Category Archives: HIST375-Archive

New Man the Hero?

Posted on by

The composition and fate of the hero has been the subject of culture and literature since antiquity.  The idea of one individual, surpassing common constraints and achieving greatness has long held an important place in the human psyche.  The creation of the New Man, by both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, transformed the concept of a new , modern human being into their own unique ideal.  Peter Fritzsche and Jochen Hellbeck argued in Beyond Totalitarianism that the Nazi hero exemplified the optimal Aryan purity and perfection, while Soviet Russia allowed every individual to achieve greatness through self-reformation into the proletarian socialist.

The relationship between the physical body and this transcendent state of being occurred in both ideologies.  Soviet Russia concentrated its efforts in creating the ideal proletarian New Man by changing the human body through modernization and mechanization.  One example, Bogdanov underwent blood transfusions in order “to create a communal proletarian body.” ((Peter Fritzche and Jochen Hellbeck, “The New Man in Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany,” in Beyond Totalitarianism, ed. Michael Geyer and Sheila Fitzpatrick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 316))  In this case the individual attempted to change their blood, the very essence of their being, in order to create a New proletarian Man.  Although the physical transformation of the body into the New Man faded from mainstream Soviet ideology, the body (this time young, healthy, and robust) remained a secondary indicator of the ideal Soviet New Man. ((Fritzche and Hellbeck, “The New Man” in Beyond Totalitarianism, 320))

Similarly, Nazi Germany utilized the physical as a representation for the important ideas meant to create the New Man.  The racial purity espoused by the Nazi Party was meant to guarantee a superior race of human beings capable of world domination; by perfecting the body through race the German people could once more achieve greatness. ((Fritzche and Hellbeck, “The New Man” in Beyond Totalitarianism, 328))  The body must therefore be continuously transformed through generations of racially pure matches in order to create the ideal New Man.  Moreover, the idealized Aryan eclipsed racial purity and applied to clothing, exercise, and, diet. ((Fritzche and Hellbeck, “The New Man” in Beyond Totalitarianism, 329))  The New Man relied on physical and aesthetic, not just mental enlightenment; similar to the concept of the New Man in Stalinist Russia.

In both Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, the regimes attempted to create a New Man by manipulation not only of the mind, but also the body.  How does this physical manipulation relate to the construction of the modern state?

The “New Man”

Posted on by

Germany and the Soviet Union utilized the idea of the New Man in different ways, according to Fritzsche and Hellbeck in “The New Man in Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany”. In Nazi Germany he was a tough figure, with no remorse and racial superiority was held above all. In the USSR, the New Man conformed to the new movements and was an example to others. All of this was achieved through propaganda, which Schivelbusch, in Three New Deals detailed through radio broadcasts and symbols.

The Soviet New Man became part of the intelligentsia and was physically robust. The world was for the New Man, and the old must be removed. Yet in Nazi Germany it was for only the pure Aryan. To be deemed Aryan, Germans themselves had to compile Ahnenpass themselves.1The geneological passport that was created went from the current person backward. Each person was required to do this to prove their Aryan heritage. It was also inspected before marriage, and often couples were deemed unfit to marry due to their bloodlines. They were not candidates to contribute to the greatness of the Aryan race.

During the Nazi reign, some Germans, deemed Aryan and without defects, were denied the right to marriage and children. This is an area we have not discussed in class. It appears as though the Nazi regime was continually reducing the amount of people who were allowed to procreate, at a time when the population was already suffering from losses in the Great War, and soon to occur in WWII. To me it appears counterproductive. Yes they were trying to establish a master race and only wanted to pure of blood to live within Germany, yet they were continually putting the country at a great disadvantage by threatening to decrease the population of people and thus workers and soldiers.

 

1 Peter Fritzsche and Jochen Hellbeck, “The New Man in Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany,” Beyond Totalitariansim, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, 331.

Italy: A State in Need of Control

Posted on by

Evolve e·volve (ēˈvälv/) verb 1. To develop gradually, especially from a simple to a more complex form.

The evolution of the Corporations in Mussolini’s fascist state lends to a larger discussion of the Duce’s leadership strategy leading up to and during the Second World War. Although much of Mussolini’s strategy of government changed, the shift that the national Corporations went through highlights one of the major inconsistencies that helped solidify Mussolini’s ineffectiveness as a ruler. The Corporations, in addition to the Constitution of the National Fascist Party (drafted in 1932), show Mussolini’s attempts to streamline his power through economic, political, and social means.

