The Role of Violence in the German and Italian Cases - Research Paper Example

348822 Compare and contrast the role of violence in the German and Italian cases. The following discussion will compare and contrast the role of violence in the German and Italian cases specifically the regimes of Hitler and Mussolini. In many respects there was a great deal of ideological common ground between these two extreme right wing regimes despite Nazi Germany having far more military capability than Fascist Italy. The Nazi regime as will be examined not only held a greater capacity for violence it had a more marked tendency to use it. Italian fascism and German national socialism gained positions of power in many ways because of economic, political, and social disintegration in their respective countries in the wake of the First World War. Arguably desperate times brought desperate measures, and remedies in the shape of fascism and national socialism with a profound inclination to use violence to gain and maintain power. Greater amounts of this discussion are used to describe the role of violence used by the Nazi regime as it was arguably considerably more dangerous to internal and external opponents than Italian fascism. Italian fascism had originally provided the mould for the majority of fascist movements across Europe during the- inter war period, although the German influence was stronger after 1933. Mussolini was a former socialist, an opportunist with panache for slogans with little room for systematic or rational ideology and he was also prepared to use violence. The main exception to Italian influence was Hitler and the Nazi’s with their more odious far right ideology and eventual anti-Semitic, anti-Communist and anti-Slav crusades. Sternhell suggested that nationalism and socialism were the core content of fascism. Mussolini would have counted that by saying image, myth and propaganda were the key elements, all of which combined to make fascism an ideology predisposed to violence.1 The term fascists derived from the name Mussolini used to describe the Revolutionary Action Groups or Fasci he started to establish from 1915. Italy was a state that had been unified by war and then by its efforts to gain colonies in Africa. The country did not have a contemporary reputation for being a military power or its fighting prowess, though it had a modern navy. The most violent feature of Italian society was the organised crime linked with the Mafia. The country was not politically stable with there been tension and sometimes violence between socialists and right wing groups before the First World War. Italy entered the First World War partly as a result of fascist agitation and promises of territorial gains from Britain and France, but had fought badly.2 Being on the winning side meant little to the Italians, their demands for territory from the now defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire were to a large extent ignored. The small amount of land Italy gained had not been considered worth the lives and the money expended during the First World War.3 Italian involvement in the war brought with it political and economic dislocation, as well as widespread social unrest. Consequences that the political establishment and population might have put up with in substantial territorial gains had been made in return. Such conditions gave Mussolini the opportunity to seize power, or to more be precise he was appointed to head the Italian government at the behest of the king.4 Mussolini had used his Black shirts to counter the communist threat through opportunism rather than anything else. The Black Shirts were certainly content to use violence at any given opportunity, and Mussolini always regarded them as being his loyalist supporters. Mussolini however knew that the key to his control of political power rested in the king wanting him to be in charge, he could not use violence as freely as the Nazi regime was able to do. Whilst the king was not averse to the use of Black Shirt violence to intimidate communists and socialists, Mussolini knew that he would not be able to eliminate these groups in large quantities.5 Mussolini may have used violence to intimidate his opponents but it was a political argument that earned his movement royal backing. According to Mussolini, fascism was the only alternative to dying Italian liberal democracy that had failed and the terrifying prospect of communism, which frightened the Italian establishment more than the Black Shirts did. Mussolini had a tendency to attempt to be all things for all people, often saying contradictory things but regarded actions and myths as more important than rational ideology. As Hobsbawm notes ‘theory was not the strong point of movements devoted to the inadequacies of reason and rationalism and the superiority of instinct and will.’6 It would be mistaken not to regard fascism as an ideology, even if not as developed as rival ideologies. Fascism unlike liberalism and socialism did not share progressive ideas springing from the Enlightenment. On the other hand fascists would favour the use of political violence and popular mass movements that could also be traced back to the eighteenth century. Rousseau and Hegel have been regarded as forerunners of fascism through their respective concepts of the ‘general will’ and historical processes. These concepts were also adopted by the left, particularly Marx and Engels.7 It is highly likely that Rousseau would have been alarmed of the misuse of his concepts to justify the actions of fascists, Nazi’s, and also communists. The idea of the ‘general will’ had not meant to be used for the atrocities of Hitler or the bloody purges of Stalin. As early as the 1890s the French socialist Maurice Barres had coined the phrase ‘National Socialism’ later, given a more sinister tone by Hitler and the Nazis. They