ABSTRACT
The Fascist and Nazi regimes worked from common principles but with strikingly different results as they developed their relationship with pre-existing elites in industry and agriculture. Both operated from a basic social Darwinist view of human relations. The aim was to expand industrial and agricultural production as far as possible without regard to weaker individuals and groups. In a system that had crippled the capacity of labour to defend its interests, this attitude ensured that management reaped greater benefits than the workers. Neither regime questioned private property and initiative, but, at the same time, the market system no longer regulated the economy. The entire industrial and agricultural capacity of the state was subordinated to the goals set by the political leadership.1
