[W. Laqueur, Fascism. Past, Present and Future, Oxford-N.York, Oxford UP, 1996, pp.13-27]

Walter Laqueur

Fascism

The Essence of Fascism

The question of what fascism is has been debated for many decades but frequently has produced more heat than light. It has intensely preoccupied political scientists in their search for a "generic model" covering all varieties of fascism. For the wider public these exercises have not been of much interest. One can endlessly discuss whether Nazism was the highest, most accomplished form of fascism and Mussolini's regime was therefore a mere halfway house, or whether Italian Fascism-perhaps because it was the first on the scene-should be the yardstick by which all other fascisms should be measured. In this case, Nazism seems in retrospect a hyper-radical, exaggerated version of a new idea relentlessly pursued to its logical conclusions. One can debate forever whether Nazism and Italian Fascism were modernizing movements by intention or despite their intention or whether they were reactionary. Fascism did not belong to the extreme Left, yet defining it as part of the extreme Right is not very illuminating either. In many respects, fascism was not conservative at all in inspiration but was aimed at creating a new society with a new kind of human beings.
One would hope that there would be no need to define once again the essence of fascism. But it is necessary because in popular parlance it is used quite indiscriminately. Writers and speakers tend to denounce their political foes as fascists (or at least semi- or para-fascists); that is, it has become a synonym for a dozen or more phenomena, usually negative in character. It therefore is easier to define what fascism is not. Twentieth-century dictatorships may be detestable, but they are not necessarily fascist. Japan in the 1930s was not a fascist country, nor was Ataturk's Turkey, nor Poland under Pilsudski, nor Spain under Franco. Likewise, the military dictatorships after World War II such as Chile under Pinochet and Greece under the colonels were not fascist.
When fascism first appeared on the political scene, it should have been clear that it contained certain essentially new factors, that it belonged to a new breed. But this was not widely realized at the time. Everyone agreed that Nazism and fascism were extremely nationalistic in orientation and that they were antidemocratic. Beyond this, however, there was no unanimity, and since it is only natural to interpret new phenomena in the light of old ones, some analysts referred to the Bonapartist model (the great Napoleon as well as his descendant Napoleon 111). Others saw fascism in the tradition of the extreme right-wing, anti-liberal groups of the late nineteenth century. Defining fascism was difficult because only two countries ever became fascist. During World War 11, the Vichy-style regimes under Axis tutelage cannot truly be considered fully fledged fascist, even though some, such as Croatia, tried hard to move in that direction.
Fascism was also not a static phenomenon. During its early period, Italian Fascism was radical in it orientation, but once it seized power it became more moderate in essential respects. Then in its last stage, it again returned to its radical beginnings.
Italian Fascism meant something different in the cities and in the countryside. Only six years passed from the time the Nazi regime came into power until it unleashed the war, when all domestic concerns were subordinated to the war effort. We can only speculate what Nazi policy would have been if Germany had won the war, whether, for instance, the economic system would have been changed, whether it would have turned against the church, whether those people considered racially inferior would have been killed or expelled, whether the regime would have moderated its policies, or whether, in sociological terms, routinization and normalization would have taken over.
One of the few issues on which there was a consensus at the time was the assumption that fascism was a European phenomenon. This seems true even now in regard to "historical" fascism. At that time, fascism in very backward countries was technically impossible because the masses could not be mobilized and propaganda and terror were not yet sufficiently effective. Whether this is still true today is less certain, because with the spread of modern technologies the preconditions for non-European varieties of fascism do exist now in many parts of the world.
What made fascism different from earlier dictatorships was the presence of a mass party that monopolized power through its security services and the army and that eliminated all other parties, using considerable violence in the process. This new style of party was headed by a leader who had virtually unlimited power, was adulated by his followers, and was the focus of a quasi-religious cult. The party's doctrine became an obligatory article of faith for not only its members but all other citizens and was constantly projected by means of a powerful propaganda machinery. Such a party-and, later, a state apparatus-would not have been feasible earlier in history because it would have been impossible to impose similar political, social, and cultural controls and to influence masses of people so intensively.
