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Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 11:23 09 March 2017
 DICT_A01.QXP 6/22/07 3:52 AM Page i

The Age of the

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Dictators
A Study of the European Dictatorships, 1918–53

David G. Williamson
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DICT_A01.QXP
6/22/07
3:52 AM
Page ii

Page Intentionally Left Blank

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To Luca and Marco

 DICT_A01.QXP 6/22/07 3:52 AM Page iv

First published 2007 by Pearson Education Limited

Published 2013 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © 2007, Taylor & Francis.

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 11:23 09 March 2017

The right of David G. Williamson to be identified as author of this work has

been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or
by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.

Notices
Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience
broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical
treatment may become necessary.

Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in
evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In
using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of
others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.

To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors,
assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products
liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products,
instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein.

ISBN: 978–0–582–50580–3 (pbk)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

A CIP catalog record of this book can be ontained from the Library of Congress

Set by 3 in 10pt Sabon

 DICT_A01.QXP 6/22/07 3:52 AM Page v

Contents
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Preface xv
List of maps xvii
Maps xviii
Acknowledgements xxvi
Introduction 1

Part One: The origins of the dictatorships 5

Chapter 1 The years of crisis, 1890–1918 7

Introduction 8
Proto-Fascism 9
The revolt against materialism, rationalism and liberalism 10
The alliance of nationalism and Socialism 11
Marxism and the Revolutionary Left 12
In Western and Central Europe 12
In Russia 14
The Impact of the First World War 16
Russia 17
Austria–Hungary 18
Germany 19
Italy 21
Assessment 22
Documents 23

Part Two: The legacy of war and partial recovery 27

Chapter 2 The victory of Leninism in Russia, 1917–27 29

Introduction 30
The February and October Revolutions 31
 DICT_A01.QXP 6/22/07 3:52 AM Page vi

vi CONTENTS

The February Revolution 31

The Provisional Government 32
The Kornilov coup 34
Lenin and the Bolshevik Party 36
The October Revolution 38
The early months after the Bolshevik seizure of power,
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October 1917–January 1918 40

The Constituent Assembly 42
Ending the war with Germany: the Treaty of Brest–Litovsk 44
The Civil War 45
Military operations 45
Allied intervention 50
Why Was a Red rather than a White Dictatorship
triumphant by December 1920? 50
The defeat of the leftist opposition 52
The development of the Cheka 53
Creation of a one-party dictatorship 53
The emergence of the Lenin cult 54
War Communism 55
The cultural civil war 57
The NEP 60
The ban on factionalism 63
The creation of the USSR 63
The recreation of the Russian Empire 63
The 1924 constitution 63
Lenin’s death and the battle for the succession, 1922–8 64
Lenin’s death 64
The defeat of Trotsky and the United Opposition 67
The defeat of Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky 69
The NEP years: the attempt to create a new Russia 70
The peasantry and the NEP 70
The workers 71
Was the NEP bound to fail? 72
Bolshevik Russia and the world, 1918–27 73
Assessment 75
Documents 76

Chapter 3 Italy: the creation of the Fascist state, 1918–29 86

Introduction 87
The post-war crisis of the Liberal state, 1919–22 88
 DICT_A01.QXP 6/22/07 3:52 AM Page vii

CONTENTS vii

The end of transformismo 88

The ‘mutilated peace’ and the Fiume incident 89
Economic and social problems 90
Mussolini and the rise of Fascism 91
The resurgence of Fascism 94
From movement to party 95
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The ‘march’ on Rome 98

The consolidation of power, 1922–5 100
The Acerbo Electoral Law and the election of April 1924 101
The Matteotti Affair and its consequences 103
The growth of the totalitarian state, 1925–9 104
Party–state relations 105
The police state 107
The development of the corporatism 109
The economy: the ‘battles’ for the lira and for grain 110
Church–state relations 112
Foreign policy, 1922–9 113
The Corfu crisis 114
Italy, Britain and France 114
The Balkans and the colonies 115
Assessment 115
Documents 117

Chapter 4 The vacuum of power and the rise of

authoritarianism, 1918–29 126
Introduction 126
Central, Eastern and Southern Europe 128
Hungary: the defeat of the Soviet dictatorship 128
Bulgaria 131
Romania 132
Spain 133
1926: the year of the four coups in Greece, Poland,
Portugal and Lithuania 134
Greece 134
Poland 134
Portugal and Lithuania 135
Yugoslavia 135
Austria 136
Assessment 137
Documents 137
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viii CONTENTS

Chapter 5 Weimar Germany: the seedbed of Nazism? 140

Introduction 142
The defeat of the revolutionary and authoritarian challenges,
1918–23 142
The revolution of 1918–19 142
The Weimar constitution 145
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The Treaty of Versailles 147

Containment of the Left and re-emergence of the Right 148
The Ruhr occupation, 1923–4 150
The growth of the Nazi party and the Munich putsch 154
Stabilization, 1924–9 158
German economic recovery 158
The peaceful erosion of the Versailles Treaty 159
Structural problems of the Republic 159
The unpopularity of the Republic 161
Hitler and the Nazi party, 1925–9 162
Assessment 164
Documents 164

Part Three the 1930s: The impact of the Great Depression 173

Chapter 6 The collapse of Weimar and the triumph of

National Socialism, 1930–4 175
Introduction 176
The impact of the Great Depression 178
The fall of the Grand Coalition 179
Brüning, the ‘Hunger Chancellor’, March 1930–May 1932 180
The election of September 1930 181
Brüning’s second government, September 1930–May 1932 183
The Papen and Schleicher cabinets, June 1932–January 1933 186
The coup against Prussia 186
The elections of 31 July and 6 November 1932 187
The Schleicher government, 4 December 1932–30
January 1933 188
The failure to contain Hitler 189
The election of 5 March 1933 190
The Enabling Act 191
Gleichschaltung and the creation of the one-party state 193
The defeat of the ‘second revolution’ 194
Assessment 197
Documents 198
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CONTENTS ix

Chapter 7 The Third Reich, 1933–9 206

Introduction 207
The political structure of the Third Reich 209
Central government 209
The Nazi Party 210
The SS state 211
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The role of Hitler 212

The economy, 1933–9 215
Kick-starting the economy 215
Agriculture 216
Rearmament and the Four-Year Plan, 1933–6 217
Was there a growing economic crisis by 1939? 219
The Volksgemeinschaft 220
Influencing a new Nazi generation: education and
youth movements 221
The peasantry 223
Women and the family 223
The workers and the Volksgemeinschaft 225
Selling the Volksgemeinschaft: the Reich Ministry of
Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda 227
The churches and the Volksgemeinschaft 229
Policing the Volksgemeinschaft 230
Race and eugenics 231
The non-Jewish racial minorities 231
The Jews 232
Hitler’s role in the formulation of anti-Semitic policy:
the structuralist–intentionalist debate 234
Foreign policy 235
The historical debate on Hitler’s foreign policy 235
The first three years 236
The Anschluss 238
The Sudeten crisis and the destruction of Czechslovakia,
March 1938–April 1939 239
The attack on Poland and the Anglo-French declaration
of war 241
Assessment 242
Documents 243

Chapter 8 The development of Italian Fascism, 1929–39 255

Introduction 256
 DICT_A01.QXP 6/22/07 3:52 AM Page x

x CONTENTS

The Duce and his government 256

The development of totalitarianism 257
Propaganda 258
The impact of Fascism on the educational system 260
Fascist youth groups 262
Fascism and the Italian people 264
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The workers 264

