Introduction
The two ideologies, Fascism and Nazism
originated from Italy and Germany respectively. It
can be stated that these two ideologies are very same yet very different at the
same time. Basically Nazism is a specific type of Fascism because Nazism
supports the ideologies of Fascism.
The word Nazism
is an abbreviated form of ‘National Socialism’ where race is considered supreme-
master race. According to Nazism, in a country the race which represents
majority of its population is the master race. The other minority should either
serve the master race or be eliminated. Nazism serves
the sole purpose of the advancement of the ‘master race’. Adolf Hitler-
brilliant orator and a former leader of Germany was the
initiator of Nazism.
Fascism,
originated under the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini is an ideology where
state is considered supreme. The central theme is the state. The state is supreme and everything revolves around the
state. Even though Fascism too practices nationalism they accept he
minorities provided that these minority groups adopt their culture, language
and religion.
Simply, Nazism wants to eliminate race while
Fascism believes in eliminating the culture. However it is my opinion that none
of these ideologies were able to solve peoples’ tribulations and both the
initiative dictators of these ideologies only lead their countries to extreme
war situations and utter chaos.
National Socialism (Nazism)
The word Nazism
is derived from the word National Socialism; basically Nazism is the shortened
form of National Socialism. It is a unique variety of Fascism which
incorporates biological racism and anti-Semitism. The ideology was first developed by Anton Drexler and then by Adolf
Hitler, but the forefather of modern Nazism is considered as Adolf Hitler.
Initially Nazi political views portrayed leftist ideas (anti-big business, anti-bourgeois and anti-capitalist but later those aspects were downplayed in the
1930s to obtain the support of industrial owners to the Nazi Party and
significance was given to anti-Marxist
and anti-Semitist theories.
Nazism advocated the supremacy of the supposed ‘Master Race’ (in the case of Germany which was the Aryan race) over the other races. Nazis
believed that the greatest threat to the Aryan race was the Jews whom they
called Parasites. To maintain the
purity of the Aryan race the Nazis
sought to exterminate or impose
exclusionary segregation upon "degenerate" and "asocial" groups that included: Jews, homosexuals, Romani, Blacks, the physically and mentally disabled, Jehovah's Witnesses and political
opponents.
The methods adopted by Nazis to achieve their political, diplomatic
and economical goals were often based on violence
and war. The Nazi theory
promoted war and militarism and in fact it envisaged politics as being a
battle. They often carried out violent attacks on their opponents, particularly
Jews. The party’s brain child Sturmabteilung- a paramilitary organization affiliated to the Nazi party carried out
these attacks.
The economic system proposed by Nazis
enclosed numerous advantages to Aryans while it deliberately excluded all the
other minority races. the Nazis supported völkisch equality that officially
ascribed collective racial equality of opportunity, equality before the
law,
and full legal rights to those able people of German blood or related Aryan
blood but deliberately excluded people outside of this definition who were
regarded as inferior and rejected the conception of universal equality of
individuals. The
Nazis advocated a welfare state in Germany for German citizens
(able Germans of Aryan racial descent) as a means to provide social justice and eliminate social barriers between the
German people. It promoted the creation of a community of common interest
between managers and employees in industry where a factory
leader would be selected to act in coordination with a council of factory
members, though these members would have to obey the Führerprinzip of the factory leader. The economy was to be
subordinate to the goals of the political leadership of the state.
The official presentation of Nazism is such that it is a neither left wing nor a right wing political ideology but a politically syncretic ideology. However a
majority of scholars identify Nazism in practice as being a far right form of politics.
The
Hitler File
Adolf Hitler- The Man Who Hated Jews (Forefather of Nazism)
·
Name- Adolf Hitler
·
Date of Birth- 20th April
1889
·
Date of Demise- 30th April 1945
·
Special Skills- Brilliant orator and
a bright student at school. He also had a passion for art and said to be
extremely good at sketching buildings and landmarks.
