Fascist Ideology

Territory and Expansionism in Italy and Germany, 1922-1945

Aristotle Kallis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134606580
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Fascist Ideology is a comparative study of the expansionist foreign policies of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany from 1922-1945.
Fascist Ideology provides a comparative investigation of fascist expansionism by focusing on the close relations between ideology and action under Mussolini and Hitler. With an overview of the ideological motivations behind fascist expansionism and their impact on fascist policies, this book explores the two main issues which have dominated the historiographical debates on the nature of fascist expansionism: whether Italy's and Germany's particular expansionist tendancies can be attributed to a set of generic fascist values, or were shaped by the long term, uniquely national ambitions and developments since unification; whether the pursuit of expansion was opportunistic or followed a grand design in each case.

1
ITALIAN AND GERMAN EXPANSIONISM IN THE LONGUE DURÉE

Without doubt, the fascist phenomenon has dominated the postwar debate about the course of modern Italian and German history.¹ The domestic and international impact of fascist policies drew attention to the conditions which facilitated the appeal of fascism in Italy and Germany, and to the factors which contributed to the radicalisation of its ideology and political practices.² Despite the differences in the level of economic development, as well as in the social and political structures of the two countries, the fact that they shared the experiences of late state formation and belated modernisation may shed new light on their similar historical trajectory in the interwar years. Without discounting these significant differences in the economic and social conditions between Italy and Germany, it seems that the ‘late-comers’ theory has provided a better starting point for the understanding of the similar long-term propensity of the two systems for territorial expansion than the theories of uneven economic or political development.³ According to this theory, expansion was a means of both accelerating the pace of domestic development, enhancing the international prestige of the ‘late-comers’ in their pursuit of ‘great power’ status, and breaking free from the limitations (political, economic, geographical) that their belated arrival had placed upon them. Instead of focusing on the differing long-term socioeconomic features of the two systems (as modernisation theory does, making a sharp distinction between the more advanced German society and the essentially backward, agrarian Italian equivalent⁴ ), the ‘late-comers’ thesis places emphasis on the similar motivations generated by the common desire of the two newly unified states to establish their position as political ‘great powers’ in the European system.

There are, however, questions particular to each country’s historical trajectory that the above theory cannot answer convincingly without recourse to specific national developments and to the impact of external factors on national politics. Although pre-1918 Italian and German expansionism was motivated by similar aspirations (great power status, completion of unification, social imperialism) and forces (emergence of radical nationalist organisations, deterioration of international relations, opportunities offered by the First World War), these factors were crystallised and subsequently affected national histories in a host of different ways.

Given that the appeal of fascism in the two societies owed most of its strength to the way in which fascism processed, and responded to, national past (see Chapter 2), it is interesting to examine first how these pre-1918 developments shaped Italian and German nationalism (and its expansionist discourses, in particular). The following analysis briefly reviews the arguments that lend validity to the ‘late-comers’ thesis, paying particular attention to the symbolic significance of territory for the two states as a result of the specific pattern of their stateformation (aggressive territorial reconstitution of a historic nation). It accounts for the radicalisation of the expansionist ideologies and policies of the two countries in the years immediately preceding the First World War, offers a brief analysis of the various prewar expansionist arguments, and finally examines the impact of the First World War in relation to its ideological legacy and political influence upon the nationalist/expansionist discourse in the two societies.

‘Late-comers’ and the symbolic significance of territory

Unification and the importance of territory

The patterns of state formation followed by Italy and Germany in the second half of the nineteenth century present two crucial similarities. First, they drew their legitimacy from a liberal nationalist tradition which had pursued the goal of national unification as the platform for domestic development and international power. In Italy, the Mazzinian principle of selfdetermination in 1848 had given rise to the vision of a ‘new’ republican, democratic Italy as the heir to the glorious Roman empire, with a historic mission in the Mediterranean area.⁵ In Germany, the Frankfurt parliament of 1848 had emphasised the urgency of national unification in order to abolish the authoritarian structures of the German states, to provide an efficient basis for social and economic modernisation, and to create a German state as a great power in the political vacuum at the heart of Europe. The second similarity concerned the specific political motivations behind the process of state formation. In both countries, this process was instigated by one state that had achieved political and economic power, as well as a certain diplomatic position in the European system. Prussia in Germany exploited its political prestige amongst the smaller German states and its great military potential to achieve its goals on its own, while Piedmont in Italy took advantage of the antagonisms among the European powers in order to offset its military incapacity, which had hampered its aspirations in 1848–9.⁶ In order to provide legitimacy to their expansionist plans and to their struggle against foreign dominators, both states invoked the principle of self-determination and gradually put forward the ideal of national unification.

