Sunday, January 10, 2010: 11:20 AM
Manchester 1 (Marriott)
Since Hanna Arendt’s renowned essay on the “Origins of Totalitarianism” in 1951, there has been a vivid scholarly debate about a possible nexus between Imperial Germany’s colonial endeavours in Africa and the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe. Some historians have gone so far as to draw a direct line from the colonial massacres of Windhoek to those committed at Auschwitz. Yet my paper will suggest a different answer to the question of historical continuities: In its plans for Poland and the Soviet Union, the Third Reich did not draw upon its own colonial past but looked to the undertakings of Fascist Italy in Libya and Abyssinia for inspiration. Starting in 1935, Italy began to implement a gigantic settlement project in Africa. This project, which would have involved 1.5 million colonists, sought to extend Italy’s spazio vitale (living space) and produce the racially superior Fascist New Man.
High ranking Nazis such as Rudolf Hess, Hermann Göring, and above all Heinrich Himmler were fascinated by Mussolini’s “achievements” in Africa and molded their plans for Eastern Europe according to the Fascist matrix. As I will argue, the sort of colonialism pursued by Fascist Italy served as a model for Nazi Germany particularly in one crucial regard: in the organization and regulation of a the new German Volksgemeinschaft at the edge of the empire. Convergences like these between National Socialism and Fascism raise the very fundamental question of where the substantial differences between the two regimes are to be found. I thus propose to rethink the “generic” nature of fascism from a colonial perspective.
High ranking Nazis such as Rudolf Hess, Hermann Göring, and above all Heinrich Himmler were fascinated by Mussolini’s “achievements” in Africa and molded their plans for Eastern Europe according to the Fascist matrix. As I will argue, the sort of colonialism pursued by Fascist Italy served as a model for Nazi Germany particularly in one crucial regard: in the organization and regulation of a the new German Volksgemeinschaft at the edge of the empire. Convergences like these between National Socialism and Fascism raise the very fundamental question of where the substantial differences between the two regimes are to be found. I thus propose to rethink the “generic” nature of fascism from a colonial perspective.