Fascism and Philosophy

Vilfredo Pareto, Sociologist and Economist

Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto was a little older than Durkheim and Weber and eight years younger than Carl Menger, founder of the Austrian school of economics. Pareto was Italian, and he would be 74 in 1922 when the fascist Benito Mussolini would become Italy's prime minister.

Pareto grew up in a middle-class environment and received a quality education in France and Italy, receiving a PhD in engineering and graduating the top of his class. He worked as civil engineer and his brains took him to a position running a manufacturing firm. As an industrialist he was interested in economics.

With the death of his parents, in 1889, Pareto inherited the marchese title, but he never used it. He quit his job and married a penniless Russian girl from Venice, Alessandrina Bakunin, and began writing articles against the government. He gave public lectures at a working man's institute. Authorities viewed him as troublemaker. He was trailed by police and he endured failed attempts at intimidation. There were forced closures of his lectures and rejection of his application for teaching positions. Meanwhile, he had the habit of offering money, shelter and counsel to political exiles.

Pareto returned to his work as an economist and sociologist. He was disturbed by the distribution of wealth. He made waves in 1906 with his announcement that in Italy 20 percent of the population owned 80 percent of the wealth. He measured the gap between the rich and poor in Europe going back to the 1400s, and a connection between political power, well-being and wealth distribution was obvious. Pareto found the numerous poor hungry and their children dying young. In the middle spectrum of wealth he saw people rising in wealth as a result of talent and luck or falling by tuberculosis, alcoholism or some other foolishness. At the very top he saw an elite that controls wealth and power for a time -- until they are unseated through revolution or some other kind of political disruption.

Pareto believed in freedom. He complained about what he thought were unnecessary abuses against the powerless, and he complained about corruption in high places. Marxists had a solution to the distribution of wealth and powerlessness problems, but Pareto was opposed to their solution, and for Pareto the ideologies of liberals and socialists were just smoke screens for leaders who were as inclined to enjoy the privileges and powers of the governing elite that they replaced. He viewed democracy as of no help to the poor, and in a 1900 article Pareto declared democracy a sham.

In a book published in 1902 he condemned socialists of all kinds and took aim at the "new gospel" of Marxian economics, including Marx's labor theory of value. He applauded Marxism's recognition of class struggle and wrote of validity in historical materialism, but he deplored what he saw as Marx's utopianism. Pareto was aware of Marx's Communist Manifesto statement that All previous historical movements were movements of minorities or in the interest of minorities," implying that the movement that he, Marx, supported was different. Pareto, on the other hand, saw class struggle as eternal and the promise of a "classless" society an illusion. He viewed Marxism as aiming to supplant one ruling elite with another.

In 1906 Pareto labored at economic theory. Like his contemporary, Carl Menger, founder of the Austrian School of Economics, Pareto worked with the idea that people made choices other than with pure reason. Pareto discarded the old explanation of economic behavior based on "utility." With his focus on preferences rather than "utility" he focused on "efficiency." Transcending the class issue, Pareto said that the goal was to make some people better off without making others worse off, even potentially. That would make efficient change without social conflict, and it was something that reasonable people could agree on.

Pareto is described as having inaugurated modern microeconomics. It is said that he helped move economics from the social philosophy of Adam Smith to a study with data, mathematics, tables, statistics and research.

Pareto published his major work in sociology in 1916. It was about people following impulse rather than reason. He claimed that people acted on non-logical sentiments and invented justifications afterwards. Politically, people driven my emotion became different types of

governing elites -- with each of these different type sought the order that a governing elite needed to perpetuate its dominance.

After the Great War, Pareto's views appealed to the fascists. Fascists wanted to fix the system while appealing to those who opposed the socialists and communist revolution. They rationalized their drive for power. Mussolini claimed to have attended Pareto's lectures at Lausanne, and he claimed to champion Pareto's ideas.

Pareto favored a reduction in state power. He was sympathetic to Mussolini, largely because Mussolini claimed to be championing ideas compatible with his views. Pareto had been largely disdainful of the Fascist movement. He was interested in specifics and had little patience for ideologues and found them amusing. The fascist march on Rome in 1922 and the crumbling of the Italian government did not strike Pareto as a move toward justice and reason.

