Italian vs German Fascism

Podcast Transcript

Fascism is one of the most notorious political ideologies of the 20th century.

Fascism is typically only thought of in tandem with Nazi Germany, but it wasn’t the only country that adhered to the ideology, and, in fact, they weren’t even the first. It originated in Italy.

Despite many similarities between fascist Italy and Germany, the two nations developed forms of fascism with significant ideological differences.

Learn about Italian and German fascism, their differences and similarities, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

When we think of the word fascism, one thing comes to mind: Nazi Germany. If you go a little further, you may also think of Italy, the other fascist country aligned with Germany during the war.

Despite being the first fascist country, many people don’t know much about Italian fascism or simply view it as the same as the Nazis. While there are plenty of similarities, there are also distinct differences between Italian and German fascism.

Before going into these differences, it is important to understand what fascism is.

Fascism is a far-right extremist political ideology and mass movement that emphasizes extreme nationalism and a strong, autocratic central government led by a dictator. Fascist society is characterized by the discipline and organization of society and the economy, often through the forced suppression of opposition.

Fascists and fascist governments typically begin as a revolutionary movement. Fascists advocate for overthrowing the existing government and suppressing current or potential political enemies. Fascists also tend to favor the traditional values of whatever country they appear in. They emphasize extreme nationalism, militarism, and prioritizing the state over individuals.

The person we can point to as the creator of fascism was Benito Mussolini, an Italian.

Mussolini was previously a socialist and was a member of the Italian Socialist Party. However, he was expelled from the party for supporting Italian involvement in World War I, believing the war created the conditions for a vast socialist movement.

Following his expulsion from the party, Mussolini denounced it and radically shifted his focus to Italian nationalism. He began to reject socialist ideas, believing that the war made national identity and loyalty to the state more important than class distinctions.

Mussolini began to create a new political ideology known as fascism. His ideas about fascism are said to come from the Ancient Greek philosopher Plato, and his book The Republic.

Ideas taken from The Republic include the need for a powerful state led by a strong central figure. In the book, Plato also rejects ideas of social equality and emphasizes that individuals should act in accordance with the needs of the state.

There were plenty of differences between The Republic and fascist ideology, the main one being that fascism promotes expansionism, whereas Plato was completely opposed to war unless it was for defensive purposes.

The roots of fascism can be traced back prior to Mussolini, including ideas such as Social Darwinism and the prioritization of society over the individual, among others, but the first organized movement can be credited to Mussolini.

No longer believing in class struggle, Mussolini founded the Fasci d’Azione Rivoluzionaria in 1914. Its members called themselves Fascisti, or fascists.

The word Fascist comes from the Italian term fascista, which itself derives from fascio, meaning a bundle or group, and ultimately from the Latin fasces. The fasces were bundles of rods bound around an axe, carried by Roman lictors as symbols of magisterial authority and the power to punish or coerce.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Italian political groups used fascio to describe leagues or associations unified for a common cause.

When Benito Mussolini founded his movement, he deliberately drew on this symbolism of collective strength bound together under a single authority.

From this, fascismo and the English word fascist emerged, carrying the connotation of authoritarian unity and enforced political cohesion.

Mussolini’s movement was initially small, unorganized, and ineffective. Party meetings were interrupted and harassed by the government and other political parties. These early interruptions created conflict between different groups and created the basis for fascists to support political violence.

Mussolini took a short break from politics during World War I, when he was called into service, but after he returned, he went back to politics. He reformed his fascist party and created the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento or the Italian Combat Squad.

This time, the movement was more organized, and the ideology better formed. He introduced a full party platform, including his foreign policy. This foreign policy, known as spazio vitale, is similar to the Nazi policy of Lebensraum. The goal of this policy was to regain the territory of Ancient Rome.

Additionally, Mussolini began to paint Italy as a proletarian nation, opposed to countries like Britain, which was considered “plutocratic.” This basically means that countries like Britain, where wealth was held by a small ruling group, were preventing countries like Italy, with a strong working class, from acquiring the territory they needed to grow their economies.

According to Mussolini, poverty in Italy could only be solved by securing the space to grow its economy.

One of the key aspects we associate today with fascism is racism. While this was present with Italian Fascism, it was more of an undertone, not a key component like with the Nazis.

Mussolini did maintain that there was a “natural law,” where the strong people dominate the “inferior” people. In Mussolini’s case, he often portrayed the people of Yugoslavia and Africa as inferior.

He specifically was threatened by birth rates, especially those in Africa and Asia. He viewed history as a battle of demographics, with larger countries defeating smaller ones. Therefore, he advocated for high birth rates to ensure Italian power.

The Italian Fascist movement, as well as other fascist movements, was traditional, which in many ways is contradictory to its revolutionary nature. They were conservative in their beliefs, emphasizing traditional social institutions, but revolutionary, seeking to create a sudden, rapid movement to overthrow and change society.

Mussolini founded the political newspaper Il Popolo d’Italia and also created an international version of his fascist movement.

One of the key aspects of Mussolini’s fascist party was the Blackshirts. Similar to the German Stormtroopers or the SA, the blackshirts sought to restore order on Italy’s streets.

This was done through clashes with other groups, including communists, socialists, and anarchists, during demonstrations and parades. The violent actions the blackshirts made were often ignored, as Italian leadership was more frightened of a communist revolution than of a fascist one, given the communist takeover of Russia.

