De Grande, Alexander. "Mussolini's Follies: Fascism in its Imperialist and Racist Phase, 1935-1940". Contemporary European History, Vol.13, No.2 (2004): 127-147.

 

De Grande, Alexander. "Mussolini's Follies: Fascism in its Imperialist and Racist Phase, 1935-1940". Contemporary European History, Vol.13, No.2 (2004): 127-147.

• Much to the suprise of Minister of Colonies Alessandro Lessona, Mussolini was not very interested in the administration of newly conquered Ethiopia. For Mussolini, it was enough to have declared the Italian Empire. This reflected Mussolini's opinion that colonies were merely geopolitical assets (127).
• Mussolini viewed colonies as a projection of Italian power and a way to revenge past humiliting defeats. Colonies also served as a springboard for Mussolini's goal of breaking out of the Mediterrean (128).
• Italian Fascism lacked consistent ideology or direction besides radical nationalism and a cult of personality around Il Duce. In 1919 and 1920, fascism was vaguely leftist, republican, and populist; in 1921, fascism became monarchist and rightist; from 1922 to 1925, it supported leissez faire economics, but switching to support of corporatism and state planning between 1929 and 1934; in 1935 and 1936, the focus shifted to a war economy and autarky; in 1936 and later, fascism shifted to open imperialism and racism (127-128). [The statement that fascism was ideological inconsistent is incorrect and reflects a surface view of the shifts in party tactics not ideology. The goal was always to reconstruct the Italian people as a domineering people within a totalitarian and imperial state. The ways to force the Italians to become fascist 'novo homo' changed, as did domestic policies due to Mussolini's uneasy cooperation with his monarchical rivals]
• The essential obstacle to fascism in Italy was that Mussolini was partnered with conservative forces that disagreed with his revolutionary goals. Mussolini wanted a fascist revolution, while his partners pushed for normalization and fought against a revolution (147).
• Mussolini's key beliefs remained the same: life is defined by struggle and conquest, where the stronger dominated the weaker. As a strong and virile state, Italy would naturally be expansionist and imperialist (128). To reeducate Italians in control and violence was the goal (147).
• Mussolini was deeply troubled by Italy's many defeats, poor international reputation, and lack of great power status. This resentment fueled his imperial ambitions (128). The weak state of Italy in the 1920s and its second rate status compared to Britain and France rankled Mussolini (130).
• The Italian Empire, prior to 1934, was marginal and more about prestige than economics. It never attracted settlers or commercial investment and, in the 1890s, accounted for between 2% and 3% of imports and exports (129).
• The Italian colonies were stripped down to their barebones as a cost-saving measure (129).
• This pattern of minimal colonial presence and expenditure continued during the fascist period up until 1934. Imports and exports from colonies increased to between 6% and 7% in the 1930s, but the only significant Italian expenditures there were on military campaign and, even then, it accounted for only 2% of total military expenditure (132-133).
• The memory of the loss at the Battle of Adua in 1896 was particularly humiliating to Italy, bringing fears that Italy would fail in Africa (129-130).
• The Italian Empire disintegrated during the First World War and they got nothing at the peace conferences. When the Fascists came to power in 1922, Somalia was in anarchy, Eritrea faced serious issues, and Libya was in open revolt (130).
• Under the first stage of the Fascist government, limited freedoms granted to the Libyans were withdrawn and the colonies were to be absorbed into the totalizing and dictatorial fascist state. Mussolini's first governor of Libya, Giuseppe Volpi, also discriminated against Arabs in employment and political rights (130-131).
• Part of the Fascist strategy of repression was to confiscate the land of rebellious Libyans. These lands were distributed among prominent Italians, especially members of the government (131).
• The Fascists were brutal in crushing colonial dissent in Libya. They focused on separating the population from the rebels, employing concentration camps in eastern Libya that at one point contained half of the entire region's population. The impact of the repression was enormous: of 200k living in eastern Libya, by 1931 20k were in exile in Egypt and 40k were dead (131-132).
• The colonies were convenient places to put incompetant but loyal fascists. Men generally considered to be incompetant buffoons, such as Cesare Maria de Vecchi or Emilio de Bono, were stuck in the colonies, where they were thought to be less harmful to the administration. Mussolini also stuck his potential rivals in Africa (132).
• Italian interest in the colonies suddenly exploded between 1935 and 1940. This started with the war with Ethiopia, which only accounted for 21% to 28% of all public spending (133), despite Mussolini's assurances that the war would be cheap and easy (135). After victory, expenditures on Africa continued to be high and the African colonies became a major destination of exports, accounting for nearly a third of all Italian imports in 1936 and a quarter in 1937; this reflected an increase from 248 million lira of exports in 1931 to 2.5 billion lire in 1937 (133).