On the international level, the great power ambitions of the two ‘late-comers’ were inevitably conceptualised in the pre-existing pattern of territorial domination, in Europe and overseas. Nationalism entailed a perception of power that could only be measured in comparison with other states of high international standing. These states – primarily Britain and France – had long ago developed a network of colonial possessions that offered them protected markets, raw materials and prestige greater than Italy and Germany. This had been a time-consuming process, and the two new states had to copy the old imperial states under great pressure of time and with severely limited political or geographical flexibility. In this respect, the ‘late-comer’ theory offers valuable insight into the importance and the problems of expansion for the new Italian and German states in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. On the one hand, the late experience of state formation in Italy and Germany meant that the two unified states had to abbreviate a whole process of social, political and economic development – that had taken centuries in the case of their main competitors, Britain and France – into a few decades. Only this would enable them to compete on equal terms with them for the attainment of their great power aspirations. They also had to adhere to an already existing pattern of competition amongst states (economic, political), to a restrictive concept of the European balance of power, and to a geographically limited sphere of potential expansion. The pressure of time meant that they had to hasten for the few remaining territories (the best lands had already been appropriated by the British and French, and also by the Dutch, Portuguese and Spaniards) before even having resolved the problems of domestic economic development and decided on the priorities of expansion. On the other hand, they were aware that they had started from a territorially underprivileged position and with a growing domestic pressure for establishing a commanding role in the international system. Territory became a sine qua non for the political ascendancy of the new states and for the prestige of the domestic ruling forces against the growing challenges from both left and radical right.⁷

The prestige factor gradually overshadowed the economic significance of expansion, in the sense that the remaining options were not necessarily the most economically or geographically beneficial ones for the states, but had to be exploited for reasons of international competition.⁸ Political pressure for expansion meant that economic and social needs had to be adapted afterwards to the – often limited – opportunities offered by the seized territories. At the same time, economic infiltration, both in European and overseas territories (informal imperialism) was often seen as something more than a goal in itself. It was also a form of political investment for future expansion in those areas, when circumstances would be favourable. Economic exploitation of colonies was often a very costly enterprise, with little support from industrial and economic interests in the metropolis, and became the subject of severe criticism.⁹ Criticism was, however, mainly directed against ineffectual or limited expansion, not against expansion as such. Failure in one field simply increased the appeal of the other forms of expansion. With the exception of the socialist left, territorial aggrandisement remained high on every other political agenda. The plethora of expansionist arguments that emerged after unification in Italy and Germany reflected a symbolic significance of territory which was more important than the political or economic considerations behind expansion.

Thus, we arrive at a widely disregarded common element which underlay the idiosyncratic expansionist tendencies of the two states and remained a constant long-term factor in the ideology of Italian and German nationalism. The process of Italian (1859–70) and German (1866–71) national unification had not taken place in a geographical or political vacuum. In both cases, it involved the incorporation of populations inhabiting territories under foreign rule. It rested upon political control of territories and this, in turn, presupposed territorial conflict. Ultimately, unification entailed the expansion of Piedmont and Prussia at the expense of international ‘enemies’ and against the opposition of domestic antagonists. At the same time, because the concept of an Italian or German ‘nation’ had predated state formation, it was extremely difficult for the new states to claim a real ‘nation-state’ status once they had opted for the ‘small’ territorial solutions.¹⁰ In the 1870s the two states declared their territorial ‘satiation’ in Europe, despite growing awareness that the ethnically incomplete unifications had increased the popularity of irredentism and had produced a stronger pressure for expansion outside the European system. In this way, however, they did nothing to allay a growing feeling that, although the ‘nation’ was the basis of state formation, the state had abdicated its responsibility to incorporate all populations and territories which formed part of this ‘nation’. Voices advocating expansion and an ethnically and territorially ‘complete’ unification proliferated and became increasingly vocal.¹¹ The pressures upon the governments for tangible manifestations of national prestige and the need to combat the post-unification disillusionment in the two countries strengthened the link between domestic and foreign policies. Territorial concessions came to be seen as the ultimate political and economic solution to domestic grievances. The fact that these aspirations were temporarily diverted to colonial antagonism did not preclude a return to territorial conflicts in Europe, should more auspicious circumstances arise. After 1900, with the gradual disintegration of the European balance of power, these suppressed ambitions were once again on the agenda and eventually led to a war that was essentially a territorial struggle on the continent.