Seeking intellectual veneer to their movement, the Fascists portrayed themselves as close to the prestigious Pareto and made him a Senator. They invited him to join the Italian delegation to the Geneva Disarmament Conference and to contribute articles to Fascist party periodicals. Pareto was ill. He declined most of the honors, but spoke favorably of certain early reforms undertaken by Mussolini. He looked forward to Mussolini minimizing the state in economic matters in order to let "purely" economic forces reign. He warned the Fascists to avoid despotism, censorship and economic corporatism. When the Fascists clamped down on freedom of expression in Italian universities, Pareto wrote a protest. Then Pareto died -- a mere ten months after Mussolini had taken office as prime minister.

Giovanni Gentile and Italian Fascism

Giovanni Gentile (1875-1944) described himself as "the philosopher of Fascism." He ghostwrote A Doctrine of Fascism (1930) for his country's prime minister and dictator, Benito Mussolini.

Philosophically he drew from Kant, Hegel and Marx -- system builders. He had some admiration for Nietzsche, and he had a romantic view of historic leaders of Italian nationalism.

He had been an academic -- the Chairman of the Department of Philosophy at Palermo University from 1907 to 1914 and later at the University of Pisa. In 1923 he accepted Mussolini's offer of the post of Minister of Education.

Gentile admired Marx, but he and his fellow fascists were opposed to class struggle. Their nationalism embodied a unified patriotic devotion to the state. He and fellow fascists viewed Italy as a single organic entity and unifying force that bound people together by their ancestry. Mussolini, fascism's great leader, said:

Gentile's admiration for Marx can be compared to the youthful Adolf Hitler's admiration for the socialist labor movement marching together in a seemingly endless file through the streets of Vienna. What Hitler admired was the labor movement's mobilization for the sake of power. What Gentile admired in Marx was the unity of his system of thought, including its historicity. Gentile wanted to consider the fascist movement as progressive within an historical context.

Fascist philosophy held to the idea of struggle and conflict moving history forward, but rather than between classes it was between weak and strong nations. In The Origins and Doctrine of Fascism, Gentile wrote that "mankind only progresses through division, and progress is achieved through the clash and victory of one side over another."

The Fascists believed in a national rebirth and in a new fascist man, Uomo Fascista as Gentile called it. This is vaguely similar to Nietzsche's bermensch, which some have translated to Superman. But Gentile was misreading Nietzsche. In Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the protagonist contends that "man is something which ought to be overcome," that apes are a laughingstock to man and that man would be a laughingstock to bermensch. Meanwhile, in the minds of some people in the world, Mussolini and fascist men displaying their superiority through pompous displays, swagger, bullying and chest beatings were in appearance ape-like.

The Fascist philosophy held that fascism was filling the need for purpose in the world that would otherwise be absurd. The philosophy of Gentile stood against the positivist philosophy, the philosophy that limited authentic knowledge to that based on sense experience. Fascist philosophy, claimed Gentile, was not skeptical, nor agnostic, nor pessimistic, nor passively optimistic. Fascism, he claimed, was man engaged in a moral and intellectual struggle in an exercise of free will in the creation of a new world. Giovanni Gentile would remain loyal to Mussolini until his own assassination in April 1944, eleven months before Musolini's assassination.

Max von Scheubner-Richter and Alfred Rosenberg

Scheubner-Richter and Rosenberg were Baltic Germans, Scheubner-Richter from Latvia, Rosenberg from Estonia and the son of a wealthy German merchant. Before World War I both areas were ruled by the Russian tsar. (Some people falsely assume that Rosenberg is a Jewish surname. Stein is another example of a common German name adopted by Jews.)

In 1905 Scheubner-Richter fought against an attempt at revolution by leftists in Latvia. The revolutionaries saw themselves as fighting against Latvia's German landowners and tsarist rule. Scheubner-Richter had joined one of the private armies that fought for the status-quo, and he married the daughter of a manufacturer whose factory he had guarded -- adding his wife's family name, Scheubner, to his family name, Richter.

Both Scheubner-Richter and Rosenberg were educated at tsarist institutions. Rosenberg studied architecture at the Riga Technical Institute and engineering at Moscow University, completing his Ph.D. studies in 1917.

During the Great War of 1914-18, Richter served as a German vice council in Turkey, where he became familiar with the mass killings of Armenians under Turkish rule. He then went to Russia and was involved in anti-Bolshevik activities. Rosenberg also sided with those hostile to the Bolshevik-Soviet regime that took power in November 1917. And by 1918, well before the antiBolshevik forces were defeated in Russia's civil war, the two were in Germany -- a terrible year for the Germans. Richter had become a mentor to the young Rosenberg.