In 1932, the Fascist Party drafted a constitution which laid out the principles under which the government must be run. The first article of the constitution reads as follows: “The National Fascist Party is a civilian militia under the order of The Leader in the service of the Fascist State.” ((Christopher Leeds, “The Fascist State in Italy under Mussolini”, London: Wayland Publishers, 44)) This, in essence, means that every member of the Fascist Party (ergo everyone in Italy) doubled as a member of Mussolini’s army, available to his beck and call whenever he so pleased. This shows how tight a grip on the Italian people Mussolini needed (or thought he needed) in order to maintain power.

An autocratic ruler must control both subordinates and the population as a whole. Mussolini attempted to do so by creating his “Corporations”- which he originally intended to function as an economic entity. In 1939, however, the Corporations became “a part of the State’s political machinery.” ((Christopher Leeds, “The Fascist State in Italy under Mussolini” 38)). Candidates who wished to stand for election for various positions within Mussolini’s government must be chosen by the members of the Corporations, an entity directly controlled by the government; in essence, Mussolini and his inner circle therefore controlled the electoral system.

Much like any other dictator of his time, Mussolini needed control. Hitler had the SS, Stalin had his own means, and Mussolini had political movements. The Duce did not resort to Gulags or Death Camps like his Axis counterparts, but rather strict, by the book political development. This did not work; he, unlike Hitler and Stalin, was the only dictator of his time to be overthrown by his own people. If Mussolini had sought control in a different, more intimidating manner in the place of manipulating the political system to his advantage, would he have lived to see the end of the war? Something to think about.

Fascist Italy and Behavior of Individuals

Posted on by

“The Fascist State” by Christopher Leeds describes the ways in which Mussolini and the Italian Fascist Party attempted to mold Italian society.

“Our whole way of eating, dressing, working and sleeping, in short all our everyday habits, must be changed” ((Christopher Leeds, “The Fascist State” in Italy under Mussolini, London: Wayland Publishers, 52.)) .

This passage is particularly important to the article because it highlights the depth in which the fascist government and Mussolini sought to modify Italian society and change individuals’ behavior. However, as Leeds suggests they were not able to successfully do so. This was in part due to the fact that the regime lacked tangible policies to accomplish specific goals ((Christopher Leeds, “The Fascist State”, 35.)) . This article challenged preexisting ideas I had about fascism in Italy and the impact it had on lives of individuals.
The regime intervened on a wide array of themes within Italy’s cultural sphere including sport, leisure behavior, and customs. Sports were of great importance and were used as a form of propaganda for the state, much like that of the Nazi Regime. All clubs, groups and societies were brought under control of the Fascist regime in an attempt to control the behavior, activities and thoughts of all citizens. Fascist leaders also thought it was necessary to modify traditional Italian customs that reflected or were introduced during times when Italy was occupied by France (Napoleon) and Spain ((Christopher Leeds, “The Fascist State”, 52)). Despite attempts to control all aspects of the private sphere of individuals, the Italian population as a whole did not undergo a dramatic transformation. In fact, such government invasion of private life aggravated most Italians.
Why do you think the behavior of Italians remained largely unaffected by the changes imposed by the State? How does Italy’s social sphere compare to that of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany?

A Fluctuating State

Posted on by

I used to think of Fascist regimes as strict and highly consistent. However, Christopher Leeds’ article, “The Fascist State” describes the vast changes that occurred within the Fascist party during its time in power. The party’s lack of concrete political ideologies granted it the flexibility to react to economic, social, and political developments throughout the decades.

The Fascist party, led by Mussolini, could implement policies even if they seemed useless or superfluous. I particularly enjoyed the example of the party’s incentives to increase the Italian population and the exchange between Emil Ludwig, the German writer and reporter, and Mussolini. When Ludwig questioned Mussolini’s goal to increase the Italian population, the Duce erupted in the reporters face ((Leeds, Christopher. “The Fascist State” in Italy under Mussolini, London: Wayland Publishers, 40.)) Such a lively exchange highlighted Mussolini’s political sensitivity and his obsession with control. The Fascist state, and its leader, needed to appear infallible in order to legitimize the authoritarian control it exerted over Italy. Ludwig questioned, and rightly so, the necessity Mussolini’s policies aimed at increasing the Italian population due to the country’s existing high population density ((Christopher Leeds, “The Fascist State,” 40.)) These policies cemented the post-WWI fears that we studied earlier in the year. The devastating casualties inflicted by modern weapons taught world leaders that military success hinged on manpower.