What we have said so far also applies to the Communist regimes True, the interference of the fascist state in the economy was much less far reaching than under Communism. Soviet ideology stressed the class character of the regime or, rather, the gradual abolition of (antagonistic) classes. Conversely, in fascist doctrine, solidarity of the classes was the supreme aim. Communism was strictly atheistic, whereas fascism was vaguely deistic, condition that the church accept the state as its political overlord and support it. Whereas fascism was overtly nationalistic, militaristic, and expansionist, Communism was theoretically internationalist and anti-militarist and had no dreams of territorial expansion. But in reality the differences, especially from the 1930s onward, were not always visible "naked eye. "
The two systems were quite similar, almost identical, in some respects but different in others, so they were bound to collide once fascism prevailed in Germany. Hitler had persuaded himself that unless Germany acquired new Lebensraum in his lifetime, it would collapse, because it did not have sufficient raw materials to provide a decent standard of living for its citizens and also to maintain its status as a great power.
The Soviet regime was under no such immediate pressure, although in the long term it could feel secure only if Soviet-style Communism prevailed at least in Europe and contingent parts of Asia. But Stalin did not have the same desperate urgency to expand right away.
What conditions favored the rise of these new types of mass parties, and in what circumstances did fascism find it impossible to progress? Although "conditions" are only one of the factors in this equation, they are an important one. "Conditions" alone, however, would not have brought about the triumph of Hitler and Mussolini. On the other hand, in the absence of a favorable political constellation, even the greatest political genius would have failed to make headway.
In both Germany and Italy, the Nazi and Fascist seizure of power was greatly facilitated by the leading figures of the old order in Germany by the Conservatives and Hindenburg's entourage and in Italy by the Conservatives and the monarchy. Hitler was the leader of the strongest parliamentary faction, and based on the constitution, a case could be made in favor of inviting him to be the next chancellor. Aware of their own weakness, the Conservatives assumed that it would be possible to rein in the Nazis and make them behave "reasonably." The pressures in Italy eleven years earlier that had brought about the Fascist takeover had been similar.
It is impossible, even with the benefit of hindsight, to say with any certainty whether Hitler and Mussolini would have dared to seize power without such legal sanction. And even if they had dared it, there is no certainty that they would have been successful. Elsewhere, violent fascist coups did fail, but this is not conclusive evidence, since Nazism and Italian Fascism were stronger than those who were defeated, and the resistance against them was weaker.
Why did strong fascist movements develop in some countries but not in others, and what attracted men and women and generated an enthusiasm much greater than that among the democratic parties? Observers from Britain and France visiting Germany and Italy in the 1930s expressed admiration and even envy when reporting the new spirit of optimism in the fascist regimes. Fascism prevailed in countries in which the old order seemed no longer to work, in which democracy was not deeply rooted, in which the waves of nationalist resentment were running high, and which felt threatened by economic breakdown and social disorder. Without World War I and the postwar crises, fascism would have remained a small sect if it had emerged at all. Therefore, large segments of the population in these countries were ready to support a movement that, unlike other parties, professed not to pursue narrow partisan or class interests but, rather, announced that it stood for the values of the whole community, that it strove for unity and order, and that this was the only way to save the country from chaos.
Such explanations can be contested on various grounds. One could argue, for instance, that the postwar crisis in Italy had been more acute in 1920 than in 1921, and more acute in 1921 than in 1922 when the march on Rome took place. By 1922 the immediate crisis was passing and the revolutionary challenge had been defeated. Mussolini's assessment, in any case, was unambiguous "To maintain that the Bolshevik danger still exists in Italy is to mistake fear for reality" (Popolo d'ltalia, July 2,1921).