·
Hitler was the fourth child of Alois Hitler and Klara Hitler. He is said to have been
a very intelligent and a deeply religious child in his boyhood. It was
unfortunate that he didn’t use his learning skills at secondary school and his
answer for the tough competition was to stop trying. By the age of eighteen he
moved to Vienna and joined the German
army with the outbreak of the First World War. Due to commitments in war he was
awarded five medals including the prestigious Iron Cross and also served the
German army as a spy. In September 1919 he joined the German Workers Party and
that marked the beginning of his political career. He was able to attract more
members to the party with the use of orating skills in his speeches. Hitler created
National Socialist
German Workers Party (NSDAP) in February 1920 which came to power under Hitler’s
leadership. While in power Hitler practiced anti-Semitism and anti-communism
where mass culled Jews. In January 1945 Hitler’s government was overthrown with
the entrance of soviet troops into Nazi Germany. He spent his last years in an
underground bunker and committed suicide with his wife Eva Braun on 30th April 1945.
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascism advocates
the supremacy of the state which is
ruled by the supreme leader by way of a
dictatorship. Fascists believe that a nation’s well being is based on the
qualitative values and fascist conception states that a
nation must be led by qualitatively-able
leaders while rejecting democracies
for being based on quantitative evaluation of individuals and their opinions rather than qualities. To achieve
its goals, fascists purge forces,
ideas, people, and systems deemed to be the cause of decadence and degeneration.
Political violence is
given vitality in Fascism and war is considered as an action which creates
national regeneration, spirit and vitality. Fascism applauds militarism as
providing positive transformation in
society and providing spiritual renovation, education, instilling of a will
to dominate in people's character and creating national comradeship through
military service. Fascists
commonly utilize paramilitary organizations for violent attacks on
opponents or to overthrow a political system.
Fascism
supports a socially united, collective national society and opposes socially
divided class-based societies (including liberal bourgeois society and Marxian proletarian society) and
socially-divided individualist-based society. Fascists claim it is a trans-class
movement, advocating resolution to domestic class conflicts within a nation to secure national solidarity. While fascism opposes domestic class
conflict, it favours a proletarian national culture and claims its goal of
nationalizing society levels and social classes and emancipates the nation's
proletariat. While viewing
domestic class conflict within a nation as unnecessary and resolvable, fascism
believes that bourgeois-proletarian conflict primarily exists in national
conflicts between proletarian nations versus
bourgeois nations; fascism declares support for the victory of proletarian
nations. It is opposed to many ideologies, including conservatism,
liberalism, and two major forms of socialism: communism and social democracy. It opposes a variety of economic,
political and social systems, it is opposed to democracy, parliamentary systems, in most cases has an inherently anti-clerical background with some exceptions, and
holds a distinctive opposition to capitalism. It rejects egalitarianism, materialism, and rationalism in favour of action, discipline, hierarchy, spirit and will.
Fascism was founded
during World War I by Italian national syndicalists who combined left-wing and right-wing political views, but
Italian Fascism gravitated to the right in the early 1920s. Mussolini in 1919 described fascism as
a syncretism movement that would
strike "against the backwardness of
the right and the destructiveness of the left". Italian Fascists
described fascism as a right-wing ideology in the political program The Doctrine of Fascism: "We are free to
believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the
'right,' a fascist century." However
they also officially declared that although they were "sitting on the
right" they were generally indifferent to their position on the left-right
spectrum, as being a conclusion of their combination of views rather than an
objective, and considering it insignificant to their basis of their views that
they claimed could just as easily be associated with "the mountain of the center" as with the right.
There is a running dispute among scholars about where along the left/right
spectrum that fascism resides.
The
Mussolini File
Benito Mussolini- The Man Who Believed in State and not in People
(Forefather of Fascism)
·
Name- Benito Mussolini
· Date of Birth- 29th July 1883 in Predappio, Italy
·
Date of Demise- 29th of April 1945
·
Special Skills- Intelligent student at school and he also had
good writing and oratory skills.
