Common Destiny: Dictatorship, Foreign Policy, and War in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany

by MacGregor Knox

Overview

This book offers a genuinely comparative analysis of the dictatorships that launched the Second World War: their origins, nature, dynamics, and common ruin. It provides an unconventional and compelling overview from territorial unification in the 1860s to national catastrophe in 1943/45 that places Fascism and Nazism firmly in the tradition of revolutionary mass politics inaugurated in the French Revolution. Set within that overview are chapters analyzing Mussolini's poorly understood foreign policy and the character and performance of the military instruments upon which success chiefly depended-the Italian and German armies. The chapter on the German army and the conclusion-which dissects the causes of the striking disparities between the two dictatorships in expansionist appetite, fighting power, and staying power-argue that a unique synthesis of Prusso-German military tradition and Nazi revolution propelled Germany's fight to the last cartridge in 1943-45.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521582087
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/12/2000
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	276
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.87(d)

About the Author

MacGregor Knox has served as Stevenson Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science since 1994. He was educated at Harvard College (BA, 1967) and Yale University (PhD in History, 1977), and has also taught at the University of Rochester (USA). His writings deal with the wars and dictatorships of the savage first half of the twentieth century and with contemporary international and strategic history, and include Mussolini Unleashed, 1939–1941 (1982); The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War (ed., with Williamson Murray and Alvin Bernstein) (1994); Hitler's Italian Allies: Royal Armed Forces, Fascist Regime, and the War of 1940-43 (2000); The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050 (ed., with Williamson Murray) (2001); and To the Threshold of Power: Origins and Dynamics of the Fascist and National Socialist Dictatorships (2007). Between his undergraduate and graduate studies he spent three years in the U.S. Army, and served in the Republic of Vietnam (1969) as rifle platoon leader with the 173rd Airborne Brigade.

Table of Contents

Introduction: war and revolution in Europe, 1789–1945; Part I. Origins and Dynamics: 1. Italy and Germany from unification to militant dictatorship, 1860–1933; 2. Conquest, foreign and domestic, in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany; Part II. Foreign Policies and Military Instruments: 3. Fascism and Italian foreign polity: continuity and break; 4. The Italian army at war, 1940–43: a study in combat effectiveness; 5. The Prussian idea of freedom and the 'career open to talent': battlefield initiative and social ascent from Prussian reform to Nazi revolution, 1807–1944; Conclusion: expansionist zeal, fighting power, and staying power in the Italian and German dictatorships.

Editorial Reviews

The latter essay is a tour de force, exposing with great verve and acumen the terrifying deficiencies of Italy's military: its anti-intellectualism, poor command structures, technological poverty and obsession with numbers, bureaucratic sclerosis....
—Times Literary Supplement

Christopher Duggan

A comparative study of German Nazism and Italian Fascism, by Anglo-American historian (and Vietnam vet) Knox. In the years following WWI, both Germany and Italy developed revolutionary movements that advertised national renewal and increased opportunities for the lower orders. Germany's war-weakened nobility, its shattered economy, and its ineffectual representational government helped unleash ideas about competitiveness and merit that the Nazi Party would mix in with stories of Jewish backstabbing and Bolshevik subversion. Hitler argued that the conservatives and aristocrats had allowed Judeo-Bolshevik fiendishness to flourish, and that the ancien regime must be swept aside by a liberation of Aryan energies. Whereas the frailty of the German state could not stop the Nazi revolution, the ideological and institutional strength of the Catholic Church, as well as the staying power of the Italian ruling classes, limited the strength of Mussolini's populist uprising. Just as the French Revolution found its fullest expression in the continental wars that lasted close to thirty years, Nazism and fascism reached their logical climax in the carnage of WWII. Italy's lackluster performance during the war was due, in large part, to the failure of Mussolini's revolt within the military and the government. On the other hand, Hitler's plan opened up exclusive officer corps, government, and party positions to ambitious men from lower classes. When the dictator assumed command of the Wehrmacht during the retreat from Moscow, he argued that his leadership would finally wipe out old elite entitlements and open the way for men of real battle experience to command the racialandideological struggle against the Russians. In the end, Nazism created mass expectations that merit would result in a better life. Knox goes so far as to imply that Hitlerism made modern German democracy possible (although he does not mention that it also made 50 years of Soviet rule over millions of Germans possible as well). An intriguing, if incomplete, account: Knox provides readers with a compelling reconsideration of the European revolutionary tradition, but one hopes that he will follow through with a companion volume that traces the further careers of Nazi opportunists.

Kirkus Reviews

"superbly researched, stimulating and well-written essays" Times Literary Supplement

"This is a highly original book: the author demonstrates in a very carefully and thoughtfully done work how foreign and domestic policies in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were similar; takes the views of Hitler and Mussolini seriously —as those two did—and offers the reader a substantial array of fascinating new ideas." Gerhard L. Weinberg, author of A World At Arms

"MacGregor Knox is one of the most creative scholars working to establish a comparative framework for the study of fascism and nazism. Common Destiny brings together a number of published articles and book chapters but the overall result is a satisfactory and coherent elaboration of his positions." The Journal of Military History

"An intriguing...account; Knox provides readers with a compelling reconsideration of the European revolutionary tradition..." Kirkus Reviews

"...a brief, articulately written, soundly analyzed monograph, Mr. Knox provides an autopsy of the decadent remains of two 20th-century tyrannies..." Washington Times

"Knox is a powerfully analytical historian and there is much to enjoy in his assembly....Knox, with a splendid armature of inforamation about Fascist social, political,fiscal,economic,tactical,logistical,technical, and personal bungling, launches an irresistible blitzkreig against such revisinist historians as Renzo De Felice and James Sadkovich who have been discerning some merit in Italy's war effort." R.J.B Bosworth The International History Review

"both of these works are impressive feats of scholarship, erudite, richly sourced, and authoritative. Taken together, they represent a stimulating and, in some ways, original school of thought that cannot be ignored." American Historical Review Dec 2001

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