European History Argumentative Essay

OXFORD READERS

Fascism Edited by Roger Griffin

Oxford . New York OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

1995

28 FASCISM AS AN OPPOSITION MOVEMENT

whic~ destiny has charged with' makin" . . greenng, in the certainrv th . ill g history, It 1Syou that I hail with a cry of f h ~J at rt w notfallond f .on a powerful response. ea ears m your ranks, but summon

The cry is a word which Iwould n . today I shout out loud h ever have uttered in normal times, but which

.at t etopofmyvoi . h b conviction, a word which is bo ce, Wit a solute sincerity and steadfast

. th dreadful and awesome" war' [ Audacia!' [Couraget] II PI' . .

Mwsolini' ~d ;po 0 d ItaJia, 15 Nov. 1914;repr. in Omnia OpeTt! di Benito , . . and D. Susmel (La Penice: Florence, 1951-81),vii. 5-7.)

I·-~~·~~:'?·~·~·~~·?~~~·I_.'Trenchocracy' - - .. One of the crucial 'b'contri unous of the First w: ld that the trencheshadfiorged heroi or War to the riseofFascism was the myth

a erou, youth"'1 and las I 'I'sweep away the sclerotic' ld der' ~..., c s ess e ire which after thewar would war generation. This myt: °hr:erh' so out oftoueh with the minds and aspirations of the if u . ,w u: was to have an ev ..o l'IQZlSm,played a maior role . . . en moresIgnificant impact on the rise

. .., In wlnmng over vet D'occupIed Fiume (see Text 10\ and . b' . . erans to Annunzio's cause when ht d' . 'I rlU In mo tllztng thep 'Z' . azione) which tookon the 'Bolsheviks' in t' aramt :tary action squads (squad.re Intoa mass movement It was Is he red two years (1919-20) and turned.Fasctsm

. a 0perpetuated 'th' h .. aprominent feature oifthe Pas . t . , WI In t emllttary ethos which became slU-h h h C1S Teglntesmyth oif Z

t at t e newforce (not yet termed 'Pas" renewa , Note the prescient suggestion cism'] could beaform ofnational socialism.

The word is ugly N. . . . 0 maner, There are ugli . Clt1ZensJ;iprights in the Italian Ian a e er ?ne.s which have long enjoyed snarl at neologisms'. It's aU part ~ g . We don t give a fig about 'purists' who and the new! The trenchocra . th e.eternal conflict between the old sensibili' rv f cy IS t e anstoc fth -J

o tomorrow! It is the aristocracy' . racy 0 e trenches, It is the aristocracy . f b" , m acnon. It come fr h m,gs?, no ility are a splendid blood red On . . s om t e depths. Its 'quarter-- a Fnslan h~rse',' a dugout, a hand.gren~de [Its coat of arms there may be depicted A new anstocracy is emergm' g Th bll ke' , . ,]

arist h . e n red and th 'd'oerney as already taken its first steps I . a1 e I lOtdo nOt see it. Yet this already 1 . . . t IS ready cl' . . b' '

~ anrung m detail its anempts to 'take . a;rmng ItS irthright. It is clandesttne, intense labour of preparation r ~~esslOn of social positions. It is French .bourgeoisie before 1789,[ ... J ' emmlscent of that carried out by the In Milan the whole movement ofp

Committee of Action run by disable;:~:da and resist~ce is in the hands of the fledged party has been fanned '0' . ounded Setvlcemen Ln Tunn' full

• Ii r SUtvlVOrs fth fr' . a y sian of draft-dodgers.ln Bologna the fonh ~ e ant with the rigorous exd ?f a newspaper caUed The Voiceofth V commg publication has been ann u- IS contained in the patriotic spirit of~ eterans

h ·[·.. ] What an immense mo~~ced

ose w 0 Come back fro th lOrce f A mobile Obstacle used in th b I m e front.[ ... J

e an efields and fortificatio n systems of the First W Idor War.

