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- Volume 6, Issue 1, 2017
Fascism - Special Issue: War Veterans and Fascism in Interwar Europe, Jun 2017
Special Issue: War Veterans and Fascism in Interwar Europe, Jun 2017
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Editorial Introduction: War Veterans and Fascism
More LessAuthors: Kristian Mennen & Wim van MeursThis special issue of the journal Fascism draws its inspiration from recent developments in the research areas of war studies, cultural history of the First World War, research on political culture and on (international) civil society in historical perspective. It aims to review the approaches and considerations of recent studies about World War veterans and their veterans’ organisations for selected European countries in the interwar period. The articles in this themed issue will contribute to an improved insight into the history of fascism and the backgrounds of fascist movements. This introduction will present the general direction of the themed issue and a broad outline of the dominant questions and concerns. It presents recent developments across a broad range of new approaches and perspectives on the history of the interwar period, before outlining the research area of veterans’ organisations and the general questions and problems which this themed issue will be considering.
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‘Milksops’ and ‘Bemedalled Old Men’: War Veterans and the War Youth Generation in the Weimar Republic
More LessAuthor: Kristian MennenThis article reconsiders traditional assumptions about the connection between the First World War and the rise of National Socialism in Germany, according to which politically radicalised war veterans joined the Freikorps after the war and formed the backbone of the Nazi membership and electorate. In questioning this view, the article first traces the political paths of actual veterans’ organisations. Whereas the largest veterans’ organisations were not politically active, the most distinctive ones – Reichsbanner and Stahlhelm – were not primarily responsible for a ‘brutalisation’ or radicalisation of Weimar political culture. Their definitions of ‘veteran’ and ‘front experience’ implicitly excluded the so-called ‘war youth generation’ from their narrative. Secondly, it is shown how representatives of this younger generation, lacking actual combat experience but moulded by war propaganda, determined the collective imagination of the First World War. The direct connection between the First World War and National Socialism can therefore primarily be found in the continuity of public and cultural imagination of war and of ‘war veterans’, and much less so in actual membership overlaps between veterans’ and Nazi movements.
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War Veterans, Fascism, and Para-Fascist Departures in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 1918–1941
More LessAuthor: John Paul NewmanThis article discusses the role played by war veterans in the various fascist and para-fascist groups present in Yugoslavia in the interwar period. The article finds that significant numbers of veterans and the nationalist associations to which they belonged contributed to proposed or actual departures from the democratic norm in interwar Yugoslavia, and were especially supportive of King Aleksandar Karadjordjevic’s dictatorship of 1929–1934. In this respect, they could be termed ‘para-fascist’. The article also notes that whilst the two groups typically identified in the literature as ‘fascist’, the Croatian Ustashe and Serbian/Yugoslav Zbor, fit into the ‘second-wave’ of 1930s fascist forces not usually marked by a strong presence of First World War veterans, their membership and ideological organisation were nevertheless significantly influenced by both the traditions of the war and the men who fought in it.
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War Veterans, Demobilization and Political Activism: Greater Romania in Comparison
More LessAuthors: Constantin Iordachi & Blasco SciarrinoThis article aims to further problematize the relationship between patterns of demobilization, fascism and veterans’ activism, on several inter-related counts. We argue that the relationship between fascism and war veterans was not a fixed nexus, but the outcome of a complex political constellation of socio-economic and political factors that necessitates a case-by-case in-depth discussion. Also, we argue that these factors were both national and transnational in nature. Finally, we contend that researchers need to employ a synchronic as well as a diachronic perspective, thus accounting for various stages and forms of mobilization of war veterans over time. To substantiate these claims, the current article focuses on a relevant but largely neglected case study: the demobilization of soldiers and war veterans’ political activism in interwar Romania. It is argued that, contrary to assumptions in historiography, demobilization in Romania was initially successful. Veterans’ mobilization to fascism intensified only in mid-to late 1930s, stimulated by the Great Depression, leading to a growing ideological polarization and the political ascension of the fascist Legion of ‘Archangel Michael’. To better grasp the specificities of this case study, the concluding section of the article compares it to patterns of veterans’ activism in postwar Italy.
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Mussolini’s Cesare
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