wanted to maintain society not introduce socialism, unity of the nation rather than unity of the working classes. The idea of the nation led to racist and anti-Semitic beliefs rather than the differing Universalist concepts of liberals and socialists.8 Eatwell observes that initial fascist movements emerged due to a crisis within both the left and right during and following the First World War. These groups and movements adopted ideas and positions from left and right and turned them into their own set of economic, political, and social policies. Despite stressing some left wing elements, fascism was more inclined towards and influenced by the right, and an aggressive sense of nationalism. The success of the October Revolution in the Soviet Union and also other failed revolutions scared many right wingers to join the Italian fascists and later the Nazis in Germany to counteract the communist threat. Both Mussolini and Hitler manipulated other right wing groups on their way to power, as well as the astute use of, or threatened use of paramilitary violence. The Italian Fascists maximised the threat of violence in their pursuit of gaining power. On the other the Nazi party distanced itself from the use of violence after the failure of the Munich Putsch in 1923. Hitler after his release from jail always stressed that the Nazi party would only ever take power through constitutional and democratic means instead of armed revolution or a coup. Hitler argued that the SA and the SS were needed to protect him and the other Nazi party leaders from the Communist paramilitaries instead of taking power.9 Amongst those on the left it was wondered why revolution had failed to spread from the Soviet Union. As well s fascism, trade union synicalist movements and Christian democracy emerged at the start of the inter-war period. The severe economic and political dislocations of the early 1920s and following the economic crash of 1929 seemed to present an opportunity to the Communists. Mussolini and Hitler instead took these opportunities. Both were happy to use the power of the state to achieve their military, political and economic aims. Fascism did not really use socialism as such; its ideas about society and economics were not the same as socialists. Even the more left ward-leaning fascists were anti-capitalist. They may have wanted to challenge, remove, or exploit capitalist elites but they did not wish to remove capitalism completely. Fascists were also intent on recording society, making the nation it’s basis, race or nationality rather than class or division of labour or wealth.10 Fascism did indeed combine elements of nationalism and socialism but also conservatism, although fascists wished to include most of society within the people or nation they would exclude their opponents. Mussolini was more inclusive than the Nazis, those that were excluded were likely to be imprisoned or exiled. In Fascist Italy it was possible for Jews to be citizens and even members of the party, in Germany Jews were stripped of their citizenship, property, businesses and eventually their lives. For Hitler only extermination was the option for internal and external opponents of the German Volk. Fascism was full of paradox, some elements were rational whilst others were irrational. Some elements were intended to transform others to preserve or protect. Fascism often found the use of myths to further its aims more useful than rational argument. Mussolini posed as the macho leader of an Italian nation that would eventually show its military prowess. Violence was necessary to obtain, maintain and further political power, to threaten its use was a justifiable method of getting what he wanted home or abroad. Force of arms was the ultimate test of strength, Hitler believed that life was full of struggles for nations as well as individuals.11 The fascist regime in Italy may have used violent rhetoric and aggressive language yet it was authoritarian rather than markedly totalitarian in its character. Unlike the Nazi regime it never developed effective secret police, or overbearing party structures. Mussolini and his party leadership may have talked tough yet they were not as violent as the Nazi regime in Germany was. The fascist regime was not committed to the mass use of violence to achieve its political and social objectives on a permanent basis, whilst it might reserve the right to use it for the purpose of intimidation. The fascists in Italy had used violence and the threat of violence to gain political power in the first place. The fascist paramilitaries, the Black Shirts had used violence and intimidation as a means of undermining political stability, and then later as a means of limiting opposition to the regime.12 The Italians had started the Second World War allied to Nazi Germany and only joined in June 1940 to attack France, after Mussolini’s ousting from power they also faced occupation by the German army. After being rescued Mussolini controlled a small revised fascist state called the Italian Social Republic, which were involved in a civil war in the north against the resistance. 