A Summary of Paxton's "Anatomy of Fascism" - Chapter 4
Getting Power
Introduction
Paxton’s Anatomy of Fascism can be read here. Read my notes on chapter three here.
This chapter covers important details on how exactly fascists gain power. While fascists like to pretend like they seized power themselves by sheer strength, the real answer seems to be that fascists need to be invited into power by conservatives who are unwilling to break deadlock with the left or liberals. Fascism was a deliberate choice these actors made time and time again. An interesting parallel of this though is that when fascists conquer territory, they tend to install local conservatives rather than local fascist movements.
Chapter 4: Getting Power
Mussolini and the “March on Rome”
The idea that the Fascists conquered power by their own effort is a myth. It is literally fascist propaganda.
A central part of this myth is the Fascist “March on Rome.” In 1922, fascists squadristi escalated from attacking socialist offices and homes to occupying entire cities, all without hindrance from authorities. This includes Fiume in March, Ferrara and Bologna in May, Cremona and Ravenna in July, and Trent and Bolzano in October. They attacked and killed people along the way, including socialist organizers and left Catholics.
The annual Fascicst Congress met on October 24th in Naples, its first movement south. Mussolini ordered the Blackshirts to seize public buildings, trains, and converge on Rome.
The March was led by four militants representing different strands of fascism.
Italo Balbo, the war veteran and squadrist boss.
Emilio De Bono, the general
Michele Bianchi, the pro-war ex-syndicalist
Cesare Maria, the monarchist
Mussolini stuck around long enough to do some photo ops, and then waiting in his Milan newspaper office, near Swiss refuge in case the march went wrong. He arrived in Rome on October 30th, not at the head of the Blackshirts, but by railway sleeping car. He met with King Victor Emmanuel III dressed in his black shirt with his morning coat. He is said to have told the king “Sire, forgive my attire, I come from the battlefields.”
The king faced a choice of either dispersing the Blackshirts by force, requiring bloodshed and internal dissension, or accepting Mussolini as the head of state. He picked the latter.
Why did the king not call Mussolini’s bluff? The answer is unclear.
The most likely explanation is that the king was warned by his commander-in-chief, Marshal Armando Diaz, that the troops might fraternize with the fascists if ordered to block them. He might have also feared his cousin, the duke of Aosta, siding with the fascists to make a bid for the throne.
Either way, Mussolini’s bluff worked.
What seems certain is that Mussolini had correctly surmised that the king and the army would not make the hard choice to resist his Blackshirts by force. It was not Fascism’s force that decided the issue, but the conservatives’ unwillingness to risk their force against his. The “March on Rome” was a gigantic bluff that worked, and still works in the general public’s perceptions of Mussolini’s “seizure of power.”
It was only the next day of October 31st, with Mussolini already in office and the fascists fed and given new clothes, did they parade through the streets of Rome. Afterwards, the Fascists worked to mythologize the March as a seizure of power by force. The anniversary of the March was set for October 28th, not the 31st, and made a national holiday. In 1927 it was made the first day of the Fascist New Year, and celebrated the “martyrs” of the March.
Hitler and the “Backstairs Conspiracy”
Immediately after WWI, fascism only gained power in Italy. Elsewhere, except in Russia, traditional elites brought things back to normal in the 1920s. But there were attempts, as Hitler tried a “march” of his own with the Beer Hall Putsch.
On November 8, 1923, during a nationalist rally at a Munich beer hall, Hitler attempted to kidnap the leaders of the Bavarian government to support his coup d’etat of the federal government in Berlin. He believed that the army would support him because the Nazis had the support of the WWI hero General Ludendorff, and the kidnapped officials would turn public support. However, Hitler underestimated the military chain of command. Under orders of gustav von Kahr, the police fired on Nazi marchers on November 9th, possibly returning fire.
Fourteen putschists and four policemen were killed. Hitler was arrested and imprisoned along with other Nazi sympathizers. He wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle) during his year in Landsberg Prison.