Such episodes, such as the one between Ludwig and Mussolini, also start to highlight a trend that authoritarian leaders all stand on edge and might suffer from some sort of self confidence problems. Do you think that self-consciousness is a prerequisite to become a dictator?

State of the Fascist State

Posted on by

In Leeds’s The Fascist State, the public acts and social requirements of Italian Fascism are explored in minor detail. Within the text we see various accounts of the principles held dear to the fascist government and the policies Mussolini implemented (often in bizarre and ludicrous ways) in the attempt to realize those principles.

Perhaps the most intriguing segment of the chapter is the bit about the “battle of natality”; that is, Mussolini’s attempts at increasing the population of Italy by providing incentives for his people to procreate. While this might seem initially like a valid method of bolstering a country’s power (by equating manpower with national capacity), to me it appears contradictory to Mussolini’s claimed intent with fascism. With Italy already “small and thickly populated”, in order for there to be space for the extra twenty million citizens Mussolini projected would exist within twenty years the nation would have to expand, whether it be by diplomatic annexation or conquering- though neither tactic was a priority in Mussolini’s Fascism. ((Leeds, The Fascist State, 40.))

This oversimplification of a national element and the resulting misdirection of procedure was typical of the Partito Nazionale Fascista, however, which never quite understood how to utilize the immense control it had over its subjects in a productive manner. The nonsense of Mussolini’s policies is indirectly referenced in The Fascist State as well; his triumphant claims of being “aristocratic and democratic, reactionary and revolutionary, legalistic and illegalistic” really convey nothing more than the frequent dichotomy between his government’s aims and its methods.

Energizing the Everyday

Posted on by

Chapter 7 of Beyond Totalitarianism ,“Energizing the Everyday”, by Sheila Fitzpatrick and Alf Lüdtke explores bonds between people and bonds to Nazism and Stalinism. The authors attempt to explore the range of possibilities within society in each regime’s sphere. An area of this essay I found particularly interesting was Sociability Outside the Workplace.

 This section focuses on the difference between sociability in Russia and Germany, as they are strikingly dissimilar. In Russia during the Stalin period, there was great control over activities outside of Soviet productivity. When the New Economic Policy ended in the late 1920s, private industry closed down and the state created substitutes for this private sector. Contrastingly, in Germany, there was much reorganization of recreational activities. Sporting clubs and singing groups just to name a few were allowed in Nazi Germany. However, the incorporation of the swastika and Nazi ideals ensued. Although there was this reorganization, the fundamentals and inner-workings of each club did not change. Although there was a change in social structure in society both in Russia and Germany, there were underground scenes for things such as drinking and religion. I think one of the main reasons, at least in Russia, that this social elimination and/or reorganization occurred all leads to the productivity of each citizen. By eliminating areas in which citizens could become brainwashed or not in their best state of mind, the State gained more power for ideology infiltration.

Frameworks of Social Engineering

Posted on by

How can we truly go about with categorizing populations? In the case of Stalin’s USSR and Nazi Germany, populations were categorized by class and race respectively. Chapter 6 of Beyond Totalitarianism, Christopher R. Browning and Lewis H. Siegelbaum examine the different “radical recategorizations” of the populations in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. <Christopher R. Browning and Lewis H. Siegelbaum, “Frameworks for Social Engineering: Stalinist Schema of Identification and the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft,” in Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared, ed. Michael Geyer and Shelia Fitzpatrick (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009)> Browning and Siegelbaum discuss both the Stalinist schema of identification and the Nazi ideal of Volksgemeinschaft and conclude that the need to reach a utopian and ideal society, justified imposing categorizations to better identify “enemies of the state.” In order to categorize populations, identification plays in big role in make categories that have to do with race and class. According to Browning and Siegelbaum,

“The Bolsheviks, without much controversy, identified the landless (batraki) and poor (bedniaki) among the peasantry as proletarians even if many of them did not identify themselves as such.”

This passage struck me the most because it demonstrates the power of the state and its capability to play the role of the “identifier.” In addition, this passage brings many things into question. How do was a proletarian defined as? Better yet, what if many did not identify as such? Similar to Nazi Germany, who was Jewish and who identifies as such? In terms of race, to what extent was someone of Aryan descent or how far can individuals trace back to the Jewish traditions of their families? One important point that I would make about this passage is the idea of human agency. Human agency is the capacity for human beings to make choices and to act in the world. When it comes to identity, it is difficult to categorize individuals in an effort to create a utopian society, because human agency will always exist. Although the state may assume the right to inscribe identity and place the population under categories, does order within these authoritarian societies have the potential to prevail?

