Fascist Warfare. Aggression, Occupation, Annihilation (1922-1945) (original) (raw)
Related papers
The main aim of this conference is to debate about the existence, or not, of a specific way of making war typical of fascism, that is to say, of the concept fascist warfare. Or, in other words, to reflect not only on its applicability, but also on its possible analytical and interpretative implications that its development would have both for the study of war in the twentieth century and for the study of fascism. For debating this issue we aim to count on the presence of scholars who have worked fascist regimes in times of war, mainly connected with two main elements: on the one hand, combat experience of the troops (mobilisa-tion, violence, behaviour at the front, discipline, etc.) and, on the other hand, occupation policies (shootings, deportations, antipartisan policy, requisitions, economic exploitation, relations with civil population, etc.) Thus, we aim to tackle how war was set out in the ideo-logical/conceptual level, hence including the sphere of mentalities, and how this war was waged in the frontlines and the rearguard, therefore paying attention to praxis. Due to the dimensions planned for this conference, we will focus mainly on four cases of study, Germany, Italy, Spain and Croatia. This way, we are seeking to obtain a picture as complete and rich as possible in cases of study on which to build our debate, fundamentally with the aim of obtaining functional conclusions both at the theoretical and empirical levels, and above all to obtain a comparative and transnational perspective of the problem tackled, something we consider essential. Equally, and absolutely involved in the 80 th Anniversary of the Spanish Civil War, this comparative and transnational perspective will allow us to connect the Spanish case with the nucleus of European fascisms and their war experiences, delving into this converging way that must be, and is, one of the main workhorses of Spanish historiography.
A Fascist Decade of War: 1935-1945 in International Perspective, London, Routledge, 2020
From the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 through to the waning months of World War II in 1945, Fascist Italy was at war. This Fascist decade of war comprised an uninterrupted stretch of military and political engagements in which Italian military forces were involved in Abyssinia, Spain, Albania, France, Greece, the Soviet Union, North Africa and the Middle East. As a junior partner to Nazi Germany, only entering the war in June 1940, Italy is often seen as a relatively minor player in World War II. However, this book challenges much of the existing scholarship by arguing that Fascist Italy played a significant and distinct role in shaping international relations between 1935 and 1945, creating a Fascist decade of war.
2019
This chapter investigates how the two Axis Powers, Italy and Germany, tried to recruit local manpower in Albania, Kosovo and bordering territories into their armed forces. From 1939 to 1944, the Italian and German authorities exploited this area of tension and conflict by trying to impose basic elements of Fascist and Nazi ideology in the establishment and training of their units (such as the Milizia Fascista Albanese and the SS Division ‘Skanderbeg’) while integrating traditional customs of warfare and national symbols to keep the local recruits in line. This study shows why their efforts failed.
Arnd Bauerkämper and Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, Fascism without Borders: Transnational Connections and Cooperation between Movements and Regimes in Europe from 1918 to 1945 (Oxford: Berghahn, 2017), 1-38.
Fascist movements and regimes have usually been conceived as and presented themselves as national political forces. In fact, contemporaries as well as scholars have highlighted hyper-nationalism as one of the most important features of fascism which separated fascist movements and regimes from each other. Not accidentally, all attempts to forge a “Fascist International” foundered between the two world wars. Many historians have therefore dismissed or failed to recognize crossborder cooperations between fascists. In fact, the hyper-nationalism of fascist movements and their social Darwinist doctrines, as well as the expansionist and racist policies of the Third Reich and Fascist Italy, have led most experts to argue that fascist internationalism or international fascism was merely a camouflage and a sham. The interpretation that “international fascism is unthinkable, a contradiction in terms” has received broad support from most historians. As a corollary, fascism has largely been investigated in the framework of national history. Beyond volumes that have collected national case studies, few systematic comparative studies have been published. In particular, cross-border interactions between fascist movements and regimes have largely been dismissed in historical scholarship.
Fascism and the Radical Right: Comparison and Entanglements - ComFas3, 2020
This paper aims to assemble a global analysis of fascism’s war experience during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Its starting point it’s the coup d’état of July 1936, which evolved into a modern, civil and total war waged not only at the fronts, but also in the rears, both the own and the enemy one. Therefore, the fascist war effort not only focused on the battlefield, the political violence in the rear, or the civil mobilization aimed to support this war effort. It also had a crucial dimension incarnated in those that were involved or supported the uprising in the territories where the coup failed and that ended up being controlled by the Republicans during part or the whole war. Thus, this paper compares the way Rebel troops waged war (typical of a modern conflict characterized by total mobilization and extreme levels of violence), with how this war was waged in the enemy rear by the supporters of the rebellion (the so called ‘Fifth Column’), tightly inked to irregular warfare such as espionage, sabotage or psychological war. Moreover, we will pay special attention to the links between the various right-wing and fascist groups in both sides of the front, reflection around if the shared war experience strengthened connections and made entanglements possible among them. Ultimately, our aim is to develop a more complex view of the Spanish Civil War in order to understand it from a ‘total’ perspective, by analyzing the idiosyncrasy of fascist war in both rears.
A fascist warfare? Italian fascism and war experience in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39)
War in History, 2017
Initiated as an armament, strategic and diplomatic assistance, the fascist intervention in the Spanish Civil War soon made Italy a belligerent country in the conflict. Once the initial coup d’état plan had failed, the Corpo Truppe Volontarie (CTV) was created to help Franco, and also as a tool to build fascist Spain and, indeed, fascist Europe. This paper examines a crucial part of the Italian intervention in Spain, far from irrelevance or trivialization: a multi-faced combat and war experience.