Or one could argue that the German economic crisis of 1923 was as grave as that in 1933 but that in 1923 Nazism was a mere local phenomenon that was easily defeated. The German crisis reached its nadir in 1932, and so if the center-right government had been able to stay in power for one more year, the situation might have improved. Indeed, some of the "chains of Versailles" (referring to the hated World War I peace treaty) had been broken even before Hitler became chancellor. But the economic recovery and the concessions by the Allies came too late The crisis had a cumulative effect, and too many people in Germany had lost h~. The system was not corrupt, however, even though Nazis and Communists were forever claiming that it was. If anything, the regime was too honest-and too devoid of imagination. The German people saw only too clearly that the government was baffled by the depth of the crisis and the failure of the medicines it had administered. For its part, the government made no secret of the fact that it was at the end of its tether, that it did not know how to cope. Such governments are bound to fall in the face of a determined challenger.
Whereas Germany had been the great loser of World War 1, Italy had been among the victors. But Italy had not come close to receiving the spoils of victory it had hoped for. Furthermore, nationalist passions were running as high as they were in Germany; only two generations had passed since the nation had unified, and the people did not yet feel that their country was secure, a self-evident fact.
The depth of the economic crisis cannot serve as the only clue to the advent of Nazism or Fascism. The United States and Britain were as much affected as Germany was by the Great Depression. Indeed, the impact on America was probably even greater, simply because Americans were altogether unprepared for the disaster; they had taken constant progress for granted. Germans on the other hand, had already had such traumatic experiences. Despite major unemployment and economic decline, fascism in England remained a marginal phenomenon, even though its leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, had at least as much popular appeal as the continental fascist leaders did. In the United States there were all kinds of fascist or para-fascist organizations, but they never achieved a political breakthrough. Spanish fascism had attractive popular leaders, and Jacques Doriot, a Communist, had been one of the most popular figures in France before he became a fascist. But in neither Spain nor France was personal popularity of decisive importance.
Instead, the postwar crisis was a moral and cultural crisis. Before 1914, European societies had been far from democratic in many respects, but despite all their imperfections, they were more civilized than ever before. Human rights were increasingly respected and few dared dismiss them as of no consequence. Moreover, the false accusations against an obscure French officer of Jewish origin had turned into a major European scandal.
World War I, with its hecatombs of victims and its enormous destruction, changed all this and had lasting consequences. The chauvinist orgies led to a brutalization of public life. The sanctity of human life no longer counted after millions had been killed. Although there had been cases of political murder in the world before 1914, in civilized countries it would have been unthinkable to advocate or justify it, let alone establish extermination camps for whole groups of people. Tsarist Russia had been the most backward and cruel regime in Europe, but the murder of its victims was only a microscopic fraction of the millions put to death by its successor regime. In addition, the moral breakdown after World War I was more profound even than the economic crisis.
The cultural crisis coincided with the eclipse of state power, the increasing lack of confidence among the ruling stratum, and the reluctance to deal forcefully with fascist street violence. The forces of order could have stamped out armed attacks (as they had in Munich in 1923), but instead they took only halfhearted measures, too few and too late. As the result of such hesitation and weakness, the fascist paramilitary units received fresh impetus. They became more aggressive; and once their number had swollen, dealing with them became more risky.
The historical record shows that fascism (like terrorism) could succeed only in a liberal democratic system. It had a chance only where it could freely agitate. When competing with a military dictatorship (Romania or Spain)-let alone a Communist regime-it invariably suffered defeat. Even in a mildly authoritarian regime such as that in Austria, it failed in 1934. Fascists despised, rather than hated, the democratic institutions They regarded the parliament as a Schwatzbule, a place where unending inconclusive debates took place and where politicians were held in contempt because of their weakness. This mood could be found not only in the extreme Left and Right but also among many who did not consider themselves radicals. In the end, democracy collapsed because not enough democrats were willing to defend it.
What sections of the population were attracted to fascism They varied from country to country, according to political tradition and social conditions. In general, the lower middle class showed the greatest affinity to fascism, particularly those who had suffered the most from the Great Depression. The Nazis made inroads among the peasantry, which was hard hit, and also among the middle class, which had lost its savings during the inflation and now faced further losses. Italian Fascism found support among war veterans who could not be reintegrated into civilian life and among students who were unable to find employment upon graduation.
A closer examination shows that there was no rigid pro-Nazi pattern according to class, generation, or gender. Before 1933 there was no significant difference in Germany between male and female voters or among voters of different age groups. Although the Nazi leaders were younger than their rivals, their voters were not. Up to 193 t the Nazis were, to a significant extent, a part of the lower middle class, but after 1931 they gained support from both the lower and upper social classes.