In 1921, Rosenberg joined Hitler's political party. Richter was closer to Hitler, providing him with a lengthy plan to seize power -- the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 -- Hitler apparently believing that the elder Richter was a man of political experience and wisdom. In a march with Hitler that confronted the government forces against the coup, Richter was shot and killed instantly. His arm had been linked with Hitler's and his fall brought Hitler down with him, dislocating Hitler's shoulder.

Hitler went to prison, and he put Rosenberg at the head of his party, the National Socialists. Hitler believed that in his absence Rosenberg was his best choice because Rosenberg was weak and lazy -- not popular or hungry for power enough to threaten his leadership.

In 1929, the National Socialists put Rosenberg at the head of the Militant League for German Culture. Then he headed the Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question. In 1930 he became a deputy for the National Socialists in Germany's parliament. In 1933, after Hitler became chancellor, Rosenberg was named leader of the party's foreign political office. And in 1934 he was deputized by Hitler as party leader responsible for education.

Rosenberg wrote a book, The Myth of the Twentieth Century, said to be second in influence to Hitler's Mein Kampf. Rosenberg claimed that God created racial differences -- rather than racial differences having developed after His creation. Struggling in a field in which he had no formal training, Rosenberg dabbled in history, relying more on presumption than researching questions inspired by doubt -- as some historians believe appropriate. And Dr. Rosenberg was not shy about expressing grand conclusions about historical development. He proposed that migrating Aryans had founded various ancient civilizations and that these civilizations declined or fell because of Aryan inter-marriage with lesser races. Rosenberg saw invasions of the Roman empire by Germans as "saving" a civilization that had been corrupted by Christianity. Christianity, he pointed out, was Jewish in origin.

Rosenberg failed to explain the corrupt rule of the Germanic Carolingian kings and countless other instances of failure of moral sensibilities among Europeans of Germanic ancestry up to and including incidents during World War I.

Rosenberg seemed to borrow from Schopenhauer when he wrote of the energetic will to power that belong to the Aryan race, Rosenberg, but not Schopenhauer implying that this will to power contributed to morality -- as if the conquests and enslavement by nomadic Aryan Greeks of farming communities was necessarily a moral act.

Rosenberg believed that the "higher races" should rule over the lower races and not interbreed with them. Cross-breeding, he claimed, destroyed God's divine plan of racial differences. He wrote of the need to purify "race soul" by eliminating non-Aryan elements in much the same ruthless and uncompromising way in which a surgeon would cut a cancer from a diseased body.

According to Rosenberg, modern culture had been corrupted by Semitic influences. Rather than championing freedom as some have claimed, he was the champion of freedom only for his fellow Aryans, and those Aryans who agreed with him and his leader, Hitler. By ranking Jews as an inferior and polluting breed, he was focusing on a central enemy that served a political movement's aspiration for power. Everything blameworthy was being blamed on the Jews. This was accompanied by the National Socialist party's disdain for the notion that, like other societies, Germany had grown diverse ethnically and ideologically and that tolerance was an important ingredient in society's functionality. Rosenberg was siding with social engineering rather than freedom. He postured morally by declaring modern art degenerate. Germans who were pure Aryans, he implied, had an innate moral sensibility.

German Fascists and Nietzsche

National Socialists adhered to a mystical "folkish" (vlkisch) or populist nationalism and what Hitler called a "will to power." For Hitler it was a will to power in order to undo a specifically 20th century development: the peace treaty signed at Versailles.

The National Socialists tried to add philosophical profundity to their movement by by associating it with Nietzsche -- no matter that Nietzsche had broken with the famous composer

Wagner over Wagner's anti-Semitism and pan-Germanism. Nietzsche considered himself a European more than a German. In fact, he saw himself as Polish and "without a single drop of bad blood, certainly not German blood. [note].

Nietzsche's sister, Elisabeth Frster-Nietzsche, married an anti-Semite with whom she founded a model Germanic colony in Paraguay, in 1887, called Nueva Germania, calculated to show German superiority. Nietzsche responded to its plans with mocking laughter.

Nietzsche saw nationalism as an attraction for the mob and as a threat to human freedom. He foresaw demagogues using nationalism to arouse and exploit the fears of the vulgar.