13 In Italy the Communists were never repressed as violently or effectively as they were in Germany. Even as an underground organisation the Italian Communist Party still had 5,000 members when Mussolini was at the height of his power. The ability of the Italian communist party survive the mild persecutions of the Mussolini regime was in stark contrast to what happened to the Communist and Social Democratic opposition under the Nazi regime. The Italian Communists had1.7 million members in 1945 by the time the war finished. The Italian fascists had also prevented the Germans from including Italian Jews in the Holocaust, which accounts for the low number of them that died in the Nazi concentration camps.14 Germany unlike Italy had been defeated in the First World War, and that traumatic defeat had drastic consequences for the stability of the Weimar Republic. Germany was a country that had a stronger military tradition than the Italians were. Both countries had been unified through war, yet the new Germany inherited the militarism and the ardent nationalism of its biggest component state, Prussia. The factor that would turn German militarism and nationalism into such a violent factor was defeat in the First World War. Eventually the Nazi party and Adolf Hitler would be the beneficiaries of the instability of the Weimar Republic, and use violence on an unprecedented scale.15 Germany had some of the most assimilated Jewish communities in Europe that had made many contributions to Germany's society and economy. When the Nazis took office the Jewish population in Germany according to the census of 1933 was 499, 682.16 So how was the Nazis party able to turn the German people against the Jews and towards genocidal war on the Eastern Front? Without doubt Hitler and his Nazis regime took their anti-Semitic policy to a much greater extreme than any other anti-Semitic policy or programme carried out before or since. Hitler (perhaps rarely for a politician) had the power and the means to carry out the policies he wanted to. He was not a man given to compromise, and would only do so to gain an advantage or bide his time until he could do exactly as he wanted. It is clear that Hitler and his subordinates fully intended to carry out the 'Final Solution' that led to the deaths of upwards of six million Jews.17 The Nazis regime carried out mass murder simply because Hitler wanted it done out of hatred and he knew that people would do it for him, either through conviction or by obeying orders.18 What is not so clear is how much support was given by the German people aside from the members of the SS, the Gestapo, and the armed forces carrying out their orders with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Many Germans who took part in the Holocaust claimed that they were only following orders and that they could not have stopped their regime's murderous anti-Semitic policy. It has also often been claimed that the German army was not as involved in the policy as the SS or the Gestapo.19 The fate of the Jewish people of Germany and later the parts of Europe occupied by the Germans is often cited as a prime example of the excessively murderous and the genocidal violent nature of the Nazi regime. Prior to the Nazis regime taking power in 1933, the German people were not particularly noted for their anti-Semitism, although there was a fringe on the Far right that that included the Nazis party that had frequently declared their hatred of the Jews. Indeed it can be argued that the Jews had played a key role in building up the power of Prussia, and subsequently had a greater influence in a united Germany than their small percentage of the German population might have suggested possible. The Jews were hardworking and loyal members of German society that had added to its cultural achievements, and had done their share of fighting in the First Word War. Hitler was able to turn them into the scapegoats for all of Germany’s inter-war failures and weaknesses. It was Nazi propaganda that justified mass anti-Semitic violence.20 In fact anti-Semitism had been more apparent in countries such as a Russia, France, Poland and Hitler's homeland of Austria. When the Nazis actually started their genocide after invading Poland it surprised some of the Polish Jews who had feared their own compatriots more than the Germans.21 Indeed Hitler's own anti-Semitism dated back to Vienna before the outbreak of the First World War. From his time in Vienna Hitler had drawn conclusions about race, religion and politics. Firstly he concluded that Germans were part of a master race and that Jews were a separate and inferior race. Hitler had also decided that parliamentary democracy was flawed and that people could be controlled by effective propaganda.22 Under normal circumstances the Nazis would not have expected to gain power, but conditions in the Weimar republic were hardly normal in the early 1930s. And in Hitler the Nazis party had a leader whose charisma, astuteness and force of will exploited its opportunities and manipulated the German people to carry out his will. The Nazis party while it did not enough votes to form a majority government had attracted millions of votes and millions of members all of who would support the regime and presumably its policies. Where the constitutional political parties had failed the communists and the Nazis party offered radical solutions. Aside from his not inconsiderable charisma Hitler held up scapegoats for Germany's woes, the Socialists, the communists and the Jews who he often derided as the November Criminals. That of course was not the case, Germany lost the First World War due to fighting on two fronts for most of it, the Royal Navy blockade and collapsing morale after Allied successes on the Western Front. German Jews had also played their part in their country's war effort. 