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Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-70329-1 - To the Threshold of Power, 1922/33: Origins and Dynamics of the Fascist and Nationalist Socialist Dictatorships, Volume I MacGregor Knox Frontmatter More information

To the Threshold of Power, 1922/33 Origins and Dynamics of the Fascist and Nationalist Socialist Dictatorships

Volume 1

To the Threshold of Power is the ﬁrst volume of a two-part work that seeks to explain the origins and dynamics of the Fascist and National Socialist dictatorships. It lays a foundation for understanding the Nazi and Fascist regimes – from their respective seizures of power in 1922 and 1933 to global war, genocide, and common ruin – through parallel inves- tigations of Italian and German society, institutions, and national myths; the supreme test of the First World War; and the post-1918 struggles from which the Fascist and National Socialist movements emerged. It emphasizes two principal sources of movement: the nationalist mythol- ogy of the intellectuals and the institutional culture and agendas of the two armies, especially the Imperial German Army and its Reichswehr successor. The book’s climax is the cataclysm of 1914–18 and the rise and triumph of militarily organized radical nationalist movements – Mussolini’s Fasci di combattimento and Hitler’s National Socialist Ger- man Workers’ Party – dedicated to the perpetuation of the war and the overthrow of the post-1918 world order.

MacGregor Knox has served since 1994 as Stevenson Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Polit- ical Science. He was educated at Harvard College (B.A., 1967) and Yale University (Ph.D., 1977), and has also taught at the University of Rochester (United States). His writings deal with the wars and dictatorships of the savage ﬁrst half of the twentieth century and with contemporary international and strategic history. They include Mussolini Unleashed, 1939–1941 (1982); The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War (edited with Williamson Murray and Alvin Bernstein) (1994); Common Destiny: Dictatorship, Foreign Policy, and War in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (2000); Hitler’s Italian Allies: Royal Armed Forces, Fascist Regime, and the War of 1940–43 (2000); and The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050 (edited with Williamson Murray) (2001). Between his undergraduate and graduate studies he spent three years in the U.S. Army, and served in the Republic of Vietnam (1969) as riﬂe platoon leader with the 173rd Airborne Brigade.

© Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-70329-1 - To the Threshold of Power, 1922/33: Origins and Dynamics of the Fascist and Nationalist Socialist Dictatorships, Volume I MacGregor Knox Frontmatter More information

To the Threshold of Power, 1922/33

Origins and Dynamics of the Fascist and Nationalist Socialist Dictatorships

Volume 1

MacGregor Knox The London School of Economics and Political Science

cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao˜ Paulo, Delhi

Cambridge University Press 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, ny 10013-2473, usa www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521878609

C MacGregor Knox 2007

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First published 2007

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Knox, MacGregor. To the threshold of power, 1922/33 : origins and dynamics of the fascist and nationalist socialist dictatorships / MacGregor Knox. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-521-87860-9 (hardback) isbn-13: 978-0-521-70329-1 (pbk.) 1. Totalitarianism. 2. Fascism – Italy – History. 3. National socialism – Germany – History. I. Title. jc481.k527 2007 320.53 3–dc22 2007002272

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Per Tina, come sempre Fur¨ Tina, wie immer

Contents

List of Figures and Maps page ix Preface xi Abbreviations xiii Introduction: Dictatorship in the Age of Mass Politics 1

part i: the long nineteenth century, 1789–1914 1. Latecomers 19 1. Peculiarities of the Old Order 19 2. Revolutions from Above, 1789–1871: Politics, Society, Myths 32 2. Italy and Germany as Nation-States, 1871–1914 58 1. Economic Expansion, Social Ambition 58 2. The Politics of Stunted Parliamentarism 78 3. The Instruments of War 100 4. The National Myths 109 5. Fateful Peculiarities: The View from 1914 131

part ii: from war to dictatorship, 1914–1933 3. The Synthesis of Violence and Politics, 1914–1918 143 1. The Meaning of the War: The Inner Circle from Euphoria to Resentment 146 2. The Meaning of the War: “August Days” and “Radiant May” 169 3. The Meaning of the War: Fragmentation, Defeat, Denial, Wrath 182 4. Structural Transformations and the End of All Legitimacy 223 4. Kampfzeit: The Road to Radical Nationalist Victory, 1918–1933 232 1. Postwar Italy and Weimar Germany: Structures and Forces 233 2. The Perpetuation of the War: Ideas and Institutions 281 3. “Without Armistice or Quarter”: Fascism and National Socialism 300

vii

viii Contents

4. To Rome and Berlin, 1921–1922/1930–1933 361 5. Out of the National Pasts. . . 389 Conclusion: Into the Radical National Future: Inheritances and Prospects of the New Regimes 399