In Nietzsche's philosophical novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra the protagonist says:

I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment.

In Hitler's movement were those who believed in what they thought was Nietzsche's superman, but it was a vulgarized, chest thumping primitive version. Nietzsche complained of readers mangling his ideas. One observer has written of "trailer park Fuehrers and pimply elites" having done so.

There was a tolerance among the Nazis for the sadism, bullying and assumed superiority that appears occasionally among school boys. German youths were perpetrating this bullying against Jewish youth. When a people believe that they have an enemy that they have to triumph over, sadists feel free to do their thing -- on the school yard and in prisons. This happened with the Nazi effort at triumph for Germany, and it was of some distance from Nietzsche's point of view.

After Nietzsche died his sister Elisabeth, still an anti-Semite, compiled a book, The Will to Power, from Nietzsche's unpublished notebooks, and she published it posthumously. Elisabeth is reported to have taken liberties with the material, and a consensus is said to hold that the book does not reflect Nietzsche's intent. Mazzino Montinari, an editor of Nietzsche's manuscripts, notes and correspondence, called the book a forgery.

In 1930, Elisabeth supported Hitler. After Hitler and the National Socialists came to power in 1933, his government gave financial support and publicity to the Nietzsche Archive that she was managing. She died in 1935 and Hitler and several high-ranking National Socialist officials attended her funeral. Japan's Kita Ikki and Nakano Seigo

Kita

Kita. He was a right-wing socialist who appealed to extremists in the military. He advocated a coup in support of the emperor who had him executed.

Nakano

Nakano. He was a liberal legislator known for his eloquence. Then he saw fascism as a way to elevate Japan.

Kita Ikki (surname first) began his political philosophy with an anti-capitalism that was common to agricultural people -- and to militarists with family backgrounds that were agricultural. He audited lectures at Waseda University in Tokyo, and while a student was attracted to socialism. It was not the socialism of Karl Marx, who believed in worker power. Kita's socialism, outlined in his book The Theory of Japan's National Polity and Pure Socialism, published in 1906 when he was 23, described Marxism and a working class-oriented socialism as outdated. He wanted a socialism from above.

Kita's next book, published a decade later, was titled An Outline Plan for the Reorganization of Japan. In it he added to the theme in his first book by advocating a united Japan pursuing a free Asia, an Asia united in opposition to Western authority and influence. He advocated a military coup d'tat that would create a regime in Japan based on rule by the Emperor. The contradictory nature of this escaped him. Why a ruling emperor could not command his own military to his support without help from a clique of dissatisfied officers he did not say.

The enhanced rule of the Emperor in Kita's estimation should include a suspended constitution and a radically reorganized parliament free of influences that he thought detrimental to his new Japan.

Kita's work influenced some in the Japanese military, perhaps moved by his having included them as instruments in creating an improved Japan. It was a childlike political naivety, from someone who would be described as a political philosopher.

A faction within the military attempted a coup in February 1936. It claimed to be in support of the emperor. An enraged Hirohito would have none of it. He called the coup leaders criminals. Fifteen of the coup leaders were executed by firing squad. No dates were given for the executions, and no ashes were returned to their relatives. Kita was among those arrested and executed. Nakano Seigo

A biography of Nakano Seigo by Leslie R. Oates, with the title Populist Nationalism in Pre-war Japan, points to what Fascism was at least in part: populist nationalism. The other ingredients can be said to be support for an imperialist foreign policy and enforced control over ideas -such as Plato advocated in his Utopia. Nakano (surname first) Seigo supported all of these.

Nakano was a graduate of Japan's prestigious Waseda University, a successful journalist, and in 1920 at the age of 34, he was elected as a member of Japan's House of Representatives. He

began his political career as a liberal. He was viewed as having eloquence, and he continually won re-election.

Fascist ideas were spreading, and Nakano bought into it. He was influenced by the writings of Kita Ikki and wanted a rebirth for Japan -- a super and more glorious Japan among other ideas accompanied by what was imagined to be the Samurai ethic. He held to a romantic view of the Samurai and admired Saigo Takamori, the so-called "last true samurai" who led the great revolt against Meiji authority and Japan's standing army. The Meiji government abolished feudal titles, ranks and privileges, including Samurai privileges, like abusing common people whenever they pleased. From the Meiji government's perspective Saigo Takamori was a criminal. Nakano believed in an intense patriotism for Japan and yet clung to the image of rebellion and the Samurai Saigo Takamori as a hero. It was a common fascistic attitude of wanting to assert themselves to replace the status quo with their own power.

