ABSTRACT
Almost every aspect of interwar fascism has generated strong historiographical interest-and, invariably, controversy. War and territorial expansion, the establishment of a ‘totalitarian’ system, patterns of leadership, and above all the eliminationist policies of the 1930s/1940s have raised fundamental questions about the nature of fascism that researchers have tried to address for decades. Did these decisions and actions derive from unwavering ideological intentions, clear and consistently pursued from the very beginning, or were they the outcome of unprogrammatic improvisations, ad hoc compromises, or even opportunistic ventures? Did they tell us something about fascism in general, about fascism in its particular national context, or about the impact of wider factors, such as memory, ‘ancient hatred’ (Mirkovic 1993, 1996, 2000) or particular national traditions? Ever since the 1950s historiography has debated whether an autonomous, original, and coherent fascist ideology ever existed; and, if so, to what extent it underpinned or influenced the decision-making process of fascist movements and regimes (Kershaw 2000b). It was only from the mid-1970s onwards that increasingly sophisticated conceptual analyses of generic ‘fascism’ started making increasingly bold claims about fascist ideology’s originality, intellectual cohesion, and even genuine revolutionary character (Bauerkämper 2006; Kallis 2003c).