All that can be said with certainty is that the Nazis were stronger in Protestant than in Catholic regions; they did not make significant inroads on the positions of the Catholic Center Party. Fascism faced similar difficulties in other countries, except in Croatia and Slovakia, where the church supported the local fascists.
There was an interesting difference between the votes in big cities and small towns. If the Nazi vote was 37 percent on average; nationwide, in the July 1932 elections, the small town vote was 42 percent, whereas in the big cities such as Berlin and Hamburg it was closer to 33 percent. The working class was not immune to the Nazi upsurge; in fact, more workers and unemployed voted for the Nazis in 1932 than for the Social Democrats and Communists together. Both Nazism and Italian Fascism mobilized sections of the population that had previously been inactive.
The situation in Italy was different inasmuch as the fascists originally appeared in northern Italy and only gradually spread to the south. Subsequently, however, the south became a stronger bulwark of Fascism than the north, and this is true also with regard to neofascism in the postwar era. Agrarian fascism was also a significant factor in Italy-a reaction of the big landholders in the Po Valley and also of the smallholders in Emilia Romagna against the growing strength of the landless farm workers. In Western Europe, fascism did not gain a foothold in the countryside in either France or the Netherlands, and in Britain it was hardly found outside London.
In Romania and Hungary, on the other hand, the fascists had support in the countryside, and the Finnish Lapua was predominantly agrarian. White-collar workers were fairly strongly represented in most fascist movements, whereas working-class representation varied greatly It was initially strong in France and relatively strong in Spain, but less so in Eastern Europe, except in Hungary. The reason was largely accidental-a popular local leader who joined the fascists would bring with him his followers.
Students were strong supporters of the fascist movements in Spain and Romania, and so in these countries fascism was in the early years a phenomenon confined mainly to particular universities. Likewise, the Nazis emerged victorious in Germany's university elections well before they became a major political factor nationwide. Nonetheless, there were few university graduates in the higher echelons of the Nazi Party; Goebbels, Hans Frank, and Ley were rare exceptions. Whereas the last Weimar governments were made up largely of members of the free professions, there were considerably fewer such persons in the Nazi and Fascist governments. Only five of the Nazi Gauleiter were university or technical school graduates; the seventeen Reichsleiter had a more elitist background. Primary school teachers were strongly represented in the Nazi elite, even though on various occasions Hitler expressed contempt for a profession that, he claimed, attracted only people of limited intelligence.
The general mood in the Nazi and Fascist leaderships was anti-intellectual. Academics were regarded with distrust, suspected of conceit, of Stanlesdünkel, for which there was no room in the Nazi community. In the Third Reich, the number of students graduating declined markedly, and as a matter of principle, Hitler refused to accept honorary doctorates.
Fascists believed in hierarchical structures but aimed at transcending class divisions. Nazism and fascism preached that the class struggle had to be replaced by national unity, that ideals and values were more important than material possessions and that the Fuhrer, the party, and the state were the supreme arbiter. This message was quite effective, as reflected in the enthusiasm generated by fascism. Even his enemies acknowledged Hitler's personal popularity. After the Nazis seized power, they scored very high in honest elections. Indeed, Hitler gave instructions not to interfere with the voting, and no documentary evidence has ever been found that the results were forged. The Nazi leaders were certain that they had popular backing.
Although fascism had, of course, a monopoly on the media after the Nazis seized power, this was not so before 1933. They had no access to the radio, and before their electoral breakthrough in 1930, they had fewer newspapers than the other parties did. The written word played a minor role in the spectacular rise of the Nazis between 1930 and 1933, and it is doubtful whether anyone ever became a Nazi because of having read Mein Kampf. The situation in Italy was different, inasmuch as Mussolini was an accomplished journalist and had an influential newspaper at his disposal.
