Rethinking Fascism

The Italian and German Dictatorships

Di Michele Andrea, Filippo Focardi, Di Michele Andrea, Filippo Focardi, Andrea Di Michele, Andrea Di Michele, Filippo Focardi

• Publisher: De Gruyter Oldenbourg
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9783110766455
• eBook ISBN: 9783110768633
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

This book takes up the stimuli of new international historiography, albeit focusing mainly on the two regimes that undoubtedly provided the model for Fascist movements in Europe, namely the Italian and the German. Starting with a historiographical assessment of the international situation, vis-à-vis studies on Fascism and National Socialism, and then concentrate on certain aspects that are essential to any study of the two dictatorships, namely the complex relationships with their respective societies, the figures of the two dictators and the role of violence. This volume reaches beyond the time-frame encompassing Fascism and National Socialism experiences, directing the attention also toward the period subsequent to their demise. This is done in two ways. On the one hand, examining the uncomfortable architectural legacy left by dictatorships to the democratic societies that came after the war. On the other hand, the book addresses an issue that is very much alive both in the strictly historiographical and political science debate, that is to say, to what extent can the label of Fascism be used to identify political phenomena of these current times, such as movements and parties of the so-called populist and souverainist right.

V. Stone Fascism after the War

Obersalzberg and the Axis

State Visits between Idyll, Diplomacy, and Atrocity

Albert A. Feiber

Institut f. Zeitgeschichte, Muenchen, Germany

Thomas Schlemmer

Institut f. Zeitgeschichte, Muenchen, Germany

Translation: Georg Felix Harsch

1 Obersalzberg

Obersalzberg was a hub of Nazi diplomacy and foreign policy. Hitler used the grand backdrop of the Berchtesgaden Alps to play the international host and statesman. Countless written and pictorial documents show how the German dictator made use of the mountain landscape to impress state visitors and diplomats. Another aim was to show to the public that the Reich had once again become a key player on the world stage. During World War II, by contrast, the remote mountain residence served as a location for secret diplomacy. It was there, far from the fighting and, if possible, out of the public spotlight, that Hitler met with his allies for discussions and summits¹.

After Hitler found the peasant village in the mountains, now shaped by tourism, Obersalzberg began to play a central political role for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) Führer and his movement². Hitler had discovered the place in 1923 during a visit to the völkisch and radically antisemitic writer Dietrich Eckart, who was hiding from the police in the village. Years later, the dictator would nostalgically reminisce that he had been “immediately smitten with the landscape”³. But it was not the landscape alone that attracted him. In Berchtesgaden, he also found a network of locals, new arrivals, and permanent visitors with whom his ideas resonated. It was a place where he felt comfortable, and that is why he kept returning, particularly when he needed peace and quiet to order his thoughts, make plans, and discuss matters with leading Party members away from the public eye. It was here that he wrote large sections of his notorious book Mein Kampf in 1925/26 after his release from Landsberg, where he had served a prison term for the failed coup attempt of November 8/9, 1923. In the early summer of 1928, Hitler withdrew to Berchtesgaden after his Party had suffered a defeat in the general elections to write down his thoughts on foreign policy and specifically his concepts for German-Italian relations. In his essays, he expressed great admiration for the genius of “the statesman Benito Mussolini”⁴ and declared his willingness to relinquish South Tyrol, which, he wrote, had been lost due to the failure of the Weimar parties.

In the 1920s, Hitler was staying in several different boarding houses and hotels at Obersalzberg, but also in Berchtesgaden itself. In 1928, the opportunity to rent Haus Wachenfeld presented itself, which would serve as his retreat and steady residence from then on. Hitler had now found the place where he wanted to settle down and immediately took out a purchase option. After lengthy negotiations, he was finally able to buy the property for around 175,000 Reichsmark in 1933. From the start of the sales negotiations in 1932, Hitler had planned to have a garage built on the property, which was completed in the summer of 1933. By then, the radical opposition leader had become Reich Chancellor, however, and with his new office came new expectations and demands. The house, which had been built during the First World War by a factory owner from northern Germany as a holiday home for himself and his family, had become too small. While it had suited the party leader, it could not fulfil the demands imposed on it by the head of the German government with his large entourage. After Hitler’s retinue had been provisionally accommodated, work began on remodeling first the little mountain village, its immediate environs and eventually even the wider area into a second seat of government complete with the required infrastructure. This process started in 1935/36 with the transformation of the humble country house into an impressive residence which was given the name Berghof. No expenses were spared for the remodeling process, and only the finest materials were used: marble from Italy, dressed stone from Bohemia, wood from South America.

The Berghof gradually became the center of a heavily guarded Führer’s off-limits area. This meant that the locals, most of whom had roots in the area going back generations, had to give way just like the summer visitors with their second homes. Martin Bormann, Chief of Staff at the office of Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess, and head of the Obersalzberg administration from 1936, bought up nearly all properties and land in the immediate vicinity of the residence on Hitler’s orders. Formally, Bormann’s acquisitions were all done properly, but the compensations the sellers received varied widely, and where the need arose, Bormann used very aggressive methods, as only a small minority was willing to sell up at short notice. Those who turned down his requests were put under massive pressure and in some cases were even threatened with imprisonment in a concentration camp. As soon as the sales were concluded, demolition works began, even if the families had not fully moved out yet⁵.

By 1937, the village of Obersalzberg had been eliminated and replaced with the Führer’s off-limits area, a kind of small town with several thousand inhabitants, which was strictly guarded and could only be entered with special permits. This was where the important institutions were located: the Obersalzberg administration and the branch office of the Munich NSDAP Party Chancellery, a luxury hotel, a post office and an SS barracks. Some of these institutions moved into existing houses, but most of them had new buildings constructed for them. A model farm with a greenhouse and an apiary was set up to provide fresh and healthy food. From 1936, the entire area was one big construction site – and this did not change until the final days of the war. There were always construction, demolition, or alteration works going on in some corner of the Führer’s off-limits area. Gradually, guard huts and staff residences were added to the new large buildings, and later entire model housing estates were built, complete with shops, inns, day-care facilities, schools, open-air swimming pools, and gymnasiums for the ever-growing number of staff.

It was not least this construction boom that provided a noticeable boost to the economy in the entire region. Although the contracts for the larger construction projects mostly went to companies that operated on a national and often even international level, local small and medium-sized businesses also profited as subcontractors and suppliers. It certainly became difficult to recruit a sufficient workforce in the area, which was why the larger companies began to recruit workers wherever they could. The first workers from outside of Germany to work at Obersalzberg were Italians, most of them bricklayers or carpenters, who arrived in 1938. There was a general labor shortage across all industries in the German Reich because of the armaments boom, and so more Italians began to work inside the Führer’s off-limits area, not only in construction, but also as domestic workers or waitstaff⁶. At times, several thousand Italians were living in Berchtesgaden.

In addition, the regional infrastructure had to be aligned with Hitler’s needs: A government airport big enough for commercial aircrafts was built in the mountains in the village of Ainring, and a large railway station was constructed in Berchtesgaden. The purpose of both of these construction projects was to ensure that the new residents of Obersalzberg could travel there in comfort and quickly, and to ensure state visitors were given an adequate reception. In 1939, the Party bought the Berchtesgadener Hof, one of the best ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• I. Fascism and Nazism in a Transnational Key
• II. “Volksgemeinschaft” and the Relationship between Italian Society and Fascism
• III. The Dictators: Hitler and Mussolini
• IV. Violence
• V. Stone Fascism after the War
• VI. The New Right and Fascism
• Contributors