·
Mussolini came from a very poor family where the father was a blacksmith
and they lived in a small and crowded two bed roomed house. Though Mussolini
was a bright student he was violent and had a large ego. When in boarding
school Mussolini was expelled for stabbing another student and after obtaining
his diploma in 1901 he briefly taught at secondary school. In 1904 he joined
the military and engaged in full time politics thereafter. Mussolini
became a member of the Socialist Party in 1900 but he
deserted the party in 1914 to cross over to the enemy camp, the Italian middle
class. He also founded a news paper called Popolo d'Italia in the same
year. Mussolini came to power in October 1922 and once in power he took steps
to remain in power. The climax of his political career was the 1930s where he
received a wider support. However during this period the Italian working class
had to undergo a tremendous amount of suffering while only the ruling class
benefited from Mussolini’s rule. In 1940–41 Mussolini's armies, badly supplied
and poorly led, suffered defeats from Europe across
the Mediterranean to the African continent. Italy lost its
war in 1942; Mussolini's power collapsed six months later. Restored as Hitler's
puppet in northern Italy in 1943,
he drove Italy deeper
into invasion, occupation, and civil war during 1944 and 1945. He was finally
executed by a firing squad on April 28,
1945, at Dongo in Como province.
How
did Fascism Differ from Nazism?
The two ideologies Fascism and Nazism are very
different and very similar at the same time.
Not all fascists are Nazi's, but it
would be all but required to support fascist ideology in order to be a true
Nazi. Fascists are not necessarily racist, which is contrary to the anti-Semitic
doctrines which are at the core of Nazi ideology. This is proved when paid
attention to the given statement,
‘Not
all Fascists are Nazis, but all Nazis are Fascists’
The question is where do you draw the line
between Fascism and Nazism?
First let us take the similarities of these two ideologies into consideration in order to
differentiate between the two.
·
Both Fascists and Nazis use political violence to
achieve their political, diplomatic or economical aims.
·
Both the ideologies believed in practicing
militarism and paramilitary organizations under the patronage of the government
were established during their rule.
·
War was promoted by both ideologies.
·
Both were right wing political ideologies
although initially Nazism showed more of a leftist aspect. However some
scholars also claim that these two ideologies were neither left wing nor right
wing political ideologies.
·
Both were influenced by the rise of
nationalism, fear from communism, crisis of the capitalist economic system and
dissatisfaction with the outcome of World War I.
Now, let us consider the differences of Fascism and Nazism.
·
The most significant disparity between Fascism
and Nazism is that theory of supremacy. Nazism believes that the ‘master race’
in a country is supreme while Fascism believes that the highest point of
supremacy is the state.
·
Another major difference between Fascism and Nazism was
their rise to power. The National Fascist Party came to power in Italy as early
as 1922, while Hitler’s putsch in Munich inspired
by Benito Mussolini’s March on Rome turned
out to be a failure. The Nazi Party, officially called the National Socialist
German Workers Party achieved virtually no success until the early 1930’s,
while its leader Adolf Hitler was laughed at.
·
Nazism had a rule where only the master race
(Aryans) were benefited and given the citizenship rights, where as the Fascist
rule was state oriented.
·
Nazism practiced genocide and Anti-Semitism while
Fascism rejected it and provided the opportunity for the minority to follow
them provided the minority should eliminate their own culture and embrace the
culture of the master race.
·
Nazism believes in eliminating people while
Fascism believes in eliminating culture.
·
Mussolini focused on territorial
expansion rather than creation of ethnically “clean” Italian state.
·
The Nazis rejected corporatism
although they supported state intervention in the economy and cultural
production. They viewed modernism as a sign of cultural degeneration and
promoted “healthy” art that emphasized the ideas of the Nazi doctrine. The
Fascists in Italy, on the other hand, did not restrict artistic expression and
encouraged creativity rather than promoting the Fascist style. They did,
however, censored all works that openly attacked the state or the Fascist
regime. Both the Fascist and Nazi architecture had a tendency towards
monumentalizing but again, they differentiated themselves in the view of
modernism.
·
The state under Nazism serves the sole purpose of the
advancement of the "master race." Nationalism is one aspect of Fascism.
However, nationalism is often used to stress the superiority of the national
culture as opposed to other minority cultures. Fascism accepts other groups,
provided that the minority groups reject their culture, language, and religion
for the superior nationalism. For example, the fascist Christian Socialists
advocate the conversion of Jews to Christianity, not the extermination of the
Jewish race, as the Nazi German Nationalists would have it. Fascism wants to
exterminate the culture, not the people.
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