Social Engineering and Bonds in the USSR and Nazi Germany

Posted on by

In Beyond Totalitarianism, edited by Sheila Fitzpatrick and Michael Geyer, two chapters discuss the framework and implementation of social engineering, and then the creation and destruction of bonds in both the USSR and Nazi Germany. Specifically, in chapter six, “Frameworks for Social Engineering,” authors Christopher R. Browning and Lewis H Siegelbaum focused on the trajectories of dictated social identities within both political systems. No attempt was made to homogenize the two systems; rather, differences regarding the criterion ascribed, the methodology of implementation, as well as what portion of each population was affected were all noted. Continuing on in chapter seven, “Energizing the Everyday,” authors Sheila Fitzpatrick and Alf Lüdtke discussed various practices and relationships within both Nazi Germany and the USSR, and how these were demonstrative that bonds were created or transformed, connecting people in a myriad of ways. Several types of bonds and relationships were discussed in order to challenge the Arendtian notion that new and new types of bonds could not be generated in “totalitarian” societies.

In Yuri Slezkine’s article “The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism,” the author demonstrated the rationale behind the Party’s emphasis on nationality and the creation of national identities for the smaller minorities and nations under its control. Slezkine argued that with the eradication of class after the Russian Revolution, the resulting development of national cultures and subsequent administration system served as a way to organize society without the use of class, making nationality essential in a Soviet citizen’s identity. Browning and Siegelbaum address this topic in chapter six, but take it one step further. They argue that while the state certainly used nationality as a way to define and categorize the general population, Soviet citizens could exercises considerable latitude (or artifice) in constructing desirable social identities. ((Christopher R. Browning and Lewis H. Siegelbaum, “Frameworks for Social Engineering,” in Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared, ed. Michael Geyer and Shelia Fitzpatrick (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 235.)) I found it surprising that regulations regarding nationality were not as resolute as Slezkine’s article depicted. In reality, the policing of social identities was far from simple. Browning and Siegelbaum noted how for example, parents of nationally or socially mixed offspring would choose to emphasize the identity of the parent that would be more advantageous ((Ibid, 235.)) or children could publicly “disown” their parents in favor of a Soviet self. 

Reading this article in dialogue with Slezkine’s article, I realize that I should not be so surprised by the flexibility and subterfuge executed by the Soviet citizenry. In a practical sense, though Slezkine described the extensive work of ethnographers in categorizing and modernizing each nationality, there were simply too many nationalities to differentiate that regulation proved futile. I wonder how much Soviet officials knew of the subterfuge going on, and if they did know, did they ignore it? Why would they?

Breaking and Mending of Social Bonds

Posted on by

In Chapter 7 of Beyond Totalitarianism ((Shelia Fitzpatrick and Alf Lüdtke, “Energizing the Everyday: On the Breaking and Making of Social Bonds in Nazism and Stalinism,” in Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared, ed. Michael Geyer and Shelia Fitzpatrick (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).)) Shelia Fiztpatrick and Alf Lüdtke discuss the breaking and mending of social bonds present in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Soviet Russia.  There a several types of bonds including inclusion, exclusion, and creation and renewal bonds.  Within exclusion bonds, Fitzpatrick and Lüdtke examine family bonds.  On page 286 it states:

It should be noted that implicit in this whole inquiry is the assumption that family bonds are the sources of support and that any weakening of them makes individuals mentally vulnerable and prone to loneliness.  Yet, families are not necessarily harmonious but often the source of pain, distress, and hardship; they may be rent with anger to the point that the family is incapable of offering support to its members and escape may seem highly desirable.  Such stifling family situations have often been discussed in societies facing both commodification and individualization of social and cultural relationships.

One bond that is constantly broken and then mended is that of family.  While family bonds are supposed to be strong, they typically dissolved within Germany and Soviet Russia at the time due to stronger ties and bonds to the state.  Often times children would rat out parents and other family members to state officials for offenses being done.  This intrigued me because it simply shows the great power of manipulation the state had over the individuals.  If family members were able to go against their own family to protect the state, how could individuals trust anyone?