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Fascism and Modernization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Henry Ashby Turner Jr.
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

If the number of publications is an accurate gauge, there was a conspicuous revival of interest in fascism during the past decade. One obvious reason for this was the erosion of the theories of totalitarianism that had dominated discussions of political extremism during the 1950's. By linking German National Socialism and, in some cases, Italian Fascism with Russian Communism, these theories inhibited consideration of fascism as a distinctive generic phenomenon in its own right. But in the wake of the thaw in Khrushchev's Soviet Union and the general relaxation of cold-war tensions during the 1960's, the various theories of totalitarianism became less compelling.1 As a result, many students of twentieth-century politics became aware of the absence of a concept suitable for characterizing those interwar authoritarian movements and regimes in Europe that were neither conservative nor Communist. For some, fascism provided the solution.

Type
Research Note
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1972

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References

1 For two examples of the criticism to which those theories were subjected during the logo's, see Hildebrand, Klaus, “Stufen der Totalitarismus-Forschung,” Politische Vierteljahresschrift, ix (September 1968), 397422Google Scholar; Burrowes, Robert, “Totalitarianism: The Revised Standard Version,” World Politics, xxi (January 1969), 272–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 By far the most ambitious and impressive attempt to arrive at a definition of fascism is Ernst Nolte's Three Faces of Fascism (New York 1966; German edition, 1963)Google Scholar, to which this article owes much. Yet three volumes of scholarly essays on the subject published since the appearance of Nolte's work reveal that there is still little in the way of agreement among the experts: Laqueur, Walter and Mosse, George L., eds., International Fascism, 1920–1945 (New York 1966Google Scholar; also published as Vol. 1, No. 1 of Journal of Contemporary History, 1966); Woolf, S. J., ed., European Fascism (London 1968)Google Scholar; Woolf, S. J., ed., The Nature of Fascism (London 1968, New York 1969)Google Scholar. Similarly diverse views can be found in the following: Carsten, F. L., The Rise of Fascism (Berkeley 1967)Google Scholar; Kedward, H. R., Fascism in Western Europe 1900–45 (London 1969)Google Scholar; Mayer, Arno J., Dynamics of Counterrevolution in Europe (New York 1971)Google Scholar; Rogger, Hans and Weber, Eugen, eds., The European Right: A Historical Profile (Berkeley 1966)Google Scholar; Sugar, Peter, ed., Native Fascism in the Successor States, 1918–1945 (Santa Barbara 1971)Google Scholar; Weiss, John, The Fascist Tradition (New York 1967)Google Scholar.

3 Apter, David, The Politics of Modernization (Chicago 1965)Google Scholar; Black, C. E., The Dynamics of Modernization (New York 1966)Google Scholar; Organski, A. F. K., The Stages of Political Development (New York 1965)Google Scholar.

4 Eisenstadt, S. N., “Breakdowns of Modernization,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, xii (July 1964), 345–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Eisenstadt, S. N., Modernization: Protest and Change (Englewood Cliffs 1966), 132–35, 160Google Scholar; Nettl, J. P. and Robertson, Roland, International Systems and the Modernization of Societies (New York 1968), 48Google Scholar.

5 This practice has been analyzed by Wilson, George Macklin in an article rejecting application of the term fascism to Japan: “A New Look at the Problem of ‘Japanese Fascism,’” Comparative Studies in Society and History, x (July 1968), 407Google Scholar. For an example, see Lipset, Seymour Martin, Political Man (New York 1960), 131–76Google Scholar.

6 Cammett, John M., “Communist Theories of Fascism, 1920–1935,” Science and Society, xxxi (Spring 1967), 155Google Scholar.

7 Moore, Barrington Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston 1966), 447Google Scholar. As a study of fascism, Moore's book labors under a considerable handicap as a consequence of his virtual exclusion of the paradigmatic Italian and German cases, which are alluded to, but never dioroughly analyzed.

8 See Fetscher, Iring, “Faschismus und Nationalsozialismus,” Politische Vierteljahresschrift, iii (March 1962), 4263Google Scholar; Sarti, Roland, Fascism and the Industrial Leadership in Italy, 1919–1940 (Berkeley 1971)Google Scholar; Turner, H. A. Jr., “Big Business and the Rise of Hitler,” American Historical Review, lxxv (October 1969), 5670CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an arresting in-dependent Marxist challenge to the orthodox view, see T. W. Mason, “The primacy of politics—Politics and economics in National Socialist Germany,” in Woolf, ed., The Nature of Fascism (fn. 2), 165–95.

9 The two best studies of the Nazi “left wing” are Kuhnl, Reinhard, Die nationalsozialistische Linke 1925–1930 (Meisenheim am Glan 1966)Google Scholar and Kele, Max H., Nazis and Workers (Chapel Hill 1972)Google Scholar. See also the treatment in Orlow, Dietrich, The History of the Nazi Party: 1919–1933 (Pittsburgh 1969)Google Scholar.

