The post war years saw strikes and demonstrations organised by the working classes and the growing strength of trade unions. Terrorists acts carried out by Communists and the emergence of a Communist state in Russia, ensured that Fascist parties grew up throughout Europe in opposition to Communism. These parties gained they support of capitalists, industrialists and people of property. Fascism was at pains to emphasise the opposite of everything Communism purported to be. It opposed its internationalism, its materialism, and its fixation with class, concentrating instead on loyalty to one’s own country as the supreme good. Industrialists and businessmen, attracted by Hitler’s anti-Communist stance, financed the Nazi party. A strong anti-Communism programme on the part of both Mussolini and Hitler ensured their acceptance by the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church was particularly impressed by Hitler’s opposition to Communism, so much so that, a Concordat was signed between the Vatican and the German state in 1933. Under this agreement, the Church was allowed to manage its own affairs, the Catholic education system was protected and Catholic bishops took an oath of allegiance to the German Reich. Fascists claimed that socialism, represented by the Marxist theories involving a class struggle between the Proletariat and the Bourgeois, caused conflict within the state by dividing people into classes.

From extreme nationalism and the cult of leadership grew racism, a belief in the superiority of one’s own race and that the world was divided into superior and inferior races. Italians were heirs to the greatness of Ancient Rome, thus, could “recognise a barbarian in every man of non-Latin blood”. In 1934 Mussolini introduced the Anti-Semitic ‘Manifesto della Rassa’ which forbid Italians to marry Jews, while existing marriages were declared null. The Nuremburg Laws of 1935 deprived Jews of many basic rights. However, it was in Germany that the idea of a “super race” was brought to a frightening conclusion with the killing of 6 million Jews (final solution) by the end of the war.

an high. These conditions made it possible for the fascist movements to become established, to generate mass support, and, during times of continuing crises, to lay claim to the reins of government. Fascism as an ideology involves, to a varying degree, some of the following hallmarks: Extreme Nationalism and super-patriotism with a sense of historic mission, cult of personality around a charismatic leader, racism and a self image as being a superior form of social organisation, attacks against both socialism and communism, repression and totalitarianism.

Some topics in this essay:
Italy Germany, Der Führer, German Aryan, Wars II, Communist Russia, Empire Italians, Extreme Nationalism, Europe Fascism, World War, Nazi Germany, cult leadership, fascist movements, one’s own, nazi germany, hitler’s germany, world war, opposition communism, national feeling, system government, mussolini’s italy,