According to Mr Dioudonnat, there have been ‘three ages of French fascism’. The first was that of the ’Faisceau’ created by Georges Valois in 1925. Indeed, it was the first to present the equation ‘nationalism + socialism = fascism’. It, incidentally, laid claim to its labelling by exploiting the Italian example. Its specific traits included the glorification of both technological progress and productive activity and the remembrance of victory. Mr Dioudonnat writes that ‘Valois’ ambition was to unite, against parliamentary plutocraticism, the combatants frustrated with their victory and the manufacturers frustrated by the benefits which stem from economic growth and which they feel entitled to’. What he thus wanted was to rally all the discontents within the Right and the Left; all those who dreamt of ‘marching on Paris’. Just like all reactions of the ‘Poujadist’823 type, the ‘Faisceau’ was rather quick to disperse. Its leaders would not be involved in any other ‘fascist’ undertakings. As for Valois himself, he died while in deportation, in 1944.
The second fascism, that of the 1930s, emerged in the aftermath of the 1929 economic crisis and relates to the political and intellectual fermentation that resulted from that crisis. It was an international and essentially volatile movement, not a doctrine. It is defined in relation to the ‘Front Populaire’, just as the first fascism is with respect to the Russian Revolution.
The third fascism was born of the French defeat of 1940, a defeat that resulted in a great deal of mental distress. Following that disaster, ‘not a single truth acknowledged by the entirety of the French people was safe from being called into question’. Parliamentary democracy seemed to have been discredited once and for all, as were all strictly ‘national’ solutions. The formula of a single party led by one single ‘leader’ exerted an ever-increasing attraction upon people’s minds. Under the Occupation, this fascism split into two kinds: on the one hand, an essentially nationalistic fascism of ‘national retraction’ encountered in the southern zone and, on the other, a ‘crumbled’ sort of fascism, one that was violent, made exaggerated promises, and feigned to revere Pétain while simultaneously accusing the Vichy government of ‘laxness and weakness’ in the occupied zone. This third fascism vanished alongside the situation that had given rise to it. A ‘fourth generation’ would perhaps have emerged on the Eastern Front, among those who experienced a war that was not merely one of words, but it was nipped in the bud.
On his part, Mr Monnerot proposes a politological definition. Fascism, he writes (op. cit.), is a ‘monarchy of discontinuity’. It is essentially a response to a ‘situation of distress’ in the face of a movement of social destruction that arouses both fear and an aversion to chaos in the minds of the most homogeneous social elements. For this reason, fascism is doubly reactive: on the one hand, it responds to a (real or alleged) threat of chaos and, on the other, to the (actual or purported) weakness of the policy makers whose state or government faces this menace. Mr Monnerot writes:
‘Fascism responds to a distress situation within a people or political unit which, despite having reached relatively great heights from the perspective of industrial development, science, culture and civilisational quality, retains a weak social mobility. This distress situation translates into a decentring of society and the mobilisation, in the etymological sense of the word, of its most stable component; the classes that identify with ultimate social stability and upon whom political order rests are thus afflicted with insecurity and incertitude and cast into psychological dispositions that give rise to revolutionary categories. This change in conditions does not alter but, instead, exasperates the basic aspiration of these homogeneous elements — the presence of order. […] Unlike the revolutionaries who have already been certified and catalogued as such, society’s homogeneous and central elements only choose to rebel when those in power are no longer (sufficiently) powerful’.
That is when the bankruptcy of the oligarchies in control of the state creates a ‘demand for power’ which is then answered by having a historically different type of men take centre stage (Mr Monnerot specifies that ‘there is a link between the re-creation of power in response to the distress situation in question and the advent of men belonging to a new historical species’).
In the face of such circumstances, fascism and communism find themselves in an automatic state of rivalry, which accounts for both their ideological differences and their methodological similarities. The anti-communism propagated by fascism presents itself, in fact, as an alternative: it is either ‘them or us’. ‘To the fascists, communism is not a subversion that attacks the existing order but a rival in the establishment of power’. This also explains why in the face of fascism, which is active in the same field, communism tends to lose one of its most efficient weapons against bourgeois democracies — emotional blackmail, meaning intimidation and guilt-tripping through the creation of incapacitating myths.
