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Rise of Fascism · Saberian History Lectures

0:00
Okay, so one of the things I kind of want to talk about today is while the textbook
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does a pretty good job of explaining what drove the United States to enter the war and
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the antipathy of the United States towards fascism, the book does a very poor job of
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explaining what fascism is.
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Now, partially because we tend to think of fascism as a European thing.
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So for those of you who ever take a Western Civ or AP European history, you might have
0:31
a better grasp of fascism in their second semester course.
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And so one of the things that I kind of want to get into is to give you a firm understanding
0:44
of fascism because we kind of bandy the term about without really appreciating what it
0:49
is.
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In our political culture, you've actually seen a lot of people accusing the other guy
0:53
of being a fascist.
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And so it begs the question, what is fascism?
1:01
Now you all have been informed of various things that we associate with fascism, but we haven't
1:09
really gotten into what it is.
1:12
So today we're going to sort of talk about the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe.
1:23
Fascism as a political ideology, most people have it starting in Italy.
1:31
Now I want to talk to you about the countries we associate with fascism.
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Italy is the first one.
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Who else were adversaries of the United States during the Second World War?
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Germany.
1:48
Second World War.
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Austro-Hungarian Empire no longer exists.
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Japan.
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I'm going to put Japan way over here.
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The reason I'm going to put Japan way over here is also Italy and Germany are relatively
2:00
proximately close on the European continent and Japan is literally half a world away.
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But that's not the only reason I got Japan way over there.
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Japan doesn't actually qualify as a fascist state.
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Fascism, Japan already had an imperial tradition of the deified emperor.
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So it's not like in Europe where you have a leader coming to power who is now deified
2:33
by the people as a result of the media complex.
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In Japan the emperor was already seen as divine.
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You get the idea.
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And so part of defining fascism depends on defining the relationship of the church and
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the state to its people.
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Now there's one other fascist country that I did not put up there yet but I'm going to
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because that fascist country was not an enemy of the United States, did not fight the United
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States in World War II, but was actually a fascist country from the early 20th century
3:07
until the 1970s and was an ally of the United States against the Soviet Union.
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Spain.
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So when I'm talking and so the idea that the United States went to war to stamp out fascism
3:29
is not entirely true.
3:32
We had had a coexistence with certain types of fascism into the 1970s.
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By the way, how did fascism finally end in Spain?
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Does anyone know?
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When their leader finally died, when Franco died of natural causes.
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So this was not simply about fascism.
4:00
So a couple of things.
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We're going to start with Italy, then we're going to get to Germany, then we're going
4:05
to get to Spain.
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And so when I talk about Japan I don't think of Japan as fascist.
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They're an ally of the fascists of Europe, but they are not themselves fascist.
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So fascism is a society, typically some of the characteristics of a fascist state are
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one party rule, a highly charismatic leader, where the government exerts control over media,
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industry.
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It is tied to a nationalist philosophy as opposed to a globalist philosophy.
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And also it uses the military, it relies on militarism to unite the people and it uses
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the military to enforce its ends, usually violently.
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1932, one party rule, a highly charismatic leader that controlled media and the industry
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and relied on nationalism in 1932.
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And a man stayed in power until he was carried out.
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Who was elected president in 1932?
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FDR.
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Now, you didn't have FDR using goons to go shoot Republicans when they got out of line,
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so maybe we can think of this as a polite form of fascism, maybe fascism-like.
6:12
I don't know.
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I don't know if the bill actually fits, but you do see some elements of the shoe wrapping
6:17
around the toes, don't you?
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But I'll get to that in a moment.
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So let's see how we get to Il Duce in Italy and Der Führer in Germany.
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Both Italy and Germany actually have a couple of things in common which in some ways helps
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explain the rise of fascism.
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Italy and Germany are both young states of old nations.
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Let me say that again.
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Italy and Germany are young states of old nations.
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What do I mean by young states of old nations?
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What do I mean by an old nation?
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What is a nation?
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People who combine a language, a culture, and a sense of history.
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So in many ways we would actually think of a nation less as a government and more as
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an ethnicity.
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So we have language, culture, and a sense of history.
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Now let's go to Italy for a moment.
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If I am Italian and I am talking about Italy as an old nation, if I'm Italian, what is
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my history?
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The Roman Empire.
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So if I'm talking about Italy, you have the historical tradition of the Roman Empire,
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but how do we get from the Roman Empire to the boot shaped country of Italy?
