Fascists among themselves: some observations on west European politics in the 1930s

Abstract

Historians have long found it difficult to deal with fascism as a generic, Europe-wide, political phenomenon. The historiographic pendulum has swung from including virtually every right-wing movement under the label of fascism to denying altogether that generic fascism ever existed. Neither approach is historically valid. The fascists did not see themselves as a species of Conservatives; they looked upon themselves as a unique, international political phenomenon. Moreover, many of their non-fascist contemporaries accepted this claim. Both were right and, for this reason, it is necessary to renew efforts to delineate the ideological and stylistic parameters of generic fascism. An important aid in understanding fascism as a generic phenomenon is the analysis of the relations between the German Nazis and French and Dutch fascists in the years from 1933 to 1939, a topic that has been little studied until now.