In Mr Monnerot’s eyes, fascism is dated and belongs to the early 20th century, just as orthodox communism belongs to the end of the nineteenth: ‘It is, so to speak, “post-socialistic”, i.e. posterior to the 19th-century phenomenon involving the great encounter of utopias and masses and the birth of “secular religions” and political messianisms’ (an increase in social mobility would nowadays prevent any rebirth of fascism).
In a striking essay on ‘Fascist Style’ (in Gerd-Klaus Kaltenbrunner, Konservatismus international. Seewald, Stuttgart, 1973), Doctor Armin Mohler824 proposes another typology, one that is founded neither on sociology nor ideology, but on style. Indeed, the sociological theory fails to convincingly account for the rapid sequence of social upheavals that arose between 1919 and 1945; it is this very theory that led Mr Ernst Nolte825 (Fascism in Its Epoch, published in 3 volumes by Julliard in 1970) to draw an absurd sort of parallel between the Action française, Italian fascism and national socialism.
From Doctor Mohler’s perspective, ‘fascist style’ is essentially ‘nominalistic’: it implies a ‘categorical rejection of commonplaces that have been drained of all substance, as well as the rejection of any and all universalism’. Fascism is ‘existentialistic’: in the face of the break-up of generalities and systems, it implements a ‘withdrawal into existence’. It attains its most perfected form through a ‘tension between youth and death’. The fascist thinks exclusively in terms of struggle, not in terms of commitment — it is a role that he longs to play, not a mission that he strives to fulfil. He despises any and all systems, including one that would justify his actions. He feels closer to an adversary in whom he discovers an equal than to a ‘half-hearted’ member of his own camp. He willingly sacrifices to violence, as long as it is personal, ‘visible’, symbolic and, if at all possible, pointless.
Based on this, Armin Mohler contrasts ‘fascism’ with two further components of ‘right-wing totalitarianism’: National Socialism and statism. From this perspective, men such as Brasillach, Drieu la Rochelle, Montherlant, Gottfried Benn, Ernst Jünger and others could be described as ‘fascists’. As examples of (French) statists, Doctor Mohler mentions Bichelonne and Borotra, with Louis-Ferdinand Céline acting as a national socialist.
Recently, the argument centred around the interpretation of fascism was revived by the publication of an interview with Mr Renzo De Felice (R. De Felice and Michael A. Leeden, ‘Intervista sul fascismo’.826 Laterza, Bari, 1975), which aroused considerable emotion in Italy. The author of a monumental biography of Mussolini (in six volumes published by Einaudi), Renzo De Felice, who comes from socialist milieus, believes that fascism has fundamentally been a leftist phenomenon, thus contrasting with National Socialism on this level. This thesis has been the focus of passionate commentaries, as testified to by the publication of Marina Addis Saba’s essays (Il dibattito sul fascismo.827 Longanesi, Milan, 1976), Denis Mack Smith’s and M. A. Leeden’s Un monumento al duce? Contributo al dibattito sul fascismo828 (Guaraldi, Firenze-Rimini, 1976), Michele Rallo’s Il caso De Felice e il problema di una nuova interpretazione del fascismo82
9 (Thule, Palermo,1976), and so on. See also the special issue of La Destra (number 1/1976. Il Borghese, Rome) on ‘Le nuove interpretazioni del fascismo’,830 published under editor Claudio Quarantotto.
In his book on the Interpretations of Fascism (General Learning Corp., Morristown, 1974), A. James Gregor, a professor of political sciences at the University of Berkeley, also dismisses most of the classic explanations of the fascist phenomenon (fascism as the result of a ‘moral crisis’, a ‘psychological deficiency’, class struggle, etc.). According to him, what fascism corresponds to, in a highly classic fashion, is a transition stage to modern economic structures; and it is in the Third World that one allegedly encounters its most characteristic manifestations today. An analogous thesis was advocated by sociologist Rolf Dahrendorf with regard to National Socialism (in Gesellschaft und Freiheit.831 Munich, 1963).
