ABSTRACT
Initially, the military was granted autonomous status under the Fascists and the Nazis. The neo-feudal model of state organization, adopted by both Mussolini and Hitler, made the military one of the many competing power centres. Traditionally, the military derived its special status from the persistence of the feudal ties to the sovereign that were only partly disrupted by the Weimar Republic and not at all in pre-Fascist Italy. Far more than the Italian generals before the advent of fascism, the German military had become a political elite that played a pivotal role in the life and death of the Weimar Republic.
