Anti-'fascism.' (why national socialism is not fascism)

ANTI-"FASCISM'

AVIGOROUS DEBATE is going on inGermany about a monument to the victims of "Fascism' to be erected in Hamburg by the noted Austrian sculptor Alfred Hrdlicka. In point of fact, Fascism, a purely Italian movement, had no German victims. What the city elders of Hamburg and the sculptor have in mind are the victims of National Socialism, a term that is absolutely taboo in leftist circles.

To be sure, during the two years thatthe Ribbentrop-Molotov pact was in effect, the Soviet press loyally spoke of "National Socialism'; but after the Germans invaded the USSR in June 1941, the Soviets started referring to their

German counterparts as "Hitlerites' (Gitlerovtsy). When it came to the Nuremberg trials, a difficulty arose over what the defendants should be called. The Soviets proposed fashisty, but the Western Allies wanted to stick to "National Socialists.' The solution was found in the folksy term Nazi, which they themselves had used (a book by Goebbels, a sort of catechism, is entitled Der Nazi-Sozi). Meanwhile, to please the democrats on the Allied side, who could not bring themselves to admit that National Socialism was a broad, popular mass movement, the trial was officially directed against the "Nazi conspiracy.' But once the trial was over, and the Soviets were no longer constrained by the sensibilities of their recent allies, they reverted to using the official label "fascist' for every movement, ideology, political notion, and conviction that did not meet with their approval.

For anyone who does not have theSoviets' interests at heart, however, there is no reason whatsoever to call National Socialism "fascist.' German National Socialism anteceded Mussolini's fascismo, and its roots are Bohemian, not Italian. It goes back to the Czech National Socialist Party, founded in 1896 by nationalistic dissidents from the Czech Socialist Party. In 1903 they were copied by Germans from Bohemia and Moravia, who created the German Workers' Party. At a big meeting in Vienna in May 1918, this party changed its name to the "German National Socialist Workers' Party' (DNSAP) and expounded a distinctly leftist program.

Hitler was then still at the WesternFront, but the DNSAP had a rich literature--which can be found in the Hoover Institution--adorned with the swastika. The program was anti-Habsburg, anti-aristocratic, anti-clerical, and anti-capitalist (among other things, it demanded the democratic control of "peoples' banks'). In addition, it was anti-Jewish. Since Marx himself was a fanatical Jew-baiter, and anti-Semitism always figured in the Socialist parties' programs (as proved by the magisterial work of Edmund Silberner), there is thus very little difference between the International Socialist and the National Socialist program. (Naive observers have claimed that the Third Reich was capitalist. In fact, "capitalists' in the Third Reich had the same function as the "patriotic capitalists' in Mao's China: They were mere administrators in a planned economy, impotent to carry out any independent action.) In his speech after the Anschluss in April 1938, the new National Socialist mayor of Vienna, Party Comrade Neubacher, told the Socialist Party leaders that National Socialism was, indeed, genuine Socialism.

The taboo on the term "NationalSocialist' has been methodically obeyed by the Left everywhere. Two years ago I received a long letter from a German institute for the research of contemporary history, asking me to inform them of my "anti-fascist' activities in America during World War II. I replied that I had been too busy studying other totalitarian movements to spend much time concentrating on Italian matters. (Of course, I knew very well what they meant). Italian Fascism was, after all, a purely local affair, its problems bothering nobody outside Italy. Only after that doubtful, well-dressed genius Anthony Eden had driven Mussolini into Hitler's arms did the Duce's intellectual and moral decline truly begin. The murder of Matteotti was foul (still, the murderers had to stand trial), but I know of no "anti-fascists' (except terrorists) executed by the Duce prior to 1939. Between 1922 and 1939 far more people were put to death in the United States than in Italy, both absolutely and relatively. Imprisonments and confinements did take place, but even the diaries of the Communist Antonio Gramsci (written in jail) do not mention inordinate severity. Hannah Arendt, who has studied this subject, tells us that in the majority of political trials, the accused were acquitted-- something unheard of in either National Socialist Germany or the USSR. Without

the rise of Hitler, Italian Fascism would have remained an insignificant chapter in world history.

HOW GENERALLY is all this known?The latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica that I have seen has no entry for "National Socialism.' After much looking, I finally discovered one for the "Nazi Party.' I thereupon wrote a postcard to the editors suggesting that, following that pattern, they should not have articles on Communism and Socialism but, rather, on the "Bolshie Party' and, as the Viennese say, the "Sozi Party.'

The quarrel about Nazism versusFascism is by no means merely a semantic question. The past is always with us, whereas the present is but the dividing line between past and future. Two statements by Confucius should be kept in mind: "Study the past and you will know the future'; and, "State and society perish if the meaning of words is distorted.'