The most complete bibliography on the interpretations of fascism is the one comprised in Ernst Nolte’s book entitled Die Krise des liberalen Systems und die faschistischen Bewengungen832 (Munich, 1968; pages 389–431). For an exposition of theories, see Ernst Nolte’s essays (Theorien über den Faschismus.833 Kiepenheuer u. Witsch, Cologne-Berlin, 1970) and Wolfgang Wipperman’s Faschismustheorien834 (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1972 and 1975–76). The latter two titles give leftist theses a prominent position. This can be rectified by reading Renzo De Felice’s Le interpretazioni del fascismo (Laterza, Bari, 1971) and Klaus-Peter Hoepke’s Die deutsche Rechte und der italienische Faschismus835 (Düsseldorf, 1968).
*
The Hitlerian Enigma
In 1933, French writer François Le Grix attends Hitler’s speech in Berlin. His impression is that Hitler has this ‘indescribable quality to him, a striking and bold aspect that characterises both his face and his gait and that would have some ladies, especially in France, describe him as a “handsome man”’ (Vingt jours chez Hitler,836 Grasset).
In 1937, Alphonse de Châteaubriant837 has the opportunity to observe Hitler:
His eyes have the same deep blue colour as the waters of his beloved Königssee. His body vibrates; the movements of his head are youthful, his nape warm. His back has not been battered by the filthy passions of politics — it is as solid and smooth as an organ pipe. One of his characteristics is his immense kindness. Yes, Hitler is kind, immensely kind indeed. (La gerbe des forces,838 Grasset)
During that same year, novelist Maurice Bedel writes:
I do not know whether it is pleasant to be a citizen in a totalitarian state; personally, I would find it unbearable. What I do know, however, is that there is more joy to be found in shackled Germany than in free France. (Monsieur Hitler,839 Gallimard)
As for Nietzsche, he said that ‘history is always written from the victor’s perspective’.
The Golden Mean
After 1945, indictments replaced apologies. Hitler became, depending on the author in question, a ‘former house painter’, a ‘stupid and stubborn political beast’, a great lunatic, a sick or impotent man, a sadist, the archetype of the ‘authoritarian personality’, the embodiment of evil, a high-calibre gangster, a puppet manipulated by industrialists, etc.
Most of the theories one encounters can be classified into two categories. Some of them offer ‘external’ explanations, in which Hitler is said to be a child of circumstance; the result of coincidence and necessity, one could say. Others, by contrast, offer ‘internal’ justifications: he was a madman, a criminal, etc. On the one hand, we are treated to a social analysis, with Hitler’s person the mere logical result of a process; on the other, we are presented with an intimist biography ending in an unpredictable catastrophe.
Displaying flat hair, a pale complexion, thin lips and high cheekbones, fifty-one-year-old Joachim Fest views all these theories as different attempts to evade the real issue. There is, indeed, one question that acts as an obstacle to such claims — if Hitler truly was all that he has been said to be, how could German people have been seduced by such a character? How could they have brought to power such a handful of brutes and imbeciles before supporting them, in an almost unanimous fashion, all the way to the fires and death of the ‘twilight of the gods’? And last but not least, due to what secret human perversity do people still seem to foster an indescribable and dangerous nostalgia for his presence now that they have been freed from dictatorship?
In 1965, Joachim Fest published a series of portraits depicting the principal dignitaries of the National Socialist regime and entitled Das Gesicht des Dritten Reiches: Porträt einer totalitären Herrschaft840 (Grasset). Initially a member of staff at the German weekly Der Spiegel (800,000 copies beginning in 1968), and then the head of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,841 he has never strayed from his topic. As a good disciple of Max Weber,842 he avoids both simplistic responses and Manichaean formulae. What he seeks is the golden mean, an attitude that has resulted in a voluminous essay on Hitler, one that is twice the size of the latter’s Mein Kampf.
The book, which has been the focus of an intense advertising campaign (with 300,000 copies sold in Germany and translations spanning across thirteen languages), strives, above all else, to act as a reflection on grandeur, on the very idea of grandeur and the notion’s ‘dreadful’ dimension.