• This increased investment and interest in Africa was immensely costly and drained the Italian currency reserves on imports that could not be produced in Italy. In the first half of 1937, expenditures in Africa resulted in the loss of 650 million lira equivalent in foreign exchange reserves. State institutions, including the social security fund, were plundered for this cash (134).
• Libya, which had undergone an urban reconstruction program in the 1920s and seen its Italian population explode from 819 in 1911 to 21k in 1931, or roughly one third of the city's population, was also costly. Most economic activity was related to government subsidies and was not profitable (134-135).
• Libya was the target of another massively expensive program in 1937 aimed at Italian resettlment. The plan was to resettle 20k Italian peasants a year in Libya and tens of thousands were employed constructing new villages for the colonists. This construction accounted for 2/3s of the Libyan budget. The resettlment plan was interrupted by the invasion of Ethiopia and only 34k Italians were resettled (135).
• A number of state companies were established to try to make colonialism profitable, but they did not succeed. Costs were high and profits low to nonexistent (134). Much of the money was wasted or embezzled by opportunistic Italians (146).
• By the mid 1930s, the fascist revolution was stuck. The corporatative experiment had been implement but had not succeeded. Mussolini's competitor, Adolf Hitler, had succeeded in assuming complete power and outmanouvering his rightist partners, whereas Mussolini was still hamstrung by compromises with the Catholic Church, the Italian monarchy, the military, and industry. Moreover, the Italians themselves were still far from Mussolini's ideal of a fascist man (136).
• In an attempt to promote the creation of a militaristic fascist man and destroy the existing bourgeois values, Mussolini focused on educating the youth to became a fascist generation. In 1934, pre military instruction was mandated for all men between ages 18 and 21 (136).
• There were a number of complementary motivations behind the invasion of Ethiopia. The war would revegenge the humilating defeat at Adua (137), boost Italy's prestige (137), and the experience of war would teach the Italians the fascist values of toughless, mercilessness, and mastery (137-138).
• The war with Ethiopia was planned as an 'anti-bourgeois' war that would show how far the newly militaristic Italians had distanced themselves from soft bourgeois values. The war would also toughen the Italian and make them into better fascists (137).
• The war in Ethiopia was deliberately brutal, involved overwhelming force, and was fought without regard for human life. Mussolini encouraged attacks on civilian targets, including hospitals, and the use of air bombardment and gas attacks. Resistance was to met with mass execution. Brutality and cruelty among the soldiery was encouraged (140-141).
• Following the conquest of Ethiopia, the African colonies were used a labratory for fascist policies that could not, for political reasons, be implemented in Italy (138). This was best represented by the new architechture of fascist cities in Italy, which were built as model cities without private areas for socializing (139).
• In Italian Africa, fascist style social organizations blossomed among settlers and society was planned around fascist organizations in a way that was impossible in Italy (145-146).
• Italian control over Ethiopia was always limited to the cities and railroad lines. Fascist brutality encouraged the continuation of the rebellion within Ethiopia (142).
• Prior to the conquest of Ethiopia, the fascist state took little interest in colonial racial policy. Without supervision, no consistent racial policy was enforced and miscegenation was common (142).
• When the conquest of Ethiopia took place, the situation changed. Inspired by both scientific racism and fascist attitudes towards domination, the new colonial policy was built on strict hierarchy and the supremacy of Italian 'masters' over African 'servants'. The racist elements of this policy were inspired by similar plans in Nazi Germany (142-143).
• Mussolini employed racial policies in the late 1930s as a tool of forming a new fascist man by using racial exclusion as a way to make the Italians 'less tender hearted' (143-144).
• This strict racism had not been previous encoded in Italian law, so it was added in 1938 with new laws making explicit that Jews and Africans were not citizens and prohibiting miscegenation between Italians and subject peoples. New laws also implemented an apartheid to make sure that Africans worked for Italians and not the other way around (144-145).
• The common Italian soldiers and settlers in Africa were often resistent to the new racist fascist policies. Africans and Italians fraternized and engaged in commercial relations that offended Mussolini; he disliked Italians taking loans from and becoming indebted to Africans (143). Sexual relations between Italians and excluded subject peoples — Africans, Arabs, Jews, Slavs — were common (144).
• Imperialism and colonialism were used as tools to reshape the Italian population as domineering and brutal masters. War was meant to wipe away bourgeois values and inspire fascist values. Racism was meant to similarly inculcate fascist values. Colonies could also be used as 'blank spaces' to more fully complete fascism's totalitarian goals (147).

Jersak, Tobias. "Blitzkrieg Revisited: A New Look at Nazi War and Extermination Planning". The Historical Journal, Vol. 43, No. 2 (2000): 565-582.

