Fascism - Special Issue: Approaches to Transnational and International Fascism: Actors, Networks, and Ideas, 1919–1945, edited by Martin Hamre, Sabrina Proschmann and Frederik Forrai Ørskov, Apr 2024

Arising from a 2021 early career workshop on practices and notions of fascist internationalism, this special issue contributes to the evolving focus on transnational and international dimensions within the field of fascism studies. It emphasizes the interconnectedness of fascist governments, movements, and individuals across borders during the interwar period and during the Second World War, as well as the conflictual aspects of such cooperation. Rather than promoting a specific methodological or theoretical approach, the issue presents different perspectives on transnational fascism and fascist internationalisms. This introduction highlights five aspects on which the contributions make interventions: actors, women, organizations, geography, and hybridity.

The article argues that contact between the German, Austrian, and Italian radical nationalist milieux through the long 1920s represented a specific form of fascist relationship-building which should be understood in terms of fascist transnationalism: a cross-border networking process that took place against the backdrop of fluid, evolving social relationships. Starting from the analysis of the mutual exclusiveness of radical nationalist mobilizations, the article highlights the analytical limits of the concept ‘internationalism’ when applied to early fascist relationships that developed in transnational, informal settings. Then, it makes an argument for a processual approach based on the observation of relational practices, while sketching out the peculiarities of these milieux. Accordingly, it outlines the development of the trilateral networking process between German, Austrian, and Italian organizations (Stahlhelm, DNVP, NSDAP, Heimwehren, and PNF) along its different stages. Finally, it offers an outlook on the key features of fascist transnationalism grounded in the historical analysis of this specific triangular case study.

This article highlights the intellectual trajectory of the Spanish writer Ernesto Gimenez Caballero (1899–1988) as mediator of fascist internationalism during the 1930s. Caballero, a writer and journalists, was known in Italy thanks to important friendships with leading intellectual, diplomatic and political figures of the Fascist regime. His theory of fascist universalism, presented at the Volta Conference of 1932, identified fascism as the true, unifying principle of Europe. He regarded fascism as ‘the new Catholicity’ of Europe. Inspired by ‘the thaumaturgic genius’ of Mussolini, Caballero pointed out that the center of this new Europe was Rome, which he considered had been reborn with the glories of the ancient times after a long period of uncertainty. The article will explore the key features of Caballero’s idea and their origins within his intellectual biography, stressing the role of personal and transnational networking in the construction of his vision.

Regimes in the interwar years went to great lengths to educate young girls into their ideology. Fascist Italy had a few years head start—its Accademia fascista di educazione fisica femminile [Fascist Academy of Female Physical Education] was regarded as innovative from likeminded governments of the time, including Nazi Germany, and was the object of visits and attention. This article explores the arc drawn by relationships between Italian and German girl organizations, focusing on encounters between Orvietine and Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM) members. It focuses on two exemplary moments in the history of the network: the 1937 trip to Berlin by 150 students of the Orvieto Academy, and the one-month observation visit in winter 1941 by Ursel Stein, a rising star of the BDM administration. By analyzing and comparing the dynamics, rituals, and actors of the two occasions the article points out at the different roles given to girl organizations by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy and raises questions concerning the agency of the members of this women network.

During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), many conservatives and fascists in Western Europe supported the Francoist rebels. This paper will outline how conservatives and fascists in Great Britain, France, and Belgium worked together to support the rebellion in Spain. Regarding Great Britain, the pressure group Friends of Nationalist Spain (FNS) will be studied, while for France and Belgium several different groups and individuals will be examined. In all countries, these networks were managed by the Francoist Ambassadors. This paper sheds light on an extensive pro-Francoist network that operated across Western Europe in which conservatives and fascists worked side-by-side. Their cooperation was facilitated by a shared anti-communism and the use of common structures, such as conservative parties. It draws from sources located in archives in Spain, Great Britain, France, and Belgium and includes publications written by the individuals who were involved in this network.

Years before the Second World War, there emerged an Austrofascist Ständestaat [Corporatist State] to the south of Nazi Germany. This Ständestaat would be subsumed into Germany during the Anschluss of 1938. Subsumption of Austrofascism into Nazism has also occurred in understandings of fascism. This article centers two paramilitary organizations—an Austrian Nazi Legion based in Bavaria and the Austrian-based Heimwehren [Home Guards]—to argue that German-speaking fascists functioned via internecine violence over Austria’s sovereignty. Fighting between the Heimwehren and Austrian Nazi Legionaries based in Bavaria culminated in a quasi-war across the Austro-Bavarian border, studied here from 1933 to 1934. This article showcases how fascist obsessions with total control came with an uncontrollable need for conflict over this contested borderland space. This tension undermined their claims of supremacy yet undergirded their supporters to fight harder against, ironically, other German-speaking fascists. As such, division was critical to their very formation. By taking this granular perspective, we acquire a better understanding of the convoluted history prior to the notorious Anschluss.

Is it possible to identify traces of dissent or even resistance to Francoism within a single fascist party? Can there be elements of radical opposition within fascism in its long duration? This article’s discussion of this question, centered on the Spanish Falange’s case, will focus on two main topics that define the parameters of historiographical discussion of an idealized (‘authentic’, ‘pure’, ‘uncontaminated’, ‘rebellious’) fascism that may also be useful for interpreting and establishing comparisons with other contexts. The first of these topics is the mythification of fascism’s original authenticity and the second is the preeminence of Franco’s providentialist leadership and how it explicitly demonstrates his de facto importance in the construction of the dictatorial regime as a fascist regime through the exercise of power.