Der Faschismus in Europa 1918-1945 [Broschiert]

 

 

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Das Buch war in gutem Zustand. und mein Mann ist damit zufrieden. Hat von dieser Reihe auch noch andere Bücher.

Arnd Bauerkämper's monograph "Fascism in Europe, 1918-1945" largely fulfils what its title promises and can be recommended as a rather cost-efficient investment, if one looks for a brief, but comprehensive and reliable overview of inter-war European fascism. Bauerkämper's firm knowledge of his subject and straightforward description of most relevant varieties and issues in the study of classic fascism as well as Reclam Press's very student-friendly sales prize of ¤5.40 should make this little, but dense volume a major contribution to an introduction of fascism as a widely used generic concept into German historical research and political analysis. This is an almost ideal textbook that keeps a good balance between the discussion of conceptual issues and explanatory theories, on the one side, and empirical analysis, on the other. It neither fails to adequately treat all significant cases of inter-war European fascism, nor misses to tell, in a separate chapter, one of its subject's most fascinating and revealing stories '- the attempts to create a fascist international. It is only after underlining my considerable admiration for the contents and style of Bauerkämper's very useful monograph that I am daring to make a small critical remark concerning Bauermkämper's critique of Roger D. Griffin's well-known proposal on how to define fascism. Even that remark concerns less so Bauerkämper himself, than a general tendency among historians studying fascism that he would seem to represent.

Bauerkämper reproduces here the gist of many attacks on Griffin in which it is claimed that the British historian wanted to comprehensively interpret fascism through exclusively focussing on ideology, and his formula of "palingenetic ultra-nationalism." That, to my knowledge, has, however, not been the aim of Griffin's characterization of fascism. His definition was designed merely as a tool for identifying those empirical cases that would be studied under the heading of "comparative fascism," and in order to distinguish fascist from, for instance, non-fascist forms of radical right-wing politics. It is only for this particular operation - choosing which real-life instances are to be researched by a student of fascism, and which not - that he proposed to focus on fascism's programme and aims. That for a larger conceptualization and explanation of fascism other elements than ideology (psychology, economy, international context, institutional constraints, political opportunity structures, etc.) would be necessary has, to my knowledge, not been questioned by Griffin, but in fact been demonstrated in the chapters seven (The Psycho-Historical Bases of Generic Fascism) and eight (Socio-Political Determinants of Fascism's Success) of his seminal monograph "The Nature of Fascism" (London: Pinter, 1991; Routledge 1993). If Griffin's approach were really as simplistic as some of his critics imply, one wonders why these critics spent as much time, energy and ink on attacking him as they did.

For instance, Bauerkämper might be justified when criticizing Griffin's "fixation on the fascist agenda" (p. 18). Yet, I was unable to identify - apart from a reference to prototypical Italian Fascism - the criteria according to which Bauerkämper decided to include certain empirical manifestations in his study, and others not. While he discusses various definitions at length and says many illuminating things about the nature of fascism, I cannot reconstruct why exactly he thinks that this or that empirical phenomenon should be labelled fascist, or not. Rather, Bauerkämper seems to have relied in his case-selection on an authoritative, yet informal consensus among a number of prominent older scholars (e.g. George Mosse, Emilio Gentile, Juan J. Linz, Stanley G. Payne, Wolfgang Wippermann) about what movements and regimes constitute cases of generic fascism, an agreement that was present already before Griffin. But then this informal consensus was also Griffin's starting point, and has been made a theme of some of his writings.

In spite of this small inconsistency, the appearance, price and large circulation of Bauerkämper's study in Germany are only to be welcomed, and should put an end to mainstream German historical writing's "Sonderweg" of continued rejection of fascism as a generic concept.

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