Sunday, February 04, 2024

Is fascism returning? Part One: The previous century

Dr Helmut Hubel, in this first part of his analysis of fascism, charts the rise of fascism in the last century.


By Dr Helmut Hubel
4 February 2024

Heraclitus - Marble at Victoria and Albert Museum - Afshin Taylor Darian - Flickr - CC SA 2 0


The Greek philosopher Heraclitus in the 5th century BC is said to have summarized his teaching with the statement: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, everything flows”, meaning: “History does not repeat itself”.

There are many definitions of fascism. This one is from Oxford Reference on Wikipedia:
“Fascism is a far-right form of government in which most of the country’s power is held by one ruler or a small group, under a single party”.

With respect to Fascism, the question to ask is:


Are the events of the last 16 years following the financial crisis of 2007/08 a repeat of those leading up to and following the crash of 1929?

The financial crisis of 2007/08 was precipitated by the collapse of the housing market in the United States which led to a severe contraction of liquidity. This caused a global crisis, resulting in the collapse of numerous investment and commercial banks worldwide and causing a loss of more than 2 trillion US Dollars from the global economy. Many countries suffered severely from economic depression and rising unemployment. The Greek economy, to give just one dramatic example, virtually collapsed and had to be reanimated with drastic measures by the other Euro member states. Already in those days experts spoke of the “most severe economic crisis” since 1929/30. At the same time we witnessed the rise of right extremist parties and proto-fascist politicians like Trump, Farage, Wilders and Höcke gaining prominence both in Europe and the United States.

So how does this compare with what happened some hundred years ago?
The Rise of Fascism in Germany

A social-political consequence of that 1929 crisis was the rise of right-wing political parties, capitalizing on the tremendous frustrations of the unemployed and offering “easy solutions” by naming scapegoats to be responsible for all the hardships. One country, suffering most drastically, was Germany with a rise of unemployment from 1.9 million in 1929 to 5.6 in 1932.

Historians agree that the financial crisis of 1929 accelerated the Nazi party’s gaining power, first in the Federal State of Thuringia (1930) and then in Berlin (1933). However, it was not the beginning but rather the culmination of the Nazi party’s path to power. In 1923, some three years after its defeat in World War One, Germany was suffering from the Versailles Treaty’s enormous, unbearable war reparations, the French occupation of the industrial Ruhr region and the months-long general strike lead to a hyper-inflation, with one US Dollar rising up to 4.2 billions of Marks in November 1923. Gustav Stresemann, becoming Chancellor on 13 August 1923, managed to stop this crisis by introducing a new currency, the ‘Rentenmark’, and seemed to have stabilized the Weimar Republic in the following years.

Sebastian Haffner (aka Raimund Pretzel), in this memoirs ‘Geschichte eines Deutschen’, written in 1939 but only published in 2000, after his death, states (page 53): “The year 1923 finished off Germany”. Hitler’s coup attempt in November 1923 in Munich quickly collapsed, leading him to pursue a strategy of ‘seeking power by political means’. Haffner describes the years between 1924 and 1929 as a seemingly stable interlude to the catastrophe to come only later.

Haffner, a trained lawyer, emigrated to the UK in 1939 because of his Jewish girlfriend and his distaste of the Nazis. He soon became a popular commentator in ‘The Observer’. He also published a book ‘Germany: Jekyll and Hyde, A Contemporary Account of Nazi Germany’ (1940), which explained Hitler’s rule and discussed options of how to fight him. Even Prime Minister Winston Churchill was impressed by Haffner’s analysis.

It was a combination of tremendous popular frustrations after a lost major war (1918), the almost complete breakdown of civil life (1923) and renewed major socio-economic hardship (post 1929) which led to Hitler’s rise to power.

What makes Haffner’s observations so special is the fact that he stresses the psychological, even spiritual, consequences for many German citizens. In his view, the experience of war and the devastations afterwards destroyed the “souls” of a large segment of the younger generation, which made them “ready” for the “fantastic crimes” the Nazis would commit later.
Fascism in other European countries in the 1920s-30s
Mussolini and Hitler in Munich – Marion Doss on Flickr – CC BY-SA 2 0

Italy’s deep economic, social and political crisis after WWI led to Benito Mussolini’s ‘March on Rome’ in October 1922, which became the blueprint for Hitler’s coup attempt in November 1923. It was the first extreme right-wing movement after the devastations of the ‘Great War’ and its success inspired not only Hitler but later also General Franco in Spain. Right-wing or explicit fascist movements could be traced in many other European countries and the United States as well. Yet, they didn’t succeed, because these political systems proved to be more resilient and were lucky to have better leaders who managed to overcome the most pressing economic problems, like President Roosevelt with his “New Deal” in the United States (1933-38).

Nevertheless, there is good reason to argue that the terrible devastations of WWI and the tremendous socio-economic problems did cause a major crisis in the world’s most developed countries and that this resulted in the rise and growth of extreme right-wing and fascist movements, severely damaging the existing political systems and paving the way for Hitler’s Germany to start WWII.

Ed: Part Two out shortly.

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Dr Helmut Hubel is a retired Professor of International Relations at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena/Germany. He held Visiting Professorships in the USA, Finland and the Ukraine and spent many visits to Russia and Israel. His areas of specialization, documented in numerous books and articles, were the European Union, Soviet Union/Russia, Ukraine, Northern Europe, Israel and the USA. He now lives with his wife in Cheltenham and Stuttgart.

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