The Anatomy of Fascism

The Anatomy of Fascism

From the author of Vichy France, a fascinating, authoritative history of fascism in all its manifestations, and how and why it took hold in certain countries and not in others.

What is fascism? Many authors have proposed succinct but abstract definitions. Robert O. Paxton prefers to start with concrete historical experience. He focuses more on what fascists did than on what they said. Their first uniformed bands beat up â€œenemies of the nation,â€ such as communists and foreign immigrants, during the tense days after 1918 when the liberal democracies of Europe were struggling with the aftershocks of World War I. Fascist parties could not approach power, however, without the complicity of conservatives willing to sacrifice the rule of law for security.

Paxton makes clear the sequence of steps by which fascists and conservatives together formed regimes in Italy and Germany, and why fascists remained out of power elsewhere. Fascist regimes were strained alliances. While fascist parties had broad political leeway, conservatives preserved many social and economic privileges. Goals of forced national unity, purity, and expansion, accompanied by propaganda-driven public excitement, held the mixture together. War opened opportunities for fascist extremists to pursue these goals to the point of genocide. Paxton shows how these opportunities manifested themselves differently in France, in Britain, in the Low Countries, and in Eastern Europeâ€“and yet failed to achieve supreme power. He goes on to examine whether fascism can exist outside the specific early-twentieth-century European setting in which it emerged, and whether it can reappear today. This groundbreaking book, based on a lifetime of research, will have a lasting impact on our understanding of twentieth-century history.

Country	USA
Author	Robert O. Paxton
Binding	Hardcover
Brand	Brand: Knopf
EAN	9781400040940
Feature	Used Book in Good Condition
ISBN	1400040949
IsEligibleForTradeIn	1
Label	Knopf
Manufacturer	Knopf
NumberOfItems	1
NumberOfPages	336
PublicationDate	2004-03-23
Publisher	Knopf
ReleaseDate	2004-03-23
Studio	Knopf

The Anatomy of Fascism

You might also like...