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There's a lot of steps that go on.
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So in the case of Italy, you first have the period of the Roman Empire.
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Roman Empire eventually falls to the Goths.
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So then you have the Gothic occupation.
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You have the Goths, which I know many of you are now picturing very pale faced people with
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black hair dye, listening dolls, or is the term emo now?
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I don't know.
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So no, these were not emo kids occupying Rome.
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These were very bearded German people.
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And after the Goths, you have a feudal period.
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Now after the feudal period, what are the things that Italy is most famous for?
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Well, yes.
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Okay, in film, it's not just the pizza.
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When you're talking about Romeo and Juliet, this was in a period of warring city-state.
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So you have the Renaissance.
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So you have the Renaissance.
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And actually it's kind of interesting.
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So you have the fall of the city, and then you have a period actually of incessant warfare.
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When I talk about a period of incessant warfare, you're talking through the 14th century.
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So you have the Renaissance where you have the different city-states.
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And so when you travel to Italy today, you visit some of the remnants of these city-states.
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What are the old Italian city-states that we might be familiar with?
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Rome is, well, Rome was the Papal State, but you have Milan, you have Venice, you have
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Florence, you have Naples, Turin.
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You have all of these different city-states.
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And these city-states were actually at war with one another, struggling for supremacy.
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And one of the greatest impediments to actually the unification of Italy was the Papacy itself.
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Nowadays, you think of the Papacy as this nice little man who's in a little box called
9:45
Vatican City.
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In the, into the 1500s and the 1600s, the Pope was a prince of a territory.
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It was called the Papal States, and he had designs to exert his influence over all of
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Italy.
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By the way, kind of ironic, and this is not an apology for Mussolini, who puts the Pope
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in the box of Vatican City?
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Mussolini does.
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The separation of Vatican City from the rest of Italian politics is a result of fascist
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domination of Italy in the early 20th century.
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So now the Holy See being free from worldly affairs.
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You can kind of thank Mussolini for that, but he won't hear you.
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All right.
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So you have, after a period of war where some of these city-states, they allied themselves
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with France, they allied themselves with other city-states, they used papal money, they used
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all sorts of fun stuff, in the 1559 to 1796, Italy was dominated by the Habsburgs.
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So you had the Austrian Habsburgs, and then you had, you also had the Spanish Habsburgs.
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So they were occupied by foreign princes.
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By the way, who kind of starts making his way to power in Europe in the 1790s into the
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early 19th century?
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Short little man running the assault columns.
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So you have Napoleon, then you have the Napoleonic era.
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By the way, where was Napoleon from?
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No.
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Sardinia.
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Funny thing about Sardinia.
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Sardinia is politically French, but ethnically Italian.
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So you have Sicily, then you have Sardinia, and it's right next to their southern coast,
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the French southern coast.
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So it was ethnically Italian, but politically French.
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Kind of interesting that a person who was ethnically Italian rises to power in the French
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officer corps and becomes the French dictator, although not actually that interesting because
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Hitler was Austrian but ran a German empire.
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And Stalin, I'm trying to remember if he was Belorussian or Ukrainian or Georgian.
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I'm trying to remember.
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He wasn't ethnically Russian.
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Kind of interesting.
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So you have the Napoleonic era.
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By the way, what happens to Napoleon?
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Battle of Waterloo.
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He's defeated and he is exiled.
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And what happens, and this event actually coincides with the creation of modern Germany,
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you have the Congress of Vienna.
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The Congress of Vienna is where the existing European powers who defeated Napoleon divvy
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up Europe into various states.
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And that's in 1815.
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1815 is the beginning of the Italian unification movement.
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So you had these disparate city-states who now are trying to forge a common identity.
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One of the first writers of this modern unification movement is Giuseppe Mazzini.
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Giuseppe Mazzini is the father of modern nationalism.
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I quote his concept extensively.
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And so he had this idea.
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Here he has the people who are linguistically, historically Italian but they also see themselves
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politically as Mantuan, as Turinian, as Roman, as Venetian, as Neopolitan.
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And so there is this idea.
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And Mazzini actually writes of a great prophecy that there will be one who comes who brings
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the kingdoms of Italy together.
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Now 1861 you have the creation of the modern Italian state.
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I'll get to Germany in just a moment.
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1861 is the beginning of what they call liberal Italy.
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Liberal Italy is the first united Italy.
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That goes from 1861 to 1922.
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Now 1861 you have a constitutional monarchy in what is called liberal Italy.