The conservative rulers put down the Beer Hall Putsch so thoroughly that Hitler never again tried to take power by force. Although the Nazis never gave up their selective violence, they had to gain power constitutionally.
Hitler found his opportunity in the next crisis: The Great Depression. As democratic governments were paralyzed to deal with the crisis and millions were thrown out of work, the Italian Fascist seemed like a populist way to restore order and national authority.
The Weimar Republic was on shaky grounds. Their constitution was never widely seen as legitimate, as a sign of foreign domination and internal treason. It was undermined by communists and the left and Nazis on the right. To survive, the center needed to build coalitions: socialists with laissez-faire moderates, and clericals with anti-clericals.
The strongest coalition for the Weimar Republic was the Great Coalition under Chancellor Hermann Müller, a reformist Social Democrat, lasting a mere 21 months (June 1928 - March 1930). But such a coalition was unable to agree on key issues, which became more pressing during the Great Depression.
Successful compromises like the Young Plan were unpopular for affirming the need to pay war debts. Compromise was impossible elsewhere, with socialists and Left Catholics wanting greater unemployment benefits, while the middle-class and conservatives focused on balanced budgets for foreign creditors.
The deadlocked coalition was a sign of the lack of political alternatives in the Weimar Republic. And it only got worse through the Great Depression, as the left wanted to raise taxes and increase social spending, while the right wanted to lower taxes and decrease social spending.
The Catholic trade unionist Heinrich Brüning governed as chancellor without a majority, so relied on President Hindenburg to pass legislation by emergency power rather than majority vote.
But then in 1932, in steps Hitler, a figure that the conservatives could finally rally around to form a real majority. The Nazi Party was quite small in the 1928 parliamentary election, getting only 2.8% of the vote. Even in March 1930, it was small. But dissatisfaction with the Young Plan and economy shot it up to become the second largest party.
The myth of Mussolini’s coup also mislead the German Left into passivity against the Nazis. Both assumed the Nazis would attempt a coup of their own. However, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) waited for the coup so they could legally act against the Nazis, as they had done against the Kapp Putsch of 1920. But this never came. The closest thing to a coup was not done by the Nazis, but by the conservative Chancellor Franz von Papen in Prussia of July 1932. The SPD failed to act against Papen, fearing the effects of a general strike in the Great Depression. They were far less prepared against Hitler, who did not strike against the legal system until 1933, after he was already firmly in power.
The Communist Party of Germany (KPD) failed for a different reason. They expected the Nazis to spur on a communist revolution, as people radicalized on the right suddenly swung left. They saw the SPD attempts to salvage democracy and legality as “social fascism,” and even joined the Nazis in a wildcat strike in November 1932. The SPD and the Nazis were equally their enemy, and they would not help the SPD save democratic institutions.
Hitler was in a much better electoral position than Mussolini had been. The government was in shambles and blame was concentrated on half a dozen men. Bringing a fascist into their cabinet was an act of desperation, with a role meant for gentlemen.
Papen had tried to rule as chancellor from July - November 1932. But holding another election let the Nazis become the largest party. He tried to make Hitler vice chancellor, a role with no power. Hitler refused, gambling for actual power.
In the fall of 1932, the Nazis increased their violence to pressure the government, especially after Papen lifted the ban on SA uniforms on June 16, 1932. Over several weeks, 103 people were killed and hundreds were wounded.
While the Nazis are remembered for their violence, Mussolini had relied even more on violence to get power, having a weaker electoral hand. Between 1920-22, estimates of the violence put about 500-600 dead fascists, and 2000 dead anti-fascists and non-fascists. Another 1000 were killed between 1923-26.
In the German election of November 1932, Hitler slipped in power while the communists gained. The electoral deadlock remained. President Hindenburg replaced Papen as chancellor with the technocratic General Kurt von Schleicher. Schleicher worked on job creation programs to fix relations with organized labor, and reached out to the more anti-capitalist Nazi Gregor Strasser. Hitler saw this as a ‘betrayal’ on Strasser’s part.