Frequently Cited Works 407 Index 421

List of Figures and Maps

ﬁgures 2.1 GDP of the Powers, 1870–1945 page 62 2.2 GDP of the European Powers and Japan, 1900–1945 63 2.3 The German Lead: Industrial Production as Percentage of GDP, 1850–1940 64 2.4 Percentage of the Workforce in Industry, 1849–1939 65 2.5 Per Capita GDP, 1900–1945: Germany, Northwest Italy, and the Powers 67 2.6 Stunted Parliamentarism: The Italian Franchise to 1913 82 2.7 The German “Five-Party System,” 1871–1918: Parties, Votes, and Reichstag Seats 92 2.8 The Unraveling of Bismarck’s System: The Popular Vote, 1871–1912 96 3.1 The Hammer of War: Armies and Peoples on Trial, 1914–1919 186 4.1 Economic and Political Trajectories: Italy and Germany from 1918 234 4.2 The Italian Civil War, 1919–1922: Strikes, Unemployment, Death 250 4.3 Rise, Decline, and Triumph of the “Anti-System” Vote 258 4.4 For or Against the Republic? The First Round, 29 March 1925 259 4.5 Against the Republic: The Election of Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg, 26 April 1925 260 4.6 The Caporetto of Liberalism: 16 November 1919 270 4.7 Fragmentation in Two Dimensions, 1913–1921 272 4.8 From PSI Local Power to Fascist Mass Movement, 1920–1921 312

x List of Figures and Maps

4.9 At the Epicenter: Agricultural Strikes, PSI-PPI Political Control, and Fascist Civil War in Emilia-Romagna, 1920–1921 318 4.10 Liberal Italy’s Last Election, May 1921 327 4.11 The Final Elections, 1928–1932: Votes and Percentage of the Popular Vote 355 4.12 Catastrophe, 1929–1932 372 4.13 Last Victory of the “Lesser Evil,” March–April 1932 378

maps 1 The Western Front, 1918 (Adapted from maps by the Department of History, U.S. Military Academy, West Point, NY http://www.dean.usma.edu/history.) 156 2 The German Reich, 1914–1933 (Adapted from Andreas Kunz, Institut fur¨ Europaische¨ Geschichte – Mainz, “Deutschland nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg Ende 1921,” http://www.ieg- maps.uni-mainz.de.) 238 3 Italy: War and Civil War, 1915–1922 (Adapted, with thanks, from Adrian Lyttelton, The Seizure of Power: Fascism in Italy, 1919–1929 [New York, 1973], 436–37, and from maps by the Department of History, U.S. Military Academy, West Point, NY http://www.dean.usma.edu/history.) 308

Preface

This is an unfashionable book. The 1960s taught me the necessity of defying the wisdom of the tribe, even the tribe of the intellectuals. The book breaks a number of conventions, most of which I spell out in the introduction. But its mortal sin is to take seriously Thucydides’ insistence that human history is the history of power – dynamis – and of armed conflict. Much of this first volume may not seem explicitly concerned with warfare, the central feature and supreme purpose of the regimes whose advent, nature, and workings it seeks to explain. But war is ever-present, even in my imprudent excursions into economics, social and political structures, and the realm of ideas. Clausewitz memorably insisted that “the soldier is recruited, clothed, armed, and drilled, [and] sleeps, eats, drinks, and marches, only for this: that he should fight in the right place at the right time.” This volume establishes the logistical base and conducts the long approach march toward an understanding of the supremely violent careers of the Fascist and Nazi regimes. Its successor will build on that foundation in analyzing the outcomes, from the respective “seizures of power” in 1922–26 and 1933–34 to common ruin in 1943–45. This volume’s faults are many: it has taken far too long to write, it attempts to do too much, and the larger enterprise of which it is the first instalment is unfinished. But its completion is nevertheless a happy event, for it offers an opportunity for long-overdue thanks to those who have helped along the way. Archives and archivists – the Archivio Centrale dello Stato; the Archivio Storico, Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito; the Politisches Archiv des Auswartigen¨ Amts; the Bundesarchiv-Militararchiv,¨ Freiburg im Breisgau and Aachen; the National Archives, London; and the U.S. National Archives, Washington, D.C., and College Park, Maryland – have tolerated my intrusions and, in many cases, my digital cameras. The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Institute for Advanced Study, and the German Marshall Fund of the United States offered early support of the project of a comparative history of the regimes, and have my abiding gratitude. More recently, the Leverhulme Trust supported two blissful years of research