23 Faced with the prospect of a communist take over and suffering from six million unemployed many Germans turned to the Nazi party seeing Hitler's anti-Semitic policy as an acceptable price for lower unemployment, political stability and increased national prestige.24 Hitler it seems intended to carry out the most extreme anti-Semitic policy possible but stressed the Nazi party’s anti-communism to gain and keep public popularity and the support of big business. To appeal to big businesses Hitler stressed that the Nazi party would conserve capitalism and would only use violence in a very controlled manner to curb socialism and communism. It was the hard core of the party membership that pushed for more radical action. Whilst the German public may or may not have thought the Nuremburg Laws of 1935 went far enough, party members, the SS and the SA did not25 The Nuremburg Laws and the growing persecution meant a large number of Jews fled Germany, almost 200,000 did so before 1939. Not only was propaganda used to convince enough Germans to support state sponsored anti-Semitism direct intimidation by the SA in response to the murder of a German diplomat in France by an exiled German Jew, protesting against Nazi treatment of his Jewish compatriots. In a vicious response orchestrated by the Gestapo, youths and louts joined the SA in attacking Jews and their property nation wide on Kristallnacht (literally Crystal Night because of the huge number of broken windows) in early November 1938. A hundred Jews were killed and others suffered untold property damage on top of which the regime fined them a billion marks in compensation for the diplomat. Basically the Jews were paying for them to get murdered, get put in death camps and have their homes and shops damaged or destroyed. Kristalnacht produced unfavourable press abroad so Hitler restrained the SA, the SS, and the Gestapo from further aggressive displays of anti-Semitism until he considered it apt.26 It is hardly credible to state that Germans who supported Nazis anti-Semitism and the violence connected with it because they were not aware of the extent to which Hitler would take that policy. His hatred of Jews was set out in Mein Kampf with his other ideas on the German master race and how that race can take its rightful dominant position. He suggests that the pain of German defeat would have been lessened with the killing of up to fifteen thousand Jews, and perhaps prophetically mentioned the use of poison gas. On the road to power Hitler did not reveal further how far he would take his anti-Semitism but given the availability of Mein Kampf nobody could doubt his intentions even if they doubted his ability to carry them out.27 The Nazis party did not hide its anti-Semitic beliefs instead it happily used anti-Semitic language and propaganda whilst the brown shirted SA storm troupers were not averse to breaking the windows of Jewish shops in between fighting their communist counterparts. Perhaps things may have been different if Hindenburg had followed the example of the Prussian government and banned Nazis party rallies and the SA from wearing their brown shirted uniforms and forming groups in public. The Republican government removing the Prussian administration in 1932 aided the Nazis party.28 Once in power Hitler and Goebbels were able to use the full force of the state media to reinforce anti-Semitism as well as carrying out measures such as sacking Jewish teachers, civil servants and those in the armed forces. Hitler breaking up the SA leadership in June 1934 may have surprised some Jews not to mention the SA, yet it was another astute move on his part. For the so called Night of the Long Knives gained him the full backing of the army which he needed in the short term to replace President Hindenburg as Head of State, and in the long term for his expansionist foreign policy and his anti-Semitic policy to be carried out.29 For without the army's full support the regime would have been vulnerable, the generals were the only ones that could have stopped Hitler and none of them tried until the bomb plot of July 1944. It was the Wehrmacht's victories between 1939 and 1942 that brought much of the Jews in Europe directly under Nazis rule, the war on the Eastern front providing enough cover to conceal the death camps. Units of the Wehrmacht certainly played their part in rounding up Jews, even where they less willing to do so they did not prevent the SS or Gestapo from doing so. The demise of Rohm and the leadership of the SA had not only helped win over the army it had brought Himmler, head of the SS further into prominence within the Nazis regime. He was the one man after Hitler most zealous in the regime's hatred of the Jews. That was particularly unfortunate for the Jews as he used his strong administrative skills to organise the Final Solution with support from Germans and collaborators in occupied countries.30 Himmler unlike Hitler mentioned in public or at least too senior SS officers the measures taken to solve the Jewish problem. Himmler admitted the sole aim of Nazis anti-Semitism was the 'extermination of the Jewish people.'31 No written orders were ever given so as not to incriminate Hitler or the party, history would either condone or condemn their actions. If Hitler had won the war the only European Jews to survive would have been those that lived in Britain and Ireland or those that immigrated to Palestine before the British restricted entry (it was mandated to the British by the League of Nations).32 Hitler and his regime were successful in indoctrinating the German people to believe in their own racial purity and the racial impurity and inferiority of the Jews and the Slavs through the media, Nazis party rallies, schools and the Hitler Youth. Germans were to treat each other and their fellow Western Europeans with respect and morality but it was not morally wrong to mistreat Jews, Slavs, and other undesirable groups such as gypsies. Thus indoctrinated enough of the German people supported anti-Semitic policy to carry it out and enough remained too apathetic to oppose it. German soldiers also made an oath to serve Adolf Hitler as well as their country. Given the seriousness in which the German army took its oaths it is no surprise how far many of its men were prepared to go in order to carry out the Fuhrer's wishes. Dedication to the Fuhrer was even greater amongst the SS and Gestapo. Jewish women treated as harshly as Jewish men although they received special treatment in being forcibly sterilised or killed earlier at the death camps if they had young babies or were