The peasantry 266
Welfare 267
Women 268
The Catholic Church and the Fascist regime 269
Fascism accelerates, 1936–9: the Fascist cultural revolution 272
The anti-bourgeois campaign 272
The reform of custom 273
Anti-Semitism 273
The economy, 1930–9 274
The impact of the Depression 274
Autarky 276
Preparing the economy for war 277
Was Fascism economically a failure? 277
Foreign policy, 1933–9 278
The historians and Fascist foreign policy in the 1930s 278
Mussolini and Germany, 1933–5 280
The Ethiopian War 281
The Spanish Civil War 284
The German alliance 285
Italian neutrality, September 1939–June 1940 289
Assessment 290
Documents 291

Chapter 9 The Spanish Civil War and the beginning of

the Franco regime 299
Introduction 300
The Second Republic 302
The Republican Socialist coalition, 1931–3 302
The revival of the Right 304
The bienio negro or ‘two black years’ 306
The slide to civil war, February–May 1936 307
The military coup of 18 July 1936 307
The Civil War 310
 DICT_A01.QXP 6/22/07 3:52 AM Page xi

CONTENTS xi

The outline of events 310

The Great Powers and Spain. 1936–9 314
The Republic and the Civil War, 1936–9 315
The social and economic revolution 315
The restoration of discipline 316
The role of the Communists 317
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Attempted consolidation: the Negrín ministry, 1937–9 318

The Nationalists and the Civil War 318
Forging a united Nationalist regime 319
Policies of Franco’s wartime regime 321
Did Franco establish a Fascist state in 1939? 321
Economic policy 323
Foreign policy 323
Assessment 324
Documents 325

Chapter 10 Stalin and the second revolution, 1927–41 331

Introduction 332
Collectivization and the end of the NEP 333
The consequences 335
Industrializaton and the Five-Year Plans, 1928–41 337
Formulating the first Five-Year Plan 337
Implementing the Five-Year Plans, 1929–41 338
The purges, show trials and the Terror 340
The Kirov assassination 341
The show trials 342
The Ezhovshchina or the Great Purges 344
Assessment of the purges 345
Life in Stalinist Russia, 1929–41 347
The cultural revolution 347
The urban revolution 348
The new working class 350
Women and the family in the USSR 352
The creation of the Stalinist political system 353
From oligarch to dictator: the evolution of Stalin’s power 354
The Stalin cult 356
Foreign policy 357
The rise of Hitler 358
The Sudeten crisis, 1938 360
The Nazi–Soviet Pact 360
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xii CONTENTS

The outbreak of war with Nazi Germany 361

Assessment 363
Documents 364

Chapter 11 Institutionalized authoritarianism 372

Introduction 372
Poland and the Baltic states 373
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Hungary and Austria: the successor states 374

Hungary 375
Austria 377
Romania and the Balkan states 378
Portugal 379
Assessment 380
Documents 380

PART FOUR: The dictators and the Second World War 383

Chapter 12 Europe under German domination 385

Introduction 386
The German occupation of Western Europe and the invasion
of Russia, June 1940–June 1941 386
Europe under German Domination, 1939–44 387
Western Europe 388
Vichy France and the ‘national revolution’ 389
Spain 392
South-Eastern Europe 393
Eastern Europe 395
The Holocaust 397
Historians and the Holocaust 397
The road to the extermination camps 398
Assessment 399
Documents 402

Chapter 13 Nazi Germany: the home front 407

Introduction 408
Führer, government and party 409
The Führer state 409
Policing the home front 411
The SS 411
The party 412
The war economy 414
 DICT_A01.QXP 6/22/07 3:52 AM Page xiii

CONTENTS xiii

The impact of Albert Speer 415

The labour problem 416
The Volksgemeinschaft at war 419
Women and the family 419
Youth and the war 420
The workers 421
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Support, Resistenz and opposition 421

The plot of 20 July 1944 423
The end of the Third Reich 424
Assessment 425
Documents 426

Chapter 14 Fascist Italy at war 432

Introduction 432
Italy at war, 1940–1 434
The home front 436
The economy 436
The crisis of ‘disappointed expectation’,
December 1940–March 1941 437
The decline of the PNF 438
Mussolini’s overthrow 439
The Salò Republic 440
The collapse of the Republic, 1944–5 442
Assessment 443
Documents 444

Chapter 15 Stalinism and the Great Patriotic War 448

Introduction 448
Military events, June 1941–May 1945 449
The impact of the war on Stalin and the Communist Party 450
Stalin 450
The party 451
A new structure of government emerges 452
Propaganda and control 452
The economy 453
The evacuation of plant 454
War production: crisis and recovery, 1942–5 454
The mobilization of labour 455
Agriculture 456
The Soviet people and the war 457
A society in convulsion 457
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xiv CONTENTS

The mobilization of women 458

‘A breath of fresh air’ 459
The nationalities 459
Foreign policy 460
Poland and Eastern Europe 461
Assessment 463
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Documents 464

Chapter 16 The survivors: the USSR, Spain and Portugal 468

Introduction 469
The USSR 470
Economic reconstruction 470
Industrial recovery 470
Agriculture 472
Late Stalinism 472
The emergence of the Quintet 472
The Leningrad and Gosplan Affairs and the Doctor’s Plot 474
The Communist Party, 1945–53 475
The Russian peoples and the post-war period 475
Late Stalinist foreign policy 477
Iran and Turkey 477
Europe 478
The Far East 479
Spain and Portugal 481
The Franco Regime 481
Portugal: Salazar survives 482
Assessment 482
Documents 483

Part Five Assessment 487

Chapter 17 The dual triumph of Western democracy

and Marxism–Leninism 489

Further reading 493

Glossary 508
Index 515
 DICT_A01.QXP 6/22/07 3:52 AM Page xv

Preface
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The object of this book is to provide for students, and indeed all
who are interested in this period, a concise and up-to-date study
of the ‘era of the dictators’. Its emphasis inevitably falls on the
history of the three main dictatorships of Soviet Russia, Fascist
Italy and Nazi Germany, but the Spanish Civil War and the estab-
lishment of Franco’s dictatorship in Spain is also analysed and
there are shorter chapters on the establishment of authoritarian
regimes in many new states that came into being after the defeat
of the Central Powers in 1918.
The book is divided into four main sections dealing with the
origins of the dictatorships and then their development up to
1945 – and beyond, in the case of Stalinist Russia and Francoist
Spain. Each chapter starts with an introduction, which outlines its
major themes and indicates the main topics that it addresses.
Focus boxes and brief notes in the margin help explain points
made in the text by providing background information or sum-
maries of historiographical debates, while a timeline at the
beginning of each chapter provides a guide to the key dates of the
relevant material covered in the chapter. At the end of the book
there is also a comprehensive glossary of technical terms. The text
is cross-referenced so that readers can explore the origins and
consequences of events they are studying, as well as the similari-
ties and differences between the dictatorships. In places, bullet
points are used to help readers grasp simply and speedily key
developments of complex events. At the end of each chapter there
is a collection of documents, which both serve as a basis for
further discussion and illustrate more fully some of the issues
 DICT_A01.QXP 6/22/07 3:52 AM Page xvi

xvi PREFACE

referred to in the main text. At the end of the book there are sug-
gestions for further reading of books in English on the dictators,
which are divided into sections and enable readers to explore
issues raised in this study in greater depth.
Finally I would like to thank Heather McCallum, Christina
Wipf Perry and Natasha Dupont for all their help and encourage-
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ment while writing this book.