History allows peoples to shape themselves. Hitler, Stalin, de Gaulle, Roosevelt and Mao Zedong were not only the artisans of their own era but also its result. Joachim Fest writes:
Hitler’s ascension was only made possible by a unique convergence of individual and collective conditions, as well as by a hard-to-decipher correspondence between man and his era.
There is no doubt whatsoever that Hitler was in tune with his time, yet it is equally beyond doubt that the German soul bears within itself a sentiment which Hitler gave shape to and set aflame, a sentiment that has now been extinguished but shall necessarily be rekindled, whether tomorrow or in a thousand years.
The seriousness with which Hitler switched between his own existence and the realm of the imaginary was genuinely German.
Mr Fest writes that this mental attitude consists in refining reality in the name of ‘idealised revolutionary concepts’. He then adds:
Whatever the German spirit was, it owed to him. Yet unlike what many believe, not all the paths that stem from this mental disposition lead to Auschwitz.
Rightist Criticism
To equate German nationalism with National Socialism would indeed be a mistake. In his book on the ‘conservative revolution’ (Die konservative Revolution in Deutschland, 1918–32. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1974), Doctor Armin Mohler highlights, on the contrary, the opposition to Hitlerism clearly manifested by a considerable number of representatives belonging to the nebula of political movements, spiritual currents and thought schools that the German Movement (Deutsche Bewegung) actually was; an opposition that sometimes cost those representatives their very lives.
Mr Dominique Venner remarks:
At a time when the Left was surrendering, the Right became the implacable adversary of triumphant fascisms. In 1943, it was the Right, and not the Left, that joined forces to assassinate Mussolini. Under the Third Reich, the sole conspiracies that threatened Hitler came from the German Right, from Canaris843 to Stauffenberg.844 (Item, February 1976)
Published in July 1933, three years prior to its author’s passing, Oswald Spengler’s Jahre der Entscheidung845 is highly revelatory in this regard. Anton Mirko Koktanek846 sees it as ‘the sole manifesto of the domestic conservative resistance ever published under the Third Reich’ (Oswald Spengler in seiner Zeit.847 C. H. Beck, Munich, 1968). As for Mr Gilbert Merlio,848 he goes as far as to say that ‘in Germany, Jahre der Entscheidung owed its success to the Rightist criticism of Nazism that had developed there’ (Oswald Spengler et le national-socialisme,849 in Recherches germaniques,850 issue number 6, 1976).
Already in 1930, Alfred Rosenberg had attacked Spengler in his most famous work entitled Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts851 (Hohen
eichen, Munich). Later, the national socialists would bestow upon Spengler the title of Untergangsmelodramatiker852 (E. Günther Gründel, Jahre des Ueberwindung.853 Korn, Breslau, 1934).
In the eyes of Oswald Spengler, who had already proclaimed this in his Decline of the West, it is not race that creates the nation, but on the contrary, history, culture, and idea-forces (such as the Prussian idea) that shape race (the Prussian officer type, for instance). It is the soul (spiritual energy) that forges the physical and is one with the latter. Man constructs himself from within, not merely from without. He does have a race of his own, but does not belong to it.
In 1932, when the NSDAP had become the prevailing force in Germany, Spengler declares in his Politische Schriften854 that the national revolution is in need of ‘statesmen, not party leaders’, before adding: ‘I do not see a single one these days’.
What he discerns in National Socialism is a variant of the ‘revolution from below’ (Revolution von unten), one that would result in levelling. He perceives it as an example of ‘herd mentality’. ‘It is insofar as Nazism seems humanitarian, socialistic and fraught with an excessive number of democratic aspects that he resists it and denounces its dangers’, Mr Merlio writes (in the above-mentioned text). Due to this fact, Spengler encourages Hitler to free himself from the socialist layer that envelops his movement. He contrasts the plebiscitary (and acclaimed) leader with the genuine representative of Prussian ascetism, the Herrenmensch,855 the charismatic leader whose power does not stem from the masses but solely from his own transcendence of the principle of authority.
Controversies and Viewpoints Page 34