The Nazis relied on the speeches of their key leaders and many party orators of the second and third rank. But this does not offer a satisfactory clue to their rise to power, because only Hitler and Goebbels (and Mussolini) were gifted speakers. Since these two were not omnipresent, this leads to the conclusion that the message rather than the medium must have been of decisive importance. The Nazis' propaganda was always intense, but so was the Communists'. Yet the latter was not remotely as successful. Although the Nazi propaganda was too crude to command great respect among the intelligentsia, it was gradually accepted after the seizure of power. There had been associations of Nazi lawyers and physicians even before 1933, but they did not amount to much. Leading thinkers such as Martin Heidegger and the jurist Carl Schmitt paid their tribute; Giovanni Gentile was a pillar of Mussolini's regime. The reasoning of these pro-fascist intellectuals was that genius and success in politics could not be measured by normal ethical (and aesthetic) standards. Hitler, as they saw it, was an enormous improvement over their previous impotent leaders. The Nazis succeeded where others had failed, and despite their imperfections- considered transitory-they were Germany's great and only hope. This positive assessment was also shared at one time or another by leading writers and thinkers outside Germany. Even most of the leading foreign statesmen had some good words for Mussolini in the early days, whereas Hitler never found the same acclaim outside his own country.
Few Western intellectuals became full-fledged fascists. Nonetheless, many thought that although fascism was unsuitable for their own country, it might well be suitable for Germany and Italy, just as Communism was for the Soviet Union. From time to time, they even argued that a dynamic leader such as Mussolini could do some good in France or Britain, by abolishing the excesses of parliamentarism and getting things done.
Fascism meant various things to various people, and likewise, it attracted them for a variety of reasons. To discuss all of them would, however, lead to a definition both vague and unhelpful. Looking back fifty years after the demise of fascism, the oldest explanation still has much to recommend it Fascism was the manifestation of a moral and cultural crisis, in which traditional values, religious as well as humanist, no longer counted for much. Fascism developed out of the delirium generated by World War 1, out of insecurity and political immaturity, and out of a revolt against reason and a reaction against the atomization of society.
These moods had existed to some extent well before the war, in all European countries Nationalism was turning into imperialism, corporationist and racialist theories, social Darwinism, the revolt against reason, and the cult of youth. It needed however a major political, social, and economic upheaval to open the floodgates. For the apostles of extreme nationalism, of "life" and "power" (in contrast to reason and peace), to obtain a mass following it was not sufficient that peopIe be spiritually uprooted, they also had to be socially and economically uprooted. Like pathogenic bacilli, fascism could be found in every organism. But it could prevail only if the organism was weakened or in some other way predisposed.

Fascist Doctrine

Fascism in Europe rose and spread quickly because of the ravages of World War I and the political and spiritual vacuum they had left behind. The Continent had been shaken by violent political and economic convulsions and in half of Europe the old conservative order had disappeared but a new one had not been accepted. The moral certainties of the world of yesterday had vanished, and the middle classes had become impoverished. To some, the last vestiges of civilization seemed threatened by a new, mysterious, highly contagious phenomenon - Bolshevism. Those who believed that a strong leadership and a new order were needed but who found Communism unacceptable in view of its internationalism and egalitarianism (the main pillars of Communist ideology in those early days) craved E political alternative.
Many basic tenets of fascism were not new, as their antecedents can be traced back well before World War I. No serious study of fascism can ignore them, but it is also true that the search for precursors is not without danger. Such a search should not ignore or belittle the important differences between the ideas of the prewar apostles preaching an anti-liberal and antidemocratic gospel and the novel elements inherent in postwar fascism. References to Nietzsche or Sorel are of only limited help in understanding fascist politics, just as the debates of the Second International in the 1890s between the reformists and the revolutionaries are not sufficient to explain events in the Soviet Union after 1917. The prewar writings were expressions of a cultural and also a political malaise, of dissatisfaction with the heritage of the Enlightenment; they were manifestations of a new irrationalism.
