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HORST BRAND is a longtime contributor to New Politics. His piece on "The Roots of Bin laden" appeared in NP 34 (Winter 2003).
SOME SIXTY YEARS AGO, fascism was defeated on the battlefields of Europe. Yet, historians' concern with fascism has not abated (judging by the 30-page bibliographical essay appended to the book reviewed here). The question that perhaps in large part motivated the writing of this book is whether a recurrence of fascism, if in some new ways adapted to contemporary social and political tensions, is likely. "The end of fascism was open to doubt in the 1990s," Paxton writes, as ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, exclusionary nationalism in Eastern Europe, skinhead violence in various European countries emerged. He notes the electoral strength achieved by Jean-Marie LePen in France, Jorg Heider in Austria, rightwing politicians and groups in Italy and the Netherlands. Is it possible, he asks, that "some kind of neofascism" will become a sufficiently powerful factor influencing in some political system? "There is no more insistent or haunting question posed to a world that still aches from wounds that fascism inflicted on it during 1922-45." (He includes National Socialism in the term.)
It is a perspective that cannot be easily dismissed -- less so as the political repercussions in Europe of Islamic insurgency cannot as yet be assayed. But the political and social aftermath of World War II must also be weighed; and it tells against his perspective.
He writes that the enormity of Hitler's crimes, in which hundreds of thousands of Germans and non-Germans collaborated, inspired a repugnance that perhaps has been the "greatest obstacle to the revival of classical fascism after 1945." Civil society was rapidly restored in West Germany although large numbers of former Nazis were almost as rapidly integrated in it. Perhaps more important, the Nazis' sociopolitical supports -- the agrarian landowners of the East Elbian regions, the higher echelons of the military, the upper strata of the civil service -- had been destroyed by defeat and utterly discredited. As Paxton repeatedly emphasizes, fascism could not have attained power or, for that matter maintained itself in it, but for the collaboration of these conservative elites. Their disrepute makes it highly improbable that a recrudescence of fascism could occur...