Twentieth century Europe saw a rise in fascist regimes as the countries began to deal with the devastation caused by World War One. The two most influential fascist governments were the Italian fascists led by Benito Mussolini and the German fascists (the Nazi party) led by Adolf Hitler. Both of these governments had many similarities and differences that made the two factions separate from one another. This paper will be comparing and contrasting Italian and German fascism in terms of party platforms, leadership styles, social programs related to women, youth, and ethnic/religious outsiders, and foreign policy.
Fascism is generally a single-party governmental system led by a dictator seeking unity. This unity could be brought about by forcing people to submit to the national interest of the state instead of the personal self interest. Both the Italian and German fascist regimes outlawed all other political parties early on in their creation; Mussolini in 1926, Hitler in 1933.1 Both sects also functioned as dictatorships. Mussolini adhered to the “leadership principle” which was, according to Brose, “rule by one man through one party.”2 Mussolini, also known as Il Duce, was the head of the party and the government, being made the Prime Minister after the March on Rome in 1922. His German counterpart, known as the Fuhrer, was the head of the Nazi party, and was soon made Chancellor and President. While the Italians and Germans agreed on the single-party system and a government led by one supreme leader, they disagreed with the unity that the people submitted to. On the one hand, Italian fascism made people subordinate to the unity of the state. However, Hitler saw unity in different terms. The German fascists made people subordinate to the unity of the pure German race. While Mussolini was concerned with unity of his people in order to suppress class conflict, Hitler was concerned with the racial unity of his people. This racial unity of the pure German race (the Aryan race) led to the genocide of Jews and many others in the brutal Holocaust.
The party platforms of the two fascist regimes are vastly different from each other. The party platform of the Italian fascists was first outlined in The Manifesto of the Fascist Struggle. This early work advocated the womens vote, minimum wage, and the eight hour work day.3 This work was later amended and the Doctrine of Fascism was created. This piece of work gave support to national unity not based on class, became more pro-monarch, and in favor of private property. Conversely, the German fascist party platform was also concerned with national unity but in the form pan-Germanism. The German fascists were also totalitarian and anti-semitic. Both sects did however, suppress all class struggles and banned all trade and labor unions.4
The two fascist groups also had similarities in their social programs related to women. In both nations, men and women were forced into traditional gender roles. While men were expected to the breadwinners and soldiers, women were forced out of their jobs (if they had one) and back into the home to raise children. These gender roles were backed, in Italy, by both Mussolini and the Catholic Church, who both feared that “feminism” would equate women having freedom of choice and would result in a “loss in female decorum and dedication to procreation.”5 Therefore, women were expected to have as many children as possible. This ideal was only reinforced with governmental loans for marriages and births, as well as paid maternity leaves, and tax breaks for large families. With these incentives and the insistence of the Catholic Church, there was a ban on birth control and anti-abortion laws were created.6 However, women still opted to have abortions, even though it was seen as a sin and an illegal act, because they could not afford to have more children (either emotionally, physically, or economically). R.J.B. Bosworth, in his book Mussolini's Italy: Life Under the Fascist Dictatorship, describes alternative methods women used to terminate pregnancies: “falling off a bicycle...imbibing large quantities of purgatives...knitting needles...taking hot baths...” and many more.7 Clearly some Italian women were willing to do almost anything not to bring more children into the fascist society, but this did not deter Il Duce himself from wanting a large Italian state full of devoted Italian fascists.
Hitler and the German fascists also had similar programs connected to women. According to author Robert Brady, German women had two functions that she was to perform for the nation. “She must generate and nourish the bodies of its children, and she must shape the infantile mind to accept Nazi ideas and attitudes in all things.”8 German women were encouraged to have as many children as possible, and were also enticed by family allowances and marriage loans. The Germans also banned abortion like their Italian counterparts.9 Hitler too, wanted a large German empire full of pure Germans. This is one of the reasons why marriage and sexual intercourse between Aryans and the “undesirables” (the Jews, Gypsies, Blacks, and others) was strictly forbidden. Hitler hoped to rid the world of the “undesirables;” by passing these laws along with the others mandated in the Nuremberg Laws, he was on his way to doing so.
Both the Italian fascists and the German fascists had organizations targeted specifically at the youth of the nations. Mussolini created several youth organizations, divided by age and gender. From their creation in 1926 until 1937, some 6.7 million youth were involved in these different youth groups.10 The youth groups generally went to camps where “sports and other leisure activities were meant always to have a militant, pugnacious and xenophobic purpose. There was quite a bit of marching, sounding of trumpets, roll-calls and other conduct mimicking that of real soldiers.”11 This fascist training was also prevalent in Italian schools. There were fascist textbooks for students and teachers who were required to dress in military uniform in order to “train Italian children in a 'Fascist manner.'”12 The youth groups and camps, along with the schools, were intended to indoctrinate the younger generation into the new fascist regime controlled by Mussolini.