Hitler had lost his momentum for the first time, putting him in a bind, and the party treasury was nearly empty. But Hitler was rescued by Papen, who resented being replaced by Schleicher. He arranged for Hitler to become chancellor while he became deputy chancellor.
Hindenburg was convinced by his son that Schleicher was planning to depose him and install a military dictatorship. And Papen convinced him that Hitler was the only other conservative option.
Hitler was made chancellor on January 30th, 1933 by this “backstairs conspiracy.”
What Did Not Happen: Election, Coup d’Etat, Solo Triumph
The Fascists and Nazis were not elected into power. The Fascists and Nazis never won a majority of the popular vote. In July 1932, the Nazis only had 37.2% of the vote. In November 1932, they had slipped to 33.1% Hitler being made chancellor helped them, but they still only got 43.9% in March 1933. The Italian Fascists had even less success, only participating in the one free election of March 1921 and getting 35 out of 535 seats.
Nor were the Fascists or Nazis put in power via a coup d’etat. Both used force to destabilize the existing system. They also both used force after taking power to transform the government into a dictatorship. But both Mussolini and Hitler were invited into office by the head of state exercising apparently legitimate constitutional authority, as with King Emmanuel III and President Hindenburg.
No fascist ever took power through an insurrectionary coup.
Authoritarian dictatorships especially crushed any such attempted coups, ironically meaning fascists needed political freedom to win power.
This was seen in oligarchic Romania, which acted three times to suppress Corneliu Codreanu’s Legion of the Archangel Michael.
The Legion was the most religious of all fascist parties, and one of the most ready to murder Jews and bourgeois politicians. Codreanu dazzled the apolitical peasants with fascist imagery, religious slogans, and banners.
The Romanian King Carol II assumed dictatorial power in February 1938. Carol attempted to coopt the Legion into his own “Front of National Rebirth,” and arrested, and then killed, Codreanu in November 1938. The Legion was taken over by Horia Sima, who retaliated with an attempted insurrection in January 1939, which the royal dictatorship repressed.
Carol abdicated power in September 1940 after Germany forced Romania to give up territory to Hungary and Bulgaria. The next Romanian dictator, General (later Marshall) Ion Antonescu, also tried to incorporate the Legion, making it the sole party in the “National Legionary State.”
But Sima set up a “parallel” police and labor organizations against Antonescu, and began confiscating Jewish property. Sima so destabilized the Romanian state and economy, Hitler approved Antonescu curtailing Horia’s power in January 1941.
The Legion responded with a full scale revolt, which was ruthlessly crushed in “‘the most extreme example of a conservative repression of fascism.” Instead, Antonescu set up his own pro-German but non-fascist military dictatorship.
Other fascists coups faired no better. For example, the Austrian Nazi Party successfully murdered Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss in July 1934, but were then repressed by his successor Kurt von Schuschnigg.
Austria instead put in place their own clerical-authoritarian Fatherland Front.
To succeed, fascists need support from conservatives.
Although conservatives might accept violence against socialists and trade unionists, they would not tolerate it against the state. For their part, most fascist leaders have recognized that a seizure of power in the teeth of conservative and military opposition would be possible only with the help of the street, under conditions of social disorder likely to lead to wildcat assaults on private property, social hierarchy, and the state’s monopoly of armed force. A fascist resort to direct action would thus risk conceding advantages to fascism’s principal enemy, the Left, still powerful in the street and workplace in interwar Europe. Such tactics would also alienate those very elements—the army and the police—that the fascists would need later for planning and carrying out aggressive national expansion. Fascist parties, however deep their contempt for conservatives, had no plausible future aligning themselves with any groups who wanted to uproot the bases of conservative power.
Fascism requires the cooperation of conservative elites. We should not buy into a “Fuhrer myth” or “Duce myth,” as if they achieved power on their own, a lie they would have enjoyed far too much.