Jersak, Tobias. "Blitzkrieg Revisited: A New Look at Nazi War and Extermination Planning". The Historical Journal, Vol. 43, No. 2 (2000): 565-582.

• The author has two main points: 1) thinking about blitzkrieg is worng and that the war with France was never planned as a blitzkrieg and, on the contrary, was expected to last for years; 2) Hitler had no plan for immediate extermination of the Jews at the time of Operation Barbarossa and the policies of the Holocaust developed on an ad hoc basis (565-566).
• Blitzkrieg normally plays a major role in thinking about Nazi war planning, including the invasions of Poland and France, and is usually explained by reference to limited German resources and Hitler's ambition to genocide the Jews of the USSR (565). New documents show that the war against France was never planned as a blitzkrieg and that Hitler and most German military leaders expected the war to last for years (565-566, 569).
• The military planning, armament production, and mobilization of large numbers of undertrained infantry reservists prior to the war with France indicates that Germany planned for a long war fought in the same manner and on a similar time scale to WW1; i.e., long term trench warfare (566-567).
• The first operation plans against the Western Allies on 9 October 1939 were extremely vague, calling for a push through the Benelux countries and the occupation of the maximum area of land in an initial offensive. This was almost identical to the Schlieffen Plan used in WW1 and certainly was not blitzkrieg (567).
• The successful blitzkrieg practiced against France by going through the Ardennes forest and crossing the Maas River at Sedan was developed by Erich von Manstein, Chief of Staff for Army Group A, and turned into an actual military plan between 31 October 1939 and 24 February 1940 (567-568).
• This plan was very contraversial among the general staff and there were disagreements among Hitler and his top generals over whether to implement the plan and if it would be successful. Its actual use in operations was not the result of Hitler's intervention, but the decision of Chief of the General Staff Franz Halder to embrace high risk strategies at the beginning of the war on the western front (568).
• Even after Franz Halder supported von Manstein's risky plan to cross the Maas River at Sedan, which Franz Halder felt carried little risk in the scope of a large and prolonged trench warfare, the actual blitzkrieg in France was the result of insubordination by General Heinz Guderian, who rushed to the English Channel against direct orders. The German Army not only was not responsible for Heinz Guderian's blitzkrieg tactics following the breakthrough at Sedan, but punished him for taking the initiative by temporary relieving him of command on 17 May 1940 (568).
• Hitler was not supportive of blitzkrieg tactics employed by Heinz Guderian in France and doubted von Manstein's plan of crossing through the Ardennes. During this period, Hitler was constantly anxious about the entire operation being an Allied trap (568). After Guderian's sweep to the Channel had shown to be successful, the rest of the German military staff supported him and removed cautious or slow commanders (568-569).
• Hitler's direct intervention into military command during this period was to stop blitzkrieg. The Commander-in-Chief of Army Group A, Gerd von Rundstedt, was considered too cautious and slow so his tanks were placed under the command of Army Group B on 23 May 1940. When he met with von Rundstedt the next morning, Hitler restored tank command to von Rundstedt, a senior command who he greatly admired, resulting in a slowdown of operations and allowing the British to escape destruction at Dunkirk (568-569).
• The experience of successful blitzkrieg in France, although it had not been planned in advance, changed German military thinking and entrenched blitzkrieg as a mode of war. It also inflated German confidence in their military abilities and encouraged even more aggressive behavior (569).
• Originally, Hitler's war plan focused entirely on conquering Russia to great German lebensraum and mild revisions of the Verseilles Treaty were secondary concerns. After Hitler realized that Britain would not support him, in 1937, and that Poland would not submit to Germany, in 1939, these war plans had to change. Hitler then switched to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which he hoped would get rid of Poland, convince the world of Soviet aggression, and ultimately give Hitler a stronger position to win back Western support and invade the USSR. This plan had to change again when Britian and France delcared war after the invasion of Poland and Hitler resigned himself to fighting a long war with France (570).
• Hitler's thoughts turned back to focus primarily on the USSR only after the surprising and rapid victory in France. The success of blitzkrieg made Germany overconfident in its ability to rapidly defeat the USSR without having resolved the continued war against Britain (570-571).
• Until 1939, Hitler did not have plans to conquer Poland nor go to war with Britain. This is why there were no plans drawn up on what to do with the 2 million Jews living in Poland and why no alternative to forcible emigration was ever developed as an alternative means of dealing with the Jewish Question (576)
• From 1933, Nazi policy aimed at the emigration of all Jews from the German Reich, preferably to Palestine. Zionism was encouraged by the Nazi regime in order to better facilitate the voluntary emigration of Jews (571). This emigration strategy was no longer plausible after severe immigration restrictions to Palestine in 1937 and definitely not after the British declaration of war in 1939 (572).