xii Preface

leave that allowed me to explore Italian, German, and U.S. archives in pursuit of material required for the second volume, and to finish much of this one. That is a very great debt indeed, and one that I hope the appearance of this book will at least partially repay. I thank colleagues and friends, dead and living, old and new, for their long-standing support and encouragement: Sanford Elwitt, Christopher Lasch, and Richard A. Webster; Donald Kagan; Richard Kaeuper, William McGrath, and Perez and Honore´ Zagorin; Paul Preston, Mia Rodrıguez´ Salgado, David Stevenson, and Arne Westad; and Richard Bessel, Jurgen¨ Forster,Michael¨ Geyer, Ian Kershaw, Marco Mondini, Williamson Murray, Giorgio Rochat, Thomas Schlemmer, Gil-li Vardi, Cornelius Torp, Hans-Ulrich Wehler, and Hans Woller. I owe particular thanks to Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., for introducing me to the subject of “fascism” and the delights of historical debate in fall–winter 1970, and to his much-missed colleague, Hans W. Gatzke, who directed the resulting Ph.D. thesis with wisdom and forbearance. The editor of my first three books with Cambridge, Frank Smith, and his colleague Lewis Bateman have been profuse with encouragement and support. Lucio Ceva and Brian R. Sullivan have on many occasions given notable help with many issues dealt with in this volume and its sequel, and Isabel V. Hull, Alan Kramer, and Adrian Lyttelton offered detailed incisive comments that improved the manuscript in numerous ways. Finally, I owe an immense and continuing debt to my father, Bernard M. W. Knox, who fought the soldiers of the German dictatorship in 1944– 45 and introduced me to the native soil and language of the Italian one at a time when the rubble left by the Wehrmacht’s combat engineers still disfigured the southern approaches to Florence’s Ponte Vecchio. I likewise owe a growing obligation to my children, Alice and Andrew Knox, biochemist and philosopher, for their cheerfulness and patience. Above all, I am immeasurably beholden to my wife, Tina Isaacs, to whom, in love and gratitude, I once again dedicate a book. Its faults of omission or commission are inevitably mine alone.

London, March 2007 MacGregor Knox

Abbreviations

ADAP Akten zur deutschen auswartigen¨ Politik (Baden- Baden, Frankfurt am Main, Gottingen,¨ 1950–) (cited as series/volume/document) AdR Akten der Reichskanzlei (Munich, 1968–) (listed by chancellor and, if pertinent, volume) AfS Archiv fur¨ Sozialgeschichte AHR American Historical Review AP Atti parlamentari (Rome, various dates) (cited by chamber, year, page, and date) APSR American Political Science Review BA-MA Bundesarchiv-Militararchiv,¨ Freiburg im Breisgau BVP Bayerische Volkspartei (Bavarian People’s Party; 1918–33 conservative-particularist Bavarian offshoot of the Catholic Center Party) Caporetto Inquiry Commissione d’Inchiesta, Dall’Isonzo al Piave, 24 ottobre–9 novembre 1917, vol. 1: Cenno schematico degli avvenimenti; vol. 2: Le cause e le responsabilita` degli avvenimenti (Rome, 1919) CEH Central European History Censimento 1921 Istituto Centrale di Statistica, Censimento della popolazione del Regno d’Italia al 1. dicembre 1921, 19 vols. (Rome, 1925–28) CSSH Comparative Studies in Society and History DAP Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (German Workers’ Party; 1919–20 predecessor of the NSDAP) DDI I documenti diplomatici italiani (Rome 1952–) (cited as series/volume/document) DDP Deutsche Demokratische Partei (German Democratic Party; 1918–33 successor, in most respects, to the