We must therefore not limit our analysis to the fascists leaders, but also to their indispensable allies.
Forming Alliances
Conservatives were happy to ignore Mussolini and Hitler’s lawbreaking, letting it go unpunished. But once the fascist movements were too large to ignore, they had to make a decision: Do they coopt the fascist movement, or force it back to the margins?
German chancellor Brüning attempted to curb Nazi violence in 1931-32, banning the uniformed actions of the SA. But when Papen became chancellor, he lifted this ban, setting off the most violent period of the constitutional crisis. In Italy, conservative leaders preferred to “transform” Mussolini than discipline him.
Conservative national leaders in both countries decided that what the fascists had to offer outweighed the disadvantages of allowing these ruffians to capture public space from the Left by violence. The nationalist press and conservative leaders in both countries consistently applied a double standard to judging fascist and left-wing violence.
When the constitutional system hit a deadlock, the number of emergency decision-makers narrows. This creates an opening for the fascist bid for power.
Conservatives comply with fascists in several ways.
Firstly, conservatives complied with fascist violence against the Left. This was seen with Papen’s removal of the ban on SA activity, and the Italian police ignoring or aiding Mussolini’s squadristi.
Conservatives also gave fascists respectability. Giolitti made Mussolini respectable by inviting him into his electoral coalition. Similarly, Alfred Hugenberg, leader of the conservative DNVP, both competed with and showed up at rallies with Hitler.
We saw earlier that the fascists received less business support than might be assumed. Before Hitler took power, German big businesses preferred conservatives like von Papen. The Nazis were nearly broke after their disappointing November 1932 election, when Hitler made hisgamble for chancellorship. This of course changed after the Nazis were in power. Businesses flooded them with money in exchange for military contracts and to break up organized labor. Likewise, the Italian Fascists received financial backing for their pro-war efforts, and later from landowners and the military supporting squadrismo.
Fascists and conservatives had to work out a power-sharing compromise. But faced with an alternative of the Left in power or a military dictatorship, they were willing to make a deal.
This increased the “normalization” of fascists, as we saw at the start of the “rooting” stage, further turning away the “purists.” They needed to make a Herrschaftskompromiss, or a “compromise for rule.”
Hitler and Mussolini made different compromises based on their different positions.
Given his weak electoral victory, Mussolini was more beholden to the ras, the regional Fascist chieftains, than Hitler was to the SA. Negotiating with conservatives is also risky for fascist leaders, who might be condemned as “sellouts” by their followers. Mussolini disappointed his followers for not coming to the defense of D’Annunzio at Fiume, and joining Giolitti’s coalition. Mussolini was even forced to temporarily resign from the Fascist leadership for his “pacification pact” with socialists in 1921.
Hitler faced similar difficulties for pursuing legal means to power, and faced opposition from people like Walter Stennes, in charge of the SA in Berlin and eastern Germany. In opposition to their low pay and subordination, the SA occupied Nazi offices in September 1930. Stennes was kicked out of the Nazi party for refusing to uphold a ban on street violence in February 1931, nearly causing the SA to revolt. Five hundred SA radicals were purged.
Hitler also almost lost control of his party at the end of 1932, as his electoral victory began to slip and the Nazis ran out of money. The stakes were also high for conservatives, who now had a chance at power with a mass base of support.
Fascist rule was not inevitable in either case. The conservatives chose to give fascists power instead of taking other available options.
It may well be that a number of factors—the shallowness of liberal traditions, late industrialization, the survival of predemocratic elites, the strength of revolutionary surges, a spasm of revolt against national humiliation—all contributed to the magnitude of the crisis and narrowed the choices available in Italy and Germany. But the conservative leaders rejected other possibilities— governing in coalition with the moderate Left, for instance, or governing under royal or presidential emergency authority (or, in the German case, continuing to do so). They chose the fascist option. The fascist leaders, for their part, accomplished the “normalization” necessary for sharing power. It did not have to turn out that way.