 DICT_A01.QXP 6/22/07 3:52 AM Page xvii

Maps
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1 European governments, 1919–37 xviii

2 The Russian Civil War, 1918–20 xix
3 The Spanish Civil War: the strategic situation,
August 1936 xx
4 German expansion, 1935–July 1939 xxi
5 The German invasion of the USSR, 1941 xxii
6 The German mastery of Europe, 1942 xxiii
7 Italian expansion, 1939–43 xxiv
8 Central Europe, 1955 xxv
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FI N LA ND xviii

A Y
DICT_A01.QXP

G R EAT Parliamentary democracies

R W
E N
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(1934–7) Limited democracies

E D

N O
W
Communist government

S
LATVIA
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from 1917
(1934)

DENMARK LITHUANIA
Parliamentary governments that
(1926) became dictatorships, with date
of inauguration of dictatorship
IR EL A N D EAST
3:52 AM

PRUSSIA Monarchies
( EI R E)
E HOLLAND E Countries with overseas empires
Independent 1921
E P O L A N D
Republic 1937 (1926)
GERMANY
(1933)
BELGIUM
Page xviii

E CZE
CHOSLO U S S R
LUX. VA K I A

A Y
RI AR
AUST HUNG
F R A N C E SWITZ. ROMANIA
YU (1938)
E G
I T A LY 19 O S
29 L
–3 A
1 V RIA
LGA
until 1931 (1921) IA BU until 1922
(1934)

6)
E ALBANIA

GA
T U R K E Y

(192 L
S PA I N from

U
E
(1923–1930) 1928 (1924)
&

PORT
(1939)
Civil War
1936–9 GREECE
Republic
1924–35

Map 1 European governments, 1919–37

Source: © M. Gilbert, 1966, Recent History Atlas, London, Weidenfeld, London, 1967, p. 48. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis
Books UK.
 DICT_A01.QXP 6/22/07 3:52 AM Page xix

xix

Annexed by Turkey 1918

Annexed by Romania 1918
Pre-revolutionary Russia
independent republics from 1918
Murmansk Anti-Bolshevik armies
August 1918

N D
BRITISH
Anti-Bolshevik armies
October 1920
N
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Anti-Bolshevik armies
E August 1918
D L A
Russian anti-Bolshevik generals
E
W

Archangel Non-Russian anti-Bolshevik forces

N
S

AMERICANS
I

Anti-Bolshevik forces controlled

Trans-Siberian Railway from
F

Kazan to Vladivostock
Kr
on
st
a
dt

Perm
EST

Petrograd KOLCHAK
H E V I K
N L S
O

IA O CZECHS
L AT V I A B Vol
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Riga
A Tsar Nicholas II and his
LITHUANIA I family murdered by
R U S S Kazan Bolsheviks 16 July 1918
Moscow
SSIA
D

Minsk
RU
N

Warsaw
E

IT Samara
A

WH Gomel Orel
L

O lg
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P
Kiev
U
on
D

K DE
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A
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I N Tsaritsyn
R E
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FRENCH
ARA
O

Odessa
M

Rostov
BI A
AN

Astrakhan
IA

CRIM
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WR
C

AN
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AS

BULGARIA BLAC BR
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H
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Constantinople O
RG Tiflis BRITISH
no

Batum IA
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Kr

AR ZE
M RB fields
A

Kars AIJA
T EN
IA N Baku
U BRITISH
R K E Y P
0 300 miles ER
SI
0 300 km A

Map 2 The Russian Civil War, 1918–20

Source: © Gilbert, 1966, Recent History Atlas, p. 39. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK.
 Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 11:23 09 March 2017

BAY O F BI S CAY xx

A
FRANCE

Y
ZCO
DICT_A01.QXP

OVIEDO

CA
DER

IPU

IZ
CORUNNA SANTAN V

GU
LUGO
ALAVA
LEÓN
BURGOS NAVARRE
PONTEVEDRA
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PALEN
ORENSE LOGRONO HUESCA GERONA

CIA
LÉRIDA
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BARCELONA
VALLADOLID SORIA
ZARAGOZA
3:52 AM

SEGOVIA
TARRAGONA

L
SALAMANCA
GUADALAJARA
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AVILA MADRID
Page xx

CASTELLÓN

G A
Minorca

N
CACERES CUENCA
TOLEDO
Majorca

E A
NEW CAS T IL E VALENCIA
BALEARIC

R T U

O C
Ibiza ISLANDS
CIUDAD REAL ALBACETE Formentera
BADAJOZ
ALICANTE

P O
CORDOBA Division of Spain,
JAÈN MURCIA
A

August 1936
E
S

HUELVA Nationalists

L A N T I C
A
SEVILLE AD

N
N

A
ALMERIA A

A T
GR
A E Republicans
AG N
ÁL

M
A
CADIZ R R
D I T E 0 100 miles
M E
Straits of Gibraltar 0 200 km

Map 3 The Spanish Civil War: the strategic situation, August 1936
Source: H. Browne, Spain’s Civil War, London, Longman, 1983, p. ix.
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DICT_A01.QXP

Memel
LITHUANIA

B A LT I C S E A
Vilna
6/22/07

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3:52 AM

D
0 100 miles

N
A

A
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L
L
M Berlin

O
Poznan Warsaw
H
Page xxi

(Posen) Brest
Litovsk
R

R
P O L A N D

H
Cologne Leipzig Lublin

I
E

M
Breslau

N
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E
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Bohemia

R
E Lvov

A
C Moravia (Lemberg)
H

N
FRANCE O S K I A
L O V A
IA

D
R ut
AN

henia
Bratislava
M

A
Munich
O

(Pressburg) R
I
Vienna
Berchtesg GERMANY 1933
Y

ade
n R
T R Gained by plebiscite 1935
S Budapest
A Remilitarized 1936
A U G
SW ITZ ER LA N D Annexed 1938
N
H U Annexed 1939
I T A LY Protectorate established 1939

Map 4 German expansion, 1935–July 1939

Source: © Gilbert, 1966, Recent History Atlas, p. 50. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK.
xxi
 DICT_A01.QXP 6/22/07 3:52 AM Page xxii

xxii

Archangel
SWEDEN
FINLAND

R.
Stockholm Dv
Lake Onega i

na
Helsinki
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Lake Ladoga
Leningrad

ESTONIA
B A LT I C
LATVIA
SEA
LITHUANIA Kalinin

Army Group Moscow

North
Minsk
Warsaw Smolensk Tula
Army
Group
Centre Brest–Litovsk U S S R
Orel
a
R.

g
Army ol
Pr

.V
ipe

Group Kurske

R
South
t

Lvov
Kiev
R.

Kharkov on
D
R.

R.
Bu

Y nie
R.

