ABSTRACT
The role of fascist movements and parties in radicalising, popularising, and legitimising a ‘licence to hate’ particular ‘others’ has already been noted (see Part II). But fascist groups also made a crucial input in the eliminationist violence that consumed wartime Europe. Participation in, or instigation of, pogroms, as well as protracted intimidation, persecution, and denigration of ‘others’, became trademarks of fascist activism during the 1920s and 1930s before being further escalated during WW II. Mostly out of ideological conviction and due to their commitment to the NS ‘agentic order’, the members of these groups were far more likely to seize the initiative in terms of inciting and discharging wanton violence against their chosen victims. Very often they outdid the official government of their states in intimidation and violence, precipitated requirements set by the NS authorities, carried them out with unsurpassable enthusiasm, exceeded targets or set their brutal agenda independently. They started pogroms or helped the occupiers carry them out more devastatingly, stepped up the intimidation of Jews, antagonised local regimes installed under the aegis of NS Germany, and even conspired with the Nazis and extremist indigenous forces against their country’s sovereignty. In the majority of casesand with some notable exceptions, such as the Romanian Iron Guard and the Hungarian Arrow Cross-they had been unsuccessful in achieving a strong political and social presence prior to the outbreak of WW II. But when the shadow of NS occupation fell on their countries, they felt that their moment too had come. Particularly in Western Europe, where fascist and ‘national socialist’ movements had usually fared poorly in elections or failed to sustain political momentum after a good result (e.g., Léon Degrelle’s Rex movement in Belgium that polled 11.5% in 1937 but was reduced to around 4% two years later), collaboration with the NS Germany was both an ideologically driven and a pragmatic choice. By aligning themselves with the NS occupiers and professing a fanatical commitment to the NS ‘new order’ in Europe, they also hoped to exchange their loyalty with power and political domination in their countries under the NS aegis. They believed that they could offset their lack of popular support by pledging themselves wholeheartedly to the NS missionary cause and thus
capitalise on the widespread impression of German invincibility during the first three years of WW II.