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So they have some aspects of a representative government.
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They also have a king.
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I want to say 1915 or 1916 to 1917, who was at war from 1914 to 1917?
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World War I.
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Italy is late to the game but they ally themselves with the allied powers.
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You may recall in one of the 14 points was that the Germans would leave northern Italy.
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So Italy fights against Germany in World War I.
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Their units are for the most part defeated.
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Other than definition of their territory in Lombardy, what did the Italians get out of
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the blood loss and the indignities of World War I?
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Nothing.
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They get no material benefit from the war.
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They do have colonies in Somalia and Eritrea but those were never contested because again
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if you look at the colonial map of Africa, the territories near Somalia and Eritrea are
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Ethiopia which had been independent forever and Egypt.
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Who controls Egypt and Sudan?
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England.
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Yes, the British.
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And so they gain no territorial advantage in Africa.
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They gain no financial advantage because Germany is paying reparations to England and France.
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So for them, was World War I a win?
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No.
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So in the global depression that occurs after World War I, really Europe is kind of the
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leading edge and the US is the trailing edge and it hits both people just as hard.
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Now 1922 is a moment of crisis.
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You have an economic downturn.
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And what often happens when you have an economic downturn?
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Well not just that.
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There's one thing that everyone sort of, that a lot of people forget.
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You have an economic downturn and you have, especially after 1917, what political philosophy
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becomes both frightening and dangerous that arises out of Russia in 1917?
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Communism.
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So you have communists and socialists advocating for the takeover of industries and so you
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have revolutionary communists on the march in Italy.
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Now a couple of things.
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What's scary about communism if you're a traditional Italian?
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No religion at all.
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If you're Italian, what are you?
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You are a staunch Roman Catholic.
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And Catholicism, I will say this, Christianity may have some socialist tendencies but for
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the most part you still have respect for private property.
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Thou shalt not steal.
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Whereas, you know, Communist Manifesto, the bourgeois got it badly, we the oppressed people,
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we need to take it away from them.
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And so 1922 is a moment of crisis.
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You're King Emmanuel and you have a weak government that's been decimated by the war that has
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had poor income taxes.
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So you have King Emmanuel in 1922.
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He has to make a choice between the socialists and the fascists.
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You're between the rock and the hard place, between the one guy who's talking about the
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government taking over everything and the other guy who's talking about safety and peace.
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So you're King Emmanuel, you have to choose between the socialists and the fascists.
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Which one do you choose?
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He chooses the fascists.
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Because here's the thing, if I'm King Emmanuel, I also recognize one thing.
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What did the socialists do to the king in Russia?
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And so one of the things that a lot of people forget is that fascism is not simply a predatory
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philosophy.
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A lot of people ran to fascism because the communists scared the heck out of them.
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Hmm.
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Somebody speaking, a self-avowed socialist and people ran to the other guy.
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Hmm.
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Too soon for that joke?
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All right.
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All right.
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So you got, so 1922, Mussolini is first the prime minister of Italy and then assumes the
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title of Ilduche.
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Which I know sounds like the shower for those of you who speak Spanish, but Ilduche, duke,
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leader in Italian.
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There are certain words that get lost from Italian to Spanish.
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I'm very sorry about that.
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We couldn't keep the Roman Empire together.
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We didn't have radio.
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So that was fun.
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So that's how it got started in Italy.
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Kind of a funny story.
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Shortly after the war, Mussolini was a socialist writer originally, but rather than embracing
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the global socialist vision embraced by the communists, he embraced a type of nationalist,
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national socialism.
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Now to explain national socialism in a nutshell.
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It is the idea that the government should intervene in what is best for its people,
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and so it's not laissez-faire economics the way we would have in our society.
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But for the most part, the state leaves certain things alone.
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Now let's get to Germany.
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Everybody go down to Italy?
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Yes?
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Okay.
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And then we'll get to Spain.
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So Germany, kind of similar in a way.
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You have Germany is an old nation, but a young state.
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When was the first empire of Germany?
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You all took world history.
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You had time to forget it.
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Was ist die Ersten Reich?
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What is the first empire?
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It was the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither holy nor Roman, nor was it much of an empire.
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So you have the Holy Roman Empire, which united the Germanys, and I use the term Germanys.
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When I use the term Germanys, what am I saying?
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Well they weren't warring states when they were under the empire, but the German speaking
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states, of which there were several.
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How many of you all went to Germany?