AR
D
g

per R. D
Dn

G
UN om
ies

H e Stalingrad
UKRAI N E
ier

ls

Odessa Taganrog
ROMANIA Rostov
SEA Astrakhan
A ZOV
CRIMEA
Kerch
Sevastopol
BULGARIA
B L A C K S E A Ca
uc
as Grozny
us
Mo
Istanbul un
tai
ns

TURKEY

Map 5 The German invasion of the USSR, 1941

Source: D. Evans, Stalin’s Russia, London, Hodder, 2005, p. 129.
 Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 11:23 09 March 2017
DICT_A01.QXP

N ORWAY
FINLAND

E N
Oslo
Leningrad
G R E AT NIA
6/22/07

B R I TA I N Stockholm TO

E D
ES
NORTH

W
SEA LATVIA

A E

S
Riga Moscow
E DENMARK

T
g
IR Copenhagen L
3:52 AM

E A LITHUANIA
B

nzi I C S
Da
Y Minsk
London Berlin N R U S S I A
HOLLAND
Channel A Brest–
Warsaw Litovsk Stalingrad
Islands
Page xxiii

Occupied BELGIUM M POLAND Dn

1940–5 Prague

R
Kiev iep
by Germany Lvov er
Paris

E
UK
F R A N C E RA

G
VA KIA IN Rostov
Vienna SLO
SWITZERLAND Budapest Y E
Vichy AR
HUNG
ROMANIA
Y
U

I
G Belgrade Bucharest
O A
S K SE

T
L AC
BL
S P A I N A Sofia IA

A
V
Corsica AR

I
BULG Axis powers in 1939
A

L
Rome T

ALB
Powers cooperating with Axis
E
U

Y
Sardinia EC Territory occupied by Axis
R

ANIA E
R

France – Vichy governed

K

MEDIT
E RR Neutrals
AN
E Y

EA
N Unconquered
SE
A 0 300 miles
Sicily
A L G E R I A 0 300 km

Map 6 The German mastery of Europe, 1942

Source: © Gilbert, 1966, Recent History Atlas, p. 72. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK.
xxiii
 Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 11:23 09 March 2017

Budapest
S W IT ZER LA N D AUSTRIA
xxiv
1938
Brenner HUNGARY
DICT_A01.QXP

Pass 1941
Occupied by

OL
Trent Hungary
Milan Y Belgrade 0 100 miles

TYR
Venice U 1941 0 1 0 0 km

S.
Turin Trieste R O A T I A
6/22/07

1942
Fiume C G
Belgra
O de

FRANCE
S ROMANIA

I
D
L

A
L A
M
3:52 AM

Nice

D
BOSNIA 1941
A

T
R
(from France) V

I A
T
IA

IA
I

T
A BULGARIA

A
IC
Sofia

S
CORSICA

E
S
(from France) Cattaro
Page xxiv

L A Occupied by
Rome (Kotor) Bulgaria
MACEDONIA

AL
1941
Y Durazzo 1941

Naples
BANIA

Valona
SARDINIA

TYRRHENIAN AEGEAN
GREECE SEA
SEA
1941

ITALY January 1939 Palermo IONIAN

Occupied by Italy April 1939 SEA At
he
Occupied by Italy 1940–3 ns
S I C I LY
Occupied by Germany
Joint German–Italian occupation, 1941–3

Map 7 Italian expansion, 1939–43

Source: © Gilbert, 1966, Recent History Atlas, p. 56. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK.
 DICT_A01.QXP 6/22/07 3:52 AM Page xxv

xxv

NORWAY Petsamo
Stockholm
Murmansk SWEDEN Leningrad
Khiuma Tallinn
Göteborg (ESTONIA)
SWEDEN Gotland
Sarema Novgorod

K
AR
NM
USSR Riga
Libau

DE
Copenhagen (LATVIA)
FINLAND
Bornholm Klaipeda
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sk
(Dan) (LITHUANIA)

n
Helsinki Viborg Lübeck

da
G Kaliningrad
Porkkala Leningrad Kaunas Vilna Smolensk
(Russ.1945–56) Hamburg Y
Bremen Szczecin

AN
Inset - half scale
BERLIN Minsk
RM
NETH. GE Grodno
USSR
WES

(4 Power
BELGIUM control) POLAN D
ST

Bonn
Warsaw
EA
T G

Leipzig Wroclaw Brest–Litovsk

LUX. Chernigov
E

Paris Frankfurt
RM

Metz Prague Cracow

CZ
AN

Strasbourg ECH Kief

OSL Przemysl
Lvov
Y

FR ANCE O VA
Munich KIA
Vienna Bratislava Rut
SWI TZ E R L AND he Bukovina
Liechtenstein ni a
Budapest
Lyons

BE
H U N GARY

SS
Milan Jassy
Trieste Odessa

AR
Fiume Zagreb

ABI
ROM AN IA
(in
Y en
de

Marseilles
U de
p

Monaco
G

O
nt
S Belgrade
I TALY Co L Bucharest
A
Sarajevo mm V
CORSICA un I A
(France) ist
st Sofia
at
Rome e)
BU LGARIA
Tirana Skopje
SARDINIA Naples Adrianople
(Italy) ALBANIA
Salonika Istanbul

0 100 miles
GREECE
(Communist
CORFU revolt
0 0 km
suppressed)

SICILY T U RKEY
Izmir
Athens

Annexed to
Satellite states
USSR Dodecanese
(to Greece)
1938 frontiers

Map 8 Central Europe, 1955

Source: D. Williamson, Europe and the Cold War, 1945–91, London, Hodder, 2006.
 DICT_A01.QXP 6/22/07 3:52 AM Page xxvi

Acknowledgements
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We are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce

copyright material:

Maps 1, 2, 4, 6 and 7 redrawn from Recent History Atlas by

Martin Gilbert, ISBN 00297764357, published by Weidenfeld
1966, reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK
(Gilbert, M. 1966); Chapter 2, Box ‘Goods supplied by private
traders in the NEP’ from Private Trade and Traders during NEP
in Russia in the Era of NEP edited by S. Fitzpatrick et al.,
reprinted by permission of Indiana University Press, Bloomington
and Indianapolis (Ball, A. 1990); Chapter 3, Box ‘Social or pro-
fessional background of National Fascist Party Members’ and
Chapter 12, Box ‘The Nazi New European Order’ from A History
of Fascism, 1914–45, pub Routledge, reprinted by permission of
Thomson Publishing Services (Payne, S. G. 2001); Map 3 redrawn
from Spain’s Civil War (Seminar Studies in History series),
reprinted by permission of Pearson Education Ltd. (Browne, H.
1983); Chapter 5, Box ‘Inflation: dollar quotations for the mark,
1914–23’ from Germany 1866–1945, reprinted by permission of
Oxford University Press (Craig, G. 1978); Chapter 5, Box
‘German industrial production, 1913–28’ adapted from
Perspectives on Modern German Economic History and Policy,
reprinted by permission of Cambridge University Press
(Borchardt, K. and Lambert, P. 1991); Chapter 5, Box ‘National
election results in the Weimar Republic, 1919–30’ from Inflation,
stabilization and political realignment in Germany, 1924 to 1928
in The German Inflation Reconsidered: A Preliminary Balance
edited by G. D. Feldman et al., reprinted by permission of Verlag
 DICT_A01.QXP 6/22/07 3:52 AM Page xxvii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xxvii

Walter de Gruyter & Co. GmbH (Childers, T. 1982); Map 5

redrawn from Stalin’s Russia (Teach Yourself History series), pub
Hodder, reprinted by permission of David Hancock, Perception
Design (Evans, D. 2005); Chapter 8, Box ‘The standard of living,
1929–39’ from Fascism in Italy: Society and Culture 1922–1945,
pub Allen Lane 1973, reproduced by permission of Penguin
Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 11:23 09 March 2017

