BOO KS
141
--{:()ntained in
both
liberalism
and
Marxism-which it sought to destroy.
Nolte does not fail to distinguish between the three fascist move–
ments under study. And here again his analysis provides us with a new
perspective on the situation. Toward the end of his discussion of Na–
tional Socialism, he comes to the not so startling conclusion that of the
three faces of fascism the German variety was the most radical and the
most complete. But it is not his conclusion so much as the whole struc–
ture of evidence and reasoning which leads up to it which is new and
important. He makes it clear that the radical character of Nazism can
be
properly comprehended only if it is seen against the background of
French and Italian fascism, so as to lay bare "the complete, layered
structure of the phenomenon."
In those sections of his book devoted to Maurras and the
Action
Franfaise
and to Mussolini and Italian fascism. Nolte tries to show that
neither Maurras nor Mussolini were originally fascists. Both moved only
gradually toward fascism: in each case the move signified a betrayal
of earlier convictions. Out of fear for the traditional culture-which for
him
was identical with the "ancien regime"-and in its
unconditional
defense, Maurras was willing, in 1940, to sacrifice France and the
French people to the German conqueror. Yet Maurras's love of France,
no matter how wrongheaded and perverse, remained; hence Nolte rightly
speaks of the
A ction Franfaise
as an "early" and incomplete form of
fascism. Mussolini drifted into the fascist camp after and as a result of
his break with his fellow Marxists over the question of Italian participa–
tion in World War
1.
When his attempt at some kind of collaboration
with the socialists and the Popolari had failed, he gave up his hope of
creating a social democracy which would be the spontaneous expression
of the masses. All traces of Mussolini's socialism disappeared when he
permitted his Italy to become the satellite of Nazi Germany, the far
greater and more nihilistic fascist power. But with his fall in 1943, Mus–
solini returned, pathetically, to his old beliefs. "It will be," he said of
that bastard state, the Republic of Salo, "the republic of Italian workers,
and it has already begun on the determined realization of all those
postulates which for forty years were inscribed on the flags of the
socialist movements." Nolte demonstrates that in the case of both
Maurras and Mussolini their original convictions were obscured and
betrayed but not altogether destroyed by their fascism.
Against this background the sheer nihilism of Hitler and of National
Socialism becomes clear. Like Maurras, Hitler justified aggression and
inhumanity by claiming that he was waging war for the sake of "cul–
ture," and, like Italian fascism, German National Socialism purported
to have a social content. But Hitler placed no real value on the German