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I know we had a student group that went to Germany last year.
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Were any of you among them?
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How many of you have been to Germany in complete generality?
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I know some of you have traveled.
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None of you?
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So in France, you don't have states, you have provinces.
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It means the conquered place.
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But of Deutsch, you have Staaten.
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They still call them states, as an homage to their previous independence.
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So you have the breakdown of the Holy Roman Empire.
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Then once again, very similar to Italy, you have a period of war between the German speaking
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states.
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That comes to an end in 1876.
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1876, you have the Franco-Prussian War.
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So in the period of the warring states, there rose a hegemonic power among the Germanys.
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This was the state of Prussia, P-R-U-S-S-I-A, or in German as it is pronounced, Ploisen.
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Ploisen is Berlin and the area around it.
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Ploisen through force of arms, led by a series of military heroes, one of which was Frederick
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the Great, who literally fought a war with France and Russia at the same time, and won.
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Well, actually, it works really well in the 18th century because your enemies don't communicate
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with each other.
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You take your whole army, throw it at one guy on one frontier, truck them across your
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own territory, and throw them at the other guy at the other frontier.
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Now, the other thing about the Prussians, and there is a reason why the Prussians are
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the dominant state in Germany.
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And it is the reason why Prussian hegemony unites the Germanys in the Franco-Prussian
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War.
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This is a highly militarized state.
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So most states create an army for its own protection.
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This army created a state for its own furtherance.
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They were called the Spartans of Europe.
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Let me describe to you life in Prussian society.
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Y'all are in graded schools right now.
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It is a Prussian institution in origin.
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Why do you put kids in school if you're a highly militaristic state?
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First you unite them.
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You institute them into your bureaucracy.
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You are in school for, is that us?
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No.
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Okay.
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You take people out of the hinterland, you put them in schools, you teach them how to
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read, write, do math in standard German, and you teach them how to march.
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After being in school, oh, 10 or 11 or 12 years, you're about 18 years old.
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And so, aus die Schule, aus die Wehrmacht.
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From the school to the army.
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You would be in the army.
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Every able-bodied man would be in the army for a period of six years.
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And why would you be in the army for a period of six years?
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Because, well, congratulations, you've got to get them out of the, you've got to make
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your army somehow and when's the best age for people to start fighting?
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18 to 24.
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After being in the army for six years, you would be moved to the Freikorps.
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The Freikorps was their military reserve.
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There you would stay until you were 40 or until you were dead.
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We don't have anything like that, do we?
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Now what's the effect?
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They have a very large swollen army.
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So their education apparatus serves their army.
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Their industrial complex serves their army.
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When they set up rail lines, by the way, they had the coal to do it and the iron.
25:03
The military ran their rail stations.
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So here this highly militarized society turns itself loose, attacks the French, takes over
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the Alsace-Lorraine.
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What's the next major conflict in Europe after 1876?
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1914 to 1918.
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What happens?
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And who wins?
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Not Germany.
25:30
Germany loses the First World War.
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And what were some of the consequences of that loss?
25:42
Reparations.
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Reparations, that's one.
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And they were demilitarized.
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Now think about this for a moment.
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You have no tax money and you have 18 to 24 year olds with no job and they're used to
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marching in formations because that's what their fathers had done.
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Their fathers' fathers.
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And so you have the throng of angry men used to marching in formation, used to marching
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to the beat of the Kaiser's drum.
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And the Allies took that away.
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And so they found a new drummer boy.
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Adolf Hitler.
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Now kind of interesting.
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Now think about this also.
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When you demilitarize a country, what is a nation state?
26:39
What is a state?
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What is the first business of statecraft?
26:42
Warfare and physical violence.
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If you take away its army, you take away the ability of a nation state not only to wage
26:49
foreign war but also to keep its population in check.
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So before the rise of the National Socialist Party in Germany, you had perennial socialist
26:58
uprisings.
27:05
You had Hitler trying to have a coup in Bavaria.
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He was arrested.
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He writes Mein Kampf while he's in prison.
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But eventually the National Socialist Party wins an electoral majority in the Reichstag.
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The most frightening thing you need to keep in bear in mind is that the fascists came
27:22
to power by election.
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But again, people chose fascism because what was the alternative?
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The alternative was not status quo.
27:38
The alternative was not peaceable coexistence.
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The alternative was a type of predatory socialism that people could not live with.