Books Ltd. and The Fascist Experience by Tannenbaum,

Copyright © Basic Books, Inc., 1972, reprinted by permission of
Basic Books, a member of Perseus Books Group (Tannenbaum, E.
R. 1973); Map 8 redrawn from Access to History: Europe and the
Cold War 1945–1991, 2nd Edition, pub Hodder, reprinted by
permission of Gray Publishing (Williamson, D. 2006); Chapter
10, Boxes ‘Peasant holdings’ and ‘Productivity targets’ from
Stalin and Khruschev, © 1990 Lynch, published and reproduced
by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Ltd. (Lynch, M. 1990);
Chapter 12, Box ‘Occupied territories’’ from Geschichte der
Deutschen Kriegswirtschaft, 1939–1945, Volume 2, reprinted by
permission of Akademie Verlag GmbH (Eichholtz, D. 1985);
Chapter 13, Box ‘Comparison between the British and German
war economies’ from War and Economy in the Third Reich, © R.
J. Overy 1994, reprinted by permission of Oxford University
Press (Overy, R. J. 1995); Chapter 13, Box ‘Food consumption in
Germany 1939–45’ redrawn from Albert Speer and Armaments
Policy in Total War in Germany and the Second World War,
Volume V, Part II edited by Research Institute for Military
History, reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press
(Muller, R.-D. 2003); Chapter 15, Box ‘The Soviet war economy’
from The Soviet Home Front, 1941–45: A Social and Economic
History of the USSR in World War II, reprinted by permission of
Pearson Education Ltd. (Barber, J. and Harrison, M. 1991).

Photographs: Figure 2.1 Getty Images/AFP; Figure 2.2 Getty

Images/Hulton Archive; Figure 2.3 Russia On-Line; Figure 2.4
RIA Novosti; Figure 2.5 Russia On-Line; Figure 2.6 Empics;
Figure 3.1 Empics; Figure 3.2 Estate of Kimon Marengo/ Centre
for the Study of Cartoons & Caricature, University of Kent;
Figure 4.1 Getty Images/Hulton Archive; Figure 5.1 Snark
International; Figure 5.2 Mary Evans Picture Library; Figure 6.1
Getty Images/Hulton Archive; Figure 6.2 Corbis/Bettmann;
Figure 7.1 Corbis/Bettmann; Figure 8.1 Getty Images/Time & Life
 DICT_A01.QXP 6/22/07 3:52 AM Page xxviii

xxviii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Pictures; Figure 8.2 Getty Images/Hulton Archive; Figure 8.4

Corbis; Figure 8.5 Getty Images/Time & Life Pictures; Figure 9.1
Corbis/Bettmann; Figure 9.2 Corbis/Hulton-Deutsch Archive;
Figure 9.3 Getty Images/Roger Viollet; Figure 10.1 RIA Novosti;
Figure 10.2 RIA Novosti; Figure 10.3 RIA Novosti; Figure 10.4
Mary Evans Picture Library; Figure 12.1 ‘You Too! Your
Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 11:23 09 March 2017

Comrades are Waiting in the French Division of the Waffen’,

Second World War poster, c.1942 (colour litho), French School,
(20th century) / Giraudon, Private Collection / The
Bridgeman Art Library; Figure 12.2 Getty Images/Hulton
Archive; Figure 13.1 Getty Images/Hulton Archive; Figure 13.2
Corbis/Bettmann; Figure 15.1 RIA Novosti; Figure 16.1 Society
for Co-operation in Russian and Soviet Studies.

We are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce

texts:

Chapter 5, Documents 5 and 7, Chapter 6, Documents 1, 4, 9 and

10 extracts from Nazism 1919–1945. Volume 1: The Rise to
Power 1919–1934 edited by J. Noakes and G. Pridham, ISBN 0
85989 598 X, University of Exeter Press, 1998, reprinted by per-
mission of University of Exeter Press (Noakes, J. and Pridham, G.
eds 1998); Chapter 7, Documents 2, 3 and 4 extracts from
Nazism 1919–1945. Volume 2: State, Economy and Society
1933–1939 edited by J. Noakes and G. Pridham, ISBN 0 85989
599 8, University of Exeter Press, 2000, reprinted by permission
of University of Exeter Press (Noakes, J. and Pridham, G. eds
2000); Chapter 12, Documents 1 and 4 extracts from Nazism
1919–1945. Volume 3: Foreign Policy, War and Racial
Extermination, edited by J. Noakes and G. Pridham, ISBN 0
85989 602 1, University of Exeter Press, 2001, reprinted by per-
mission of University of Exeter Press (Noakes, J. and Pridham, G.
eds 2001); Chapter 13, Documents 3, 4 and 5 extracts from
Nazism 1919–1945. Volume 4: The German Home Front in
World War II edited by J. Noakes, ISBN 0 85989 311 1,
University of Exeter Press, 1998, reprinted by permission of
University of Exeter Press (Noakes, J. ed 1998).

In some instances we have been unable to trace the owners of

copyright material, and we would appreciate any information
that would enable us to do so.
 DICT_A02.QXP 13/3/07 16:15 Page 1

Introduction
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The ‘era of the dictators’ is a convenient label to describe the

period of dictatorships, which dominated Europe between 1918
and 1945, but on closer analysis, like all historical labels, it can
prove simplistic. Dictatorships in Europe were not unique to the
inter-war period. The period 1918–45 certainly encompassed the
rise and fall of the dynamic dictatorships in Germany and Italy,
but the Spanish and Portuguese dictatorships continued on into
the 1970s, and the Soviet dictatorship remained virtually intact
until 1990.
Is the logic of this chronology then that there is no clear-cut
era of the dictators? In retrospect it can be argued that up to
1939, or perhaps still more 1942, Europe was being recast by the
new ‘totalitarian’ dictatorships. By 1939 18 regimes can be
described as dictatorial. During the period of German occupation,
with the exception of Switzerland and Sweden, the remaining
Continental democracies were replaced with authoritarian
regimes. Although the defeat of Italian Fascism and German
Nazism in 1943–5 destroyed the most dynamic of these move-
ments, paradoxically this opened up the way not only for the
democratic reconstruction of Western Europe, but simultaneously
also to the triumph of Stalinism in Eastern Europe. Western
Europe (with the partial exception of Spain and Portugal) was
able to emerge from the ‘Fascist era’, but in Eastern Europe pre-
war authoritarian and wartime Fascist regimes were merely
swapped for the new Stalinist people’s democracies. The Cold
War ensured that for only half of the European Continent, the era
of dictatorships ended in 1945.
 DICT_A02.QXP 13/3/07 16:15 Page 2

2 INTRODUCTION

To what extent did these dictatorships possess common

characteristics? Their form varied from the Bolshevik regime in
Marxist–Leninist Russia, which was inspired by Marxist–Leninist principles, to the
principles Italian Fascist and German Nazi dictatorships and the authori-
The theories of revolution
tarian governments of the Iberian peninsular and Eastern and
based on the writings of
Karl Marx and Vladimir South-Eastern Europe. The Bolshevik regime was the first of the
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Ilyich Lenin, which foresaw new dictatorships, which based itself on a pseudo-democratic
the overthrow of legitimacy, but it evolved and changed, and historians debate the
capitalism, the creation of degree of continuity between Leninism and Stalinism.
a workers’ democracy
(dictatorship of the
Similarly, how much in common did the Italian Fascist and the
proletariat) and the German Nazi regimes have? Was Nazism in fact a form of
subsequent creation of a Fascism or was it, as some historians argue, ‘altogether a unique
just and harmonious phenomenon, emerging from the peculiar legacy of the
society in which the state
Prussian–German authoritarian state and German ideological
would gradually ‘wither
away’. development, but owing its uniqueness above all to the person of
Hitler.1 On the other hand it was argued, particularly strongly at
the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, that the new political
movements that seized power in Italy, Russia and Germany did
have much in common. Hannah Arendt and Carl Friedrich both
described them as totalitarian regimes sharing the following
characteristics:2

• an official ideology
• a political monopoly by a single mass party
• a police state
• total control over the media
• central control over the economy
• a monopoloy of armed power.

