How to Be a Dictator

by Frank Dikotter

  39Roberto Festorazzi, Starace. Il mastino della rivoluzione fascista, Milan: Ugo Mursia, 2002, p. 71.

  40Piero Melograni, ‘The Cult of the Duce in Mussolini’s Italy’, Journal of Contemporary History, 11, no. 4 (Oct. 1976), pp. 221–4; see also Winner, ‘Mussolini: A Character Study’, p. 518.

  41Berneri, Mussolini grande attore, p. 54; Kirkpatrick, Mussolini, p. 161.

  42Tracy H. Koon, Believe, Obey, Fight: Political Socialization of Youth in Fascist Italy, 1922–1943, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1985, pp. 111–12; Mack Smith, Mussolini, pp. 175–6; G. Franco Romagnoli, The Bicycle Runner: A Memoir of Love, Loyalty, and the Italian Resistance, New York: St Martin’s Press, 2009, p. 48.

  43A list of subsidised newspapers appears in ACS, MCP, Reports, b. 7, f. 73; the mottos are in ACS, MCP, Gabinetto, b. 44, f. 259, ‘Motti del Duce’; on the flow of information between Ciano and Goebbels see Wenke Nitz, Führer und Duce: Politische Machtinszenierungen im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland und im faschistischen Italien, Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2013, p. 112.

  44Bonsaver, Censorship and Literature in Fascist Italy, pp. 61 and 124; Giovanni Sedita estimates that 632 million lire were used to subsidise both newspapers and individuals; Giovanni Sedita, Gli intellettuali di Mussolini: La cultura finanziata dal fascismo, Florence: Casa Editrice Le Lettere, 2010, p. 17; Asvero Gravelli, Uno e Molti: Interpretazioni spirituali di Mussolini, Rome: Nuova Europa, 1938, pp. 29 and 31; the subsidy received by the author is listed in an appendix published in Sedita, Gli intellettuali di Mussolini, p. 202.

  45Philip Cannistraro, La fabbrica del consenso: Fascismo e mass media, Bari: Laterza, 1975, pp. 228–41.

  46Navarra, Memorie del cameriere di Mussolini, pp. 114–15.

  47Franco Ciarlantini, De Mussolini onzer verbeelding, Amsterdam: De Amsterdamsche Keurkamer, 1934, p. 145.

  48Paul Baxa, ‘“Il nostro Duce”: Mussolini’s Visit to Trieste in 1938 and the Workings of the Cult of the Duce’, Modern Italy, 18, no. 2 (May 2013), pp. 121–6; Frank Iezzi, ‘Benito Mussolini, Crowd Psychologist’, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 45, no. 2 (April 1959), p. 167.

  49Iezzi, ‘Benito Mussolini, Crowd Psychologist’, pp. 167–9.

  50Stephen Gundle, ‘Mussolini’s Appearances in the Regions’ in Gundle, Duggan and Pieri (eds), The Cult of the Duce, pp. 115–17.

  51Koon, Believe, Obey, Fight, p. 30; Dino Alfieri and Luigi Freddi (eds), Mostra della Rivoluzione Fascista, Rome: National Fascist Party, 1933, p. 9; Dino Alfieri, Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution: 1st Decennial of the March on Rome, Bergamo: Istituto Italiano d’Arti Grafiche, 1933.

  52Edoardo Bedeschi, La giovinezza del Duce: Libro per la gioventù italiana, 2nd edn, Turin: Società Editrice Internazionale, 1940, p. 122; August Bernhard Hasler, ‘Das Duce-Bild in der faschistischen Literatur’, Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, vol. 60, 1980, p. 497; Sofia Serenelli, ‘A Town for the Cult of the Duce: Predappio as a Site of Pilgrimage’ in Gundle, Duggan and Pieri (eds), The Cult of the Duce, pp. 95 and 101–2.

  53ACS, SPD CO, b. 869, f. 500027/IV, ‘Omaggi mandati a V.T.’.

  54Kirkpatrick, Mussolini, p. 170; many of the fasces can still be found today; see Max Page, Why Preservation Matters, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016, pp. 137–8; Ludwig, Talks with Mussolini, p. 121.