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So in each case, you have weak executives on the part of King Emmanuel, weak executive
27:57
on the part of President Hindenburg, and you have the rise of these strong cults of personality,
28:04
and also you have the political triangulation as the fascists put themselves as the sane
28:09
alternative to communism.
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I want you to think about that for a moment.
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There are plenty of people who actively made the choice for fascism because the alternatives
28:26
were far more terrifying.
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And so here you have Hitler's vision where he actually goes to the idea, he actually
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says of the Germans, we are the barbarians, referencing back to the barbarian Germans
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who overthrew the great Roman Empire.
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He talks about it in terms of an apocalyptic vision of a thousand year Reich.
28:56
And then there's Spain.
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Now what happened to Spain in 1898?
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What was the main event of 1898?
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The main event of 1898 was the sinking of the USS Maine.
29:25
1898, you have the Spanish-American War.
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What happened to the Empire of Spain in the Spanish-American War?
29:33
It lost.
29:36
Right.
29:37
Now Spain had been a declining power going back to Mexico's revolt from Spain in 1821,
29:43
but the final nail in the coffin of the Spanish Empire was the Spanish-American War.
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And so in many ways we can kind of thank the United States for fascism in Spain.
29:55
So into the 20th century you have once again a conflict between socialists being funded
30:05
by, oh by the way, so we're talking Spanish Civil War 1936 to 1939.
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Let me do that.
30:14
So 1936 to 1939, you have the Spanish Civil War.
30:31
In Germany and in Italy, fascism prevailed over what political ideology?
30:36
Communism and socialism.
30:38
The Spanish Civil War was a fight between the Spanish Republic that was the socialists
30:48
and traditional elements of their military, some of them were actually based in northern
30:53
Africa.
30:54
It was a fight between the socialists and the fascists.
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So that's 1936 to 1939.
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Now here's the thing I want you to think about.
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Now the Germans and the Italians actually put troops, they actually put material, they
31:06
actually sent money, they supported the fascists in the war against the socialists.
31:11
And who do you think gave money to the socialists and gave arms and gave aid?
31:15
Russia.
31:16
Russia and along with socialists in the United States and patriots in the United States,
31:20
there were Americans in the Spanish-American War fighting each other.
31:24
There were Britons in the Spanish-American War jumping in as well, sorry, in the Spanish
31:28
Civil War fighting each other.
31:30
You get the idea.
31:31
This was the microcosm of a conflict between communism and fascism and the rest of the
31:37
United States is looking at that and saying what?
31:40
The standard American politicos are looking at that and saying what?
31:46
If I got two political ideologies that I don't like and they're both killing each other,
31:52
do I really want to get into that mess?
31:57
So America decided to stay out of the Spanish Civil War.
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Eventually the fascists will prevail.
32:06
They're led by Francisco Federico Franco who ruled Spain until like 1972, 1976.
32:12
You hung in there.
32:15
Great sunglasses on that guy by the way.
32:20
So, 1936 to 1939 you have Spanish Civil War, the fascists prevail.
32:30
Moving on.
32:32
The Anschluss and the Munich Pact.
32:35
So let me get to the Anschluss and then we'll get to Munich and then we'll get to the invasion
32:41
of Poland.
32:44
And I think that would probably be the best place to stop.
32:49
1250.
32:50
1250?
32:51
That's about right.
32:52
Okay.
32:53
Okay, do we have all this?
32:58
Yes?
32:59
Okay.
33:00
So, a couple of things that's kind of interesting about Germany and the particulars of the Anschluss.
33:17
Now if you think about it, in and of itself had Italian, oh, a couple of other things
33:26
I wanted to tell you.
33:27
So, kind of a side note but kind of fun and interesting.
33:32
First use of airborne incendiaries was when the Italians actually started dropping it
33:38
on resistance fighters in Somalia.
33:41
Great way to emulate people.
33:42
They were also used in the Spanish Civil War.
33:44
They were deployed by the Germans.
33:46
But anyway, so let me talk to you about the Anschluss and then we'll get to Munich and
33:56
then we'll get to Poland.
34:00
Okay.
34:03
Not until they signed the alliance.
34:05
In other words, Japan isn't really a fascist country.
34:09
Even after when they had become industrialized, you do have a centralized government exerting
34:14
itself.
34:15
They had already gone through that centralized process after the era of the samurai had ended.
34:21
And so the imperial worship had always been a thing.
34:24
And so you don't really have a takeover of the government the way you had in Germany.
34:30
The existing government was already there.
