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II. The German Question
Fascism emphasises action rather than theory, and fascist theoretical writings are always weak. Hitler's Nazism had rather more theory, though its intellectual quality is appalling. This greater theoretical content is mostly concerned with race, and it was Hitler's racial theories that distinguished Nazism from Italian fascism.
-Ian Adams
For nearly 60 years historians, ideologues, philosophers, and political scientists have argued about the relation between Fascism and National Socialism, resulting in dozens if not hundreds of articles, books, debates, discussions, theses, analyses and fights that have sought to answer the same fundamental questions: “Is Nazism a form of Fascism?” and “What is the relation between Fascism and Nazism?”, being the most common.
Thus we see that rivers of ink have been spilled and entire forests been sacrificed in the search of, as Eric Blair famously called it: “sort out different shades of black”, and while we do not intend to bore the reader by retreading old philosophical or historical fights, (4) we are obliged to at least provide some context and distinguish the two main positions regarding the issue, which can be simplified as follows:
1. Fascism and Nazism are two distinct and unrelated movements: as defended by Polish historian and writer Zeev Sternhell, one of Fascism foremost chroniclers, who famously synthetized the divide when he said “Nazism cannot, as I see it, be treated as a mere variant of fascism: its emphasis on biological determinism rules out all efforts to deal with it as such.” The French School and its Latin American adherents are especially prone to agreeing with Sternhell, as are the more Orthodox men of the Milan School.
2. Nazism is fundamentally an offshoot of Fascism: a view postulated by the London School, New Wave Philosophers, Marxist Historians and other historical materialists, thinkers and philosophers from the Western World (mainly the English-speaking World) and the Soviet Union. Eric Blair, H.G. Wells, Hannah Arendt and Alan Taylor are quoted as the paladins of this camp, even if many of the London and Leningrad Schools have chosen to ignore them in the past few years in support of post-structuralist or neo-Marxist theories. (5)
Which is not to say that 60 years of debate can be reduced to two sides arguing over “to be or not to be”, as there have been many attempts to either transcend, ignore or reconcile the divide, including theories regarding Nazism as a form of degenerated Fascism that grew a life of its own and eventually became its own movement, or that it was a truer version of Fascism, Mussolini’s movement having either become corrupt or born corrupt and decadent, a bloated, crude replica of D’Annunzio’s Carnaro. And so on and so forth.
Italian Fascists often derided Germany’s National Socialist movement: famously, ultra-fascist extremists such as Roberto Farinacci and Giovanni Preziosi wrote that Nazism, with its parochial and exclusivist racism, was offensive to the conscience of mankind and would push Europe into Communism, and even Mussolini itself mocked Hitler’s racial ideas, opining that Germans did not constitute a race at all, but rather the blend of six-different peoples. Fascist publications further focused on stressing Fascism’s respect for individual rights and attacking Nazism as too socialistic, too anti-individualistic and too anti-Catholic. (6)
Ultimately, what the first group argues is that Nazism is a movement wholly of its own: that its foundation is linked irremediably with “biological determinism” and the issue of race and destiny, which in turn are inseparable from German irredentism and anti-Semitism, making it purely a German ideology that could not be replicated elsewhere. Hitler’s dream was in the end a German dream, the group has argued, and its ideas about a master German Race are incompatible with the outline and core of Fascist ideology as underlined in every document, declaration, speech and bit of text from the Charter of Carnaro to the Montreux Declaration and the Fascist Manifesto. Latin American fascists (especially the Integralists and Falangists) and the Orthodox Milanese School further argue that Nazism’s blatant state atheism and promotion of “Positive Christianity” are explicitly contrary to Fascist ideology and even mankind’s morals.
On the other side of the issue there are those who argue that the differences were purely pragmatic and motivated more by historical and political circumstance than by any form of loyalty to a perceived ideological canon or purity of the Fascist movement. In favor of this position is the high number of Jewish people in positions of powers throughout Italy, from members of the National Fascist Party to Dr. Aldo Finzi, member of the Grand Fascist Council and personal friend of Mussolini’s and Gino Arias, chief fascist theorist of the Stato Corporativo and Fascist Economic Theory at Montreux, among others, and their influence within the Italian Fascist Regime. The influence of men like Ettore Ovanzza, one of Mussolini’s financial patrons and founder of the newspaper La Nostra Bandiera also supports this position. (7) This stands in contrast to the policies and stances of many other members of the Fascist International, especially the Romanian National-Christian Union and Hungary’s Arrow Cross, which were known to be virulently anti-Semitic and yet remained part of Rome’s aegis when the Italian-German split came.
The more recent position regarding Fascism and Religion (which did not really became part of the Montreaux charter until about the 1950s) has also been attacked from several angles, and many have pointed to Mussolini signing the Lateran Treaties due to political pragmatism rather than Catholic devotion. Such arguments of course may fall flat when dealing with Latin American Falangism or Integralism, but the difficult and rather mercurial relations between the Fascist State and the Catholic Church are not the issue that concerns us the most.
