Figure 1.--All Fascist regimes placed a great emphasis on the military and the idea of reaching national goals through military action. And military values and skills were strongly promoted at an early age by the the compulsory national youth groups. Here is a group of older Italian Bailla boys in the 1930s who have received military training. Most of the adults are Bailla leaders or Fascist Party leaders. We think the older man is an Army officer, but we cannot identify him. Both the Italian Fascist and German NAZI youth movement included a strong military component. The results, however, were sharply different. The Germans achieved stunning initial military scccesses while the Italians went from one military disaster to another.

Fascist leaders placed a strong emphasis on the military. Fascists saw military power as the preminent measure of a county's greatness and on the individual plane a man's masulinity. This is in keeping with a belief in the survival of the fitest applied in human society. This Fascist view of survival of the fitist was a major difference with the Communists, at least in ideological terms. The Communist formulation of scientific ordered determinism was in many ways comparable. Actual militarism was also pursued by the Communists. Stalin and the Soviet Union as well as other Communist regimes after Woirld war II lavished vast resources on the military. Stalin was just as prepared to use his military as Hitler -- although more caustiouslly. The Fascist focus on militarism was more than an ideological matter. It is also a necessary element because the emhpasis on nationalism meant most prominently the pursuit of national territorial claims by force. And as an artifact of its tumultous histiory, virtually every European state had territorial claims on neigboring states. Fascists were prone to use force in both domestic and international affairs. This was a special case of Germany. Not only did Germany have the Prussian military tradition, but Hitler did not have minor border changes in mind. He was determined to redraw the ethnic and political map of Europe. For this a massive military establishment was needede saw the seizure of the East as necessary for Germany. And this meant war with the Soviet Uniion was inevitable. While both Fascists and Comunists built huge militaries and lavished huge resources in the military. There were, however, two differences. First, Fascists openly expoused militarist values and idealized war. Communists did not pubically expouse militarism and war, while building and employing massive armies just like the Fascists using them. Second, Communists primarily used military force on their own people. Most of the victims of Stalin, Mao, the Kims, and Pol Pot were their own people. Even so the victims are in the tens of millions. The Fascists on the other hand primarily victimized foreign people or minorities in their own country.

Created: 12:01 PM 9/22/2016
Last updated: 12:01 PM 9/22/2016