• At the time that issues with immigration first emerged in 1938, the German Foreign Officer also spoke up against the emigration policy. The Foreign Office said that the enemy wasn't German Jewry, but International Jewry and that emigration did nothing to solve that issue. Moreover, another center of Jewish power in Israel would pose as much of a threat to Germany as would the existing centers of Judeo-Bolshevik Jewry in Moscow and International Finance Jewry in New York. The Foreign Office argued that Jews should instead be geographically dispersed as much as possible (572).
• Hitler ignored this objection by the Foreign Ministry and continued advocating for the emigration of Jews to Palestine in 1938. Hitler's primary concern at the time was getting the Jews out of Germany ASAP and he doesn't seem to have cared where the Jews went (572).
• The emigration policy was forced to be thrown out in the aftermath of the Evian-les-Bains Conference of July 1938, at which the it was discovered that no country was willing to take in Jewish refugees. The failure of the emigration policy in the light of Jews having nowhere to be expelled to left a policy vaccum exploited by the faction of violent anti-semites radauantisemiten within the regime, led by Joseph Goebbels, who advocated for the murder of the Jews (573).
• The conference accomplished nothing, as nobody wanted to take the Jews and the German Foreign Office refused to discuss the topic at the conference. To Hitler, the conference was a great success as it implied that other states also saw the Jews as parasites and were unwilling to take them in (572).
• Violence against the Jews was tried out during Kristalnacht in November 1938, but met without domestic support and received strong international condemnation. In the aftermath of Kristalnacht, the USA and Britain agreed to again start allowing in Jewish immigrants from Germany. This swung the focus of German policy back toward emigration (573). In January 1939, Hitler's plan was still to force Jewish emigration from Europe and the creation of a separate Jewish state (574).
• At this time, and in the same speech in January 1939, Hitler laid out a preferred plan to force Jewish emigration from Europe and an alternative that, should another world war erupt, he would endorse the murder of the Jews of Europe (574). Hitler seems to have expected emigration of the Jews to be carried out before war broke out, however, and planned to make Germany judenfrei before invading the USSR (576).
• With the reallowal of immigration to Palestine secured in January 1939, Hitler's plan for forcible Jewish emigration appears to have been succeeding. This all failed when Britain and Germany went to war in September 1939, cancelling the plans to deport German Jews to Palestine due to fears of an Arab revolt simultaneous with the war against Germany (576).
• The war with Poland in 1939 changed how Nazi leaders thought about the Jewish Question. German victory against Poland had simultaneously placed 2 million additional Jews under Nazi jurisdiction and cut off any potential of Jewish emigration. During an SS meeting on 19 September 1939, Reinhard Heydrich announced a new plan developed with Hitler to deport all Jews to the Generalgovernement in occupied Poland. After victory over the USSR, these Jews could then be deported to an inhospitable part of Russia, perhaps Siberia (577).
• It is important that, in September 1939, Hitler expected the war with France to last for years and to come before the war with the USSR. It was deemed too difficult to resolve the Jewish Question during the long war against France so the Jews were to be moved to occupied Poland for storage during this conflict (577-578).
• The German victory over France again changed the calculus of the Jewish Question, as it was expected that there would soon be peace with Britain and that Germany could then turn its attention to the Jewish Question. It was during this period when other plans for what to do with the Jews, such as the Madagascar Plan, were proposed (578).
• Plans to deport the Jews to Madagascar had been around since the late 1800s (579). These plans were raised again by the Nazis following the success of their invasion of France and Hitler appears to have supported the deportation of European Jews to Madagascar as the preferred solution in July 1940; this solution was deemed so favorable the deportation of Jews to occupied Poland was halted during this period (580).
• When Britain did not soon surrender, Hitler decided to move forward with the war against the USSR. Once the war against the USSR was complete, Germany could move on to dealing with the Jewish Question (578). The 'final solution' was initially planned for after the war against the USSR (582).
• Hiter did consider the murder of the Jews as a potential solution to the Jewish Question, but he regarded it as "ungermanic" and preferred a policy of resettling Jews elsewhere (580).
• Hitler considered the USA as a potential enemy and rival since at least December 1938 and approved a theoretical 'Z-Plan' for a massive navy directed against the USA around that same time. This was due to the collapse in relations between the USA and Germany and a massive shift in US public opinion against Germany following Kristalnacht (577).
• The origins of the Holocaust in the USSR were in the actions of the Einsatzgruppen and were not planned or anticipated by Nazi leadership. The Einsatzgruppen were initially developed to provide security for German forces behind the front lines and targetted sources of potential anti-German resistance. The Einsatzgruppen leaders identified Jews as the biggest potential threat to German security and so murdered large numbers of Jewish men, especially community leaders (582).