The dictatorships that sprang up in the Iberian peninsular and

Central and South-Eastern Europe had little in common with the
dynamic new movements of Fascism, Nazism and Communism.
At most they were what one Czech historian called ‘half-cock
fascism’.3 Essentially, except perhaps in Spain, these dictatorships
lacked any popular backing and relied on the officer corps great
landowners and the bureaucracy for support. Only in the late
1930s and early 1940s, with the apparent triumph of German
Nazism and Italian Fascism in Europe, did these regimes begin to
adopt increasingly Fascist tendencies.
 DICT_A02.QXP 13/3/07 16:15 Page 3

INTRODUCTION 3

NOTES
1 I. Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives,
London, Edward Arnold, 3rd ed. 1993, p. 19.
2 H. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York, Harcourt,
1951; C.J. Friedrich and Z.K. Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship
and Autocracy, Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press, 1956.
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3 J. Valenta, ‘The drift to dictatorship’, in History of the 20th Century,

no. 52, London, Purnell, 1968–9, p. 1433.
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PART ONE

dictatorships
The origins of the
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 DICT_C01.QXP 13/3/07 16:15 Page 7

CHAPTER ONE

The years of crisis,

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1890–1918

Timeline
1890 Julius Langbehn’s Rembrandt als Erzieher published
1894–9 Protocols of the Elders of Zion forged by agents of the
Russian Secret Police in Paris
1899 Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s Foundations of the
Nineteenth Century published
Action Française formed
1902 Lenin’s What Is To Be Done published
1903 Brussels Conference and formation of the Bolshevik or
majority group
1905 Uprising in Russia
1908 Publication of Sorel’s Réflexions sur la violence
1909 Futurist manifesto published
1910 Foundation of the Italian National Association, which
amalgamated with the Fascist Party in 1923
1912 SPD emerges as largest party in the Reichstag elections
Mussolini becomes a key figure on the left-wing of the
Italian Socialist Party and appointed editor of L’Avanti
1912–14 Industrial and agrarian unrest in Italy
1913 First Italian election under the new suffrage law
1914 August Outbreak of First World War
1915 May Italy declares war on Austria
1916 August Italy declares war on Germany
1917 February Russian Revolution
April USA declares war on Germany
August Mass strike against war in Turin
October Bolshevik Revolution in Russia
Italian defeat at Caporetto
1918 January Strikes break out in Berlin
March Treaty of Brest–Litovsk
 DICT_C01.QXP 13/3/07 16:15 Page 8

8 THE ORIGINS OF THE DICTATORSHIPS

March–April German offensive on the Western front

29 September German High Command calls for an
armistice
11 November Armistice signed between Germany and
Allies
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Introduction
During the years 1917–45 Europe was reshaped by the revol-
utionary forces of Fascism, Nazism and Communism. For
historians the key question is whether the triumph of these move-
ments was caused by the cataclysm of the First World War or
whether their emergence as powerful forces would have happened
even without the war. In retrospect the years immediately before
the outbreak of the First World War seemed to be a golden age of
peace and prosperity, yet they were also a period of massive
change, dislocation and political and social crisis. Accelerating
industrialization led to the development of a new mass culture,
large cities and the expansion of the working classes, which chal-
lenged the nineteenth-century liberal and conservative dominance
of the political system. However, it is all too easy to read into
these years an inevitability that did not exist. In Russia Lenin had
developed his revolutionary variant of Marxism, and in Western
and Central Europe there certainly was an intellectual revolt
against rationalism and liberalism, and the emergence of the core
ideas of what was later to be called Fascism, but without the First
World War it is doubtful whether this revolt would have been suf-
ficient to destabilize and finally to overthrow the existing political
systems.

The key issues in this chapter are:

• The difficulty in defining Fascism.
• The intellectual backlash against liberalism and the rise of
irrational ideologies.
• The fusion of nationalism and Socialism.
• The decline of Socialism as a revolutionary force and the
emergence of syndicalism and Bolshevism.
• The radicalizing impact of the First World War.
 DICT_C01.QXP 13/3/07 16:15 Page 9

THE YEARS OF CRISIS, 1890–1918 9

PROTO-FASCISM
Before tracing the origins of Fascism it is important to define the
term. It is, as the American historian Stanley Payne has observed,
‘probably the vaguest of the major political terms’.1 Apart from
Italian Fascism, most of the regimes that could be regarded as
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Fascist in inter-war and wartime Europe never called themselves

Fascist and differed significantly from each other. Consequently
one of the major tasks of historians of Fascism has been to define
what is meant by the term and try to identify common points in
the regimes that have been described as ‘Fascist’. Payne2 has
drawn up a table in which he breaks up the characteristics of pol-
itical Fascism into three main sections:

1 Ideology and aims:

• An idealist or ‘vitalist’ philosophy (see p. 10) aiming at

creating a new nationalist, authoritarian state, which would
not be based on traditional conservative principles.
• Its economy would be controlled by the state, or be
‘corporatist’, and attempts made to integrate both the Corporatism
workers and employers into one common organization. The attempt to defuse
class hatred by giving both
• The worship of force and the readiness to use it to achieve
capital and labour a role in
territorial expansion. running industry – see
pp. 109 and 110.
2 It was opposed to:

• liberalism
• Communism
• conservatism, although it might temporarily ally with the
traditional Right.

3 Its style and organization:

• Creation of a party militia and mass mobilization of the

population.
• The use of symbols, language and orchestrated mass
meetings, which emphasized the mystical or religious side of
the movement.
• Stress on male dominance and superiority over the female.
• Emphasis on the dynamism of youth and the conflict of
generations.
• The creation of a charismatic authoritarian leadership.
 DICT_C01.QXP 13/3/07 16:15 Page 10

