Italian fascism and Nazism: comparative analysis and historical context

¶ … Italian Fascism and Nazism are superficially similar, but fundamentally different." Consider.

Italian Fascism and Nazism are two phenomena that political scientists and historians have placed under the larger category of "right-wing extremism." They both share similarities, but they also display a whole array of differences, some of them even fundamental. Right wing politics in Europe have not ceased to exist once the Second World War ended, moreover they even started to manifest strongly in Europe after the Fall of the Berlin Wall as it appears that societies that are undergoing transitional stages and experiences socio-political crisis are more prone to embrace extremist movements such as fascism.

There are a few pillars that generally support right wing movements like the Nazism and the Italian Fascism in the first half of the twentieth century, but the two are fundamentally divided by the former's obsession with the supremacy of race (Bessel, 1996). What Italy and Germany shared during the period between the two World Wars was a socio-economic situation that encouraged the majority of the population to embrace the manifestation of right wing parties. Transitions are usually situations that make way for extremist political movements to form and gain momentum, usually feeding on the disorientation of those caught in this process. Traditional and modern views clash, those caught in-between being usually the majority of the population, a mass of maneuver.

It is generally agreed that Nazism is a form of fascism blended with theories of the superiority of the Aryan race and directed at the universal enemy which is the Jewry. Both Fascism and Nazism heavily relied on the charisma of their leaders: Mussolini and respectively Hitler. They were both nationalist movements that started as a counter reaction to the existing forms of governments and to the threat of Bolshevism and promoted nationalism, autarky, totalitarianism and the return to traditional values. Although neither of them supported collective property in the detriment of private industry, both Nazism and fascism relied on the total implication of the state in all sectors, including the economy. The German and Italian societies came thus under the leadership of parties that were claiming they promoted the sole interest of the state and everything else had to be subjected to this interest. Politics were subjected to a militarized form of government, war was promoted as the only solution to the respective states' problems and both movements achieved their goals making use of heavy propaganda supported by all media means and illustrated at all costs through signs, symbols and uniforms.

One of the main sources of difference between Italian Fascism and Nazism: the use of theories related to the superiority of race shaped the latter's development as the extreme form of anti-Semitism that led to its engagement into the systematic destruction of al the Jews and everything Jewish.

The heroic past was important for both Mussolini and Hitler and the new form of heroism the two leaders demanded from the people were to be achieved exclusively thorough war, a war destined to reclaim the rights the two countries lost following their defeat in the First World War as well as a war of expansionism.

If, in order to accede to the ruling ranks of the government, Mussolini's National Fascist Party made use of the support of the monarchy, the NSDAP, Hitler's Nazi Party, rose to power and finally gained majority in the German Parliament under the circumstances of the Parliamentary Weimar Republic. Democratic elections played a part in the party's gain of the majority, but Hitler was also the beneficiary of other factors such as: economic instability as a consequence of the Wall Street Crash in the U.S. In 1929, well constructed and coordinated propaganda, directed to reach diverse audiences, paramilitary forces destined to weaken and finally annihilate any forms of opposition. Both Mussolini and Hitler were appointed as prime minister respectively Reich chancellor as a result of an agreement with the head of the state: the emperor, respectively the president of the republic. They will both soon assume the uncontested and total leadership as heads of state, even if, in Italy's case, Victor Emmanuel III held his title as king of Italy until 1946. Mussolini and his fascist party made sure that he had the support of the monarchy (regardless of the motives that made the king not react against Mussolini's future actions) as well as that of the Catholic Church, through the Lateran Treaty, signed in 1929.