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The Ethics of Consent—Regime and People in the Historiographies of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2015

ROBERTA PERGHER
ROBERTA PERGHER*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Ballantine 742, Indiana University, 1020 E. Kirkwood, Bloomington, IN 47405-7103; [email protected]
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Extract

In his trenchant and stimulating review article Patrick Bernhard surveyed a series of English-language studies that focus in one way or another on the relationship between the fascist regime and the Italian people. Drawing on the historiography of Nazi Germany, Bernhard took these studies as his cue to argue that much of the historiography on Italian Fascism is outdated. In particular, he sees the approach adopted to assessing the regime's appeal as often old-fashioned, with the result that Italian historians have vastly underestimated ordinary Italians’ embrace of fascism and their complicity in its violence and war crimes. At the same time, he argues that histories of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy show far more parallels and intersections than have been acknowledged of late and calls on Italian historians to turn their attention to this entangled history.

Type
Roundtable on Italian Fascism: Responses to Patrick Bernhard's ‘Renarrating Italian Fascism: New Directions in the Historiography of a European Dictatorship’ (CEH, Vol. 23, No.1, February 2014)
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , May 2015 , pp. 309 - 315
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

1 Bernhard, Patrick, ‘Renarrating Italian Fascism: New Directions in the Historiography of a European Dictatorship’, Contemporary European History, 23 (2014), 151–163CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Kühne, Thomas, Belonging and Genocide: Hitler's Community, 1918–1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wildt, Michael, Volksgemeinschaft als Selbstermächtigung: Gewalt gegen Juden in der deutschen Provinz 1919 bis 1939 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2007)Google Scholar; Bajohr, Frank, ‘Die Zustimmungsdiktatur: Grundzüge nationalsozialistischer Herrschaft in Hamburg’, in Schmid, Josef, ed., Hamburg im „Dritten Reich“ (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2005), 69–131Google Scholar.

3 The reference to the Germans as ‘bad people’ is the reverse of the Italian tendency to view their own people as ‘good Italian people’ (italiani brava gente). I will address this Italian myth further on in the essay.

4 See Kershaw, Ian, ‘“Volksgemeinschaft.” Potenzial und Grenzen eines neuen Forschungskonzepts’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 59, 1 (2011), 1–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Mommsen, Hans, ‘Changing Historical Perspectives on the Nazi Dictatorship’, European Review 17, 1 (2009), 73–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Herbert, Ulrich, Best: biographische Studien über Radikalismus, Weltanschauung und Vernunft, 1903–1989 (Bonn: J.H.W. Dietz, 1996)Google Scholar; Wildt, Michael, An Uncompromising Generation: The Nazi Leadership of the Reich Security Main Office (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009)Google Scholar; Fritzsche, Peter, Life and Death in the Third Reich (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; and the titles in footnote 2.

6 de Grand, Alexander, ‘Working Towards the Duce: Five Recent Books on Mussolini’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies 11, 4 (2006), 561CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 See Togliatti, Palmiro, Corso sugli avversari: Le lezioni sul fascismo, ed. Biscione, Francesco M. (Turin: Einaudi, 2010)Google Scholar.

8 See in particular the third volume of his Mussolini biography: De Felice, Renzo, Mussolini il duce. Gli anni del consenso 1929–1936 (Turin: Einaudi, 1974)Google Scholar. For a discussion of the term ‘consenso’ and its meanings see Pergher, Roberta and Albanese, Giulia, ‘Historians, Fascism, and Italian Society: Mapping the Limits of Consent’, in Albanese, Giulia and Pergher, Roberta, eds., In the Society of Fascists: Acclamation, Acquiescence and Agency (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 1–28Google Scholar; and Morgan, Philip, ‘The years of consent? Popular Attitudes and Forms of Resistance to Fascism in Italy’, in Kirk, Tim and McElligott, Anthony, eds. Opposing Fascism: Community, Authority and Resistance in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 163–179CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Field defining in this respect has been the work of Emilio Gentile. See Gentile, Emilio, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996)Google Scholar and Gentile, Politics as Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).