POLITICAL FUTURISM 29

The disabled servicemen of today are the vanguard of the great army who will return tomorrow. They are the thousands who await millions of demobilized soldiers. This enormous mass-conscious of what it has achieved-is bound to cause shifts in the equilibrium of society. The brutal and bloody apprenticeship of the trenches will mean something. It

will mean more courage, more faith, more tenacity. The old parties, the old men who carry on with the exploitation6 of the political

Italy of tomorrow will be swept aside. The music of tomorrow will have another tempo. It will be an andantino sostenuto, and a hot-blooded fortissimo is not ruled out. There will also be many a diesis in chiave.7It is this prediction which makes us observe with a certain contempt everything which is said and done by the old windbags who govern us, so full of presumption, sacred formulas, and senile

tmbedliry.l ... J The words 'republic', .democracy', •radicalism', 'liberalism' , the word' socialism'

itself, have no sense any longer: they will have one tomorrow, but it will be the one given them by the millions of 'those who returned'. And it could be something

quite different. It could, for example, be an anti-Marxist and national socialism. The millions of

workers who return to the furrow in their fields, after being in the furrows of the trenches, will realize the synthesis of the antithesis: class and nation.] ... ]

Those who in eleven battles chased Austria back beyond the Isonzo; those who stopped Austria and Germany, Bulgaria and Turkey on the Piave," watch,listen,

understand. The Italy of today is here. The Italy of tomorrow is too. We are pooling the passions of the soldiers and we will be with them tomorrow

to see that the highest justice is done. ['Trincerocrazia', 11Popolo d'Italia, 15 Dec. 1917; repro in Omnia Opera di Benito MlUsolini

(see Text 4), x. 140-3.]

I POLITICAL FUTURiSM................................................................•••..••........................

• The Futurist Vision of the New Italy

The PoliticalFuturist Party wasfounded in Rome in September 1918two months beforethe end of the First World War. Though it was to have minimal impact on the Italian electorate, its programmeisworth citingas oneoftheearliestattempts to capitalize onwhat since the deftat at Caporetto had becomea wave oj popular enthusiasm for the war and translate it into afonnal political organization dedicated to the 'renewal' of l£aly, Signi- ficant too are severalaspects of the programme which, quite independently of Mus soHni,

6 French word in the original. 7 (In music) a sustained slow tempo. 8 In the wake of the disastrous defeat at Caporetto in Oct. 1917, the Italian forces retreated to

the River Piavt where they successfully created a line of defence.

THE ITALIAN NATIONALIST ASSOCIATION 37

tion; sculptors, painters, decorators, architects, musicians, all those who work in fine art, pictorial arts, decorative arts. The seventh is made up of all those who are freelance professionals not covered

in the previous categories. The eighth is constituted by industrial and agrarian co-operative societies of

production, work, and consumption; and only the administrators of such societies can be members. The ninth incorporates all the people who work at sea. The tenth has no category, no title, no name. Its fulfilment is awaited like that of

the tenth Muse. It is reserved for the mysterious forces of a people which labours and rises up. It is like a votive statue consecrated to the unknown genius, to the appearance of a man who is utterly new [novissimo], to the ideal transfigurations of works and days, to the total liberation of the spirit from soul-destroying exertion and the sweat ofblood. It is represented in the civic sanctuary by a burning lamp which bears an ancient

Tuscan motto from the epoch of the Communes, a stupendous allusion to a spiritualized form of human labour:

Toil without toil. [The Constitution of Piume, promulgated 8 Sept. 1920, in La Carta del Camara nei testi

di Aluste, de Ambris e di Gabriele D'Annunzia, ed. R. De Felice (II Mulino: Bologna, 1973), 35-47.J

I·.!!:.I:. ~!::~~~~.~::!.J.!?~ ~ ~.I.~.~.::~.~.!?~.I:~.:.I.?~.. . .The Nationalist Blueprint for a New Italy Set up in December 1910 by Enrico Corradini (an associate of Papini) and Luigi Federzoni, the Italian National Association (ANI) was the major forum for rightist, statist ultra- nationalism in pre~Fascist Italy. The Nationalists promoted a fiercely anti-socialist and anti-liberal vision of an organic, industrially advanced, and imperial Italy able to pursue its destiny as a great power and put an end to the hegemony of the 'older' plutocratic nations Britain and France. Inevitably, it became a major force in the interventionist campaign. Its imperialist and produ.etivist ideas influenced Mussolini, but itwas only in March 1923 (after the March on Rome) that the ANI merged with Fascism, now moving to the right, which enabled several Nationalists, notably Federzoni and Rocco, to gain high office within the regime in its formative phase (see De Grand 1978). Noteworthy in this passage are the organic conception of the nation (if. Text 117) and the advocacy of a rightist form. of syndicalism, which under Rocco would effectively eclipse the leftist version.