Nakano's patriotism had a totalitarian element. He favored unified adherence to ideas imposed by an elite for the sake of order. He opposed the degree of democracy that Japan had, believing that leaving common people to set standards leads to an abandonment of principles. He believed as had Plato that he and those who agree with him, a philosophical elite, had a monopoly on the knowledge as to what is best for society. Democracy, Nakano said, was "the precise cause of contemporary decadence."

Nakano was opposed to an "individualism that shows no concern for others." Somewhat contrary to his belief in elitist (anti-democratic) politics, he favored an organic unification of citizens "sharing common ideals and a common way of feeling." And rather than people with money deciding what should be done economically, he favored a state run economy -- which put him at odds with the thinking of Japan's more traditional conservatives. As elsewhere, there was in Japan some merger between wealthy business families and the nobility. Some industrialists belonged to old Samurai families that had made the shift from military prowess to commerce. Japan's elite liked the idea of cooperation between business, government and labor that was taking place in Mussolini's Italy and in Hitler's Germany. [note] The extensive state control that Nakano advocated would not have the support needed to become government policy. But he opposed taking power in a coup as Kita had tried to do. His strategy for success was modeled after the successes of Mussolini and Hitler -- a lesson Hitler had learned after his failed coup in 1923.

In 1936, Nakano formed his own political party, the Tohokai party. The Tohokai wore black shirts with armbands bearing the Japanese character for 'East', and they held party held mass rallies. At its peak, in 1937, it held 11 seats in Japan's parliament -- the Diet.

In 1940 he and his party ran afoul from a competing totalitarian force: the government of General Hideki Tojo, who wanted a single party state, was super-nationalist and more adamantly expansionist than Nakano.

In October 1943, Nakano was arrested on charges of plotting to overthrow the Tojo regime, and he committed suicide under mysterious circumstances soon after being released. In October 1940 his party was merged into the government's Imperial Rule Assistance Association. In 1942, Nakano violated his principle of organic whole and patriotic devotion to authority and broke away from the government party. He was a victim of the kind of rule that he advocated. In October 1943, he was arrested and charged with plotting to overthrow the government. He was released and soon after committed suicide. Triumphant Philosophies against Fascism

In trying to make the world they preferred, the fascists confronted historical influences not easily overcome. There was the now hidden influence of John Locke and the belief that legitimate state authority must be derived from the consent of the governed -- contrary to fascism's belief in imposed leadership by exceptional persons like Mussolini or Hitler.

Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill were still of some influence, Bentham having favored laws for "the greatest good for the greatest number" and Mill having written "On Liberty." Nietzsche having associated them with what he called a "pig philosophy" -- a view perhaps shared by some fascists -- had not substantially diminished their influence. Mill believed that a person should be sovereign "Over himself, over his own body and mind," and he believed in protecting minorities against the majority -- of special value to minorities living in states where the majority were supporting a fascist dictatorship.

Another anti-fascist influence still around in the early 20th century was that of Edmund Burke (1729-97), the 18th century Anglo-Irish politician-philosopher, who had been a member of the liberal Whig political movement as Locke had been. He was an opponent of unrestrained executive political power or mob power. He was an Anglican who supported rights for Catholics and an opponent of the illiberal ways of the French Revolution.

Christianity was also a force that the fascists had to content with. There was widespread support by Christians for fascism, despite diatribes against Christianity that arose from some fascists, including from the official philosopher of the National Socialist movement, Alfred Rosenberg. The Catholic church increased its hostility to Hitler's regime in 1940 in reaction to Germany's euthanasia program. A few Catholics and other Christians in fascist-ruled countries who were above average in moral sensibility became fascism's enemy.

Opposed to fascism were those influenced by the Austria school of economics. Their associating freedom with economic efficiency was a part of their hostility to fascism, and among them were Jews who fled from Nazi anti-Semitism. In the United States was the philosophical tradition that molded Franklin Roosevelt's hostility to fascism. Roosevelt, in addition to calling himself a Christian, was a firm believer in democracy. In the United States and Europe were many who believed in an important component of democracy: the public's check on what government's did and allowed others to do.