Finally, there are the twin issues of German Racial Theory and Territorial Irredentism. The first holds the superiority of the Aryan Race over all others and the need to purge Europe of those races deemed “inferior” (Slavs, Jews, Roma) in order to create a “Homeland” for the German People. Why such conceits would result in clashes with the rest of the Fascist World hardly needs an explanation, and even if Mussolini hadn’t been emboldened by his self-appointed position as “Leader of World Fascism” or his role as founder of the National Movement, it’s doubtful that even without that position and Mussolini’s own egomania he would have sat idly and let Hitler dictate terms to him, knowing that he’d be considered, according to Nazi racial theory, an “Untermensch.”
The issue of irredentism is more complicated, and also linked to that of National Identity, one of the greater hurdles that the Fascist International had to sort during its early years. As the Fascist Movement encouraged ardent Nationalism, Totalitarianism and a Cult of Action, it was common for the European Fascist Movements to spouse Irredentist and expansionist views, as was the case of Italy, Hungary, Romania and a few others, motivated in some cases by desires of greatness, achieving a self-appointed historical and national destiny or simply securing safer borders for pragmatic or vindictive reasons, often under the guise of achieving said perceived “destiny” or returning to the nation’s “historical borders” or recovering its “birthright.”
And while it is true that in the end pragmatism (or a fear to avoid another European War) won out in the end, the twin issues of Nationalism and Irredentism proved to be a though issue to overcome, eventually becoming one of the main contributing causes to the Italian-German Schism of 1934. The other causes are well known, but worth mentioning in any case:
-The two heads theory: neither Hitler or Mussolini could stand to be subordinate to the other or accept the other’s leadership in any way, and even though Hitler had declared himself a follower of Mussolini in his youth, by virtue of the nature of the two movements, neither man could not be the maximum leader;
-Anti-Semitism and the Jewish Issue: briefly explained above, Anti-Semitism was commonplace among Fascist Ideologues (as seen in France, Spain) and even a cornerstone in the case of some (as seen in Romania), contributing to some Fascist Parties to part with Italy and side with Germany, yet was not a big enough factor to contribute for a majority of the members of the Fascist International. (8)
-National Interest: in many cases, parties that could be described as closer to Germany than to Italy in terms of ideology, or that placed National Irredentism or Anti-Semitism higher than any other Fascist policies sided with Mussolini rather than Hitler due to pragmatic and geopolitical reasons: the Belgian Rexists, Romanian National Christian Union and Hungary’s Arrow Cross, among others, placed their own national interest and place within the European game ahead of ideology, especially as they saw Hitler’s new Germany as destabilizing to the European order and a threat to peace.
More local factors also played a hand, such as the virulent anti-Germanism of the Arrow Cross leadership as well as Miklos Horthy’s desire to avoid being surrounded by anti-Hungarian alliances, be them democratic or fascist, Austria’s own problem in dealing with the fighting between Austrofascism and Austronazism and the issue of Anschluss, Primo de Rivera’s insistence in Spanish national identity and claiming that the Falange was “Spanish, not Fascist”, Portugal’s desire to balance good relations with Italy and the United Kingdom, the irrevocably anti-Germanic nationalism of the French and Polish parties, etcetera.
Thus tensions boiled between Berlin and Rome on ideological and geopolitical grounds, building up pressure until the infamous Montreux Conference of 1934: three days of fiery speeches, fistfights, screaming and recriminations that ultimately ended up in the materialization of the Schism of 1934, as 66 delegates of the German NSDAP, the Norwegian Nasjonal Samling, Marcel Boucard’s Mouvement Franciste (in contrast to the members of La Cagoule and Action Française, who stayed and even heckled the dissenters), the Swedish National Socialist Party, a good half of Romania’s National Christian Union led by Corneliu Codreanu (which later formed the National Socialist Fatherland Movement), the Argentine National Liberation Alliance (which would rejoin the International in 1937), the Sudeten German Party, the Croatian Revolutionary Movement and many delegates of other organizationswhich chose to leave their seats and walk out of the assembly on that fateful February afternoon, essentially abandoning their own parties to form new organizations to serve as mirrors of German National Socialism. (9)
Mussolini’s Italy was nevertheless able to control a majority of the remaining delegates, who agreed to brand National Socialism as an Anti-Fascism ideology and Hitler a rogue madman and “individualist”, a courtesy extended to the “National Socialists” who left Montreux. On the fifth day of the 1934 conference Mussolini and his allies went one step beyond by recognizing Theodor Duesterberg’s Stahlhelm paramilitary organization as the one true Fascist movement in Germany, elevating it from the observer status it had enjoyed since 1931. Along with them, the fascist parties and delegates from Portugal, Hungary, Lithuania, Brazil, Japan, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Albania, Romania, Poland, Peru, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Austria, Switzerland, Ireland, Czechoslovakia, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Finland and Greece, amongst others with observer status, sided with Italy.