The emergence of radical nationalist organisations

This long-term symbolic significance of territory in post-unification Italian and German history lends considerable credence to the ‘late-comers’ theory. However, explaining the radicalisation of the expansionist policies of the two countries in the years up to the First World War requires the examination of another crucial development: the emergence and mobilisation of radical nationalist organisations. The process through which the ideological developments on the radical nationalist right affected the conduct of foreign affairs in the two countries was a highly complex one. On an ideological level, the transformation of the nationalist movements in Italy and Germany into imperialist organisations, with beliefs in the transcendental power of the nation and a growing aggressive tone in their territorial programmes, largely predated the political emancipation of the two movements. In Italy, the turning point in the ideological transformation of the nationalist right was the foundation of the Italian Nationalist Association (Associazione Nazionalista Italiana, henceforward ANI) in 1906. The new organisation aimed to give political expression to the ‘new’ nationalist ideology that had made its appearance after the traumatic defeat of the Italian armed forces at Adowa, Ethiopia in 1896,¹² in an attempt to restore faith in the capacity of the new Italian state to acquire the prestige that its glorious past justified.¹³ The ANI became an umbrella organisation for the various nationalist groups, covering a wide spectrum from radical ideologies of imperialism to the liberal exponents of irredentism. It attempted to provide a synthesis of the different nationalist ideologies into a uniform programme for domestic rejuvenation and international ascendancy, and thus to justify its political function as the main representative of a nationalist renaissance in contrast to the ‘old’ bankrupt official nationalism of the Italian state. In Germany, such an umbrella organisation did not theoretically exist, with a number of new groups emerging in the first decade of the twentieth century and a fairly even distribution of membership figures among them.¹⁴ However, the central role occupied by the Pan-German League (Alldeutsche Verband) in the representation of the radical nationalist viewpoint since the 1890s rendered it a mirror of the ideological developments in the whole German radical nationalist movement.¹⁵ The intensification of the aggressive character of the organisation under the leadership of Heinrich Class reflected the emergence of a new trend in German nationalism. This trend supported a confrontational foreign policy against the other European states, a revival of the imperial glories of the German nation and an extensive territorial agenda for expansion, mainly in Europe but also overseas.¹⁶

The radicalisation of expansionist arguments: irredentism, continental expansion versus colonial expansion, conquest versus economic infiltration

The radicalisation of territorial politics in the years prior to the First World War dramatically affected the way in which expansion was conceptualised in Italian and German society. Although traditional arguments for territorial aggrandisement (irredentism, colonial expansion, economic infiltration, ‘living space’) continued to dominate the debate in the two countries, their content underwent a long-term transformation. The shift to confrontational policies was reflected in the radicalisation of previously moderate arguments (irredentism) and in the priority given to continental expansion and territorial conquest (as opposed to overseas expansion and informal imperialism). We shall now turn to these separate expansionist arguments and examine the process of their radicalisation, their contribution to the aggressive spirit which led to the First World War, and their legacy to the post-1918 expansionist ideologies in the two countries.

Irredentism

The historic origins of irredentism lie in the liberal nationalist ideology of the nineteenth century. The term (derived from the Italian irredenta, meaning literally ‘unredeemed territories’) signified the desire of an ethnically homogeneous yet scattered population to be incorporated in the same political unit, the nation-state, on the basis of national self-determination. Clearly, the dream of a complete unification of the Italian and German peoples presupposed a political vacuum in central and eastern Europe, namely the absence of strong states occupying territories and controlling peoples claimed by the ‘new’ states. This was not the case, however. Powerful neighbouring states (France and the Habsburg empire in the case of Italy, the same two plus Russia in the case of the German Reich) placed territorial restrictions upon the plans of Cavour and Bismarck for a complete national unification. This led to a political compromise which had two characteristics. On the one hand, it did allow the establishment of the Italian and German states as nation-states, representing politically the Italian and German historic nations in the European system. On the other hand, the ethnically incomplete unifications prompted the formation of national irredenta outside the frontiers of the two states. In this sense, the postunification irredentist claims of Italian and German nationalism reflected an attempt to resume the interrupted process of national and territorial unification by non-aggressive, liberal means (see Chapter 2).

In the last decades of the nineteenth century, irredentism acquired a new popularity within the wider nationalist discourse of the two countries. In Italy, the Mazzinian vision of a unified Italian state, based on self-determination, survived in various nationalist organisations which emerged in the three last decades of the nineteenth century. The story of all these organisations (Pro-Italia Irredenta, 1877; Dante Alighieri, 1889; Trento e Trieste; Pro Patria and others¹⁷ ) followed a similar pattern until the turn of the century. Largely confined to intellectual circles, with a relatively small membership and a non-aggressive character, they advocated the ideological and ethical priority of irredentism over all other forms of territoria...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Italian and German Expansionism in the Longue Durée
• 2 Fascist Ideology and Territorial Expansion
• 3 Foreign Policy Decision-Making Processes Under Fascist Rule
• 4 Fascist Expansionism in Practice
• 5 Between Co-Operation and Rivalry
• 6 Fascist Expansionism and War (1939–45)
• Conclusions
• Notes
• Select Bibliography