10 On the affinity of the Nazi leadership for medieval institutional patterns, see the suggestive article by Koehl, Robert, “Feudal Aspects of National Socialism,” American Political Science Review, liv (December 1960), 921–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the Utopian tendencies of Nazism, see Cohn, Norman, Warrant for Genocide (New York 1966)Google Scholar, 160ff.

11 There are indications, however, that elements of the “left wing” survived what have usually been regarded as its conclusive defeats, and persisted in influential positions until the end of the Third Reich; see Milward, Alan, “French Labour and the German Economy, 1942–1945: An Essay on the Nature of the Fascist New Order,” Economic History Review, xxiii (August 1970), 336–51Google Scholar.

12 On the remarkable consistency of Hitler's foreign policy views and actions from 1924 on, see Jackel, Eberhard, Hitlers Weltanschauung (Tübingen 1969), 2957Google Scholar; Kuhn, Axel, Hitlers aussenpolitisches Programm (Stuttgart 1970)Google Scholar.

13 Hitler's scorn for modern industrial cities has not received the attention it deserves. In his unpublished book of 1928 he described them as “abscesses on the body of the folk (Volfakörper), in which all vices, bad habits and sicknesses seem to unite. They are above all hotbeds of miscegenation and bastardization.…” See Weinberg, Gerhard L., ed., Hitlers Zweites Buck (Stuttgart 1961), 61fGoogle Scholar. On the sources and importance of the anti-urban component of Nazi ideology, see Bergmann, Klaus, Agrarromantik und Grossstadtfeindlichkeit (Meisenheim am Glan 1970)Google Scholar. Unaccountably, Bergmann asserts in his conclusions, without evidence, that Hitler did not fully subscribe to the rural utopianism of the movement (355). Recently, Hitler's enthusiastic participation in plans for the postwar reconstruction of Berlin have been cited as evidence of lack of hostility toward big cities on his part: Lane, Barbara Miller, Architecture and Politics in Germany, 1918–1945 (Cambridge, Mass. 1968), 189Google Scholar. However, Albert Speer, who worked closely with Hitler on these plans, repeatedly specifies in his memoirs, Inside the Third Reich (New York 1970)Google Scholar, that Hitler's interest in the Berlin of the future was limited to its awe-inspiring, monumental government district. When discussion turned to projects designed to make the capital city as a whole a more liveable place for its millions of inhabitants, the Führer's attention wandered, and he sought to change the subject.

14 For the importance accorded to this project in the Third Reich, see Koehl, Robert, RKFDV: German Resettlement and Population Policy, 1939–1945 (Cambridge, Mass. 1957)Google Scholar. For Hitler's wartime views on German colonization in the east, see Cameron, Norman and Stevens, R. H., trans., Hitler's Secret Conversations, 1941–1944 (New York 1953)Google Scholar, passim. On Himmler's ideas, see Ackermann, Josef, Heinrich Himmler als Ideologe (Gottingen 1970)Google Scholar.

15 See Mosse, George L., The Crisis of German Ideology (New York 1964)Google Scholar, and Stern, Fritz, The Politics of Cultural Despair (Berkeley 1961)Google Scholar.

16 For examples, see Harrison, John R., The Reactionaries (New York 1967)Google Scholar; Hamilton, Alistair, The Appeal of Fascism (New York 1971)Google Scholar; Soucy, Robert, “Romanticism and Realism in the Fascism of Drieu la Rochelle,” Journal of the History of Ideas, xxxi (January-March 1970), 6990CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tucker, William R., “Politics and Aesthetics: The Fascism of Robert Brasillach,” Western Political Quarterly, xv (December 1962), 605–17Google Scholar; Tucker, , “Fascism and Individualism: The Political Thought of Pierre Drieu la Rochelle,” Journal of Politics, xxvii (February 1965), 153–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; sWinegarten, Rene, ‘The Fascist Mentality—Drieu la Rochelle,” Wiener Library Bulletin, xii (Winter 1967/1968), 3743Google Scholar; Winegarten, , “The Temptations of Cultural Fascism,” Wiener Library Bulletin, xiii (Winter 1968/1969), 3440Google Scholar.

17 For a suggestive attempt at an answer, see McRandle, James H., The Track of the Wolf (Evanston 1965), 5179Google Scholar.

18 Sauer, Wolfgang, “National Socialism: Totalitarianism or Fascism?” American Historical Review, lxxiii (December 1967), 411Google Scholar.

19 In Mussolini's Early Diplomacy (Princeton 1970)Google Scholar, Alan Cassels attributes the Fascist regime's drive for territorial expansion on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean and in East Africa to a desire for “national glory and living space for Italy's surplus population…” (391). Cassels characterizes this policy as an arrogation of the “Crispian tradition,” but it would be worthwhile to examine whether the Fascists’ motives may not have more closely resembled those of the Nazis than those of the liberal imperialists of the late nineteenth century.

20 Quoted in Schmidt, Carl T., The Plough and the Sword (New York 1938), 43Google Scholar.

21 Gallo, Max, L’ltalie de Mussolini (Verviers 1964), 243Google Scholar.

22 On Fascist “productivism,” see Sarti (fn. 8), 221.; also Maier, Charles S., “Between Taylorism and Technocracy: European ideologies and the vision of industrial productivity in the 1920s,” Journal of Contemporary History, v (No. 2, 1970), 4045Google Scholar.