No direct thread, however, leads from the nineteenth-century thinkers to fascism. At all times, all kinds of ideas-good, bad, indifferent, sensible, and lunatic-emanate from the studies of professors and from literary coffeehouses, but they tend to influence politics only in certain constellations. For instance, much has been written about the reactionary tradition in German intellectual life from Luther to the late-nineteenth-century chauvinist and racialist thinkers. There is no denying that this tradition existed and that it contributed to a climate of opinion in which Nazism developed and prospered. But even though there also was such an intellectual heritage in Britain and France, its political impact remained marginal. In Italy, on the other hand, the anti-liberal, antidemocratic impulses were quite strong after the turn of the century, and it was precisely there that fascism first prevailed.
Fascism was, above all, nationalist, elitist, and anti-liberal. It was militarist, and whenever the country it occupied was sufficiently strong, it advocated imperialism and territorial expansion. Nationalism, however, was a dominant force in many countries before 1914, and its appeal was by no means limited to the Right and the Center. Nor was elitism an innovation. Few political parties admitted to subscribing to it, though all practiced it. Anti-liberalism was rampant among the Catholic Church and the right wing. Advocates of imperialism could be found among liberals as well as conservatives, and sometimes even among socialists.
The difference between fascism and its predecessors is partly one of degree, the consequence of the general radicalization caused by World War I. Before 1914, political parties were dominated by small groups, but unlike the fascist movement, they were not based theoretically and practically on the Fubrerprinzip. Racialism was preached before 1914 by both German conservatives and the Action francaise. But this was not an extreme racialism, except perhaps in the writings of some exalted litterateurs and other outsiders who did not count for much. Many conservatives felt unhappy about the growing influence of the Left, and there was a great deal of muttering about firm action to prevent this danger. Some young Italian intellectuals wrote about the right of proletarian peoples to acquire new territories to obtain raw materials and relieve the population pressure. But in fact there were no coups d'etat and little expansion between 1890 and 1914.
There was, however, a basic difference between fascism and prewar parties on the Right Whereas fascism stood for far-reaching, even revolutionary, changes, the Conservatives-despite their criticism of parliamentary democracy-had accepted the principle of power sharing. The fascists wanted absolute power, and they knew that a wholly different, non-parliamentary approach was needed to achieve this aim. The Conservatives were the party of the preservation of the status quo and of order. Fascism wanted a new order and for this reason it had to destroy the old one. Mussolini was certainly familiar with the writings of the Action francaise and was influenced by them. But he was even more influenced by Sorel, who was not a conservative. The break between Hitler and the old German conservative, antidemocratic tradition was even more pronounced, and it was not just a matter of a new tactical approach. There is a link between the Nazi doctrine and the "ideas of 1914" that in turn was a somewhat streamlined version of some of the ideas of the 1890s. But we cannot stress too often that it was only as a result of the world war, the political unrest, and the economic crisis that these ideas-simplified and, popularized-acquired a power that they had not possessed before.
These sentiments and ideas varied from country to country, but they all originated in a feeling of discontent with the general state of affairs, of the Kulturpessimismus that spread widely in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The enemy in France and Italy was "liberalism." In Wilhelmian Germany, the reaction was primarily directed against "destructive rationalism" and excessive individualism.
The German critics complained about the growth of materialism, as both a philosophy and a way of life; about the decline of spiritual values; about the effects of industrialization on one hand and of laissez-faire capitalism on the other; and about the fragmentation of society and the breakdown of old social ties. They noted with sorrow the growing cultural sterility and predicted that without a revival of the national community (the Volk), the general decadence that had already set in would continue inexorably, gather momentum, and eventually lead to total ruin.
Such dire forebodings were exaggerated but not altogether baseless for all these evils did in fact exist. They also were observed by Leftist writers, who interpreted them as the inevitable consequences of the bankruptcy of capitalism which would be overcome once the old social order had been overthrown. They pointed as well to cultural decline, to the alienation and atomization of society. But their cure-revolution-was not acceptable to the right-wing critics of capitalism. Socialism, as the rightists saw it, was materialist, had no higher ideals, and was totally preoccupied with restructuring the economy. They could not share the hope that socialism would somehow lead to a better society. In their eyes, socialism simply meant more of the same, replacing the present elite by a new and even more inferior hierarchy. It meant Vermassung, not the elevation of the standard of the masses but their further moral and cultural decline, to the detriment of all the value that had been established over many centuries.