10 For the early work on intellectuals see Isnenghi, Mario, Intellettuali militanti e intellettuali funzionari: Appunti sulla cultura fascista (Turin: Einaudi, 1979)Google Scholar and Turi, Gabriele, Il fascismo e il consenso degli intellettuali (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1980)Google Scholar; and, more recently, Ben- Ghiat, Ruth, Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922–1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001)Google Scholar. For the regime's efforts see Cannistraro, Philip V., La fabbrica del consenso: Fascismo e mass media (Rome: Laterza, 1975)Google Scholar and De Grazia, Victoria, The Culture of Consent: Mass Organization and Leisure in Fascist Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On marginalised groups see Passerini, Luisa, Fascism in Popular Memory: The Cultural Experience of the Turin Working Class (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

11 Ben-Ghiat, Ruth, ‘A Lesser Evil? Italian Fascism in/and the Totalitarian Equation’, in Dubiel, Helmut and Motzkin, Gabriel Gideon Hillel, eds., The Lesser Evil: Moral Approaches to Genocide Practices (New York: Routledge, 2004)Google Scholar.

12 The historiography on the brutal and protracted campaign in Libya, the war in Ethiopia and war and occupation in the Balkans, as well as on anti-Jewish persecution in Italy is by now extensive. I will just list here Labanca, Nicola, La guerra italiana per la Libia. 1911–1931 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2012)Google Scholar; Dominioni, Matteo, Lo sfascio dell’impero. Gli italiani in Etiopia (1936–1941) (Rome: Laterza, 2008)Google Scholar; Rodogno, Davide, Fascism's European empire: Italian occupation during the Second World War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; and Sarfatti, Michele, La Shoah in Italia. La persecuzione degli ebrei sotto il fascismo (Turin: Einaudi, 2005)Google Scholar. For a full-on critique of the ‘brava gente’ myth, see Bidussa, David, Il mito del bravo italiano (Turin: Il Saggiatore, 1994)Google Scholar. And specifically on the ‘good Italian-bad German’ juxtaposition see: Focardi, Filippo, Il cattivo tedesco e il bravo italiano. La rimozione delle colpe della seconda guerra mondiale (Rome: Laterza, 2013)Google Scholar. For historical research on crossovers and entanglements see Klinkhammer, Lutz, Guerrazzi, Amedeo Osti, and Schlemmer, Thomas, eds., Die “Achse” im Krieg: Politik, Ideologie und Kriegführung 1939–1945 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2010)Google Scholar; Liebscher, Daniela, Freude und Arbeit: Zur internationalen Freizeit- und Sozialpolitik des faschistischen Italien und des NS- Regimes (Köln: Sh-Verlag, 2009)Google Scholar; and Nolzen, Armin and Reichardt, Sven, eds., Faschismus in Italien und Deutschland: Studien zu Transfer und Vergleich (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2005)Google Scholar.

13 Rosenhaft, Eve, ‘Blacks and Gypsies in Nazi Germany: the limits of the “Racial State”’, History Workshop Journal 72 (2011), 161–170CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; and Pendas, Devin, Roseman, Mark, and Wetzell, Richard, eds. Beyond the Racial State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2015)Google Scholar.

14 Stargardt, Nicholas, Germans, 1939–45 (New York: Basic Books, forthcoming 2015)Google Scholar.

15 Giulia Albanese and Roberta Pergher, eds. In the Society of Fascists.

16 See Corner, Paul, The Fascist Party and Popular Opinion in Mussolini's Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Emilio Gentile's review of Duggan, Cristopher, Fascist Voices. An intimate history of Mussolini's Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)Google Scholar: Emilio Gentile, ‘Il duce, che emozione!’, Il Sole 24 Ore, 4 May 2014. See also Giulia Albanese's contribution to the forum.

17 Much anticipated is Bernhard, Patrick's study Rasse und Raum transnational: Bevölkerungsmanagement in der “Achse” Rom-Berlin, 1936–43 (Munich: Oldenbourg, forthcoming 2015)Google Scholar.