23 Nolte (fn. 2); Sauer (fn. 18). Italian scholars have, virtually without exception, dealt with Fascism as an isolated national problem, ignoring all except the Marxist theories of fascism as a generic phenomenon. A departure from this pattern may be found in the recent survey of theories about fascism by Felice, Renzo De, Le inter-pretazioni del jascismo (Bari 1969)Google Scholar.

24 Sarti (fn. 8); Cassels, Alan, “Janus: The Two Faces of Fascism,” The Canadian Historical Association, Historical Papers (1969), 165–84Google Scholar; Gregor, A. James, The Ideology of Fascism (New York 1969)Google Scholar; Tannenbaum, Edward R., “The Goals of Italian Fascism,” American Historical Review, lxxiv (April 1969), 11831204CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Albert Speer, in his memoirs (fn. 13), relates that Hitler objected to industry on the grounds that it gave rise to communism and bred an intelligentsia, something the Führer regarded as undesirable (309). Yet Speer records that, upon his appointment as Munitions Minister in 1942, Hitler advised hi m to circumvent the bureaucracy whenever possible and deal directly with industry, since that was where the best brains were (202). According to Speer, Hitler abandoned his original plan to de-industrialize the occupied territories of the East only when he came to realize the necessity of utilizing industrial installations there on behalf of the German war effort (309).

26 See James Joll's essay on Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Fascism in his Three Intellectuals in Politics (New York 1965), 133–84Google Scholar.

27 For the best analysis, see Schoenbaum, David, Hitler's Social Revolution (New York 1966)Google Scholar.

28 Ibid., 288.

29 For comparative data on the rate of change, see Patel, Surendra J., “Rates of Industrial Growth in the Last Century, 1860–1958,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, ix (April 1961), 316–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the obstacles to change in France, see Sawyer, John E., “Strains in the Social Structure of Modern France,” in Earle, Edward Mead, ed., Modern France (Princeton 1951)Google Scholar.

30 See the illuminating analysis of middle-class political behavior in a small German town in Allen, William Sheridan, The Nazi Seizure of Power (Chicago 1965)Google Scholar.

31 See Mosse (fn. 15) and Stern (fn. 15); also Lebovics, Herman, Social Conservatism and the Middle Classes in Germany (Princeton 1969)Google Scholar; Klemperer, Klemens von, Germany's New Conservatism (Princeton 1957)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 On Quisling, see Paul M. Hayes, “Quisling's Political Ideas,” in Laqueur and Mosse, eds. (fn. 2), 145–57; also Hayes, , Quisling: The Career and Political Ideas of Vidkun Quisling, 1887–1945 (London 1971)Google Scholar; also T. K. Derry, “Norway,” in Woolf, ed., European Fascism (fn. 2), 217–30. On the Falange, see Nellesen, Bernd, Die verbotene Revolution (Hamburg 1963)Google Scholar, and Payne, Stanley, Falange (Stanford 1961)Google Scholar; such tendencies seem to have been most evident in the JONS faction led by Onésimo Redondo y Ortego and Ramiro Ledesma Ramos.

33 On Mosley, see R. J. A. Skidelsky, “Great Britain,” in Woolf, ed., European Fascism (fn. 2), 231–61. On Doriot, see Gilbert D. Allerdyce, “The Political Transformation of Jacques Doriot,” in Laqueur and Mosse (fn. 2), 56–74; also Wolf, Dieter, Die Doriot-Bewegung (Stuttgart 1967)Google Scholar. On Peron, see Blanksten, George I., Peron's Argentina (Chicago 1953)Google Scholar, and Fillol, Tomas, Social Factors in Economic Development: The Argentine Case (Cambridge, Mass. 1961)Google Scholar.

34 This has been argued by Alan Cassels (fn. 24), who has suggested that in back-ward countries such as Italy, fascism was a forward-looking agent of modernization, while in advanced countries, such as Germany, it was backward-looking and nihilistically regressive. However, Cassels encounters difficulties in applying this thesis to the putative fascism of eastern Europe. In addition, as suggested above, the cases of Mosley and Doriot seem to contradict his formula.

35 See, for examples, George L. Mosse, “Introduction: The Genesis of Fascism,” in Laqueur and Mosse (fn. 2); Sauer (fn. 18); Hugh Trevor-Roper, “The Phenomenon of Fascism,” in Woolf, ed., European Fascism (fn. 2); Weber, Eugen, Varieties of Fascism (Princeton 1964)Google Scholar.

36 On the history of the term itself, see Nolte, Ernst, ed., Theorien über den Faschismus (Cologne 1967)Google Scholar; Schieder, Wolfgang, “Faschismus,” in Kernig, C. D., ed., Sowjet-system und demohratische Gesellschajt, ii (Freiburg, Basel, Vienna 1968), 438–77Google Scholar.