Hitler also had his opportunity to brain-wash the youth of the Nazi state. The Germans, like the Italians, used both the schools and youth organizations to persuade young peoples minds. Schools soon became “Nazified”13 and youth groups began extensive recruiting. The most prominent groups were the Hitler Youth (HJ) for boys fourteen and older, and the League of German Girls (BDM) for girls fourteen and older. At first, these two youth groups (along with their younger counterparts) recruited on a volunteer basis. Soon, the Hitler Youth “became a department of state and was officially recognized as representing all youth groups.”14 The voluntary enrollment became mandatory by the Hitler Youth Law of March 1939. By this time, the number of members of the Hitler Youth totaled 7.5 million, and the League of German Girls totaled 2 million.15 While the boys in the Hitler Youth were having military training that included “shooting practice, field maneuvers, [and] courses for radio operators...”16 girls in the League of German Girls (and the Faith and Beauty organization for girls seventeen and older) were being taught “physical education, domestic science and preparation for marriage.”17 Through a vast magnitude of propaganda used on the young people in Nazi Germany, Hitler had the youth on his side.
It is certain that both of the fascist regimes did not treat ethnic or religious outsiders kindly. This is clearly seen in Hitler's annihilation of the Jews and other minorities including the handicapped, mentally ill, gypsies, religious dissenters such as Jehovah Witnesses, and homosexuals during the Holocaust. Hitler and the German fascists were trying to create an ethnically pure Aryan race, and therefore had to rid the world of the impure peoples. Hitler was also very much anti-clerical, both anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic, having sent many priests to the dreaded concentration camps.
While Hitler led a fascist regime that was largely based on racism, Mussolini differed slightly. It is evident that Mussolini did encourage racist ideas about blacks, Arabs, and Slavs, and was clearly anti-Semitic however, the Italian regime never went to the extreme to spout that there was an ethnically pure race as Hitler and the German fascists believed. The Italian fascists, like the German fascists, participated in a form of ethnic cleansing in Trieste, a town annexed by Italy after the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after WWI. Trieste had a significant population of Slovenes that were persecuted by the Italian fascist regime. This culminated in 1920 of the burning of the Narodni Dom (“National House,”) the headquarters of the Trieste Slovenes.18 And while Mussolini was an atheist when he first began, he quickly advocated the Roman Catholic Church in order to gain political backing. Instead of persecuting the Church as Hitler did, Mussolini used the Church to his own benefit in order to promote his fascist regime.
Both the Italian and German fascists had an extensive foreign policy that consisted of aggressive nationalism coupled with imperialism. For the Italian fascists, this foreign policy took the form of invading and controlling certain areas near the Mediterranean Sea in order to create a larger Italian Kingdom. This is seen with Mussolini's invasion of the small Greek island of Corfu in 1923, the takeover of Albania in 1939, the conquest of Ethiopia from 1935-36, and the rule and genocide in the colony of Italian North Africa (modern-day Libya) in the 1930s.19 These immense territorial gains only helped Mussolini and the fascists consolidate power in order to become more authoritarian.
Likewise, Hitler was also very aggressive and imperialistic in his foreign policy. Based on the need for lebensraum or living space, the German fascists sought to take over most of Eastern Europe, at the expense of the Soviet Union. This was first seen with the occupation of Poland in 1939. Poland was invaded by Germany from the north, south, and west, while the Soviet Union (in accordance to the Nazi-Soviet Pact) attacked from the east. After Polish forces were compelled to withdraw, the Nazis and Soviets divided the land into individual spheres of influence. Eventually, Hitler needed more lebensraum for the German people, and with Operation Barbarossa in 1941 (and the breaking of the Nazi-Soviet Pact) decided to try and take the European areas of the Soviet Union. Although ultimately unsuccessful, Hitler and his forces took over the entirety of Poland, Ukraine, and major portions of the European bloc of the Soviet Union up to Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad. The Soviet Union conclusively pushed back and defeated Hitlers fascist regime, which led to the demise of the Nazis.
Italian and German fascism have many similarities in the way they operated. They had a similar foreign policy that consisted of aggressive nationalism and imperialism. They also treated outsiders similarly, both participating in different forms of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Both regimes also developed strong propagandist policies toward youth in order to indoctrinate them into the new fascist regime. Both the Italians and the Germans promoted traditional gender roles and attempted to create large fascist countries by having women have many children, outlawing forms of birth control and creating anti-abortion laws. Clearly, both Mussolini and Hitler took to heart the idea of a fascist regime being “rule by one man through one party.” While the German fascists created their regime by following the Italians example, Hitler and the Germans were much more radical in their implementation of certain policies, such as the creation of the Holocaust. However despite their minor differences, it is through comparing and contrasting the two regimes that one discovers how similar the two were to each other.
1Eric Dorn Brose, A History of Europe in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 189.
2Ibid, 193.
3Fascist Manifesto (web page, 2008); available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manifesto_of_the_Fascist_Struggle
4Brose, 197 – 98.
5R. J. B. Bosworth, Mussolini's Italy: Life under the Dictatorship 1915 – 1945 (New York: The Penguin Press, 2006), 267.
6Brose, 195.
7Bosworth, 266.
8Robert A. Brady, The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism (London: Vicotr Gollancz Ltd., 1937), 186.
9Brose, 198.
10Bosworth, 289.
11Ibid, 291.
12Ibid, 294.
13Pierre Aycoberry, The Social History of the Third Reich: 1933 – 1945 (New York: The New Press, 1999), 176.
14David Welch, The Hitler Conspiracies: Secrets and Lies behind the Rise and Fall of the Nazi Party (Washington, D.C.: Brassey's Inc., 2001), 121.
15Ibid, 120 – 22.
16Aycoberry, 183.
17Welch, 122.
18Bosworth, 157.
19Ibid, 282; 388; 387; 381.