xiii

xiv Abbreviations

Left-Liberals of Imperial Germany, with some National Liberal recruits) DNVP Deutschnationale Volkspartei (German National People’s Party; 1918–33 successor to the Conservatives of Imperial Germany, with some National Liberal recruits) DRZW Militargeschichtliches¨ Forschungsamt, Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, 8 vols. to date (Stuttgart, 1979–) DVP Deutsche Volkspartei (German People’s Party; 1918–33 successor, in most respects, to the National Liberals of Imperial Germany, with some Left-Liberal recruits) De Felice Renzo De Felice, 1: Mussolini il rivoluzionario, 1883–1920 (Turin, 1965) 2: Mussolini il fascista,I,La conquista del potere 1921–1925 (Turin, 1966) ESI (Einaudi) Storia d’Italia, numerous vols. (Turin, 1972–) Falter, HW Jurgen¨ W. Falter, Hitlers Wahler¨ (Munich, 1991) Falter, WA Jurgen¨ W. Falter, Thomas Lindenberger, and Siegfried Schumann, Wahlen und Abstimmungen in der Weimarer Republik (Munich, 1986) GG Geschichte und Gesellschaft Goebbels Die Tagebucher¨ von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I, Aufzeichnungen 1923–1941, ed. Elke Frohlich,¨ 9 vols. (Munich, 1998–2006) GSR German Studies Review GWU Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht HJ Historical Journal HSA Adolf Hitler, Samtliche¨ Aufzeichnungen 1905–1924, ed. Eberhard Jackel¨ and Axel Kuhn (Stuttgart, 1980) HRSA Adolf Hitler, Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen: Februar 1925 bis Januar 1933, 16 vols. and parts (Munich, 1992–2003) HZ Historische Zeitschrift IC Italia Contemporanea JCH Journal of Contemporary History JEEH Journal of European Economic History JMH Journal of Modern History JSS Journal of Strategic Studies KPD Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Communist Party of Germany, 1918–46/90) Maddison Angus Maddison, The World Economy: Historical Statistics (Paris, 2003) MGM Militargeschichtliche¨ Mitteilungen

Abbreviations xv

MIW Wilhelm Deist, ed., Militar¨ und Innenpolitik im Weltkrieg 1914–1918, 2 vols. (Dusseldorf,¨ 1970) MK Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim (Boston, 1943) NA Nuova Antologia NCO non-commissioned ofﬁcer NSDAP Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) OO Opera Omnia di Benito Mussolini, 44 vols. (Florence and Rome, 1951–) PCI Partito Comunista d’Italia (Communist Party of Italy, 1921–91) PNF Partito Nazionale Fascista (National Fascist Party, 1919/21–45) PPI Partito Popolare Italiano (the Catholic mass party, 1919–26) PSI Partito Socialista Italiano (Socialist Party of Italy, 1891–1994) Repaci´ Antonino Repaci,´ La marcia su Roma. Mito e realta`, 2 vols. (Rome, 1963) RSHA Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Head Ofﬁce of the SS, 1939–45: internal security, domination of conquered peoples, racial extermination) RSS Rivista Storica del Socialismo SA Sturmabteilung (paramilitary mass formations of the NSDAP, 1921–1945) SC Storia Contemporanea SGAB Sozialgeschichtliches Arbeitsbuch, 3 vols., various editors (Munich, 1975–82) SPD Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of Germany, 1870–) SS Schutzstaffel (paramilitary elite formations of the NSDAP, with police and military functions after 1933) SSt Studi Storici TMPR Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions UF Herbert Michaelis and Ernst Schraepler, eds., Ursachen und Folgen. Vom deutschen Zusammenbruch 1918 und 1945 bis zur staatlichen Neuordnung Deutschlands in der Gegenwart, 24 vols. (Berlin, 1958–64) USPD Unabhangige¨ Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (1917–22; Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, leftist offshoot of the SPD) VfZ Vierteljahrshefte fur¨ Zeitgeschichte VSWG Vierteljahrschrift fur¨ Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte

xvi Abbreviations

Wehler, DGG Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte: 1: Vom Feudalismus des Alten Reiches bis zur Defensiven Modernisierung der Reformara¨ 1700–1815 (Munich, 1987) 2: Von der Reformara¨ bis zur industriellen und politischen “Deutschen Doppelrevolution” 1815–1845/49 (Munich, 1987) 3: Von der “Deutschen Doppelrevolution” bis zur Beginn des Ersten Weltkrieges 1949–1914 (Munich, 1995) 4: Vom Beginn des Ersten Weltkriegs bis zur Grundung¨ der beiden deutschen Staaten 1914–1949 (Munich, 2003) WIH War in History