' The cultural revolution envisaged by the right-wing precursors of national socialism was to be based on a regeneration of the Volk. a return to traditional values, and the restoration of a community in which a natural(hierarchy would exist, an aristocracy of prophets and warriors. The German concept of community (Gemeinschaft) was juxtaposed to the Western idea of society High German culture was contrasted with inferior Western civilization. In France and Italy, the emphasis was on the nation rather than the Volk and although racialism was not absent from French right-wing thought, it was in Germany that it found more fertile ground.
According to this doctrine, the German people, though inherently superior to others, were in mortal danger of disintegration. Therefore, the purity of their blood had to be preserved, which meant, above all, the elimination of Jewish influence, of the protagonists of liberalism, of Marxist socialism, and of all supernational forces. It also meant that to fulfill its historical mission, the German race needed more Lebensraum These ideas were developed and popularized by various thinkers, some of whom had originally been men of the Left (Wilhelm Marr and Eugen Duehring), whereas others had come from abroad (Houston Stewart Chamberlain). Not everyone believed that the superiority of the German race could be scientifically proved. But in the end, it did not really matter whether this conclusion was reached on the basis of pseudoscientific reasoning or an article of faith of extreme nationalism.
The myth of the Volk and the emphasis on racialism were particularly strong in Germany. Elsewhere, as in Italy, the stress was on the nation and even more on the role of the state. D'Annunzio wrote that he gloried in the fact that he was a Latin, and he considered every non-Latin a barbarian. But D'Annunzio was not a representative of mainstream fascism. According to Mussolini, it was not the nation that had given rise to the state; rather, this was an antiquated "naturalistic concept" that afforded a basis for nineteenth-century nationalism. Instead, it was the state that had created the nation, conferring volition and therefore real life on a people made aware of its moral unity. Or as a British fascist and admirer of Mussolini wrote "Racism is a materialist illusion, contrary to natural law and destructive of civilization, and truly logical application would be farcical and impractical."
Thus on the philosophical level, there was a sharp conflict between Nazi ideology and Fascist doctrine, but this was more apparent than real. The mythos of the Volk by no means excluded the mythos of the Reich. In any case, the Nazis were at least as strongly committed as the Italians were to the rehabilitation of strong state power, in contrast to the impotent liberal state. As the Nazis envisaged it, the assignment of the state was not to safeguard the greater happiness of the greatest number. On the contrary, the interest of the state always took precedence over the right of the individual. State power was to be based on leadership, and the legitimacy of this leadership was provided by the very fact that the people followed the leaders. Seen in this light, the leader embodied the will of the people and fascism was true democracy.
According to Nazi and fascist doctrine, the supreme aim and value was greatness, not equality and humanism, the false idols of the Age of Enlightenment. Right is what helps the state and the nation. One nation is the others' natural enemy, according to Mein Kampf, and those with the greatest willpower, the most fanatic and brutal, will prevail. There is a racial hierarchy both within each nation and among nations. The higher master races are called to rule, the inferior to obey, and the progress of humankind will be achieved by the preservation of pure blood (race). German imperial leadership answers an universal need; it is the natural order of things. Thus any war led by Germany is a just war. Germany and France are eternal enemies, and the Slavs constitute an inferior race. Inside German power should be in the hands of a leader, and a new nobility born from blood and soil But if the Fuhrer and the new nobility are not up to their job, will there be a way to remove them? In Nazi doctrine, this question was left unanswered.
Italian Fascism based its ideology on the central role of the nations in the natural order of things. Fascists were indeed aware that the nation was a myth, not a reality. As Mussolini put it shortly before the march on Rome "We have created our myth. The myth is a faith, it is a passion, in our myth is the nation, and to this myth, to this grandeur we subordinate all the rest." Such a doctrine had no time for the niceties of democracy. Humanitarianism was a mere irrelevancy. The main aim was to work for the greatness of the nation. The instrument toward this end was the state which should control all political, moral. and economic forces.