  55Mack Smith, Mussolini, p. 136; Kirkpatrick, Mussolini, pp. 275–6; see also Eugene Pooley, ‘Mussolini and the City of Rome’ in Gundle, Duggan and Pieri (eds), The Cult of the Duce, pp. 209–24.

  56Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, p. 309; Dominik J. Schaller, ‘Genocide and Mass Violence in the “Heart of Darkness”: Africa in the Colonial Period’ in Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses, The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 358; see also Mack Smith, Mussolini, p. 171.

  57Kirkpatrick, Mussolini, pp. 288–9.

  58Jean Ajalbert, L’Italie en silence et Rome sans amour, Paris: Albin Michel, 1935, pp. 227–8.

  59Mack Smith, Mussolini, pp. 190 and 197.

  60Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922–1945, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001, p. 216; Ian Campbell, The Addis Ababa Massacre: Italy’s National Shame, London: Hurst, 2017; the incident with Graziani is recounted in Navarra, Memorie del cameriere di Mussolini, p. 202.

  61To give but one example, the journalist Henry Soullier received thousands of Swiss francs to visit Addis Ababa; ACS, MCP, Gabinetto, b. 10.

  62Romagnoli, The Bicycle Runner, p. 48; ACS, SPD, Carteggio Ordinario, b. 386, f. 142470, 23 Aug. 1936.

  63Kirkpatrick, Mussolini, pp. 331–2.

  64Santi Corvaja, Hitler and Mussolini: The Secret Meetings, New York: Enigma Books, 2008, pp. 27–8; Alfred Rosenberg, Das politische Tagebuch Alfred Rosenbergs aus den Jahren 1934/35 und 1939/40: Nach der photographischen Wiedergabe der Handschrift aus den Nürnberger Akten, Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1964, p. 28.

  65Kirkpatrick, Mussolini, pp. 350–54.

  66Galeazzo Ciano, The Ciano Diaries, 1939–1943, Safety Harbor, FL: Simon Publications, 2001, pp. 43–4 and 53.

  67Mack Smith, Mussolini, pp. 230 and 249.

  68Ciano, The Ciano Diaries, 1939–1943, p. 138.

  69Ibid., p. 223, see also p. 222; Mack Smith, Mussolini, pp. 237 and 240–43.

  70Renzo de Felice, Mussolini il Fascista, vol. 1, La conquista del potere, 1921–1925, Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1966, p. 470; on his isolation see Navarra, Memorie del cameriere di Mussolini, pp. 45–6, and Kirkpatrick, Mussolini, p. 167.

  71Navarra, Memorie del cameriere di Mussolini, pp. 140 and 203; Ciano, The Ciano Diaries, 1939–1943, pp. 18–19.

  72Mack Smith, Mussolini, pp. 240–47.

  73Melograni, ‘The Cult of the Duce in Mussolini’s Italy’, p. 221.

  74Duggan, ‘The Internalisation of the Cult of the Duce’, pp. 132–3.

  75Emilio Gentile, The Sacralisation of Politics in Fascist Italy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996, pp. 151–2.

  76Emilio Lussu, Enter Mussolini: Observations and Adventures of an Anti-Fascist, London: Methuen & Co., 1936, p. 169; Romagnoli, The Bicycle Runner, p. 67.

  77Christopher Duggan, Fascist Voices: An Intimate History of Mussolini’s Italy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 177 and 257–8; Ajalbert, L’Italie en silence et Rome sans amour, p. 231; Paul Corner, The Fascist Party and Popular Opinion in Mussolini’s Italy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 200 and 250.

  78Mack Smith, Mussolini, p. 239.

  79Ciano, The Ciano Diaries, 1939–1943, p. 264.

  80ACS, MCP, Gabinetto, b. 43, pp. 39 ff, 20 Nov. 1940, Mack Smith, Mussolini, p. 260; ACS, MCP, Gabinetto, b. 44, f. 258, p. 29 on fighting clandestine radio.

  81Kirkpatrick, Mussolini, pp. 494–5; Ciano, The Ciano Diaries, 1939–1943, p. 583.

  82Kirkpatrick, Mussolini, p. 515.

  83Winner, ‘Mussolini: A Character Study’, p. 526; ACS, MCP, Gabinetto, b. 44, f. 258, 12 March 1943, p. 5.

  84Angelo M. Imbriani, Gli italiani e il Duce: Il mito e l’immagine di Mussolini negli ultimi anni del fascismo (1938–1943), Naples: Liguori, 1992, pp. 171–6.