10 THE ORIGINS OF THE DICTATORSHIPS

The revolt against materialism, rationalism and

liberalism
During the period 1890–1914 the cultural elite in Continental
Europe, particularly Germany, Italy and France, began to reject
the prevailing beliefs of liberalism and rationalism which had
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been accepted almost without question by the preceding gener-

ations. The attack on liberalism gathered strength, while the
yearning for great men, heroism and violence grew. Typical of this
new spirit was the Futurist movement in Italy, in which Filippo
Marinetti played the leading role. Its art, drama and philosophy
stressed the glories of war and aimed to exalt aggression and viol-
ence. After the war both Italian Fascism and Russian Communism
were to draw on the ideas and imagery of the Futurist manifesto
published 10 years earlier (see Document 1 and pp. 58 and 93).
In Germany the reaction against liberalism took the form of a
Rembrandt als Erzieher rejection of modernity by the new völkisch philosophy, which by
Literally, Rembrandt as
1914 dominated nationalist and right wing thought in Germany.
Educator.
The völkisch writers, Lagarde, Langbehn and later Moeller Van
Friederich Nietzsche der Bruck, propagated a nostalgic, anti-modernist ideology, which
(1844–1900) looked back to an idyllic Germanic pre-industrial rural society. Its
Argued that in
message was that urbanization, industrialization and liberalism
contemporary culture
religion had been replaced were destroying the good old pre-industrial Germany with its
by materialism and the heroic values. Above all in this process the Jews were playing a
quest for pleasure, leading role (see Document 2). These nationalist fantasies and
drawing the conclusion utopias, which composed the new Germanic ideology, had an
from this that God was
‘dead’. To remedy this he
immediate resonance and were to colour the attitude of a whole
urged in Thus Spake generation of Germans, and make them more receptive to Nazi
Zaruthustra the creation of propaganda. Langbehn’s work, Rembrandt als Erzieher, for
a new ruthless elite under instance, was republished 39 times in two years.
a totally amoral leader or
Similarly, in the hands of minor intellectuals and textbook
‘superman’.
writers, the ideas of the great late-nineteenth-century philos-
Henri Bergson ophers and scientists, such as the German philosopher Friedrich
(1859–1941) Nietzsche, the French thinker Henri Bergson and the English biol-
In his book L’Evolution
ogist Charles Darwin (1808–82), were simplified and made
Creatrice he stressed the
importance of the ‘vital accessible to a much wider audience. Darwinian biology, for
instinct’ (élan vital) in life example, gave rise to ‘social Darwinism’, which viewed life as a
which favoured the bitter struggle for the survival of the fittest and opened the way
creativity of the individual up to eugenics and racial engineering. The new theories of the
as opposed to the drab
supremacy of the Germanic races drew heavily on these ideas.
conformity of society.
 DICT_C01.QXP 13/3/07 16:15 Page 11

THE YEARS OF CRISIS, 1890–1918 11

Houston Stewart Chamberlain, for example, in his two-volume Houston Stewart

Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, linked the superiority of Chamberlain
(1855–1927)
the German race to their racial purity, and argued that the real The son of an English
threat to this superiority came from the Jews. The theories of admiral, who became a
Gustav Le Bon, which stressed that crowds were essentially German citizen and was a
irrational and hysterical, as well as the views of the Italian great admirer of the
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composer, Wagner, whose

Vilfredo Pareto, that politics rested on emotion rather than
daughter he married.
reason, also created a climate in which great men, charismatic
leadership and daring deeds, rather than the more prosaic virtues Gustav Le Bon
of liberalism and internationalism, seemed to be the requirements (1841–1931)
One of the founders of
of the time.
sociology and the writer of
The Psychology of the
Masses.
The alliance of nationalism and Socialism
The years 1880–1914 were the incubation period for Fascism and Vilfredo Pareto
(1848–1923)
National Socialism. Fuelled by France’s humiliating defeat at the
An economist, whose most
hands of Prussia, new radical nationalist groups, such as the important book, Mind and
League of Patriots and the Action Française were formed in Society, was written in
France, while in Italy Enrico Corradini was popularizing the view 1916.
that Italy was treated like a proletarian nation by the great
Eugenics
powers. He urged a new national revolution that would create a The science of improving
more united and powerful state. In this context he sometimes used the population by selective
the term ‘National Socialism’. In Germany extreme nationalism breeding.
became increasingly popular with pressure groups like the Pan
Enrico Corradini
German League, the Navy League and the Agrarian League. In
(865–1931)
1893 small anti-Semitic parties managed to win 16 seats in the A journalist and nationalist
Reichstag, although by 1912 their number had fallen to seven. In politician.
Bohemia, a province of the Austrian Empire in 1904, a German
Workers’ Party was set up, which increasingly became more
nationalist and racist, and by 1918 called itself the German
National Socialist Workers’ Party.
Taken together the ideologies and policies of these groups
anticipated much of the Fascist and National Socialist pro-
grammes of the 1920s:

• They all advocated an authoritarian nationalism.

• They were hostile to liberalism and the parliamentary
process.
• The nation counted for far more than the individual. Thus
their nationalism had a socialist dimension to it. Charles
 DICT_C01.QXP 13/3/07 16:15 Page 12

12 THE ORIGINS OF THE DICTATORSHIPS

Maurras, who founded Action Française in 1899, declared,

for instance, that there existed a ‘form of socialism, which,
when stripped of its democratic and cosmopolitan accretions,
would fit in with nationalism just as a well-made glove fits a
beautiful hand’.3
• They advocated the doctrine of corporatism for regulating
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competing social and economic interests.

• They were anti-Semitic and realized that anti-Semitism could
be used to integrate the workers into the national
community.

How much impact, however, did these radical groups have?

They influenced intellectuals and university students, and
appeared to provide some answers to the problems created by
accelerating industrialization and the growing power of the
masses. However in 1914 the prospects of any proto-Fascist
seizure of power in a European state were still inconceivable. It is
true that there was a growing disillusionment with nineteenth-
Feudalism
century liberalism and parliamentarism in both Italy and
The social system in Germany, and the increasing industrial unrest and growth of
medieval Europe whereby socialist parties was producing a conservative backlash with
land was held by a vassal demands for limiting the franchise and the creation of a more
from a superior in
authoritarian state but, as long as there were no cataclysmic and
exchange for military
allegiance and other polarizing crises, a peaceful absorption of the new mass parties on
duties. the left into democratic politics was still possible.

Capitalism
An economic system in MARXISM AND THE REVOLUTIONARY LEFT
which the production of
goods and their In Western and Central Europe
distribution depend on the
investment of private Marxism (see p. 14) was a revolutionary political theory, which
capital (money) with a provided a structure for inevitable change from feudalism to cap-
view to making a profit.
italism to Socialism. By the late nineteenth century it was the
Socialism dominant revolutionary theory in Western and Central Europe,
The belief that the and gaining ground in Russia. In Germany the Social Democratic
community as a whole, Party (SDP) was a Marxist party, but it was far from revol-
rather than individuals, utionary. Growing prosperity had shown that Marx’s prediction
should control the means
of production, the
that industrialization would only impoverish the workers and
exchange of goods and lead to revolution was clearly inaccurate. In Germany the Social
banking. Democrat Eduard Bernstein had already drawn the conclusion
 DICT_C01.QXP 13/3/07 16:15 Page 13

THE YEARS OF CRISIS, 1890–1918 13

that Socialism could be achieved peacefully by using the demo-

cratic process. The SPD had become an uneasy alliance between
moderates or ‘revisionists’ and radicals, who still clung to the idea
of a revolutionary struggle. These two contradictory views were
partly reconciled by the Erfurt Programme of 1891, which com-
bined an orthodox Marxist criticism of society with a set of
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moderate demands, that did not have to be implemented by a rev-

olution. The moderates were greatly strengthened by the trade
union wing of the party, which was much more interested in using
its power to achieve concrete reforms rather than indulging in
what it saw as the futile gesture of a general strike. This policy
became known as economism.
The decline of Socialism as a revolutionary force as a conse-
quence of the rise of economism led to a radical revision of
Marxism in both France and Italy. In France Georges Sorel
(1847–1922), a retired engineer, began to develop the idea of syn- Syndicalism
dicalism. He argued that socialism would have to be radically A movement aimed at
securing the ownership of
restructured if it were to regain its revolutionary momentum:
industries by the workers
• It must accept for the time being capitalism, the development through direct action by
strikes.
of which would lead to growing tensions between the
workers and employers.
• Unlike the dry ‘materialism’ of Marxism, it must develop a
new culture and psychology that stressed the importance of
idealism and myth as a way of inspiring the workers.
• Liberal democracy must be completely rejected, and direct
action, such as a general strike, should be used to achieve
change and revolution.
• Finally, in his seminal Réflexions sur la violence (1908), Sorel
stressed the importance of violence in creating commitment
to a cause and unity in a political movement. He regarded
violence not just as an unfortunate necessity, but something
that was good in itself and which would create a
revolutionary consciousness.