34:31
Now if I actually look at Japanese expansion, we can talk about the Sino-Japanese War, which
34:43
was a war between China and Japan, by the way, over Manchuria.
34:51
That illustrated some of the weaknesses of Japan and actually, not of Japan, of China
34:55
and actually helped precipitate the open door notes.
34:59
Okay.
35:01
So I'm going to reference back to the open door notes.
35:03
A lot of that had to do with Sino-Japanese War.
35:07
And then what happened in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905?
35:13
The Russians got owned and that actually in many ways precipitated Germany.
35:18
And again, we talked about this in our discussion of World War I.
35:20
The Russo-Japanese War, the summary trouncing of the Russians in 1905 kind of helped start
35:29
the process of getting the ball rolling for World War I.
35:32
And so again, you're not having a change in government.
35:35
Here you simply have Japan becomes industrialized largely as a result of British and American
35:40
influence and it becomes an expansive state, expanding beyond the island, onto Manchuria,
35:45
onto the Koreas and starts exerting its will there.
35:49
And so here we can really look at Japanese expansion not as anything novel but rather
35:54
as a continuation of a trend.
35:56
Now what's interesting is the novelty really is the Sino-Japanese War because previously
36:00
Japan had sequestered itself from the rest of Asia.
36:06
But you don't have a massive government change.
36:08
You just have the centralization of its bureaucracy.
36:10
Okay, the Anschluss.
36:12
So in, to understand the Anschluss we need to kind of go back to 1876.
36:24
So 1876 you have the creation of the German Empire.
36:29
Modern Germany.
36:31
You have Germany.
36:32
By the way, is Germany the only country in the world where they speak German?
36:35
No.
36:36
What's the country next to Germany?
36:40
What's the German speaking country next to Germany?
36:42
It used to be part of a Hungarian Empire.
36:45
Austria.
36:47
Now for those of you who don't speak German, Austria is an English word.
36:54
It's not what they call themselves in Austria.
36:58
For those of you who don't speak German, the word is Österreich.
37:05
Which sounds like ostrich but that's not what it is.
37:07
Austria Eastern Reich Empire.
37:10
Austria was a separate empire from the Deutsches Reich.
37:14
Okay, what's the other German speaking country?
37:18
There are three German speaking countries today.
37:20
Germany.
37:21
We already talked about them.
37:24
Starts with an S. Lots of watches and army knives you get from there.
37:28
Switzerland.
37:29
Aus der Schweiz.
37:32
Wait, who here is in German?
37:39
If I'm screwing up the pronunciation you should tell me.
37:41
Okay.
37:42
Austria.
37:43
Hitler's hometown.
37:44
The Anschluss.
37:45
Germany annexes Austria.
37:46
Actually, it's not an annexation.
37:47
It is a plebiscite.
37:48
For those of you who don't know what a plebiscite is, a plebiscite is a popular upper-right
38:01
uprising.
38:03
So basically, the people in Austria, and some would say as a matter of plants, others would
38:08
say as a matter of legitimate political cultural affinity, decided since Germany and the Austro-Hungarian
38:15
Empire were allies in World War I, they shared cultural ties, they share the Fuhrer, they
38:19
share a language, they share some aspect of the sense of history.
38:23
Austria by virtue of a popular uprising joins the German Empire.
38:29
Switzerland does not.
38:33
By the way, if you go to Switzerland today, you better be trilingual because what are
38:36
the three languages you need to know to get around in Switzerland?
38:39
German, Italian, and French.
38:45
Because Switzerland is where all three of them meet and Switzerland prides itself on
38:49
its independence.
38:51
And it has one very interesting way of maintaining its independence in the midst of many oppressive
38:58
empires.
38:59
How do you maintain your independence from a highly militaristic German state?
39:06
Not a bigger one.
39:09
You have a better one.
39:11
So in Switzerland, remember the Prussians were militaristic, the Swiss were more so.
39:16
In Switzerland, to this very day, from the time you come of age to the time you are 65,
39:23
you are in the military, you are in the ready reserve of the Swiss army.
39:29
You go to boot camp, you get a Sig 556 and you get to take it home with you along with
39:34
50 rounds of ammunition.
39:37
Now at the time it was a different weapon, but yes, every Swiss man had a bolt action
39:46
long gun that the Germans knew if they invaded Switzerland they were going to have a bad time.
39:53
So the Swiss stayed neutral, but it was an armed neutrality.
39:57
Okay, I will have to get to the conquest of Poland later.