  85Robert A. Ventresca, Soldier of Christ: The Life of Pope Pius XII, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013, p. 192.

  86Imbriani, Gli italiani e il Duce, pp. 184–5.

  87Mack Smith, Mussolini, p. 298.

  88Gentile, The Sacralisation of Politics in Fascist Italy, p. 152; Italo Calvino, ‘Il Duce’s Portraits’, New Yorker, 6 Jan. 2003, p. 34; John Foot, Italy’s Divided Memory, Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, p. 67.

  89Ray Moseley, Mussolini: The Last 600 Days of Il Duce, Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2004, p. 2.

  90Romagnoli, The Bicycle Runner, p. 259.

  CHAPTER 2 HITLER

  1H. R. Trevor-Roper (ed.), Hitler’s Table Talk 1941–1944, New York: Enigma B
ooks, 2000, p. 10.

  2Margarete Plewnia, Auf dem Weg zu Hitler: Der ‘völkische’ Publizist Dietrich Eckart, Bremen: Schünemann Universitätsverlag, 1970, p. 84.

  3Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Munich: Franz Eher Verlag, 1943, p. 235.

  4Ernst Hanfstaengl, Unheard Witness, Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1957, pp. 34–7; size of the audience in Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Ascent 1889–1939, New York: Alfred Knopf, 2016, p. 95.

  5Plewnia, Auf dem Weg zu Hitler, pp. 69 and 84–90.

  6Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1889–1936: Hubris, London: Allen Lane, 1998, pp. 162–3; Plewnia, Auf dem Weg zu Hitler, p. 81.

  7Georg Franz-Willing, Die Hitlerbewegung. Der Ursprung, 1919–1922, Hamburg: R.v. Decker’s Verlag G. Schenck, 1962, 2nd edn 1972, pp. 124–8 and 218–19.

  8Hanfstaengl, Unheard Witness, p. 70; Rudolf Herz, Hoffmann & Hitler: Fotografie als Medium des Führer Mythos, Munich: Klinkhardt and Biermann, 1994, pp. 92–3 and 99.

  9Plewnia, Auf dem Weg zu Hitler, p. 90; Ullrich, Hitler, p. 113; Ludolf Herbst, Hitlers Charisma. Die Erfindung eines deutschen Messias, Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 2010, pp. 147–9.

  10Hanfstaengl, Hitler, p. 86.

  11William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, New York: Simon & Schuster, 50th anniversary reissue, 2011, pp. 75–6.

  12Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 116; the term Traumlaller appears in Georg Schott, Das Volksbuch vom Hitler, Munich: Herrmann Wiechmann, 1924 and 1938, p. 10.

  13Ullrich, Hitler, p. 189.

  14Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler Was My Friend: The Memoirs of Hitler’s Photographer, London: Burke, 1955, pp. 60–61.

  15Claudia Schmölders, Hitler’s Face: The Biography of an Image, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009, p. 87; Herz, Hoffmann & Hitler, pp. 162–9.

  16Hoffmann, Hitler Was My Friend, pp. 61–3.

  17Ullrich, Hitler, pp. 199–202.

  18Joseph Goebbels, Tagebücher 1924–1945, edited by Ralf Georg Reuth, Munich: Piper Verlag, 1992, vol. 1, p. 200; Ullrich, Hitler, p. 208.

  19Ullrich, Hitler, p. 217.

  20Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 96; Joseph Goebbels, Die zweite Revolution: Briefe an Zeitgenossen, Zwickau: Streiter-Verlag, 1928, pp. 5–8; ‘Der Führer’, 22 April 1929, reproduced in Joseph Goebbels, Der Angriff, Munich: Franz Eher Verlag, 1935, pp. 214–16; see also Ernest K. Bramsted, Goebbels and National Socialist Propaganda 1925–1945, East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1965, pp. 195–201.

  21Ullrich, Hitler, pp. 222–3.

  22Herbst, Hitlers Charisma, p. 215; The Times, 10 June 1931, p. 17; Richard Bessel, ‘The Rise of the NSDAP and the Myth of Nazi Propaganda’, Wiener Library Bulletin, 33, 1980, pp. 20–29.

  23Ullrich, Hitler, pp. 281–2.

