OZON Gov’t Not Fascist Nolte

Three Faces Of Fascism: Action Francaise, Italian Fascism, National Socialism, by Ernst Nolte.

This Scholar Censored Because Crimes of Nazism are Like Those of Communism. Verboten! Pre-WWII Polish Government Was in No Sense Fascist

German scholar Nolte first points out that the term fascist has been widely over-used, and regularly invoked by Communists as a label against those who disagree with them (p. 455). Fascism is not the same as military dictatorship (p. 455), nor is it synonymous with extreme nationalism (p. 397). In particular, “The most marked characteristic of any fascism—and fascism always remained ‘national fascism’ in its era—is the combination of a nationalistic and a socialistic motif.” (p. 460). Nor is fascism simply the Far Right or extreme conservatism, as politicians of that stripe were often opponents of fascism (p. 313, 417) .

WHAT IS FASCISM?

Nolte defines fascism as follows: “Fascism is anti-Marxism which seeks to destroy the enemy by the evolvement of a radically opposed and yet related ideology and by the use of almost identical and yet typically modified methods, always, however, within the unyielding framework of national self-assertion and autonomy.” (p. 21). Also, “…both [Italian fascism and German National Socialism]..fought a war of annihilation against Marxism by adopting and typically transforming Marxist methods.” (p. 369).

THE DEVELOPMENT OF FASCISM

Nolte then traces the history of fascism, and provides interesting information regarding the same. For instance, Mussolini had been a Communist as recently as 1921 (p. 154). The position of Jews towards Italian fascism had, for some time, been an ambiguous one: “The founder of Roman fascism was a Jew (Enrico Rocca), also the theoretician of corporatism (Gino Arias); moreover, there had been quite a number of Jews among the early Fascists. On the other hand we cannot overlook the fact that the number of Jews among the opponents of fascism was considerable…” (p. 230). Nolte provides much detail about the strongly anti-Christian character of fascism (p. 189, 331, 397, 407, etc.).

PRE-WWII POLISH GOVERNMENT (INCLUDING OZON) WAS NOT FASCIST

Some Polonophobes have mischaracterized the prewar Polish government as a fascist or quasi-fascist one, but Nolte repudiates this: “In Poland, too, the threat from outside the country—although it came from Bolshevik Russia and, in contrast with Bavaria and Hungary, actually did represent a deadly threat—did not lead directly to the development of fascist trends. “ (p. 11). “The ‘moral dictatorship’ set up by Pilsudski in Poland in 1926, with the aim of leading the country to recovery (Sanacja) by abolishing the ‘abuses’ of the parliamentary system, relied principally on the army. The core of the army consisted of his own legionaries, and even if Pilsudski himself never infringed on the multiplicity of parties and a fairly extensive freedom of expression of opinion, his successors took some forceful steps in the direction of an authoritarian, one-party dictatorship of soldier-statesmen.” (p. 14).

Nolte concludes: “The poles of authoritarianism and totalitarianism bracket a span ranging from Pilsudski’s regime, via the political totalitarianism of Falangist Spain, to the all-encompassing totalitarianism of Mussolini and Hitler.” (p. 460).

EARLY MARXIAN HOSTILITY TO POLAND

There was a time when Marx and Engel had been sympathetic to extreme German nationalism, and, in addition, had exterminatory attitudes towards partitioned Poland. Nolte comments: “Cf. also the extraordinary letter from Engels to Marx of May 23, 1851 (‘Wrest from the Poles in the West what one can;…send them into the fire, eat their land bare…!’).” (p. 541).

THE POLES WERE THE FIRST VICTIMS OF NAZI GENOCIDAL POLICIES

Nolte traces the development of Hitler’s exterminatory policies: “From an objective standpoint, the campaign in Poland proved that an agrarian people is virtually helpless when confronted by an attack from a highly armed industrial nation…the policy of annihilation. In this, its first appearance, it was directed not against Jews and not against Bolsheviks, but against the Polish intelligentsia.” (p. 355).

Holocaust-uniqueness advocates have argued that, while (supposedly) all Jews were slated for extermination, some Poles would be spared and converted into Germans. In actuality, the “Poles” involved WERE Germans–who had long ago become Polonized. In the case of the kidnapping of Polish children of good racial stock (blonde, blue-eyed), as in the Lebensborn program, their German ancestry was ipso facto assumed even in the absence of independent evidence. Nolte comments: “Accordingly many Poles were scrutinized by experts for their ‘Germanness’ and where necessary transferred to a German environment for ‘renationalization,’ in the process of which there was in principle nothing to prevent children being taken from their homes and being taught, against the will of their parents, to hearken to the true ‘voice of blood’.” (p. 396).

WHY THE GERMANS WERE FORCED TO TREAT JEWS AND POLES DIFFERENTLY

For all the talk about Poles and Jews being “unequal victims” in WWII, it becomes obvious that unequal German treatment of each group was motivated solely by practical considerations. The Nazis certainly did not regard the Poles as having any more inherent right to live than the Jews. In describing future German plans for the conquered Poles, Nolte writes: “Underlying everything is the total disfranchisement of the subjugated. They have no claims of any kind, except an early death…In order to sell them contraceptive devices, Hitler jokes, one ought perhaps even to employ the Jews…Infantile meanderings? Of course. But in Poland they had become a reality in many vital initial points.” (p. 414).

And, against the claim that Hitler was uniquely obsessed with Jews, even at the time of his suicide, we learn the following: “And Hitler never wavered in this view, except perhaps just before his death when, strangely enough ‘the more powerful people of the East’ appeared to him to be the true winners of the war.” (p. 522).

UNDERSTANDING ANTISEMITISM

Anti-Semitism has frequently been described as completely irrational and incomprehensible, but Nolte does not share this view: “Anti-Semitism is by no means a relic of the Middle Ages or the expression of petit-bourgeois social envy; in an age of the growing awareness of national and social differences it is under certain conditions an element of national consciousness itself.” (p. 381).

WAS HITLER, IN SOME WAYS, PROGRESSIVE?

Interestingly, Hitler had promoted vegetarianism (p. 419) and wanted to enforce vegetarianism and to abolish smoking after the war (p. 291).