And in Europe were anti-fascist Marxists. The philosopher Bertrand Russell, who was hostile to Marx and Marxists, recognized Marxism as coming out of the liberal tradition. He wrote that both "are philosophically not very widely separated; both are rationalistic, and both, in intention, are scientific and empirical." (This is contrary to those who understand things only in isolation and absolutes rather than in broad historical development.) Russell, by the way, was a liberal marked for death by the Hitler regime in their plans for a fascist takeover of Britain.

The difference between the fascists and communists was obscured briefly in the minds of some by the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939. But, by then, Hitler had been imprisoning Communists who had broken no German law -- including the internationally famous communist Ernst Thalmann.

In Europe, the Communists were the best organized opposition of the fascist regimes -- in part because of their traditional belief in social and political activism, Marx having said something about purpose being to change rather than just contemplate or examine one's navel. During the war, fascist aggressions pushed a number of idealistic youths into the Communist Party, their idealism to clash with Stalinism after the war. Italy went from Fascism to having one of the larger Communist parties as a percentage of its population. It was Communist Partisans who were able to apprehend and assassinate Mussolini. In Hegelian fashion, Marxism and liberalism "negated" Fascism.

Triumful si declinul fascismului italian Din 1922, cand a avut pentru prima data puterea asupra guvernului italian in Roma, pana in 1927, Benito Mussolini si-a consolidat progresiv dictatura, dand forma statului fascistitalian.Statul si partidul au devenit instrumente monolitice in mainile lui Mussolini, care era capo di guverno (seful guvernului), al statului si el Duce , conducatorul partidului. Legge fascistissime ( legile cele mai fasciste), realizate de liderul fascist, juristulAlfredo Rocco, a transformat Parlamentul intr-un congres al partidului si practic a fuzionat puterea legislativa si cea executiva si a facut Marele Consiliu Fascist un instrument al Ducelui, pe care putea sa il convoace singur si sa ii determine agenda.Cu acest succes Mussolini a inceput sa se gandeasca mai departe la viitor. Pana in 1930a inceput greul proces de modernizare fortata a tarii, de catre un guvern puternic si eficient cuo noua conducere ce comunica intregului popor vitalitate si energie.Pe 25 octombrie 1932, Musolini a tinut in Milano o cuvantare prin care punea ItaliaFascista printre liderii lumii : Astazi, cu o incredere absoluta, va spun ca secolul douazeci va fi secolul fascismului, secolul puterii italiene, secolul in care Italia va fi pentru a treia oaraliderul omenirii

.In 1934 Mussolini afirma ca fascismul a devenit din 1929 nu numai un fenomen italianci unul mondial. Pentru a duce la bun sfarsit ceea ce a inceput, Mussolini cere transformareaItaliei intro natzione militarista e guerriera .In indeplinirea acestui obiectiv el a reusit inca si mai putin decat reusise inmodernizarea Italiei.In primele sale faze, Musolini privea Fascismul ca odezvoltare a civilizatiei Occidentale si privea cu neincredereasupra germaniei si mai ales asupra Socialismului National promovat de Hitler, in care vedea o suta de procenterasism: impotriva oricui : ieri impotriva crestinatatii, astaziimpotriva latinitatii iar maine, cine stie, impotriva intregiicivilizatii . Dar imperialismul si supraestimarea fascismuluil-a condus pe Mussolini in bratele Partidului NationalSocialist German.Cucerirea Etiopiei (1935) a separat Italia de Europande Vest si de Organizatia Natiunilor. In anul urmator,impresionat de succesul german, Mussolini incepe savorbeasca de o axa Roma-Berlin si o promoveaza in mtimpulvizitei la Berlin in 1936, vizita pe care Hitler o reintoarce inmai 1938.Sincerele admiratii ale lui Hitler pentru Mussolini au facut sa creasca increderea sa injsine. Interventia fascismului in Razboiul Civil Spaniol si tratatul Munchenului cu Anglia dinseptembrie 1938 a insemnat incoronarea succesului politicii lui Mussolini ; in realitate semasca odata cu acceptarea politici anti-semite de catre Italia, trecerea acesteia intr-o pozitie desatelit al germaniei. Din aceasta cauza, dar si din dorinta de glorie si de marire, Italia intra iniunie 1940 in razboiul pornit de Germania in septembrie 1939. Razboiul a dezvaluit ineficientaItaliei, iar trei ani de razboi au adus caderea lui Musolini si a partidului sau.