39 The shadow of Fascism

The First World War left the countries of Europe exhausted, impoverished and embittered—a perfect breeding ground for political extremism. Many returning soldiers felt the politicians had not only abandoned them, but also dishonored their millions of dead comrades. The war had all been for nothing, and with the return of peace the politicians offered no security and no hope. Democracy had failed. What was needed to restore national pride was a strong, charismatic leader who could bend the whole of society to his will.

It was this mood that gave birth to Fascism, an extreme form of militaristic nationalism that took root in a number of European countries in the 1920s and 1930s, most notably in Italy and Germany. Fascism is not a coherent international ideology like Marxism, but tends to take on local characteristics—for example, German Nazis were much more anti-Semitic than the supporters of Mussolini in Italy. But in general Fascists espouse violent authoritarianism, share a hatred of foreigners, ethnic minorities, socialists, communists, liberals and democrats, and yearn for military conquest.

The rise of Mussolini and Hitler Following the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia in 1917, fear of communist revolution propelled many middle-class people in Europe into the arms of the far right. In Italy, the most prominent of the far-right parties was theFasci di Combattimento—the Fascists—who took their name from the fasces, the bundles of rods enclosing an ax carried by magistrates in ancient Rome as a symbol of their authority. In 1922, under their leader Benito Mussolini, a journalist and brilliant orator, 25,000 black-shirted Fascists made their famous “March on Rome,” where King Victor Emmanuel II was persuaded to ask Mussolini to form a government. Mussolini went on to establish a single-party dictatorship, with himself as Il Duce (“the leader”).

“The broad mass of a nation … will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.”

Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1925

In Germany, during the chaos following the end of the First World War, groups from both the communist left and the far right unsuccessfully tried to seize power. In 1923, one of the far-right parties, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party—the Nazis—attempted to overthrow the government of Bavaria in the so-called “Beer Hall Putsch.” The Nazi leader, a former corporal called Adolf Hitler, spent a short time in jail as a consequence, where he wrote Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”), in which he asserted the superiority of the blond, blue-eyed “Aryan” race of the Germanic and Nordic countries over Africans, Slavs, Gypsies, Jews and other Untermenschen (“sub-humans”). Hitler declared that it was the destiny of the German race to create a Lebensraum (“living space”) in the rich agricultural lands of western Russia. In addition, Hitler played on the resentment felt by many Germans at the severity of the Treaty of Versailles, and peddled the popular myth that the German army, far from being defeated in 1918, had been “stabbed in the back” by the democratic politicians.

The Treaty of Versailles

Following its defeat in the First World War, Germany was obliged to sign the punitive Treaty of Versailles, in which it was forced to admit to starting the war. Germany lost all of its overseas possessions and much territory in Europe, including Alsace and Lorraine to France, and a corridor giving Poland access to the Baltic Sea, so splitting Germany in two. The Rhineland was occupied by Allied troops. Conscription was banned, and Germany’s armed forces were limited to 100,000 men, with no tanks, military aircraft or large warships. Finally, Germany was forced to pay vast sums in reparations to Britain and France

With the onset of the Great Depression—which Hitler blamed on Jewish bankers—the Nazis experienced an upswing in their popularity. In the election of 1932 they became the largest party in the Reichstag (the German parliament), and in January 1933 Hitler became chancellor (prime minister). When the Reichstag was burned down in February, the Nazis blamed the communists and proceeded to arrest opposition politicians. By August 1934 Germany had become a single-party dictatorship, with Hitler known simply as the Führer (“leader”). The Nazi Party controlled every aspect of German life, and enforced its will by means of the Gestapo (secret police) and SS paramilitaries. In addition to eliminating their political enemies, the Nazis stepped up their persecution of the country’s Jewish population.

Dreams of empire While Hitler declared the advent of a new German Reich that would last a thousand years, Mussolini sought to build an empire to rival that of ancient Rome, and in 1935 ordered his army to invade the independent African kingdom of Abyssinia (Ethiopia). One of the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles had been the creation of the League of Nations, an international body that was supposed to prevent any future aggression by one state against another, and thus put an end to all wars. However, the League had done little more than express disapproval after Japan occupied Manchuria in 1931, and, following the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, it did nothing apart from imposing ineffective economic sanctions.

Germany had followed Japan out of the League in 1933. The following year Hitler defied the Versailles treaty by reintroducing conscription and began a massive program of rearmament. It was this more than anything that returned the country to full employment during the Great Depression. In 1936 Hitler ordered the German army to reoccupy the Rhineland, and formed an alliance with Mussolini known as the Rome–Berlin Axis.

Hitler then turned his attention to extending the boundaries of the German Reich. Versailles had left many ethnic Germans as minorities within other states, and Hitler exploited this. Anschluss (union) with Austria had been forbidden by the Versailles treaty, but there were many Nazi sympathizers in Austria, and when in March 1938 German troops entered the country, they were widely welcomed. Britain and France protested, but, desperate to avoid another war, did nothing—a policy subsequently dubbed “appeasement.”

Hitler now pressed the case of the ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland area of Czechoslovakia, who demanded to join the Reich. As the crisis deepened, the British and French prime ministers, Neville Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier, joined Hitler and Mussolini in Munich to find a peaceful solution. On September 30, 1938 they signed the Munich Agreement, which—without consulting the Czechoslovak government—transferred the Sudetenland to Germany.

“I believe it is peace for our time.”

Neville Chamberlain, on the Munich Agreement, September 30, 1938

When Hitler proceeded to occupy the remainder of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Chamberlain realized that appeasement was not the answer, and when Hitler began to demand the return of the Polish Corridor and the free city of Danzig (Gdansk), Britain and France declared that they would provide military assistance should Poland’s frontiers be threatened. On September 1, 1939, having agreed a Non-Aggression Pact with the Soviet Union, Hitler called their bluff and launched an invasion of Poland. Two days later, Britain and France declared war.

the condensed idea

Discontent with the outcome of the First World War paved the way for the Second