Fascism: Comparison and Definition

4. The Mussolini and Hitler Regimes

4 Phases The Mussolini and Hitler Regimes IRE MUSSOLINI REGIME A major obstacle to any definition of Italian Fascism is the problem of differentiating between different phases both of the movement and of the regime. Emphases and orientation shifted considerably from one phase to the next, and valid generalizations are difficult to establish. During the fIrst phase, from the March on Rome to the beginning of 1925, the regime was a largely constitutional continuation of coalition government. The second phase was that of the construction of the dictatorship from 1925 to 1929. It was followed by three years of comparative nonactivism and consensus, from 1929 to 1932. There ensued a period of active foreign policy and continued consensus at home from 1933 to 1936. This was succeeded by the years of autarchy and semi-NazifIcation (1936-40), followed by the war (1940-43) and finally by the puppet regime of Sala (1943-45). Though the second phase brought the construction of the fIrst durable institutionalized and semipluralist new author68 THE MUSSOLINI AND HITLER REGIMES I 69 itarian system in Europe since the age of Louis Napoleon, all of the first three phases involved a process of controlling and purging the Fascist movement itself in the interest of a semipluralist new system. A largely fictive refascistization came somewhat belatedly, more and more under the influence of National Socialism. After Mussolini had finally been overthrown by a combination of Fascist moderates and the nonFascist right, his last government attempted a formal return to national syndicalist radicalism, but drew breath only as a German puppet. Structure Though the Fascist Party was able to present certain doctrines and ideas of national syndicalism that could form the basis for an alternate political system, it did not have a clearcut political theory for a new state, and Mussolini assumed office as prime minister without any specific plan for a new system, dictatorial or otherwise. Expressing the divergences, Giuseppe Bottai said that "The Fascisms [in their pluralist diversity] marched on Rome.... [but now] in Rome we have to found [a unified] Fascism."l Though Mussolini immediately cracked down on the more extreme sectors of the nationalist left (0'Annunzians) and internationalist left (Communists), one of his major problems was how to cope with and coordinate the Fascist Party itself. A Grand Council was quickly instituted as ruling organ of the party under Mussolini's control (December 1922), and then he acted to reaffirm the supremacy of state prefects over district party leaders Oanuary 1923) and transformed the squadristi into an official state militia, the MVSN (January 1923), partly under regular military control. The right-wing Nationalists then merged fully with the Fascists (February 1923), giving a more rightist, though not necessarily conservative, cast to the movement. Mussolini gained the opportunity to dominate the political situation fully only with the elections of April 1924, in which 1. Lyttelton, Seizure of Power, 151. 70 I TIiE MUSSOLINI AND HITLER REGIMES the Fascist coalition won about 70 percent of the seats. The murder of the Socialist deputy Matteotti two months later by squadristi (following the murder of a secondary Fascist leader in Rome by opposition activists) revived strong opposition and placed Mussolini at the crossroads, where he was faced with the alternative of devising a clear-cut permanently institutionalized authoritarian system or resigning power. Elaboration of the first choice was not such a simple or likely development as it has sometimes seemed to later commentators . Before the 1920s, modern political theory had no precise doctrine of permanent authoritarian rule, the only existing theories being short-term constructs of "Cincinnatian " dictatorship (temporary emergency rule by decree) and the vague transitional "dictatorship of the proletariat," the ill-defined Marxist version of the Cincinnatian doctrine. Right-wing theorists who strove for a more elitist or authoritarian system before the 1920s normally turned to some traditional institutional buttress such as monarchy. During the 1920s a variety of attempts to establish more authoritarian nationalist regimes were made in southern and eastern Europe but had great difficulty sustaining themselves, in part for lack of a clear new theory or strategy for institutionalizing a permanent authoritarian structure. All three of the first attempts at a kind of dictatorship in the other south-European countries (Pimenta de Castro in Portugal, 1915; Primo de Rivera in Spain, 1923-30; Pangalos in Greece, 1926) failed completely. The Kemalist regime did survive in Turkey, but as the first third...