To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949 (Penguin History of Europe (Viking)) by Ian Kershaw

Author:Ian Kershaw [Kershaw, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-11-17T08:00:00+00:00

DYNAMIC DICTATORSHIPS IN COMPARISON

The three dynamic dictatorships – Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany – were in practice quite distinctive forms of rule even though they had a number of structural features in common. Stalin’s regime stands out plainly from the other two, which share more similar characteristics (and some ‘borrowings’ by Nazi Germany from Fascist Italy) though also displaying crucial differences. Each made a ‘total claim’ on its citizens. This was not realized in practice and most weakly accomplished in Fascist Italy – paradoxically the only one of the three regimes explicitly to declare that it was building a ‘totalitarian state’. However, the ‘total claim’ unquestionably had huge consequences for the behaviour of citizens in such heavily orchestrated and controlled societies. ‘Political space’ and forms of organized social activity, even compared with those in other dictatorships of the era let alone liberal democracies, effectively ceased to exist outside what was permitted and managed by the regime itself. A ceaseless attempt was made in each of the three regimes to mould attitudes and behaviour according to exclusive ideological tenets. Identity with the regime was underpinned and reinforced through emphasis on the ‘enemy within’ – the ‘outsiders’ whose very existence shaped the creation of a community of ‘insiders’, of those who ‘belonged’.

The penetration of society by regime values was lowest in Italy, in all probability greatest in Germany. The success of indoctrination was variable, though most apparent in all three regimes among the young. In each instance, the regime had substantial success in mobilizing large numbers of idealists and gaining extensive popular support. Quantifying the support is impossible, given the repression of all opposition on which each regime rested and the lack of freedom of expression. From the imprecise indicators available, Nazi Germany had the greatest level of popular support, Italy was some distance behind, while the Soviet Union was the most coerced population, suggestive of the least authentic support.

Each deployed the heavy hand of terroristic repression. For those terrorized by the police state, the ideological or structural differences between the regimes were a matter of the purest indifference. Even so, they mattered. The Soviet Union exerted an extraordinary level of terror directed at its own citizens, far more than the other two regimes, an arbitrary, unpredictable deterrence not replicated elsewhere. Nazi terror focused on quashing organized political opposition then, increasingly, on weak and small minorities – Jews, especially, and other racial or social ‘outsider’ groups. The worst of Fascist terror was reserved for Italy’s African colonies. At home, once the early street violence of castor oil and the cudgel had waned, the application of terror was mild in comparison with that of the other two regimes, concentrating on eliminating known opponents but otherwise largely content with a strategy of containment.

Where Fascist Italy was also weakest was in its ideological dynamism and its militarization. Much of the mobilization of society was little more than superficial. After more than a decade of Fascist rule, the gap between rhetoric and reality was sizeable.

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