The fundamental thesis of Nationalism," which places the Nationalist doctrine in a special relationship with respect to all other political doctrines, is that the various

l~ 'Nationalism' refers specifically to the statist, neo-conservative brand of palingenetic Ultra-nationalism espoused by the ANI.

38 FASCISM AS AN OPPOSITION MOVEMENT

societies existing on earth are true organisms endowed with a life which far transcends that of individuals and which is sustained for centuries and millennia. Thus the Italian nation does not only contain the 36 million Italians alive now,

but all the hundreds of thousands of millions of Italians who will live in future centuries, and who are conceived as components of a single whole. In this concep- tion each generation and every individual within a generation is but a transient and infinitesimal part of the nation, and is the cell of the national organism. Just as cells are born, live. and die, while the organism remains the same, so individuals are born, live, and die, while the nation continues to live out its millennial exist- ence.[ ... J

Por many years Italians lived with the illusion that the problem of renewal and social and economic recovery was an exclusively dome.stic issue. that could and had to be resolved as ifItaly was cut offfrom the world, indeed, as ifltaly was the only country in the whole world. No one ever cast an eye across the borders to see what was going on there. As a result a mistake was made and became ever more widespread, namely of seeing the country's economic and social problem as one of in.ternal distribution ofwealth.[ ... J Nationalism was perhaps the only movement of ideas in Italy which, to Italians absorbed in the problem of internal distribution of wealth, raised the issue of the international di..stribution of wealth. It proclaimed out loud that, alongside internal jltitice, there also exists international justice, and asked for justice for the Italian nation too. In this sense Nationalism deserved the name socialism of the nations. Indeed, if there is a nation which has the right and the duty to behave nationalistically it is precisely the Italian nation, the proletarian nation par excellence, suffocated in a world dominated by the high-handedness and greed of capitalist and plutocratic nations.[ ... J

But Nationalism, which is an integral doctrine of social life, takes full account of the inevitable and irrepressible conflicts between classes and does not ignore the problem of the internal distribution of wealth. It recognizes that hand in hand with the increase in production must go the equitable distribution of its profit among those who contributed to achieve it. Hence it recognizes the need for the working class to be organized, just as it

recognizes the need for employers to be organized. Indeed, Nationalism, going beyond the economic conceptions of a now superseded liberalism, has pinned its colours firmly to the mast of syndicalism. Taking a bold but logical step, National- ism believes that the syndicate must become the basis of economic life and wants to bring this about.[ ... J Nationalism considers the expansion of Italy's power in the world not only as a

process of promoting national productivity and bringing the highest economic and political benefits to all its citizens, but above all as a duty. It is a moral law which calls upon a people destined, for geographic, historical, and demographic reasons, either to perish or to expand and dominate, to embrace its destiny and be unflinch_ ing in the struggle with competing nations, a struggle which will be hard but, with victory assured. also glorious.

['Assooazione Nazicnalisra ltaliana', in n Ilazionalumo (ANI: Rome, 1920),6--9,14-15.]

GOTTFRIED BENN 135

The new national art of Germany will only enjoy respect in the world and bear witness beyond the frontiers of our country to the intense cultural dynamism of the new Germany if it is firmly and ineradicably rooted in the mother earth of the national culture [Volkstum] which produced it. The world must discover anew what is German and genuine.[ ... ] May German art and culture be blessed and fostered by the newly formed Reich

Culture Chamber.[ ... ] In it the creative individual in Germany has found the way to be part of the new State. May he thereby experience the blessed feeling we all have of being pioneers, creators, and shapers of a new century.