  24Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler wie ihn keiner kennt, Munich: Heinrich Hoffmann, 1935 (1st edn 1932); see also Herz, Hoffmann & Hitler, pp. 245–8.

  25Bramsted, Goebbels and National Socialist Propaganda, pp. 202–4; Emil Ludwig, Three Portraits: Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1940, p. 27.

  26Gerhard Paul, Aufstand der Bilder. Die NS-Propaganda vor 1933, Bonn: Dietz, 1990, pp. 204–7.

  27Ullrich, Hitler, pp. 330–31.

  28Richard J. Evans, ‘Coercion and Consent in Nazi Germany’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 151, 2006, pp. 53–81.

  29Ibid.

  30BArch, R43II/979, 31 March, 2 and 10 April 1933.

  31BArch, R43II/979, 18 Feb., 7, 8, 11 March 1933; R43II/976, 7 April and 3 July 1933.

  32BArch, NS6/215, p. 16, Circular by Martin Bormann, 6 Oct. 1933.

  33Konrad Repgen and Hans Booms, Akten der Reichskanzlei: Regierung Hitler 1933–1938, Boppard: Harald Boldt Verlag, 1983, part 1, vol. 1, p. 467; BArch, R43II/959, 5 and 13 April 1933, 29 Aug. 1933, pp. 25–6 and 48.

  34Richard Bessel, ‘Charismatisches Führertum? Hitlers Image in der deutschen Bevölkerung’ in Martin Loiperdinger, Rudolf Herz and Ulrich Pohlmann (eds), Führerbilder: Hitler, Mussolini, Roosevelt, Stalin in Fotografie und Film, Munich: Piper, 1995, pp. 16–17.

  35Ullrich, Hitler, p. 474.

  36Deutschland-Berichte der Sozaldemokratischen Partei Deutschlands (Sopade) 1934–1940, Salzhausen: Verlag Petra Nettelbeck, 1980, vol. 1, 1934, pp. 275–7; see also John Brown, I Saw for Myself, London: Selwyn and Blount, 1935, p. 35.

  37Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years 1933–1941, New York: The Modern Library, 1999, p. 82.

  38The speech can be found in Rudolf Hess, ‘Der Eid auf Adolf Hitler’, Reden, Munich: Franz Eher Verlag, 1938, pp. 9–14, and reactions to it in Deutschland-Berichte der Sopade, 1934, pp. 470–72.

  39Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 387.

  40BArch, NS22/425, 30 Aug. 1934, p. 149; two weeks later, after it was reported that some of the portraits were being destroyed, a new circular allowed images of other leaders provided that Hitler’s portrait prevailed in proportion and size; see p. 148, 14 Sept. 1934; on slogans in the 1935 rally see Louis Bertrand, Hitler, Paris: Arthème Fayard, 1936, p. 45.

  41Deutschland-Berichte der Sopade, 1934, pp. 10–11, 471–2, 482 and 730–31.

  42Joseph Goebbels, ‘Unser Hitler!’ Signale der neuen Zeit. 25 ausgewählte Reden von Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Munich: NSDAP, 1934, pp. 141–9; see also Bramsted, Goebbels and National Socialist Propaganda 1925–1945, pp. 204–5.

  43Bernd Sösemann, ‘Die Macht der allgegenwärtigen Suggestion. Die Wochensprüche der NSDAP als Propagandamittel’, Jahrbuch 1989, Berlin: Berliner Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft, 1990, pp. 227–48; Victor Klemperer, To the Bitter End: The Diaries of Victor Klemperer 1942–1945, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999, p. 106.

  44Wolfgang Schneider, Alltag unter Hitler, Berlin: Rowohlt Berlin Verlag, 2000, p. 83; BArch, R58/542, p. 30, Frankfurter Zeitung, 25 Aug. 1938; p. 32, Berliner Börsen Zeitung, 7 Sept. 1938; p. 38, Völkischer Beobachter, 6 Nov. 1938.

  45Othmar Plöckinger, Geschichte eines Buches. Adolf Hitlers “Mein Kampf” 1922–1945, Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2006, pp. 414–15; BArch, R4901/4370, 6 Feb. and 5 April 1937.

  46Ansgar Diller, Rundfunkpolitik im Dritten Reich, Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1980, pp. 62–3.

  47Goebbels, Tagebücher 1924–1945, p. 772.