Mussolini’s fascist party rapidly gained support and became the National Fascist Party. In 1921, Mussolini was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in the Italian Congress.

Just one year later, Mussolini began his full fascist takeover.

Marching with 30,000 blackshirts in Rome, Mussolini demanded that the liberal Prime Minister, Luigi Facta, resign. As the King took no action against this movement, Facta resigned, and the King appointed Mussolini as Prime Minister.

During his first few years as Prime Minister, Mussolini began to consolidate his power. He succeeded in doing so and established a totalitarian state with himself as the supreme leader, or Il Duce.

Fascism in Germany began a bit differently. Though Italy also struggled with the aftermath of World War I and felt cheated, Germany was decimated by the end of the war and the Treaty of Versailles.

This led to Germany as a state becoming incredibly unstable, with multiple groups rising to challenge the Weimar Republic. One of these organizations was the German Workers’ Party, which was joined by Adolf Hitler.

Mussolini’s March on Rome brought international attention to the fascist movement and inspired other movements, most notably Hitler.

After hearing about the success of Mussolini’s fascist party, Hitler began to model his own party on the Italian movement after being elected head of the German Workers’ Party.

One of the first actions Hitler took was to rename the party the National Socialist German Workers’ Party or the Nazi Party. The idea behind the name was to appeal to people on both sides of the spectrum: German Nationalists on the right, and Socialist workers on the left.

Despite quite literally having “Socialist” in the name, Hitler advertised the party as being anti-socialist and international communism. His ideology was meant to advance the power and welfare of the German people, not any particular economic class, and certainly not any international movement.

The party under Hitler’s leadership began to stabilize, creating a 25-point plan. This plan, centered on ideas of antisemitism, nationality, and expansionism, called for ending the Treaty of Versailles and the formation of a paramilitary group called the Stormtroopers or the SA.

The Nazi Party was a small, fringe movement, but it intended to follow Mussolini’s path. Emulating the March on Rome, Hitler and the Nazis attempted their own coup. This failed, and Hitler was sent to jail for five years, but he only served eight months.

The Nazis painted themselves as opposed to communism, against the Treaty of Versailles, promised higher employment and pensions, preached the supremacy of the German people, utilized paramilitary groups, promised to re-industrialize the military, and, most importantly, provided a scapegoat for all of Germany’s problems, the Jews.

After his release from jail, Hitler and the Nazis pursued an electoral strategy. This plan was much more successful, and by 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany.

After being elected, Hitler used a series of political maneuvers and tactical violence to destroy German democracy and establish a dictatorship with him at the core.

Despite both countries being called fascist, there are actually quite a few differences between German and Italian fascism. However, before going into those, I think it is important to understand the similarities.

In both the Italian and German cases, the fascist movements reject Enlightenment ideology. During the Enlightenment, the focus was placed on the individual. Instead, they emphasized the importance of the people and the nation as being paramount over the individual.

Additionally, fascists in both states had a system that sought total control over the state, the economy, and society. Both fascist parties sought to completely take over all spheres of life, down to the thoughts of the people. This allowed them to emphasize allegiance to the party and the state.

Many of their ideas of control were due to the negative view of human nature that they had. Fascists believe that the masses are lacking in intellect and therefore prone to manipulation, especially through the tools of propaganda.

Both Italian and German fascism were highly nationalistic, promoting the belief in their nation’s superiority over others. This nationalism resulted in both nations’ militaristic and expansionist foreign policy.

The main difference between the different forms of fascism has to do with race. While both fascist states participated in and perpetuated racism, Germany placed significantly more importance on racial ideology.

Mussolini initially rejected Nazi-style biological racism, as they viewed fascism as a national movement, not a racial one. Racism within Italy was more based around “Italian-ness,” which was able to include groups like the Jews, some of whom had joined the fascist party.

In fact, in 1932, Mussolini famously said, “Race? It is a feeling, not a reality: ninety-five percent, at least, is a feeling. Nothing will ever make me believe that biologically pure races can be shown to exist today.”

Despite initially rejecting ideas of biological racism, the Italians did eventually adopt German racial policies. In 1938, the Italian Fascists openly endorsed the “Manifesto of Race,” which in one of its points said, “it is time that Italians proclaim themselves to be openly racist.”

This was largely due to Germany’s influence over Italy.

This escalated after Germany occupied Italy in September 1943.

Under German occupation, Italy enacted Nazi style racial laws and participated in the devastating events of the Holocaust.

Although Italy did eventually adopt Nazi policies, it was never a core belief in the foundation of the Italian fascist party at its outset.

Another difference between Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy was how totalitarian the government was.

Unlike the Nazis, Mussolini was never able to fully eliminate his opposition. The King and the Catholic Church still threatened Mussolini’s bureaucratic control. Therefore, Italian fascists, while packing many bureaucratic sectors, still operated within existing structures, whereas the Nazis completely rewrote them.

Finally, another difference between the two countries was in how culture was treated. Hitler and the Nazis purged large amounts of literature, destroyed what they considered deviant art, and controlled and restructured universities around Nazi ideals.

In comparison, this wasn’t really the case in Italy. Mussolini never launched campaigns against works of art or artists as Hitler did. Italian culture remained largely intact during the fascist period, as they weren’t trying to completely remake society like the Nazis were.

The lesson is that, despite many similarities between German and Italian forms of fascism, there were also differences. Germany and Italy were not simple carbon copies of each other.

These differences can be attributed to leadership, the way the parties took political power, and the cultures of the respective countries.