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Department of History

Week 10 - Ideologies and States III: Fascism

For the final week of term, in addition to the Williams selection, please read these two items:

  • R. Bosworth, ‘Italian Fascism’ in R. Bosworth, The Italian Dictatorship (1998), ch. 9.
  • I. Kershaw, ‘The Essence of Nazism’ in I. Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship (1985, latest), ch. 2.

I would also like you to watch The Great Dictator (1940; IMDB, Wikipedia), staring Charlie Chaplin and directed by Charlie Chaplin and Wheeler Dryden. The library has DVD copy, but you can also find a version online here or here (but beware, both have many pop-ups and such).

There are also useful primary source documents for you to peruse:

Finally, please remember that this is the last week of term. We will meet again the week of 10 January 2011. Have a safe and happy holiday and I look forward to seeing you all back here in the new year.

Music By Which to Read

As you can imagine, with the defeat of Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy, the eventual disapperance of Franco's regime in Spain, and the fall of the various fascist governments in South America, the music of facism has fallen into disrepute. Quite rightly, most of the aggressively nationalistic and xenophobic music that glorified the violence on which most facist regimes built their legitimacy is now denigrated and purposefully ignored. Often neo-far right groups ressurect such material for their new agendas. Nevertheless, it is interesting to compare this genre to currently acceptible nationalistic pieces and think about how such music is utlizsed by states to help control/inspire/influence their citizens. Find the playlist here and the text version here.