A Revelation of Frightening Success

This is my response to the following Essay Exam prompt: Based on their ideological agenda and the historical reality they confronted who was the most successful statesman of the mid-twentieth century; Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler or Churchill? Who was the least successful?

With the cessation of hostilities in Europe at the end of World War Two, the continent had become little more than a physically and psychologically smoldering ruin. Destroyed on a far greater scale than that of the Great War, Europe had succumbed to not only the ever expanding reality of war within the modern age, but war infused with radicalized ideology. Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin proved to be the victors while their conquered adversaries, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, lay dead at the feet of an Allied victory. Fascism had been routed in Europe by the unlikely partnership of Capitalist and Communist ideology, but the mid-twentieth century faced a sudden realization; which ideology, and in-turn which statesman, had truly succeeded and which had truly failed?

In looking at the losing side of the conflict, there exists the defeated ideology of Fascism, and while both forms of Fascist government were ultimately defeated, it can be argued that Benito Mussolini and his form of Fascism are ultimately the least successful combination emerging from the first half of the twentieth century. This lack of success is most revealing when compared the Nazism of Germany under Adolf Hitler. Although Mussolini and his Fascisimo party gained power in 1922, his first failure was the inability to completely dissolve the monarchy of the Italian state, an institution whose existence was antithetical to the “revolutionary” break with egalitarian politics which was held so dear to the Fascists. Indeed, the fact that it took a decade for Mussolini to fully detail what Fascism really was undermines his own capability of understanding the ideology he professed. In his Fascist Doctrines Mussolini states, “Above all, Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace . . .War alone brings up to its highest tensions all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it.” Mussolini’s only successful manifestation of this doctrine was realized with Italy’s successful, and internationally unopposed, invasion of Ethiopia. By 1940, however, Italian Fascism and Mussolini had been relegated to junior status in the affairs of Fascist Europe, as German Nazism under Hitler had proven beyond a doubt the true realization of Fascist ideology.

Hitler, who at the time of the Nazi seizure of power, was eleven years behind Mussolini in implementing Fascist ideology, quickly surpassed the “accomplishments” of the Italians. Establishment of a complete totalitarian state, clearly defined ideological and political aims, and the creation of the most economically and militarily powerful nation in Western Europe showed the German model of Fascism to be far superior to that of the Italians. Mussolini’s relegation to subordinate power became even more apparent once Allied armies in North Africa gained the upper-hand, causing Mussolini to rely on heavy German military support in a losing campaign. Even more humiliating was Mussolini’s loss of control over his own party. As Eric Brose states,

” . . . on July 24, 1943, worried Italian generals and Fascist Party leaders, sensing impending disaster, overthrew Mussolini, reinstated King Victor Emmanuel, and installed General Pietro Badoglio as prime minister . . . The coup d’état against Mussolini resulted from the intrigues of highly placed officers and Fascist Party officials, not pressure from the resistance movement, but the anti-Fascist underground had contributed to the necessary climate of opinion for action.”

In a deeply ironic twist, having lost control of his own party and nation, Mussolini was eventually captured and executed by Communist partisans, members of the very ideology his own Fascism had so deeply opposed. With Benito Mussolini at the helm, the ideology of Italian Fascism not failed both internally and externally. It proved to be incapable of opposing both Capitalist and Communist ideologies, its sworn enemies. Additionally, the underdeveloped aims of Mussolini failed to keep pace with the more “forward-thinking” fascism of Nazi Germany. Had the outcome of the Second World War resulted in victory for Nazi Germany, the frightening revelation would be that Adolf Hitler and his destructive ideology would have proven to be the most successful of the European nations. However, in perhaps a slightly less frightening turn of events, the ideology of the Soviet Union, guided by Josef Stalin, shows itself to arguably be the most successful combination of ideology and statesman to emerge from the Second World War.

This reality is apparent when viewed in the context of comparative gains and losses between Stalin’s Soviet Union and Churchill’s Democratic Great Britain. Churchill had successfully rallied the British populace to stand steadfast and resilient through the Battle of Britain and The Blitz. “Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.” Such inspiring rhetoric no doubt resonated with the British civilians and soldiers, but the terror and fear that Great Britain was to endure at the hands of Nazi Germany was far less than that suffered by Soviet Russia. By 1941, Hitler had given up on the plans for an invasion of the British Isles, choosing to instead invade Russia with genocidal brutality. While Churchill’s Britain fought a foe bent on destroying democracy, Stalin’s Russia faced an onslaught indoctrinated in an ideology that transcended not only economic and political principles but racial and social ones as well. Communist Russia fought for its very survival and future existence on a far more human and personal scale. To the Nazis, the Soviet Union was to be utterly destroyed, a concept deeply rooted in Hitler’s ideology. In creating the perception that Judaism equated to Bolshevism and vice versa, German forces invading Russia had a far different perception of their enemy than when they faced Anglo-Europeans:

In the East the soldier is not only a fighter according to the rules of warfare, but also the carrier of an inexorable racial conception [völkischen Idee] and the avenger of all the beastialities which have been committed against the Germans and related races. Therefore the soldier must have complete understanding for the necessity of the harsh, but just atonement of Jewish subhumanity.

The success of Russian forces at the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942 proved to be a major turning point in the war. Not only was it tactically inspiring, it was ideologically inspiring for the Communists as well, for they forces of Soviet Russia, on the brink of destruction, hand singlehandedly turned the tide of war, two years before their Capitalist counterparts would be capable of mounting the invasion of Fortress Europe.

By the close of the war, Stalin’s Communist forces had taken Berlin and established a political and ideological presence throughout Eastern Europe and Germany. Stalin’s democratic counterpart, Churchill, was victorious in Western Europe, primarily through the military and economic assistance of the United States. As war-time gave way to a wary peace, Great Britain quickly found its national stature and power waning, with the loss of its colonies facilitated by its own ideology of democratic Capitalism. To add insult to injury, Churchill’s role in leading the British to victory as Prime Minister was rewarded with his being voted out of office less than three months after the German defeat. Such is the way of Western democracy.

Josef Stalin, despite the brutal and deadly Communist totalitarian regime he presided over, proved to be the most successful statesman of the early and mid-twentieth century. His leadership had successfully modernized the Soviet Union, albeit upon the backs and lives of its citizens, and had weathered the initial failures of genocidal military defeat at the hands of the Germans. Mussolini, Hitler, and European Fascism had fallen to the combined efforts of Soviet Communism and Allied Democracy, but whereas Churchill had lost his political seat and Great Britain had been relegated to a junior partner in world affairs by the United States, Josef Stalin and Soviet Communism thrived. European life and politics had a new ideology to contend with, both committed and virulent, and the only real defense for democracy lay across the Atlantic Ocean at the doorstep of the very non-European United States of America.

1Benito Mussolini, “Fascist Doctrines,” in Sources of Twentieth Century Europe, ed. Marvin Perry (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000), 147.

2 Eric Dorn Brose, A History of Europe in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 249-250.

3 Winston Churchill, “Blood, Soil, Tears, and Sweat,” in Sources of Twentieth Century Europe, ed. Marvin Perry (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000), 239.

4 “The Indoctrination of the German Soldier: For Volk, Führer, and Fatherland,” in Sources of Twentieth Century Europe, ed. Marvin Perry (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000), 243.