In his book, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: The 'Fascist' Style of Rule, Alexander J. De Grand argues that, despite certain differences, namely Nazi racism, enough similarities exist between Italian Fascism and German National Socialism in the approaches taken by the two regimes in confronting the crisis of inter war Europe as to indicate a "Fascist Style of Rule." In order to prove this point, De Grand compares the development of the two parties from their origins and rise to power through the beginning of the Second World War with special emphasis on how the two regimes organized their respective states once in power. Adrian Lyttelton's "The 'Crisis of Bourgeois Society' and the Origins of Fascism" and Bernd Weisbrod's "The Crisis of Bourgeois Society in Interwar Germany" examine the foundation of support for the 'fascist' movements among the discontented middle classes in Italy and Germany, respectively. The parallel arguments made by Lyttelton and Weisbrod are echoed in De Grand's comparative examination of the rise of Fascism and Nazism, and the locus of support for the two movements in the disenchanted middle classes of post-World War I Italy and Germany.

De Grand argues that 'fascism' is a response to "certain problems inherent in the structure of liberal politics around the turn of the century." (De Grand 5) These "problems" stem from the adoption of universal manhood suffrage in the years before the Great War and the consequential rise of socialist parties and unions throughout Europe as the voice of the recently enfranchised working class. In Italy and Germany, the demands made by the increasingly vocal working class were widely rejected by members of the middle classes, but the bourgeois liberal political parties were unable to successfully protect the interests of their constituencies from this modernistic world of mass politics. Lyttelton refers to this phenomenon in Italy as the "...crisis of the liberal state..." in which the widespread perception among the bourgeoisie of the "...inadequacy of the state and party structure to cope with modernization, the beginnings of mass politics, and the imperatives of international conflict..." predated the Great War and therefore contributed to the unease that led the middle classes to support the Fascists thereafter. (Lyttelton 15)

Indeed, a similar situation existed for the middle classes in Germany. Despite, the underrepresentation of the working class in the Reichstag due to the antiquated three-tiered voting system, the German Social Democratic Party had commanded a large parliamentary delegation in prewar Germany. The fact that the Kaiser had the ability to arbitrarily exclude the Socialists from the government had been a source of security for the German middle classes in the prewar years. This security was lost with the establishment of true proportional representation which guaranteed the primacy of the Socialists in the postwar German political environment. The fact that this change arrived on the heels of Germany's defeat in the Great War and was accompanied by additional factors that also resulted in middle class unease led Weisbrod to discuss the crisis of bourgeois German society as a consequence of Germany's war experience. Weisbrod states that the German middle classes had suffered a deterioration in the bourgeois values of security in property, and thus social standing, a consequence of the inflation that followed the war, security in a privileged occupation due to education, another consequence of the economic hardships of the postwar years, and security in a peaceful behavior pattern, a casualty of the violence of the war and the political violence of the winter of 1918-19. (Weisbrod 24) These factors, according to Weisbrod, led to the widespread middle class support for the National Socialists.

De Grand, indeed, addresses Weisbrod's main point on the crisis of bourgeois society, that being the perceived threat to the privileged position of the middle class compared to the working class. De Grand defines the "fascist" movements as "...expressions of the expansion of the bourgeoisie and its desire to see society organized in ways that favored its continued social ascent." (De Grand 5) Similarly, the Lyttelton article also maintains that the Italian middle classes viewed the fascist movement as a "...chance...to confirm their status vis-á-vis the working class." (Lyttelton 21) These definitions of fascism agree with Weisbrod's argument that the perception of insecurity of class distinction led much of the German bourgeoisie to support the National Socialists, who promised to protect the privileged position of the middle classes within the Volksgemeinshaft. De Grand also addresses Weisbrod's secondary argument that states that the infusion of violence into the German bourgeois experience through participation in the war and in the political violence of 1918-19 allowed the Nazis to maintain violence as a political tool, and even employ middle class agents in the implementation of violence, without alienating a society whose prewar bourgeois value system abhorred violence. Again, Lyttelton addresses this point, as well, by describing how Italy's experience in the trenches allowed for "...the convertibility of external and internal violence..." thus facilitating the Fascists use of violence as a legitimate political tool, as did the National Socialists. (Lyttelton 18) Thus, when Fascists assassinated Socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti, Mussolini could successfully claim that "Italy... wants peace, wants calm, wants a stability which allows work to continue. This calm, this stability we will giver her with love, and, if necessary with force." (Griffin 50)

De Grand successfully argues that "...fascism and Nazism were ideologies of bourgeois resurgence." (De Grand 82) Indeed, De Grand's comparison of Fascism and Nazism is not limited to examining the parallels between the crises in Italian and German bourgeois societies. However, the examination of the nature of the societies which formed the majority of the initial support enjoyed by the fascist movements highlights some of the most important similarities between Italy and Germany: a middle class distaste for the political gains made by the working class under the liberal democracies of prewar Italy and Weimar Germany, the widespread fear by bourgeois society after the Great War of a loss of perceived class privilege which led much of the middle class to support fascism, and the middle class experience of violence during the war and the acceptance of that violence as a legitimate political tool.

De Grand, Alexander J. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: The 'Fascist' Style of Rule. London: Routledge, 1995.

Griffin, Roger, ed. Fascism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Lyttelton, Adrian. "The 'Crisis of Bourgeois Society' and the Origins of Fascism." Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: Comparisons and Contrasts. Ed. Richard Bessel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Weisbrod, Bernd. "The Crisis of Bourgeois Society in Interwar Germany" Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: Comparisons and Contrasts. Ed. Richard Bessel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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