['Die deutsche Kultur vor neuen Aufgaben' [The new tasks of Gennan culture), in Signale du tteuen Zeit [Signals of the New Age] (Zentralverlag der NSDAP!Franz

Eher: Munich, 1939),323-36.]

x

An early expressionist poet and a medical orderly in the First World War, Gottfiied Benn (1886-1956)became increasingly obsessed after the war with the need to break out of an over-cerebralcivilization and the 'nihilism' it bred. This predisposed him to see in Nazism an explosion of pent-up primordial energies which would restore meaning to the world. He thus turned to celebrating the Nazi revolution in ecstatic prose, till the violence of the Rohm. Purge broke the spell. He ended up vilified by the regime and retreating into 'inner emigration', but during his brief affair with the Third Reich his readiness to glorify its leader and its grotesque eugenicfantasies knew no bounds, as this passage shows.

He who wishes his reign to last, must breedfor thefuture. No one can doubt any more [... J that behind the political events in Gennany there lies a historical transformation of unfathomable consequences. The cultural sheen of an epoch is flaky and breaks up. Along sutures in the organic the forces of heredity stir; from defects in the centres of regeneration the human gene pushes towards the light. There values which were once stable and authentic melt into the shadows. There accomplishments are transformed and become unrecognizable: the centuries of propagation are at an end. The unfathomable historical transformation initially manifests itself politic-

ally in the central concept: The Total State. The Total State, in contrast to the pluralistic State of the last epoch, the State of thwarted plans and ambitions, announces itself by asserting the complete identity of power and spirit, individu- ality and the collective, freedom and necessity; it is monist, anti-dialectic, enduring, and authoritarian. It is the executive principle at the most refined level of cultiva- don ever encountered in the history of the West of past cultural spheres only Egypt and Yucatan bear comparison. The new, disruptive element, but simultaneously

136 GERMAN FASCISM IN POWER 1933-1945

the element of synthesis involved in the transformation, reveals itself specifically in the concept of leader [FuhrerbegriffJ. The leader is not the embodiment of power, and certainly not conceived as a principle of terror, but as the highest spiritual principle.[ ... J

It seems to me beyond doubt that out of this transformation a new man will once again emerge in Europe, half from mutation and half from breeding: the German man. He will stand up against no one, but he will stand out from both the Western and the Eastern type. All the preconditions for his emergence are there: behind him a quarter-century of radical crisis, shattering upheavals, of being churned up as no other people in the world has experienced, and in the last decade a growing awareness of biological dangers, one which bears out the precept that a people which becomes conscious of the dangers facing it produces genius.[ ... J I know that this people will become free and its great spirits will come with

words which once more have meaning, will be valid for other peoples, and will bear fruit. In their syllables there will be everything which we have suffered, the celestial and the transient, the legacy of our philosophical suffering. I know they will come, not gods, and not fully human either, but fruit of the purity of a new people. Then they will make their judgement and rip up the beds of idleness, and knock down the walls which have been thinly whitewashed over and where sacrilege has been committed for a handful of barley and a morsel of bread-they alone will do this. I know they will corne, and I am sure that I can hear the reverberation of their footsteps. I am sure that the victims they claim deserve their fate: I see them coming.

[·Zi.1chtung I' [Breeding IJ. in D071eue Staat und die Inulleletuellt'7l [The New State and the Intellectuals] (Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt: Stuttgart/Berlin, 1933);repro in Es5ays,

Reden, Vortrdge (Limes Verlag: Wiesbaden, 1959),2.14-2.2..]

I PAULA SIBER..................................................................................................... The New German Woman

Fascism clearly represents an extreme form of'male chauvinism', and one scholar (The>ve. leit: see Text J58) has located its basic obsession with decadence in a pathologicalftar (and hence hatred) of women. The official policy on women as outlined in this programmatic text could equally well have been 'Written under the Third Reich or the Third Rome. It was written by tlu acting head of the Deutsche Frauenwerk (Assodation of German Woman), from J933 run by the NS Frauenschajt, which had been set up in 1931as an organization for all fema~ NSDAP ~bers. It should be remembered when reading such reactionary texts that [ascist ltaders clmmed to be revolutionizing traditional womanhood and motherhood by.making t~emvit~lto the~eationoftherejuvenated national community. Under Nazism thtS was to tnw.'lve ut pracnce not JILSt encouragement to have large families and provide a source of menud labour whenever the State reqUired it but coll"',·o . 'h ., .... n tn e eugenlcs, euthanasia, war, and genocide organized by the menfolk.