  48On the numbers and cost of radio sets, see Wolfgang König, ‘Der Volksempfänger und die Radioindustrie. Ein Beitrag zum Verhältnis von Wirtschaft und Politik im Nationalsozialismus’ in Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 90, no. 3 (2003), p. 273; Deutschland-Berichte der Sopade, 1934, pp. 275–7; 1936, p. 414; 1938, p. 1326; Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness, p. 155.

  49Stephan Dolezel and Martin Loiperdinger, ‘Hitler in Parteitagsfilm und Wochenschau’ in Loiperdinger, Herz and Pohlmann, Führerbilder, p. 81.

  50On mobile cinemas, see Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power, London: Penguin Books, 2006, p. 210.

  51Hoffmann, Hitler Was My Friend, p. 70; Herz, Hoffmann & Hitler, p. 244.

  52Ines Schlenker, Hitler’s Salon: The Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung at the Haus der Deutschen Kunst in Munich 1937–1944, Bern: Peter Lang AG, 2007, p. 136.

  53A. W. Kersbergen, Onderwijs en nationaalsocialisme, Assen: Van Gorcum, 1938, p. 21.

  54Annemarie Stiehler, Die Geschichte von Adolf Hitler den deutschen Kindern erzählt, Berlin-Lichterfelde: Verlag des Hauslehrers, 1936, p. 95; Kersbergen, Onderwijs en nationaalsocialisme, p. 22.

  55Paul Jennrich, Unser Hitler. Ein Jugend- und Volksbuch, Halle (Saale), Pädagogischer Verlag Hermann Schroedel, 1933, p. 75; Linda Jacobs Altman, Shattered Youth in Nazi Germany: Primary Sources from the Holocaust, Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishers, 2010, p. 95.

  56Rudolf Hoke and Ilse Reiter (eds), Quellensammlung zur österreichischen und deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 1993, p. 544.

  57Despina Stratigakos, Hitler at Home, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015, pp. 24–46.

  58Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich, New York: Macmillan, 1970,
p. 103; Christa Schroeder, Er war mein Chef: Aus dem Nachlaß der Sekretärin von Adolf Hitler, Munich: Langen Müller, 1985, p. 71.

  59Stratigakos, Hitler at Home, p. 59.

  60Ibid., p. 84.

  61Kristin Semmens, Seeing Hitler’s Germany: Tourism in the Third Reich, Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. 56–68; BArch, R43II/957a, 10 Oct. 1938, pp. 40–41.

  62Ulrich Chaussy and Christoph Püschner, Nachbar Hitler. Führerkult und Heimatzerstörung am Obersalzberg, Berlin: Christoph Links Verlag, 2007, pp. 141–2; David Lloyd George, ‘I Talked to Hitler’ in Anson Rabinbach and Sander L. Gilman (eds), The Third Reich Sourcebook, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013, p. 77–8.

  63Chaussy and Püschner, Nachbar Hitler, p. 142.

  64Andrew Nagorski, Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012, pp. 84–6.

  65Kershaw, Hubris, p. 590; Max Domarus, Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945, Leonberg: Pamminger, 1988, p. 606.

  66Deutschland-Berichte der Sopade, 1936, pp. 68–70; W. E. B. Du Bois, ‘What of the Color-Line?’ in Oliver Lubrich (ed.), Travels in the Reich, 1933–1945: Foreign Authors Report from Germany, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010, p. 143.

  67Deutschland-Berichte der Sopade, 1936, pp. 68–70, 141, 409, 414 and 419; Domarus, Hitler, p. 643.

  68William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary, New York: Alfred Knopf, 1942, p. 86.

  69Deutschland-Berichte der Sopade, 1937, pp. 139–40, 143–6, 603, 606, 1224 and 1531.

  70Ibid., pp. 1528 and 1531.

  71Ullrich, Hitler, p. 736; Kershaw, Hitler: Nemesis, pp. 110–12.

  72Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness, p. 29; Goebbels, ‘Geburtstag des Führers’, 19 April 1939, Die Zeit ohne Beispiel, Munich: Franz Eher Verlag, 1942, p. 102; The Times, 20 April 1939.

  73‘Aggrandizer’s Anniversary’, Time magazine, 1 May 1939; Speer, Inside the Third Reich, p. 149.