Jessen & Richter (Eds.) (60 page)

Elections, Plebiscitary Elections, and

Plebiscites in Fascist Italy and

Nazi-Germany: Comparative Perspectives

Enzo Fimiani

“Force and Consensus”

In this essay I analyze the historical significance of both plebiscitary experi-

ences and electoral practices of a plebiscitary nature in Fascist Italy and

Nazi Germany.1

If there is no doubt that the very high frequency of plebiscitary-elec-

toral voting was largely determined by the suffocating nature of the totali-

tarian dictatorship, it is also important to bear in mind that these systems

of power were able, in some way, to anticipate the moods, ambitions and

expectations of a fair proportion of the people. Neither Fascism nor Na-

tional Socialism, in fact, can be assessed solely in terms of their political

violence, juridical illegalities or institutional corruption, and not even in

terms of the ideological constraints that they imposed or their inherent

ability to spread their propaganda through technologically-advanced forms

of mass communication. The positive responses in the plebiscites also

pointed to the population’s approval of the myths of nationalism or of

patriotic redemption in the face of previous humiliations in the course of

history (the
shame
of Versailles for Germany, the “
vittoria mutilata
” for Italy after the First World War). So, to succeed and to achieve totalitarian levels

of participation, elections and plebiscites needed not only the mere praxis

of power. The plebiscite ballot boxes, overflowing with
Sì
and
Ja
, represented well this
mixture
in the essence of right-wing dictatorial power, which we could define—using the words of the Italian
Duce
himself—as a

perverse mixture of “force and consensus” (Mussolini 1923). As has been

written of Fascism, “the regime organized consensus, oppressed and at the

same time made the people participate […]. This was typical of an authori-

——————

1 My thanks to: Paul Corner, for his friendship; Barbara Lewis (teacher and language scholar, Pescara, Italy), who translated this essay from Italian into English; John Guerin (Kaplan School, Dublin), who was very patient with my English...

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E N Z O F I M I A N I

tarian mass regime, subduing the individual to the state and to his boss and

making him participate all the same, while giving him space” (Foa 1996,

126, 131). In other words, the plebiscitary exercise of the right to vote was

an emblematic paradigm of
participation
in political life under totalitarianism.

Form of Regime, Form of Vote: Meanings and Functions

of Nazi-Fascist Plebiscitary Votes

The plebiscitary experiences and electoral practices of a plebiscitary nature

under the two regimes have not received the attention they deserve from

international historiography. In one of the best works on the relations

between German totalitarianism and the people, Gellately has stressed that

historians “are used to ignoring the subsequent elections and plebiscites

under Hitler’s dictatorship” (Gellately 2002, 15). In Italy, the principal

scholar of Germany’s history recently wrote that “until now, the problem

of the plebiscites […] has only been dealt with marginally by the wealth of

literature available on Hitler’s regime” (Corni 2010, 179). As far as Fascism

is concerned, after a long silence, historians only began to turn their atten-

tion to its plebiscites some ten or twelve years ago.

This lack of interest has almost always been determined by
negative preju-

dice
, so to speak, towards plebiscites in general. It was generally thought that there was little point in studying them as they always turned out, in

European history, to be mere rituals for illiberal regimes, occasions for

celebration, and predictable manifestations of consensus for the political

system in power. Moreover, the regime’s plebiscitary successes were put

down largely to coercion.

In effect, the electoral and plebiscitary dates, that marked the lives of

the German and Italian peoples between the two World Wars took on

many important meanings and functions for the political dynamics of the

two regimes that we cannot afford to ignore. On the one hand, they

marked out and emphasized some of the main emblematic moments of the

respective totalitarian experiences, albeit with their quite distinct character-

istics. Elections for the two parliaments, and plebiscites for the collective

ratification of political decisions already taken in practice by the two gov-

ernments, now give us another opportunity to measure, among other

E L E C T I O N S , P L E B I S C I T A R Y E L E C T I O N S , A N D P L E B I S C I T E S

233

things, the ability of profoundly non-democratic regimes to control and

mobilize the
masses
by using a typical instrument of democratic tradition, the right to vote. On the other hand, they had the function of conferring a

kind of “chrism” to the Fascist and Nazi powers,
legitimizing
them in some way from the bottom upwards, and often contributing to
legalizing
formally the more obvious aspects of their illegality (especially but not only in respect of international public opinion).