pregnant.33 To a certain extent the German people were also used to authoritarian government and a Prussian tradition of obeying orders without question, the national leader was always right.34 The success of Nazis indoctrination of anti-Semitism into the majority of the German population can be shown by the zeal of many whom took part in the genocide and the almost complete absence of any Germans willing to help any Jews to escape. It did not take much to progress from breaking shop windows and daubing vile anti-Semitic graffiti on walls to go to the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Bukenwald.35 Publicly the Nazis regime maintained that its treatment of the Jews was meant to degrade them into second class citizens and house them into ghettos from where they were transported east to resettlement camps. Newsreels were broadcast of these camps to reassure the Jews and those Germans that did not wish to know or simply could not believe that their government could carry out genocide.36 These camps however were too large with too many people running and guarding them to be have stayed secret from the entire German public. Transporting people to the camps also used up a great deal of the train networks capacity; enough eyewitnesses must have seen trains full of people returning empty to guess their awful fate. The transport would have been better used to reinforce and supply German frontline units especially in the east.37 It must be remembered that just because Germans happened to be in the SS, the Gestapo or the army when they carried out the regime’s policy that they were Germans first and that their occupation came second.38 Rabid anti-Semitism actually weakened the German war effort, the SS, the army or the Police battalions would seize Jewish workers even if they carried out essential work. Not that the rail workers that stole off their Jewish and non-Jewish victims minded, personal gain was another motive for supporting the regime's policy.39 It was not only individuals that gained financially from supporting the regime's anti-Semitic policy, private companies, the SS, and the regime itself gained forced labour and plundered their victims. Gold, currency and other valuables were used by the German Reichsbank to buy weapons and iron ore from the officially neutral Swedes, most of that money originated from the concentration camps. After the war leading bank officials were jailed for profiting from war crimes and crimes against humanity.40 Amongst the Germans that most willingly supported and carried out the Nazis anti-Semitic policy were the Police battalions. These Police battalions were part of the Order Police and were prolific in the round up, deportation or execution of European Jews. They were adept at finding the Jews that had got wind of the holocaust and had escaped from the ghettos the German authorities had them live in. These Police battalions were renowned for their brutality (it was something they prided themselves on) and were active across all the Nazis occupied territories especially in Poland, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.41 The efficient administrators that accompanied them from Germany assisted the work of the extermination squads, mass murder controlled by the bureaucracy. The Germans did not always have to work too hard to capture Jews, the naivety of some Jews in Kiev for example that they going to be resettled and collaborators helped them in countries such as Latvia. The holocaust was stepped up with the conquests of Poland and the Soviet Union as that is a where a majority of Jews lived. In Poland there were 3.3 million Jews in 1939 and a least 3 million more in the Soviet Union.42 The Soviet Jews were despised for being Jews and possibly communists as well by the Germans. As Soviet citizens both Jewish and non-Jewish became aware of Nazi policies of extermination they became more determined to resist the advance of the invaders. 43 Around 2 million Soviet Jews were killed amongst at least 11 million Soviet citizens killed by the Germans. Total Soviet losses would have been 20 million. The German people had also supported the war against the Soviet Union even if they were afraid of being defeated.44 Bibliography Bourne, J, Liddle, P. & Whitehead, I. the Great World War 1914-45 - Who won? Who lost? (2000) Harper Collins Publishers, London Brendon, P. the Dark Valley – A Panorama of the 1930s (2000) Jonathan Cape, London Bullock, A. Hitler and Stalin - Parallel Lives (1991) Harper Collins, London Clark C, Iron Kingdom, the Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600 – 1947 (2007), Penguin, London Dawidowicz, L. S. the War against the Jews 1933-45 (1987) Penguin, London Eatwell, R Fascism A History Vintage London 1995 Eatwell, R and Wright, A. Contemporary Political Ideologies 2nd edition Continuum London, Reprinted 2003. Fullbrook, M. the Fontana History of Germany 1918-1990 the Divided Nation (1991) Fontana Press, London Ginsborg, P. A History of Contemporary Italy 1943-1980 (1990) Penguin Group, London. Goldhagen Hitler's willing Executioners - Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (1996) Little, Brown and Company, London. Hobsbawm, E. Age of Extremes - The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991 (1994) Kirk, The Longman Companion to Nazis Germany (1995) Longman, London Padfield, P. Himmler - Reichs Fuhrer-SS (2001) Cassell & Co, London Roberts J.M, (1996) A History of Europe, Penguin, London Service, R. A History of Modern Russia – From Nicholas II to Putin (2003, new edition) Penguin Books, London Stern, J. P. Hitler The Fuhrer and the People (Revised Edition 1990) Fontana Press, London Thurlow, R. Perspectives in History – Fascism (1999) Vadney, T.E The World Since 1945, second edition (1992) Woodruff W, A concise History of the Modern world (2005) Pimlico, London Read More