What Fascists Offered the Establishment
In a political crisis with a rising threat of revolution, successful fascist movements offer resources to the failing conservative order. It provides a mass movement to form parliamentary majorities, without making concessions to the Left. This was especially true for Hitler, who had much more electoral success than Mussolini.
The only other successful non-Marxist party was the Catholic Zentrum (Center Party). The Zentrum built up Catholic trade unions, but did not have the broad recruitment of the Nazis.
Fascism also offers fresh faces to the aging establishment. Fascism and communist parties had the youngest members.
Fascism also attracted workers away from Marxism. Marx asserted the workers had no homeland. They were the “workers of the world.” Conservatives could not change this attitude with deference, religion, or schooling. But in World War I, Action Francaise had succeeded in recruiting people to the war through nationalism. Fascism built on this, with the Nazis explicitly naming themselves the German Worker’s Party. This tactic of divide and conquer was far more successful than conservative strategies.
Fascist violence also made themselves the only workable nonsocialist option. Some conservatives were uncomfortable with some anti-capitalist rhetoric. But in practice, the fascists made it clear they would not act against national capitalists. Mussolini had come around to ‘productivism’ and praising industrial heroes. Hitler’s speech at the Dusseldorf Industrialists’ Club on January 26, 1932 also made it clear he was a social darwinist economically too.
Conservatives were convinced they would still control the state, even if the uncouth outsiders were brought into office. Running the state was always the job of the upper class elites before, even in democracies. Hitler and Mussolini were the first lower-class adventurers to reach power in major European countries. Conservatives banked on them having no idea what to do with high office.
Fascism offers conservatives popular support with making concessions to the Left, and therefore without threatening their privilege.
In sum, fascists offered a new recipe for governing with popular support but without any sharing of power with the Left, and without any threat to conservative social and economic privileges and political dominance. The conservatives, for their part, held the keys to the doors of power.
The Prefascist Crisis
Italy and Germany had very different pre-fascist crises: The aftermath of World War I, and the Great Depression. But they share some common elements.
The nation was in the middle of an economic crisis and foreign humiliation that traditional parties could not fix.
Both were stuck in deadlock in their constitutional regime.
A militant Left was rapidly growing and threatening the establishment.
Conservatives refused to work with even the moderate Left.
Conservatives could not govern without fresh reinforcements.
Communist revolution seemed like a real possibility in 1921 Italy and 1932 Germany.
In 1921, Italy had gone through two “red years” after the first postwar election of 1919. The Italian Socialist Party (PSI) tripled its pre-war vote with the “maximalist” wave. Russia had just gone through its own revolution in 1917. But while Italian socialists and communist really had very few plans of actually moving a revolution forward, the fear of such revolution motivated conservatives.
As Federico Chabod observed, middle-class fear of communism peaked in Italy after the “maximalist” wave had already subsided.
In 1930s Germany, the Communist and the Nazis were the only partys increasing their vote. German communist benefitted from unemployment and the failure of the traditional establishment. The Nazi Party was actively planning for counter-action against Communist revolutions, as shown in the “Boxheim” papers.
Meanwhile, in both cases, the democratic government was deadlocked. While fascists encouraged this deadlock, they did not bring this about. Liberalism itself was failing in the strains of World War I and the growth of communism.
However we interpret the deadlock of democratic government, no fascist movement is likely to reach office without it.
Revolution after Power: Germany and Italy
Conservatives gave fascist leaders power quasi-constitutionally in a coalition government. From there, the fascists were able to turn this partial rule into an outright dictatorship. While they gained power through quasi-legal means, they had to turn to outright illegal actions.
Hitler wanted to win another election before seizing power, but he got a lucky break. The opportunity for a coup came with the Reichstag fire on February 28, 1933.
It is commonly believed that the Nazis started the fire, then pinned the blame on a young Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe, who happened to be in the area. However, today most historians think van der Lubbe really did start the fire, although acting alone.
