THE PROBLEM OF FASCISM AND NAZISM

By Peter N. Stearns

Fascist movements took shape initially in the 1920s, building on new kinds of conservative attacks on modern society before World War I. In some respects, the movements were blatantly anti-Western, despite their popularity in countries that seemed central to the West. They attacked individualism in the name of group loyalty, the state, and a single leader. They blasted parliaments for their political divisions and their constraints on strong government initiatives. They criticized modern consumerism, modern art, and the changes in women's roles, urging a return to real or imagined folk forms and female domesticity and childbearing. Ultimately, fascism, combined with weak response from the remaining democracies, introduced another set of horrors to 20th century Western history, bringing another world war and the unprecedented slaughter of six million Jews, plus many others, in the Nazi Holocaust.

How could this happen in Western civilization? Aside from a head-in-the- sand wish that the 20th century would go away, there have been two principal interpretive responses. The first emphasizes the extent to which the leading fascist countries, and particularly Germany, were not in fact really Western, despite their undeniable participation in many aspects of Western history and numerous contributions, from music to the modern university, to Western life. Nazism, according to this line of argument, springs from Germanness, not Westernness.

A great deal of research went into a search for a German Sonderweg, or special way, to explain how a society could go so wrong. All of the Sonderweg analysis went beyond the special circumstances Germany faced after 1918, which everyone acknowledges played a key role in spurring Nazism: defeat in war after the government had kept Germans hopeful that victory was near; the fact that the military leadership made a new civilian government take responsibility for the peace settlement, which tainted the regime even though it had not had anything to do with the conduct of war; a terrible price inflation in the early 1920s (for which the government did bear some responsibility, but which really unsettled the middle classes by pounding down the value of savings); a bad peace settlement which stripped Germany of key territory, severely limited the military which made both leaders and veterans all the more disgruntled, and also treated the nation as if it had been solely at fault for the war, imposing heavy reparations which further damaged the economy; and a depression which, partly because of the war's consequences, hit Germany unusually hard after 1919. None of this, according to Sonderweg analysis, quite explains why so many Germans could voluntarily fall for such a horrible political movement (at a peak in free elections in 1932, about 37% of all voters picked the Nazis) and then stay largely silent under a regime that became still more horrible as time went on.

Here are the main features of Germany's special historical path, and, of course, they can be combined with each other as well as with the war and postwar dislocation. In politics, the Prussian state had traditionally emphasized strong authority and a large army. Germany had long been disunited, and then between 1864 and 1871 gained unity by war. All of this increased nationalism more than was usual in Europe (so the argument goes) and linked it to militarism and a strong state. National success weakened the middle-class commitment to liberalism, for liberals accepted a fairly weak parliament, including the emperor's appointment of the executive ministers along with limits on the freedom of the press, because they were so excited about unity. When Germany did get full parliamentary institutions after World War I, in the Weimar republic, it did not have a strong enough liberal tradition to provide adequate support. Late unity also caused a pervasive sense that the other great European powers were not giving Germany its due, for example in imperialism, so when the war settlement punished Germany directly resentment was greater than it might otherwise have been. All of which, in turn, made a vigorously authoritarian, militaristic political movement that promised a glorious foreign policy unusually attractive.

Culturally, some have argued that Germans - particularly, Lutheran Germans - had a distinctively internal idea of freedom, which could make them feel free even under an authoritarian state. Again, this points to weak liberalism. Socially, Germany had an unusually powerful landed aristocracy, the Prussian Junkers, who wanted a state that would maintain their social and economic prestige. Though not for the most part Nazi, they accepted Nazism because it secretly pledged a defense of aristocratic privilege. Under the Junkers, many peasants had long lacked much freedom, which may have made them, too, quick to support a nationalist movement that promised a defense of peasant values against modern life. (Nazis were big on promoting peasant costumes and such.) Germany had industrialized very fast and created a powerful big business class that often allied with the Junkers. Overall, German society had not kept pace with its economy. One result, besides traditionalist peasants, was a large artisan and shopkeeper class that resented modern economic forms, like the department store, which threatened growing competition; again, Nazism, which promised to restore artisan guilds though it largely broke its promise in favor of promoting big business and a war economy, could seem a solution to a society under systematic stress even before World War I. Germany's social structure was simply less flexible than France's or England's, and rapid industrialization was all the more disruptive.

And so Germany was not really Western, which makes a clearly anti-Western political movement and regime unsurprising without calling Western civilization directly into account. The Western nations are still responsible for their timid, sluggish response to Nazism, until World War II forced their hand, but at least Nazism itself is not laid at the Western door. There are a few holes in the Sonderweg analysis: notably, Prussia, where strong government and weak peasants had their greatest hold, was not a hotbed of Nazism compared, for example, to Catholic regions such as Bavaria. But lots of really thoughtful scholars, German and non-German, have poured great intelligence and historical insight into the search for a special explanation.

But Sonderweg analysis has declined in popularity in recent years, mainly, of course, because Germany now seems thoroughly Western and the pressure of explaining Nazism and its atrocities is far less acute. (Historical thinking is always susceptible to the impact of current conditions, and this is one of the factors involved here; the Sonderweg interest may have dropped more than it should as a result.) Far more work now sees Germany's history as fairly similar to that of its neighbors, its social structure, for example, quite comparable to that of France. But this might mean, of course, that Nazism has more to do with the West than some observers might wish.

While Nazism was unusually powerful and awful, strong fascist, anti- Jewish movements cropped up in many parts of the West after World War I - particularly, of course, in Italy (though the anti-Jewish part came only later) and France. Fascism did not win out in France but fascistic movements sometimes had as many as two million supporters; and France's wartime regime, though partly imposed by the Germans after the French defeat, had fascist elements. Spain also picked up fascism, though partly on the strength of German example. To be sure, fascism was weak in Britain, Scandinavia, and the settler societies including the United States, where among other things the parliamentary tradition was unusually strong. But maybe it was in fact Western, and not simply a German aberration.

And here is how this possibility might play out. Fascism was anti-Western in many ways but it highlighted several Western features, taking them out of full context. Notably, it emphasized a strong state as absolutism had done, though going much further in part because, with industrialization and the World War I example, governments could be much more powerful than absolutists had ever imagined save in rhetoric. Fascism strongly played up fervent nationalism, which was a Western creation. It built on a tradition of anti-Semitism that went back to the Middle Ages. And a fascination with military virtues and military competitions was as old as the West itself, and all the fascist movements played on this tradition. So a real Western component was there.

Then, fascism also built on the shock of World War I and a wider sense that industrial society needed to be brought under greater control, to protect older values and social groups. Germany was not alone here. Many sectors - the military, the aristocracy, and in places like Spain the church - were willing to use new, desperate measures to preserve their social power, and fascism could suit the bill. Fear of communism added into this mix - and many non-fascist Westerners shared this fear in the 1920s and 1930s.

Germany went to extremes, but this is because of the war and postwar dislocations, and also because of Hitler's particular evil genius, not because Germany was non-Western. Other regions moved in similar directions. The West is not off the hook. Even at the time, thoughtful observers, such as the novelist Sinclair Lewis in the United States with his book It Can't Happen Here, worried that fascism could spread more widely in the West. Even after World War II fears of revived fascism have troubled not only Germans and Italians, but also French observers and others. No one would argue that fascism was typically Western or some logical outgrowth of Western history; but there may be more link than is sometimes recognized. In extreme circumstances, in other words, the West harbors its own opponents. And while events in the past 50 years have greatly eased fears of fascist recurrence, it may be that the memory not only of the movement, but of its links to Western civilization, is worth maintaining, to warn Westerners of their own dark side.