01:360:401 Lecture Notes - Lecture 29: António De Oliveira Salazar, Italian Fascism, Russian Civil War
21 May 2018
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Chapter 29: Dictatorships and the
Second World War
1. Authoritarian States
1. Conservative Authoritarianism
1. The traditional form of antidemocratic government in European history was
conservative authoritarianism (leaders of such governments tried to prevent major
changes that would undermine the existing social order)
2. Authoritarian leaders depended on obedient bureaucracies, vigilant police departments
and trustworthy armies; liberals, democrats, and socialists prosecuted
3. The old-fashioned authoritarian government were preoccupied with the goal of mere
survival and limited their demands to taxes, army recruits, and passive acceptance
4. The parliamentary regimes that had been founded on the wreckage of empires in 1918
fell one by one and by early 1938 only economically and socially advanced
Czechoslovakia remained true to liberal political ideals
1. The lands lacked a tradition of self-government, with restraint and compromise
2. Many of these new states were torn by ethnic conflicts that threatened existence
3. Dictatorship appealed to nationalists and military leaders as a way to repress such
tensions and preserve national unity (middle class weak in Eastern Europe)
5. Although some of the conservative authoritarian regimes adopted certain Hitlerian and
fascist characteristics in the 1930s, their general aims were limited
1. They were more concerned with maintaining the status quo then with forcing
society into rapid change or war; this tradition has continued into our own time
2. In Hungary, Bela Kun formed a Lenin-style government, but communism in
Hungary was soon crushed by foreign troops, landowners, and hostile peasants
3. A combination of landowners instituted a semi-authoritarian regime, which
maintained the status quo in the 1920s; Hungary had a parliament with controlled
elections and the peasants did not have the right to vote (landed aristocracy)
4. In the 1930s the Hungarian government remained conservative and nationalistic
and it was increasingly opposed by a Nazi-like fascist movement, the Arrow
Cross, which demanded radical reform and mobilization of the masses
5.
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6. Another example of conservative authoritarianism was newly independent Poland,
where democratic government was overturned in 1926 when General Joseph Pilsudski
established a military dictatorship; Pilsudski silenced opposition and tried to build a
strong state (supporters were army, major industrialists, and nationalists)
7. Yet another example of conservative authoritarianism was Portugal in western Europe
1. Shaken by military coups and uprisings after a republican revolution in 1910,
Portugal finally got a strong dictator in Antonio de Oliveira Salazar in 1932
2. Salazar gave the church the strongest possible position in the country, while
controlling the press and outlawing most political activity but there was no
attempt to mobilize the masses or to accomplish great projects (tradition)
2. Totalitarianism or Fascism?
1. While conservative authoritarianism predominated smaller states of Europe by the
mid-1930s, radical dictatorships emerged in the Soviet Union, Germany, and Italy
2. Leaders of the radical dictatorships rejected parliamentary restraint and liberal values;
they exercised unprecedented control over the masses and sought to mobilize them for
constant action (three main approaches to understanding radical dictatorships)
1. The first approach relates the radical dictatorships to the rise of modern total-
itarianism and the second focuses on the idea of fascism as the unifying impulse
2. The third stresses the limitations of such generalization and uniqueness of regime
3. The concept of totalitarianism emerged in the 1920s and the 1930s and in 1924
Mussolini spoke of the “fierce totalitarian will” of his movement in Italy; in the 1930s
many exiled writers used the concept of totalitarianism to link Italian and German
fascism with Society communism under a common antiliberal umbrella
1. Early writers believed that modern totalitarianism burst on the scene with the
revolutionary total war effort of 1914 to 1918 (subordinate all institutions)
2. As stated by French thinker Halevy, the varieties of modern totalitarian tyranny—
fascism, Nazism, and communism—are related with the nature of modern war
3. Writers such as Halevy believed that the crucial experience of WW I was carried
further by Lenin and the Bolsheviks during the Russian civil war; Lenin showed
how a dedicated minority could make a total effort and achieve victory
4. Lenin showed how institutions and human rights are subordinated to the needs of
a single group and its leader and provided a model for single-party dictatorship
5. Modern totalitarianism reached maturity in the 1930s in the Stalinist U.S.S.R. and
Nazi Germany, according to this school of interpretation
4. The grandiose vision of total state control broke decisively not only with conservative
authoritarianism but also with nineteenth-century liberalism and democracy; indeed,
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totalitarianism was a radical revolt against liberalism as classical liberalism had sought
to limit the power of the state and to protect the sacred rights of the people
5. Liberals stood for rationality, peaceful progress, economic freedom, and a strong
middle class and the totalitarianism believed in will power, preached conflict, and
worshiped violence (individual was infinitely less valuable than the state)
6. Modern totalitarianism was based not on an elite but on people who had become
engaged in the political process, most notably through nationalism and socialism; real
totalitarian states built on mass movements and possessed boundless dynamism
7. Totalitarianism was in the end a permanent revolution, an unfinished revolution, in
which rapid, profound change imposed from on high went on forever (Trotsky)
8. A second group of writers approached radical dictatorships outside the Soviet Union
through the concept of fascism; a term of pride for Mussolini and Hitler, who used it to
describe the supposedly “total” and revolutionary character of their movements,
fascism was severely criticized by these writers
1. Fascism was linked to reactionary forces, decaying capitalism and domestic class
conflict and Marxists argued that fascism was the way powerful capitalists sought
to manipulate a mass movement capable of destroying the revolutionary working
class and thus protect eh profits to be reaped through war and territorial expansion
2. Less doctrinaire socialists saw fascism as only one of the several possible ways
for the ruling class to escape from a general crisis of capitalism
3. Fascist movements all across Europe showed that they shared many
characteristics, including extreme, often expansionist nationalism; an
antisocialism aimed at destroying working-class movements; alliances with
capitalists and landowners; mass parties appealing to the middle class and
peasantry; a dynamic and violent leader, and glorification of war and the military
4. European fascism remains a product of class conflict, capitalist crisis, and postwar
upheaval in these more recent studies but interpretation has become convincing
9. Historians often adopt a third approach which emphasizes the uniqueness of
developments in a country (challenge interpretations of totalitarianism and fascism)
10. Four tentative judgments concerning these debates seem appropriate
1. Leading schools of interpretation are rather closely linked to the political passions
and the ideological commitments of the age (some liked totalitarian framework)
2. The concept of totalitarianism retains real value (Germany and Soviet Union
made an unprecedented “total claim” on the belief and behavior of their citizens
3. Antidemocratic, antisocialist movements sprang up all over Europe but only in
Italy and Germany (and some would say Spain) were they able to take power
4. The problem of Europe’s radical dictatorships is complex few easy answers exist
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Document Summary
Workers" party and in addition to denouncing jews, marxists, and democrats, the. German workers" party promised unity under a german national socialism which would abolish injustices of capitalism and create a people"s community : by 1921 hitler had gained absolute control of this small but growing party and. Act, which gave hitler absolute dictatorial power for four years (only social. 1934, most jewish lawyers, doctors, professors, civil servants, and musicians had lost their jobs and the right to practice their professions; in 1935 the infamous nuremberg. 1938, some high-ranking army officers plotted against him, unsuccessfully: nazi expansion and the second world war, aggression and appeasement, 1933-1939, when hitler was weak, he righteously proclaimed that he intended to overturn the. Soviet communism was the real danger and that hitler could be used to stop it: the soviet union watched developments suspiciously as hitler found powerful allies, in 1935 mussolini decided that imperial expansion was needed to revitalize.