The Nazis used this arson to claim that the communists were launching a coup, which they needed to stop, whipping people into a panic. The conservatives were happy to give up power to stop the communists. President Hindenburg signed a “Decree for the Protection of People and State” the same day, suspending civil liberties to let the police do whatever they needed to arrest suspected “terrorists” (communists) at will.
With no legal support or recourse, few Germans could resist. The new election had already been authorized for March 5. However, the Nazis still failed to get a majority. Instead, they proposed the Enabling Act, or “Law to Relieve the Distress of the People and Reich.”
This would give Hitler dictatorial power for four years, without check from the parliament or president, and promised he would retire afterward.
Without a Nazi majority, they still needed support from their allies to reach the necessary two-thirds vote. They achieved this not only by cracking down on communist opposition, but also with the support of the Catholic Zentrum (Center) and Hugenberg’s nationalists.
The Catholic support reflected Pope Pius XI’s anti-communism, which he saw as a greater threat than Nazism, and his indifference towards political liberty, instead wanting to act through grassroot youth and worker organizations. In return, Hitler promised toleration for Catholic teaching, which he fulfilled on July 20th with a Concordant with the Vatican.
Hitler could now dissolve all other political parties, including the Catholic Zentrum, setting up his one-party dictatorship.
Conservatives continued to turn a blind eye towards the illegal actions of the Nazis, so long as it was directed at the “enemies of the people,” i.e. Jews and Marxists. This included the establishment of the first concentration camp in Dachau in March 1933 for political enemies.
Hitler used his own authority to extend the Enabling Act for another five years in 1937, and then indefinitely due to the war in 1942. The Enabling Act gave Hitler the legal veneer he needed to rule as dictator.
Hitler’s status as dictator let him crack down on internal divisions in the Nazi Party. Members of the Party demanded greater benefits from Hitler, expecting jobs and the spoils of the “second revolution.” SA Leader Ernst Röhm pressured Hitler to turn the Brownshirts into a supplementary armed force to the regular army.
This was settled on June 30, 1934 in the “Night of Long Knives,” as Röhm and other SA leaders were murdered, along with a few other recalcitrant conservatives, generals, and their families. There were between 150 and 200 victims.
The harsh repression combined with the promise of the Nazi spoils kept people in line from there.
Mussolini’s revolution was more gradual, working in coalition between the leader, the party zealots, and the conservative establishment.
For two years, Mussolini ruled as a normal prime minister, in coalition with the nationalists, liberals, and few Populari, and pursuing conventionally conservative policies, like deflation and a balanced budget. But the menace of squardisti remained. And they felt Mussolini was being too soft after the dramatic March on Rome. To send him a message, they acted out in violence, attacking people.
Mussolini sometimes used the threat of Blackshirt violence to his advantage. For example, he passed the Acerbo election law on July 23, 1923. This law gave two thirds of the house seats to the largest party, so long as it received 25% of the vote. Through this, Mussolini got a docile parliament to give his rule an appearance of legitimacy.
This quasi-normal period ended though with the murder of Giacomo Matteotti, a reformist socialist of the Italian Socialist Party. On May 30, 1924, Matteotti gave detailed evidence of Fascist tampering with the recent election. He was kidnapped off the street, thrown into a car, and his body was found several weeks later.
While it’s unclear if he personally ordered the murder, it was obvious that some of Mussolini’s associates had committed the crime. The outcry gave the king and conservatives another chance to kick Mussolini out of office. They chose not to, fearing renewed chaos or the growth of the Left.
After months of stalemate, the ras forced Mussolini’s hand. On December 31, 1924, thirty-three consuls of the Fascist Militia (the converted squadristi) confronted him, demanding he take power or they would reject him.
On January 3, 1925, Mussolini took responsibility for squadristi violence and declared himself dictator. The Mobilized Militia began shutting down and arresting political opposition. Over the next two years, the Fascist parliament passed laws strengthening the administration, replaced local mayors with appointed officials, censored the press, gave monopolies to Fascist labor unions. By 1927, Italy had become a one-party dictatorship.
