Difference between Fascism and Nazism
Fascism and Nazism, the two extreme right-wing political ideologies that emerged during the World Wars in Italy and Germany, respectively, had a lot in common. Both were influenced by the rise of nationalism, fear from communism, crisis of the capitalist economic system and dissatisfaction with the outcome of World War I. Both ideologies were also marked by the cult of the leader, use of violence and rejection of both democracy and communism although both borrowed several elements from the Russian communism including the cell system and strict hierarchy, while Mussolini’s corporatist theory and rejection of individualism was very similar to the Soviet economic system in the first half of the 20th century.
There were several important differences between Fascism and Nazism, and rejection of the concept of race and anti-Semitism is what differentiated the fascist ideology from Nazism the most. Mussolini later incorporated the concept of race into his doctrine but he never fully developed it. Fascism was fueled by nationalism as well but it did not reject other nationalities, of course, under condition that they accepted the culture and language of “the superior nation“. Mussolini focused on territorial expansion rather than creation of ethnically “clean“ Italian state. When he finally introduced the anti-Semitic laws and declared Italians the descendants of the “Aryan race“ in 1938, they were perceived as un-Italian and even un-Fascist. During the World War II, the Italian fascist deported the Jews into prisons and concentration camps as well but the Italian Jews were not deported into death camps until the arrival of the Nazis in 1943.
Nazism can be defined as a form of Fascism but it differentiated itself from the latter by the concept of racial superiority and inferiority. According to the Nazi doctrine, the races were classified as superior and inferior with the Germanic or Aryan race on the top and the blacks and Jews on the bottom of the racial pyramid. Unlike Fascism that glorified the state as the highest ideal, the Nazis viewed the state as Lebensraum (living space) of “the master race“ which needs to incorporate the entire geopolitical area inhabited with ethnic Germans. At the same time they also believed that “the master race“ was undermined by inferior races, in the first place by the Jews and that the German race must be strengthened and its enemies eliminated to be reborn again.
The Nazis rejected corporatism although they supported state intervention in the economy and cultural production. They viewed modernism as a sign of cultural degeneration and promoted “healthy“ art that emphasized the ideas of the Nazi doctrine. The Fascists in Italy, on the other hand, did not restrict artistic expression and encouraged creativity rather than promoting the Fascist style. They did, however, censored all works that openly attacked the state or the Fascist regime. Both the Fascist and Nazi architecture had a tendency towards monumentalism but again, they differentiated themselves in the view of modernism. Architecture in the Fascist Italy was marked by a variety of styles including modernism which was rejected by the Third Reich as a symbol of Bolshevism. The Nazis promoted neoclassicism as the official architectural style.
Another major difference between Fascism and Nazism was their rise to power. The National Fascist Party came to power in Italy as early as 1922, while Hitler’s putsch in Munich inspired by Benito Mussolini’s March on Rome turned out to be a failure. The Nazi Party, officially called the National Socialist German Workers Party achieved virtually no success until the early 1930’s, while its leader Adolf Hitler was laughed at.
