Portland State University PDXScholar Dissertations and Theses Dissertations and Theses 7-6-1993 Anti-Bolshevism and the Advent of Mussolini and Hitler: Anglo-American Diplomatic Perceptions, 1922-1933 Lisa Kay Walker Portland State University Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds Part of the History Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Walker, Lisa Kay, "Anti-Bolshevism and the Advent of Mussolini and Hitler: Anglo-American Diplomatic Perceptions, 1922-1933" (1993). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 4629. https://doi.org/10.15760/etd.6513 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. Please contact us if we can make this document more accessible: [email protected]. AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF Lisa Kay Walker for the Master of Arts in History presented July 6, 1993. Title: Anti-Bolshevism and the Advent of Mussolini and Hitler: Anglo-American Diplomatic Perceptions, 1922-1933 APPROVED BY THE MEMBERS ~~~E THESIS Franklin C. West ' Lo'i/s, Becker Louis Elteto The history of World War II has led many Americans to vie~ Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy and Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany as European variants of a single Fascist ideology. Ho~ever, in the early years of the Mussolini and Hitler regimes, the conceptual category of international Fascism was by not so ~ell-established, particularly ~here the Nazis were concerned. American and British diplomats stationed in Germany in the early 1930s only occasionally 2 interpreted the rising Nazi party as an offshoot of Fascism, but frequently referred to it as a possible form of or precursor of Bolshevism in Germany. Published and unpublished American foreign policy documents, published British diplomatic documents, and a wide array of secondary sources have contributed information showing how perceptions of Nazism and Bolshevism were influenced by matters that clouded the issues. The similarity of American and British views on the subjects of Bolshevism, Fascism, and Nazism can be attributed to the new understanding among the policy elites of the two nations as they became the leading status QaQ powers after World War I. The United States in particular had gone through tremendous organizational changes during and after the war, and was entering into a new era of professional and bureaucratized foreign policy that differed from its ad ~ diplomacy of the past. American foreign policy of the interwar period combined a strong interest in business expansion with a relative lack of desire for international political entanglements. American political commitments of the 1920s, particclarly in Germany, were backed primarily by loans and investment, and through reparations revision plans designed by unofficial diplomats recruited from the private sector. As American financial commitments to Germany became more dependent on German repayment, and as 3 the Depression tightened its grip, the rise of the Nazis became an ever greater source of alarm. This concern was related not only to their unclear and ill-defined political ideas, but to the threat they seemingly posed to financial stability -- a threat that increased their resemblance to the Bolsheviks in the minds of many diplomatic observers. Various other factors were important in developing the Anglo-American view of Nazism as related to Bolshevism. These included the almost obsessive intensity of anti­ Bolshevism in the United States and Great Britain throughout the interwar period; the close association of Bolshevism with economic chaos in the minds of Anglo­ American leaders, with a concomitant tendency to see Bolshevism developing wherever economic chaos occurred in Europe; and the strong admiration for Mussolini's Italy in both Britain and the United States, which precluded possibilities of seeing much in common between Italian Fascism and Nazism during this period. Some important sources of conceptual confusion were inherent in the policies of Germany's post-World War I Weimar Republic. Leading German diplomats and politicians of the republic, such as Gustav Stresemann, used Anglo­ American fears of Bolshevism as a cornerstone of their policy to gain revisions and modifications of the harsh terms of the Versailles Treaty. In the early 1930s, the "Bolshevism bogey" was used by Ambassador Frederic Sackett, 4 a political appointee of Herbert Hoover, to get Hoover's attention so that he would modify reparations policy in favor of Sackett's friend, the embattled Chancellor Heinrich Bruning. The internal factions of the rising Nazi party, including the left-leaning wing led by Gregor Strasser, appeared to give some credence to the idea that the Nazis could harbor communistic elements. After Hitler's rise to the chancellorship in 1933, American and British observers began to note more resemblances between the Hitler and Mussolini regimes. However, many of their earlier observations about the similarities of Nazism and Bolshevism have validity in terms of the more totalitarian nature of these regimes as compared to Italian Fascism and its other less extreme variants. ANTI-BOLSHEVISM AND THE ADVENT OF MUSSOLINI AND HITLER; ANGLO-AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC PERCEPTIONS, 1922-1933 by LISA KAY WALKER A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in HISTORY Portland State University 1993 TO THE OFFICE OF GRADUATE STUDIES: The members of the Committee approve the thesis of Lisa Kay Walker presented July 6, 1993. V. Burke, Chair Franklin C. West .._ __ ...• Lois Becker Louis Elteto APPROVED: Chair, Department of History for Graduate Studies and Research ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The long-delayed conclusion of this project offers me an opportunity to thank several people who made important contributions to its completion. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Professors Lois Becker, Louis Elteto, and Franklin West for serving on my thesis committee and for contributing many useful observations and challenging questions. Lee Ellington and Diane Gould of the History Department office deserve extra thanks for their patience and willingness to guide me through the sometimes confusing pathways of graduate school paperwork. Maureen Eldred and the Graduate Office staff were unfailingly helpful in answering my questions about style and format. Marit Federcell deserves special thanks for her dedication to helping me overcome obstacles that were keeping me from completing this project. My co-workers at Oregon Council for the Humanities offered encouragement and understanding. My family, as always, was in my corner. However, my greatest debt of all is to Bernard V. Burke, my thesis advisor and committee chair, who never gave up on me and my work. As a teacher, scholar, employer, department head, and human being, he has set standards that his students, myself included, can only hope to emulate. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................... iii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION .................................. 1 Endnotes ............................... 9 II THE ANGLO-AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC BACKGROUND ..... 10 Endnotes .............................. 37 III MUSSOLINI AND THE AMERICANS .................. 44 Endnotes ............................... 72 IV THE AMERICANS AND WEIMAR GERMANY -- THE 1920'S ............................. 79 Endnotes ............................. 105 V THE AMERICAN DIPLOMATS AND THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC, 1930-33 ..................... 110 Endnotes .............................. 134 VI BOLSHEVISM, FASCISM AND NAZISM -- CONCLUSIONS ........................... 140 Endnotes .............................. 151 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................... 152 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION During the years 1930 to 1933 the National Socialist German Workers Party, a new and alarming political phenomenon, rose rapidly to power amid the disintegration of the Weimar Republic. American diplomats in Germany reported regularly on the activities of the Nazis, but their views were constrained by their own prejudices and experience. When reporting on the disorderly, rabble­ rousing tactics of the Nazis before they came to power, American diplomats in Berlin frequently used the analogy of Russian Bolshevism. However, diplomats serving in Washington and those with previous experience in Italy could and often did see Nazism as being related to its most obvious ideological source, Italian Fascism. The situation was somewhat different before and after the crucial period of 1930 to 1933. The reports of American military attaches in the early 1920s had remarked on the similarities of the Nazi Party and Mussolini's recently ascended Fascists, and American diplomats frequently compared the two regimes after Hitler took over as Chancellor in January 1933. Yet during 1930-33, the years of Nazism's climb to true national power, the 2 diplomats serving in Berlin often ignored the similarities of Nazism and Italian Fascism, reporting on Nazism as a possible offshoot of Communism, or as a destructive ideology that would damage Weimar society to the point that Communism could triumph in the ensuing chaos. The Berlin diplomats ignored the Italian connection for many reasons. Among these were the following: 1. The fundamental differences between Nazism and Italian Fascism. The Nazis were rightly viewed as much more destructive and a greater danger than Mussolini's Fascists, and there were many significant