Conservatives allowed this to happen, seeing their only other options as deadlock or conceding to the Left. They preferred fascism.
Comparisons and Alternatives
Comparison between movements is stronger at this third stage (getting power) than the second (taking root). Many first stage fascist movements (creation) failed, being too weak to matter. Many second stage fascist movements fail to influence elites enough to gain office, or are effectively kept in check by those elites. Only in Germany and Italy did fascism succeed in gaining full, dictatorial power.
Fascism does not survive as second-place within authoritarian regimes. Authoritarian leaders dislike its extravagant claims, impatient violence, and radicalism. This was seen in the bloodiest suppression of fascism within Romania. We will also see it later with Franco and Salazar in Spain and Portugal. It was also true for Vargas in Brazil.
In general, well-entrenched conservative regimes of all sorts have provided unfavorable terrain for fascism to reach power. Either they have repressed what they regarded as fomenters of disorder, or they have preempted fascism’s issues and following for themselves. If conservatives could rule alone, they did.
Fascism can also be established as a puppet regime.
But this is surprisingly uncommon. Mussolini’s soldiers were not organized enough to achieve this. Hitler’s were, but he distrusted foreign fascists.
Nazism, as a recipe for national unity and dynamism, was the last thing he wanted for a country he had conquered and occupied. It was the German Volk’s private pact with history, and Hitler had no intention of exporting it.
Hitler preferred using local conservatives over local fascists. One such example of a fascist puppet was Vidkun Quisling in Norway. Quislin’s “Nasjonal Samling” (NS) only had 2% of the vote in the 1930s, but seized power on April 9, 1940. His regime was deeply hated, and Hitler had him pushed aside a few days later as Josef Terboven took over.
In occupied Holland, Queen Wilhelmina set up a government-in-exile in London. Holland was governed mainly by the Nazi lawyer Arthur Seyss-Inquart. The Dutch fascist Anton Musser of the NSB was given only a minor role.
In Denmark, the Danish fascist leader Frits Clausen played no important role. Instead, King Christian X was kept in place as a conservative Nazi collaborator.
France was Germany’s most valuable conquest. Hitler did not risk it by giving power to local fascist chieflings.
The French defeat so discredited the Third Republic that in Vichy France (the unoccupied south), the elderly World War I Marshall Philippe Pétain was elected and governed through authoritarian rule with the Catholic Church.
Hitler kept some French fascists on standby, but they were unnecessary until nearly the end of the war, when conservatives began to abandon their support for the Vichy government.
The main role Hitler gave homegrown fascists in occupied countries was to recruit local volunteers to freeze and die on the Russian front. Both the Belgian Léon Degrelle and the French fascist Jacques Doriot rendered Hitler this service.
Hitler also did not care about fascism within satellite states. Instead, he chose the conservatives, who did much more to assist him. He did not care about fascism being crushed in Romania, who in turn provided many troops for the Russian front. He left Slovakia under the clerical-authoritarian Slovak Popular Party, who helped in deporting Jews. He left Hungary under the traditional authoritarianism of Admiral Horthy, who had ruled since 1920. He replaced him with the Arrow-Cross movement only when it seemed like they were turning to the Allies. The Soviets conquered them shortly after.
Hitler did let native fascists take over Croatia though. But this was a new creation that didn’t have an established ruling elite in the first place, and in Italy’s realm of influence. The terrorist nationalist Ustasa and its leader Ante Pavelic were put in charge. But even Nazi onlookers were appalled by their slaughter of hundreds of thousands.
None of these puppets in satellite or occupied states could survive one moment after the defeat of their Axis protectors. In Spain and Portugal, by contrast, authoritarian regimes continued to function after 1945, carefully avoiding any hint of fascist trimmings.
Where Hitler used fascist puppets, this was seen as a failure to persuade traditional leaders to collaborate. Occupational fascism mostly exposes the “losers” of the old system. But these seem to be less authentic fascisms, as they are not free to pursue national grandeur and expansionism.
