FASCISM AND NAZISM-DISEASES OF MONARCHY
By GUGLIELMO FERRERO
COMPARISONS have often been drawn in Europe between Fascism and Nazism. Are they identical or different ? And if the latter, in what respect do they differ ? Opinions are divided. There are admirers of Nazism who detest Fascism, and admirers of Fascism who detest Nazism. There are others who either admire or detest Nazism and Fascism alike. The passions which the two parties set in motion, the ideas they profess, the methods of government they employ, are the same. It is a mixture of vulgarized Bismarckism and modernized Bonapartism. Their State Socialism, their militarism, their nationalism are a kind of music-hall Bismarckism. The coercive organization of the universal suffrage system, the perpetual galvanization of the people and its artificial enthusiasm, are the inventions of the two Bonapartes. Bonaparte and Bismarck are resurrected in both movements, distorted by an almost monstrous exaggeration.
But there are differences also. The chief is that Nazism has become in Germany a great mass movement and that at a certain epoch in 1931 and 1932 it swung into line behind it almost half Germany, while Fascism in Italy has never had any important following among the masses—the peasants, the workers, the middle classes. In 1921, fourteen or fifteen months before Fascism was called to power, M. Giolitti, speaking in the Chamber in his capacity of Minister of the Interior, stated that the enrolled members of the Fasci were 100,000. The organization was powerful, but apart from this organiza- tion Fascism commanded no wide sympathy in the country, except among the rich, who are less numerous in Italy than in many other countries. The situation of Fascism had not changed much in October, 1922, when it was called to power. It was a small minority, ably organized, but regarded by the great mass of the people with hostility, with mistrust, or with indifference.
This difference is most important. It explains the different position and evolution of the two parties. For Fascism the great difficulty was to attain power, for that depended on the King alone. It would have been enough for him in October, 1922, at the moment of the march on Rome, to sign the decree of state of siege, for Fascism to be compelled to renounce its political ambitions for ever. It possessed no instrument to compel the Government to yield power to it, but once it had attained power its task was relatively simple. The country asked nothing of it except to be left unharried and untroubled. All the new Government had to do fundamentally was to satisfy the thirty or forty thousand people who had helped it to achieve, and could help it to retain, supremacy—which was easy enough. for a dictatorship set up over a country of 40 million people.
The position of Nazism was just the opposite. It was relatively easy for it to gain possession of the State, for the immense following it won in the country was a for- midable instrument wherewith to compel President Hindenburg to yield authority to it. Hindenburg was an opponent of Nazism, but he was compelled after long resistance to call it to power at the beginning of 1933, after having attempted every other possible combination, because the Nazis on the one side and the Communists on t he other formed between them a majority of the Chamber and made it impossible for parliamentary government to function on an ordinary majority basis. But as soon as it was installed in power Nazism found itself faced with a terrible difficulty which Fascism never had to confront. It had achieved immense popularity by exciting every kind of expectation and had now to make good its promises—in other words, to perform a miracle.
Fascism and Nazism are both today at grips with a violent crisis of discontent caused by the results of their policy, but while this crisis has arisen in Italy only after twelve years, in Germany it has arisen after a year and a half, the reason being that the Italian people never hoped anything of Fascism, while the German people hoped miracles of Nazism. A second and highly important difference between the situation of the two parties is that Italy is still a monarchy, while Germany is already a republic. This difference makes the position of Fascism much stronger than that of Nazism. The chief reason why the Fascist movement was able to establish itself so easily is that it was actively supported by the old monarchic hierarchy. It was able to gain complete control of the army, the gendarmerie, the magistracy, the civil service and the police of the old regime ; for it was, after all, simply a continuation of that regime with all its defects accentuated. The old hierarchy served and supported it because it never believed in its revolutionary programme.
It is quite otherwise in Germany. Here the revolu- tionary programme is more serious, and what remains of the ancient hierarchy maintains in regard to Nazism an attitude of distrustful collaboration. In Italy Fascism exploits and saps the prestige and the legitimacy of the monarchy, which is the key of the old hierarchy, and drags it down into its own lawlessness. In Germany Hitler has no longer this heritage from the past to liquidate. He is trying to secure for the Nazis the support of what remains of the old hierarchy by laying hold, by a new coup d'etat, of the Presidency of the republic—a procedure much more perilous.
I believe that in events which are now shaping them- selves the consequences of these differences will be revealed. At bottom these differences derive from a fun- damental fact of the highest importance but commonly overlooked—namely, that all the movements which have resulted in so many countries in the establishment of dictatorships are not crises of democracy, as is to often insisted, but crises of monarchy. All these move- ments have originated, and have succeeded, either in countries where there is still an absolute or semi-absolute monarchy—Italy, Jugo-Slavia, Bulgaria—or in countries which in 1914 were still under an absolute or semi-abso- lute monarchy—Russia, Poland, Germany, Austria- Hungary. And the dictatorship is stronger and operates more smoothly in countries which are still monarchies like Italy than in countries where a republic is in existence, even though only since 1919, like Germany. On the other hand, the old republics, France and Switzerland, the old parliamentary monarchies like England, Belgium, Holland and the Scandinavian countries, have so far resisted every attempt made to imitate these dictatorial movements.
Fascism and Nazism are diseases of monarchy. They appear during the agony or immediately after the down- fall of an old absolute or semi-absolute monarchy.
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