The state was not a mere arbiter, working to resolve conflicting interests. Rather, it had a will of its own; outside the state no human or spiritual values existed. This then was the ideal, and from a philosophical point of view it is not important that fascist reality never really approximated fascist doctrine.
Fascism was rooted to a decisive extent in a pre-19 14 strand of thought that was anti-liberal, antidemocratic, and anti-Enlightenment and went well beyond the official nationalist ideology. This kind of ideological ambiance, again, provided the breeding ground for fascism. It was bourgeois and at the same time anti-bourgeois; it rejected the rationalism and individualism of liberal society and the self-satisfaction of conservatism. Its supreme value was not the pursuit of happiness but fighting and adventure; appropriately, its slogan later became "To live dangerously." Fascism admired nature (as it understood it), physical strength and barbarism. This was a rebellion of youth against philistinism, a revolt against mediocrity, caution, tolerance, big-city life. It wanted to create a new human being and a new civilization (or, as the Germans put it, a new Kultur). Some of fascism was not more than posturing and the effusions of minor philosophers hoping to gain a wider audience by making extreme statements, or of decadent writers who had turned into men of action- such as Barres or D'Annunzio. But there was also a general feeling of dissatisfaction and boredom. The old order had somehow functioned over the years, but it provided little spiritual guidance and not much satisfaction. Young writers in various European countries on the eve of World War I described a feeling of suffocation and a feeling of deliverance when the war broke out At long last, everything was bound to change!
If it had not been for the cataclysm that followed, this mood would have remained no more than an interesting chapter in intellectual history, like that of symbolism or naturalism. But a clear message was needed in the uncertainties of the postwar period, as well as strong leadership to cope with the many dangers engulfing countries such as Italy and Germany. Liberal democracy often seemed-and indeed was-weak and irresolute. In such conditions there was a growing readiness to support political movements, however antidemocratic, provided only that they seemed capable to cope with the crises. In addition, there was a new psychological readiness to accept violence that had not existed before the war.
Two questions remain to be answered. It is a far cry from the longings for a new closely knit community, from the dreams about greatness and heroism, to the crimes committed by fascism. The discrepancy between the ideas of the late-nineteenth-century Kultur Kritiker and the reality of fascism is as great as the distance between the likes of a Hitler, a Goebbels, or a Streicher and the aesthetic ideal of a Nordic race. An expansionist and militarist doctrine was bound to lead to conflict. But it cannot be said with certainty that the specific radicalism of fascism was foreordained and, with it, its total debacle.
The ideas of the philosophical precursors of fascism were not wrong in every detail. They appealed to both base instincts and strong idealist elements, for they were based partly on noble dreams and visions. For this reason, fascism attracted many young idealists, not just careerists, adventurers, and the dregs of society. But to what extent did the fascist leaders believe in their own doctrine, or did they use it cynically to manipulate the people in order to seize power and to keep it. Even Hitler did not believe all the obscurantist nonsense of the early racialist thinkers about blood and soil, and he was often contemptuous of their fantasies. He had never read Rosenberg's Myth of the Twentieth Century and once said in conversation that "only our enemies have read this book." Fascists in power had to compromise They achieved neither the total social revolution they had promised nor even the "return to the soil" that had figured so prominently in Nazi thought. Nazi "pragmatism" was equally evident in its alliance with such non-Nordic nations as Italy and Japan, which could hardly be justified with reference to the Nazis' race doctrine.
In other respects the fascist leaders remained faithful to their principles They acted according to the nationalist "sacro egoismo"; they practiced the Fuhrer principle; and they certainly were not converted to tolerance and humanism. They were not nihilists, as some believed. Nazi and fascist policy cannot be understood unless one accepts that the fascist leaders had a cause, however perverted, in which they firmly believed. Their myths were both a propagandistic device and, as they saw it, part of a higher order of reality, bound to come true. As one of the racialist thinkers once disarmingly put it "Perhaps the higher race we constantly invoke does not really exist. But we shall create it anyway." The fanaticism of the true believers was more striking in German National Socialism than in Italian Fascism, but it did exist to some extent in every fascist movement. Fascism was possible only if based on genuine belief.

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