemned 12,000 to death

By 1945, Wehrmacht courts condemned 35,000 military personnel to death

Question 21

MacGregor Knox - Italian sequence of events

Answer 21

War began 1940-3 with a string of catastrophic failures - defeats by despised Greeks destroyed all prestige of regime

Soldiers henceforth fought with sapped enthusiasm, sense that real enemy was Germany

Lack of willingness to die for the Duce

Question 22

MacGregor Knox - German sequence of events

Answer 22

Hitler truly became Fuhrer for all with 1940 defeat of France (Wilhelm had failed)

Goods, food, and conscript labour seized from occupied territory kept German people from feeling the weight of the war until 1944

Racial-ideological eastern war locked in loyalty through complicity - immensity of crimes left no alternative but to fight for Hitler

Question 23

MacGregor Knox - differences in ideology in action

Answer 23

Patriotism and monarchical loyalty of the Italian officer corps and resignation of their peasant soldiers were no substitutes for fanaticism

Question 24

MacGregor Knox - differences in home fronts

Answer 24

Lack of hatred of the enemy, lack of conviction and steady decline in living standards meant the Italian home front soon collapsed

German regime irreversible after 1938 - home front held onto memory of thee benefits the regime had brought and conviction of racial superiority