Regime comparison Flashcards
Bessel - can the two be meaningfully compared?
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
Bessel - Burleigh and Wipperman
Concluded in the Racial State that everything was subordinate to social policy, which was to create a hierarchical racial order
Bessel - necessity of comparison
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
MacGregor Knox - similarity in claims of regimes
Leaders of Germany and Italy claimed a common origin and destiny for their two regimes
MacGregor Knox - difference in overall war effort
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
MacGregor Knox - compromise in the regimes
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
MacGregor Knox - indirect road to power
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
MacGregor Knox - three categories for factors explaining difference in power
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
MacGregor Knox - Italy time behind and literacy
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
MacGregor Knox - difference in inherited political structures
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
MacGregor Knox - differing effects of the war
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
MacGregor Knox - military-economic potential difference
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
MacGregor Knox - different level of myths
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
MacGregor Knox - myth of the war’s end
German Dolchstosslegende emerged effortlessly and commanded widespread assent
Italian ‘mutilated victory’ failed to command the same audience
MacGregor Knox - factors affecting expansionist zeal in the countries
Depth of ideological conviction
Scope given to individual initiative
Ability and willingness to use terror
MacGregor Knox - impotence of Fascist ideology
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
MacGregor Knox - strength of German ideology
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
MacGregor Knox - difference in rise to prominence
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
MacGregor Knox - lack of Italian terror
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
MacGregor Knox - German extent of terror
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
MacGregor Knox - Italian sequence of events
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
MacGregor Knox - German sequence of events
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
MacGregor Knox - differences in ideology in action
Patriotism and monarchical loyalty of the Italian officer corps and resignation of their peasant soldiers were no substitutes for fanaticism
MacGregor Knox - differences in home fronts
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