PAULA SIBER 137

To be a woman means to be a mother, means affirming with the whole conscious force of one's soul the value of being a mother and making it a law of life. The role of motherhood assigned to woman by nature and fully endorsed by National Socialism inno way means, however, that the task of the National Socialist woman within the framework of the National Community should be simply that of know- ing herself to be the carrier of race and blood, and hence of the biological conserva- tion of the people. Over and above the duty intrinsic to her gender of conserving her race and

people there is also the holy task entrusted to man and woman of enhancing and developing the inner, spiritual, and human qualities. This in the case of woman culminates in the motherhood of the soul as the highest ennoblement of any woman, whether she is married or not. Therefore a woman belongs at the side of man not just as a person who brings

children into the world, not just as an adornment to delight the eye, not just as a cook and cleaner. Instead woman has the holy duty to be a life companion, which means being a comrade who pursues her vocation as woman with clarity of vision and spiritual wannth.[ ... J To be a woman in the deepest and most beautiful sense of the word is the best

preparation for being a mother. For the highest calling of the National Socialist woman is not just to bear children, but consciously and out of total devotion to her role and duty as mother to raise children for her people.[ ... ] The mother is also the intermediary for the people and national culture [Volk-

stum] to which she and her child belong. For she is the custodian ofits culture, which she provides her child with through fairy-tales, legends, games, and customs in a way which is decisive for the whole relationship which he will later have to his people.[ ... ] In a National Socialist Germany the sphere of social services [VolksfUr- sorge] is predominantly the sphere of the woman. For woman belongs wherever social services or human care is required. Apart from these tasks of conserving the people, educating the people, and

helping the people, the final area of responsibility for the woman, one not to be undervalued, is her contribution to the national economy. Women manage 75 per cent of the total income of the people, which passes through her hands simply in running the home.[ ... J The national economy includes agriculture. It is today less possible than ever to

imagine the struggle for existence and the toil involved in the economics of improving crops, refining breeds, and fanning new land, activities which demand constant attention and maintenance, without the contribution of woman to agri- culture in overseeing and running the farm.

[Dit' Frau~nfrag~und ihr~ Uisung durch drn Nafiona!.sozialismw [The Women's Issue and its National Socialist Solution] (G. Kallmeyer: WolfenbUttel/Berlin, 1933); repro in Walter Gehl (ed.), Dunationauozialisllscher Staat [The NationaJ Socialist State]

(Ferdinand Hilt: Breslau, 19D), 1:17-30.)

158 GERMAN FASCISM IN POWER 1933-1945

In principle the promotion of the purity of one's own race and its protection against the infiltration of alien races is a vital requirement of volkisch politics for all peoples and races, and extends beyond the Jewish problem.[ .. ,J

But in this context the problem posed by Jewry acquires a twofold significance. For a long time it constituted the only serious threat to European peoples and thus was for practical purposes largely identical with the racial problem itself. Beyond this it has become the immediate cause for a concern with questions of race and racial politics, and opened the way to fundamental insights which, even after the Jewish danger has been overcome, will be part of the tools and arsenal of truly German politics for ever more,

On the other hand the jewish problem exhibits peculiarities which distinguish it profoundly from all present or future conflicts in the sphere of racial politics. Jewry has not confronted the European peoples as a distinctive ethnic group, but behind the deceitful mask of supposed assimilation; it has not begun to have contact with other peoples from a base in its own State, but infiltrated them and extensively conquered them as a homeless parasite people. Finally, true to its character and its historical development, it espoused the corrupting doctrine of the Communist International and of universal equality, and, as a global elite working in secret, practically secured domination over finance, over the dominant ideology (Zeitgeist], and finally over the politics of numerous states, which eventually had to pay for this development with two wars, with pointless economic destruction, and the grot- esque mask of Bolshevism.