By the early 1900s revolutionary syndicalism had begun to

take root in Italy. As it became clear after the strikes of 1907–8
that the workers alone could not achieve revolution, the Italian
Syndicalists began to develop the theory of revolutionary national
socialism. Already by 1902 this synthesis of nationalism and
socialism began to have some impact on Mussolini, who at times
 DICT_C01.QXP 13/3/07 16:15 Page 14

14 THE ORIGINS OF THE DICTATORSHIPS

even called himself a Syndicalist, although he could still bitterly

attack nationalism (see p. 91).

In Russia
In nineteenth-century Russia Marxism was never as influential as
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it was in Western and Central Europe. This was partly because of

the backwardness of the economy, the repressive nature of the
state and competition from the Russian Populist revolutionary
tradition. Essentially the Populists hoped that the bourgeois stage
of the revolution that was so essential for Karl Marx could be
avoided and that Russia would develop its own form of Socialism
Village commune based on the village commune. However, after the famine and
Apportioned state taxes, cholera epidemic in 1891–2, which showed up with brutal clarity
selected the number of
the inability of the tsarist state to cope with an emergency, the
conscripts for the army
and apportioned the land Marxist argument that Russia needed more of modern capitalism
that had been made began to appeal strongly to the intelligentsia. Grigorii Plekhanov,
available for the peasantry a Marxist theoretician, in a series of influential books popularized
when the serfs were a version of Marxism, and argued that the unique situation in
emancipated in 1861.
Russia would not hasten the outbreak of revolution. Russia
would first of all have to undergo, as in Germany and Britain,
industrialization and a bourgeois revolution. Acting on this
advice, a group of Marxist intellectuals, which included Lenin,
formed the St Petersburg Union of Struggle to assist the workers
in their fight against the employers and to develop an under-
standing of the wider class struggle. The Union of Struggle was
quickly broken up by the authorities and most of its members,
including Lenin, were sent to Siberia.

Marxism
Karl Marx (1818–83) was a German philosopher of Jewish
extraction. The theoretical and philosophical system he
constructed was the intellectual basis of the Leninist and Stalinist
ideologies (see Chapters 2 and 10). The key elements of Marxism
are:

• ‘Historical materialism’: Marx was convinced that the

economic system of a country determined its political and
social structures. To him, religion simply reflected the current
economic realities.
 DICT_C01.QXP 13/3/07 16:15 Page 15

THE YEARS OF CRISIS, 1890–1918 15

• Marx, being a student of the German philosopher, Georg

Wilhelm Hegel (1770–1831), also believed in ‘historical
inevitability’, which would eventually lead to Communism. In
practice this meant that historical change was the inevitable
result of economic inequalities, which produced class hatred.
• Consequently, Marx was convinced that capitalism would
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inevitably be overthrown by the workers or ‘proletariat’.

Initially they would create a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ in
order to defend the revolution from a backlash from the
dispossessed capitalists and bourgeoisie, but once the
revolution was safe the new proletariat state would simply
begin to ‘wither away’ and be replaced by a communist
society where economic production would be subordinated to
human needs. Marx idealistically believed that once this stage
was achieved, crime, envy and rivalry would become things of
the past. For him the ‘state’ was merely the means by which
one dominant class suppressed the inferior classes.

Like the Syndicalists, Lenin and his colleagues were horrified

by the popularity of Bernstein’s revisionism and the ‘economism’
of the German trade unions, and were determined to prevent
similar developments in the Russian labour movement. In a pam-
phlet, What Is To Be Done, Lenin urged the setting up of a
centrally controlled party which would be able to stop the drift
towards compromise politics (see Document 4). These ideas on
party organization did not come from Marx, but from the
Russian revolutionary tradition, as exemplified by The People’s The People’s Will
Will, which, to survive persecution, became a centrally organized Formed in 1879; two years
later assassinated Tsar
party of professional revolutionaries.
Alexander II.
In 1903 Lenin’s colleagues, Plekhanov and Martov, began to see
that Lenin’s ideas would turn a social democratic party into an elite
autocratic force, which would become a caricature of the tsarist
state. When the constitution of the Russian Social Democratic
Workers’ Party was debated at a Congress in Brussels later that
year, this issue was bitterly divisive. Initially Lenin was defeated but
then, thanks to withdrawal of a small number of ‘economists’and
Bund members, he was able to claim majority support. From now Bund
on he called his group the Bolsheviki, or majority, while his oppo- The organization of Jewish
workers.
nents were labelled the minority, or Menschiviki. The Congress did,
however, manage to agree on a minimum party programme:
 DICT_C01.QXP 13/3/07 16:15 Page 16

16 THE ORIGINS OF THE DICTATORSHIPS

• the abolition of the monarchy and the creation of a

democratic republic
• a single chamber legislature elected on a universal franchise
• extensive local self-government and self-determination for the
minority peoples
• the creation of a people’s militia to replace the army
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• progressive income and inheritance taxes

• complete legal equality for the peasants and the return to
them of the land they had lost to the gentry at the time of the
emancipation of the serfs in 1861.

Neither the Bolsheviks nor the Mensheviks played an

important part in the revolts in Russia of 1905. Their rivals, the
Socialist Revolutionaries, were far more successful in mobilizing
the peasants by promising to socialize the land and hand it over
to the peasant communes. The Tsar managed to divide his
enemies with the offer of an elected Duma, or parliament, and
restore some semblance of his authority by 1907. To escape
arrest, Lenin and the leading Social Democrats and Socialist
Revolutionaries had to go into exile. Significantly, for the future
he also drew the conclusion that the Bolsheviks needed to appeal
to the peasantry by promising to seize the land from the gentry
and redistribute it to them.
On paper Lenin had created a tightly centralized party, but his-
torians now question whether the Bolsheviks between 1905 and
1917 were really such a united group. Stephen Cohen, for
instance, has argued that Bolshevism was not Leninism but a
‘diverse group led by dissimilar men and women’.4 Much to
Lenin’s disgust, the writings of Sorel were read by many of the
Bolsheviks. Alexander Bogdanov, a contemporary and rival of
Lenin, for instance, saw Socialism not so much as a product of
Marxism, but as ‘a useful myth that organized mass experience’.5

THE IMPACT OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Before 1914 Bolshevism was a force in Russian revolutionary
politics, while the ideology of Fascism could already be discerned.
It was, however, the Great War of 1914–18 that was to create the
environment in which both these ideologies could flourish. The
pressures each belligerent nation, particularly the less developed
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