We learn more about fascism from the visible yet failed domestic fascist movements in France and England. Here, conservatives did not feel threatened enough to make alliances with fascists. In Scandinavia, social democrats captured enough farmers and lower-middle-class interests to deny fascists space to grow.
The comparative look at fascism also helps debunk the reductionist theory of fascism as merely the creation of capitalists. This ignores the role of an autonomous popular backing fascism received.
The intelligence of fascist intellectuals and chiefs is not so important. While the intellectual history is an essential first step to delegitimize the current system, it does not create this space for fascism to grow, or set up conservative anxiety.
If conservatives are so anxious though, why not simply use the military to install an autocracy and crackdown on the Left? Some did do this. In Austria, Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss set up an authoritarian Catholic regime, shelling a worker neighborhood in Vienna in February 1934, while keeping the Nazis at bay. In Spain, General Fransico Franco crushed the republicans and Spanish Left, while keeping out the Spanish fascists, the Falange.
But these options require giving the street, the working class, and intelligentsia entirely to the Left, and rule entirely by force. German and Italian conservatives wanted to harness fascist power over public opinion, seeing it as too late to demobilize the masses. The people must therefore be won over to the nationalist cause, rather than return to 19th century deference.
That Hitler and Mussolini reached office in alliance with powerful traditional elites was no mere quirk of German or Italian history. It is hard to believe that fascist parties could come to power any other way. It is possible to imagine other scenarios for a fascist arrival in power, but they are implausible.
Alternative ways for fascists to take power are implausible. The Kornilov scenario in Russia is one potential alternative. General Kornilov was appointed commander-in-chief of the Russian army in August 1917, and he believed Kerensky’s social democracy was ineffective against the rise of socialism in Russia, a classic recipe for fascism. He was stopped by the Bolsheviks though, and given the newness of democracy in Russia, likely would have merely installed a military dictatorship.
We are not required to believe that fascist movements can only come to power in an exact replay of the scenario of Mussolini and Hitler. All that is required to fit our model is polarization, deadlock, mass mobilization against internal and external enemies, and complicity by existing elites.
We could get fascism in other ways. In the Balkans of the 1990s, something similar to fascism arose, but this time from leaders already in power. Post-communist dictators played the card of expansionist nationalism to substitute discredited communism. The Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic’s use of patriotism leading to the Bosnian genocide parallels fascism.
The idea of freely elected fascism also remains, but seems implausible when even the Nazis could not achieve this. What fascists are much better at is making orderly elections impossible. This is also a dangerous game for fascists if they alienate conservative allies. They largely fall to symbolic gestures then.
Electoral success is not particularly important for fascism. But the deadlock and collapse of the liberal order is crucial for giving them space to take over. The role of mature fascism working with the elites is even clearer. In the short term, breaking deadlock with a solution that excludes socialists. In the long term, mass support for rejuvenated national unity and purification of the weak, decadent, and unclean.
Other options were available to the Italian and German elites. In Italy, a coalition with social-Catholic Popolari and reformist socialists could have restored parliamentary majority. It would have taken some work, but it was not even tried because it was not wanted. In Germany, a parliament of social democrats and centrists was possible, but only with strong presidential leadership. In both countries, non-partisan experts and technicians could rework the system to break deadlock.
Even a military dictatorship would have been preferable to Hitler. But the German army did not want that (unlike in Spain), and instead supported fascism. The Italian army was too fearful of the Left to try that.
In each case, it helps to see that political elites make choices that might not be their first preferences. They proceed, from choice to choice, along a path of narrowing options. At each fork in the road, they choose the antisocialist solution.
The fascist seizure of power is a process, as alliances are made and choices cut off. The elites continually picked the fascist option.
Crises of the political and economic system made a space available to fascism, but it was the unfortunate choices by a few powerful Establishment leaders that actually put the fascists into that space.