The elections and plebiscites also constituted authentic paradigms of

the modern totalitarian plebiscite, which, in its respective propaganda cam-

paigns, produced some of its highest expressions of violence, persuasion

and invasiveness in forms that included technology and advertising, the

extraordinary power of the party machines, the weight of both psychologi-

cal and physical coercion, and lastly the ability to gain the electoral support

of a substantial portion of Italians and Germans on topics of broad popu-

lar appeal. Moreover, they had an additional function, which helps us “to

look totalitarianism in the face” (Ungari 1963, 11). For Fascism and Na-

zism, the numbers achieved in the results of elections and plebiscites were

only of relative importance (although the two regimes threw all they had

into achieving the maximum percentage of affirmative and, indeed, plebi-

scitary votes). Electoral experiences of this kind, putting aside the differ-

ences between Italian and German history, are revealed as being something

that went far beyond the tally of the ballot papers. They also became a

symbolic fact, a
plastic
testimony of the link between the
new
power and popular consensus.

We can say, ultimately, that the ten elections and plebiscites that were

held in Italy, Germany and in some German-speaking areas between 1924

and 1938 are a reliable yardstick for us. They enable us to comprehend

better, in comparative terms, the two systems and to observe their relation-

ships with the contradictions of political modernity.

Elections, Plebiscitary Elections and Plebiscites:

Questions of History and Definitions

When Fascism and Nazism used the plebiscite, an instrument, which al-

lowed a government to appeal to the people to express themselves with a

Yes
or
No
on a particular issue, already had a long history, which began in

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E N Z O F I M I A N I

the French Revolution. The modern plebiscite soon revealed its ability to

become a phenomenon of European dimensions over the next two centu-

ries (Fimiani 2010). It has been used by a number of nations and has

crossed several frontiers of political thought, revealing itself as a useful

means for different sorts of regimes to legitimize, consolidate or legalize

themselves, and to gain in this way a gloss of
democracy
. Numerous forms of electoral competitions “without choice” have revealed a close relationship

with plebiscites proper. Fascism and Nazism, therefore, did not invent the

plebiscitary tradition; rather, they
reinterpreted
a plebiscitary past with methods characteristic of modern dictatorships.

Beside the
plebiscite
, then, the two regimes made use of other instru-

ments of
electoral
consultation of the people, which, in many ways, were similar enough to plebiscites to allow us to consider them side-by-side in a

comparative analysis of
Nazi-Fascist
plebiscitarianism. The
elections proper
, in a juridical sense, both in Italy (in 1924) and Germany (two in 1933 and two

in 1938, on the
Anschluss
and the Sudetenland issue),2
always
took on a
de
facto
plebiscitary nature and were aimed at winning approval for the regime in a general sense, beyond the political contingencies for which they had

been called. Alongside these specific electoral experiences,
hybrid forms
of polls were tried out, which we could term
plebiscite-elections
(the Italian elections of 1929 and 1934; the German one of 1936 on the Rhine issue). The

three forms of election under study constitute, from a historical and inter-

pretative point of view, a fascinating mixture for the scientific study of a

crucial point—the more or less real commitment to the dictatorships of

the twentieth century.

At first sight, the sheer numbers bring out substantial differences be-

tween Fascism and National Socialism. Fascist plebiscites emerge as feeble

compared to Nazi ones. Only two plebiscites were held in Italy during the

Fascist dictatorship: on March 24, 1929 and March 25, 1934. To these, we

should add the general elections, still formally with more than one party,

which were held on April6, 1924: they were celebrated not so much as an