This explains the very special fonn which the defence againstjewry has taken, one which corresponds to the uniqueness of its historical manifestation and its guilt. The zeal with which Germany broke Jewish domination, the ruthless thoroughness with which the definitive elimination [endg'Ultige Ausscheidung] of this parasitic foreign body from Europe will be pursued after the war, is nor to be explained by the prindples of National Socialist racial politics in themselves, but by the enormous suffering which the Jewish people has broughr on mankind, and by the necessity ro make any repetition of this baleful course of events impossible for all time.

('Grundfragen nationalsozialistiche.r Rassen und Bevolkerungspolitik' (Basic issues in National Socialist racial and demographic policy], Nationalsoziali5lich~ Montttsschriftett,

121t37 (Aug. 1941),661-6.]

I·A~~.~.~.,:..<?~~~.~.~.~~ .: • The True Meaning of the War Goebbels 'Wrote this euphemistic justijicatfun of the Second World War and the mass atrocities it involw:d in the summer OfI942, when the iUusicm of the Third Reich's invincibility had stiU not been shattered. Germany invaded Russia inJune 1941, and Bolshevism is once again portrayed as the oJfslwor of Oewish) P/=acy, j"'t as it was before rhe Ribbentropp Part aUied the two COUntries in August 1939· 11u apptal to Social Darwinian principles of 'might is right' is cunjlated with two other lypicalfa.sd.st themes, the inexorability Of destiny, and the sense of

JOSEPH GOEBBELS 159

historical watershed. The passage is also significant because it registers a shadow faWng across the war, the sense that victory, while inevitable, is no longer imminent. In December 1941 the USA had joined the war, and the allied bombing of Gennan dties was int<n.rifying as Goebbe~ wrote. Before long the Wehmuuht would e>perience itsfirst revers~ in North Africa and Ru.ssia,and the shadows would grow ever longer and darker.

We are rapidly approaching the end of the third year of this war which was forced upon us. It has reached a degree of extension in space and protraction in time which very few could foresee when it broke out. The relatively insignificant issue sur- rounding the German city of Danzig and the need for a corridor through the corridor" has grown into a struggle between continents, a world war in the true sense of the word, which will decide the fate of entire peoples.

Whereas at first people only saw the immediate catalyst, now they can see the underlying cause: rich peoples, led by a refined and insatiable plutocracy and its most radical offshoot, Bolshevism, overloaded with territorial possessions and raw resources, have forced the German people along with the Axis powers to take up arms to decide the vital issue of whether in future we will have an adequate basis for our national life, or even lose the completely insufficient basis for this which we already possessed.{ ... J

The division of the earth is not ordained by God, but is decided by human beings. It can be changed at any time. It is simply a question of power, not morality. Our enemies can afford to be piOUS, because they have in abundance what they need for life. Once they took this too, not out of piety, but by force. Now they possess everything and we possess nothing.[ ... ]

On occasion the peaceful evolution of a continent is interrupted by the stormy epochs when something new is constructed. At this point the earth is convulsed by seismic tremors which usher in a new birth amidst the most terrible labour pains.[ ... ]

Every birth brings pain. But amid the pain there is already the joy of a new life. It is a sign of sterility to shy away from new life on account of the pain.[ ... ] Our age too is an act of historical birth, whose pangs carry with them the joy of richer life to come. The significance of the war has grown as its scale has increased. It is relentlessly at work. shattering old forms and ideas, and directing the eyes of human beings to new, greater objectives. Think where we stood at the outbreak of war, and where we stand now! We are following the path assigned to us and cannot turn back or deviate from it. We must carry on marching towards the goal whose outlines can be made out ever more clearly in the distant haze.[ ... ]

In an age which like never before offers us the choice between the highest fortune and deepest catastrophe of our Reich, we stand finn as a people, deter- mined and ready to work and fight so as to fulfil the ultimate meaning of the war.

['Vom Sinn des Krieges' [On the meaning of the war], in Vas eheme Hen. Reden und Aujidtze au.s denJahren 194112 [The Brazen Heart: Speeches and Essays from the Years

194112J(zenrrelverlag der NSDAP/Franz Bher: Munich, 1943),436-42.]

Jl The Nazi violation of the 'Polish corridor' created by the Peace Settlement after the First World War to guarantee Poland access to the sea at Danzig (Gdansk) was a major step towards the outbreak ofthe Second World War.