Primo de Rivera’s Falange and associated movements in Spain and Latin America remained at Montreux as observers but refused to openly acknowledge either the German or Italian leadership, a situation maintained throughout the Austrian War but dropped due to practical reasons during the early days of the Spanish Civil War.
The political and ideological consequences of the 1934 schism are felt to this day, seen not only in the heated arguments of intellectuals and political theorists, but also in the bitter rivalry the Fascist and National Socialist Movements that persists to this day, even as relations between Austria, Italy and Germany have long been reestablished along friendly terms and are strong allies today.
Among the declarations made at Montreux the following day, Eugenio Coselschi, in his capacity as Chairman of the Fascist International, declared Hitler and Nazi Racism as opposed “yesterday to Christian Civilization, today to Latin Civilization and tomorrow to the civilization of the entire world.” Furthermore, a formal declaration was made proclaiming that the International “rejected any materialistic concept which exalts the exclusive domination of one race above others.” (10)
The Nazi-Fascist Schism of 1934 is also considered one of the contributing factors to the Austrian War of 1936.
Notes:
4. But if the reader is nevertheless curious, a short history of this argument is wonderfully synthetized in “The Black and the Brown: a retrospective of the Fascism Schism” (Forsythe: 1990) and “A History of the European Thought and Ideology (Vol. IX)” (Schiller & Foot: 1993)
5. Although that is as far as the similarities between the Marxist and Western positions go, as Marxist theorists will invariably see Fascism and Nazism as being on the same side of the coin, while both being opposite sides of Capitalism on the same coin; unsurprisingly, many conservative and neo-liberal theorists in America and Britain see Fascism and Socialism as two sides of the same coin as well;
6. It is interesting to note that Hitler’s own views on Mussolini are often regarded to have been completely and unambiguously positive, regarding Italian Fascism as an inspiration and Mussolini’s Italy as natural ally.
7. For further reference on the issue, other important Jewish Fascist hierarchs include Dante Almansi (Vice-chief of the Fascist Police), Guido Jung (minister of finance and ex-officio member of the Grand Fascist Council), Alberto Liuzzi (consul general of the Fascist militia), Lodovico Mortara (lord chief justice and first president of the Court of Appeals), Margherita Sarfatti (Mussolini’s first official biographer, mistress and coeditor of the influential Fascist montly review, Gerarchia), Professor Carlos Foa (editor of Gerarchia), Gino Olivetti (head of Confindustria and former President of Juventus) and Giorgio del Vecchio (first fascist rector of the University of Rome). Of the fifteen jurists asked by Mussolini to draft the fascist constitution, 3 were Jewish (Professors Arias, Barone and Levi).
8. Although it did cause several splits within the members’ ranks: famously, within Romania’s National Christian Movement it resulted in the defection of Codreanu’s National Socialist Fatherland Movement, among others, many later participating in the events of April 4th. Attempts at reconciling Italy’s pragmatic views with the more ardent and fanatic anti-semitism of the Eastern European movements, one of declarations signed by the parties at the Second Montreux Congress of 1930 did, while excluding a “universal hate campaign against Jews”, denounce the existence in “many places” of “Jewish Groups” that exercised “openly or under an injurious influence on the material and moral interests of their homelands” and “committed itself to fighting them.” Interestingly enough, the proclamation (later forgotten and ignored after the 1934 Congress) was seen by Ettore Ovazza, a Jewish fascist and patron of Mussolini, as “a condemnation of Nazism”, while Ezio Garibaldi, Members of Parliament and grandson of the national hero, wrote attacking the declaration as “distinctly anti-Semitic”, “a campaign to foment hate against Jews” and “down-right racist propaganda.”
9. The walk-out, led by the head of the German delegation, Joachim Albrecht Eggeling, also saw one of the final violent incidents between the representatives of the European fascist parties, this time nearly resulting in an outright riot as the Romanian Corneliu Codreanu – who had been involved in many confrontations with other delegates at Montreux during the previous days - was spearheading the walk-out of the Germanophile delegates on April 4th, and caught eye of Ferenc Szálasi, head of the Hungarian delegation, heckling him (and allegedly laughing) and immediately led his men against the Hungarian representatives. While the fistfight was ultimately short-lived thanks as cooler-heads prevailed and the other delegates intervened, the incident left a profound impression on Codreanu.
10. Fascist periodicals and publications were not as diplomatic in their language while condemning Hitler, with Gerarchia and others referring to Hitler as an “Anti-Christ” and the Nazi Party a “political movement of pederast” (As the schism occurred only months after the infamous Night of the Long Knives in Germany)
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