Jessen & Richter (Eds.) (62 page)

tions and plebiscites under totalitarian regimes were also reliable indicators

of their ability to rally the masses and to obtain a sort of grip on their citi-

zens. Nazism, compared to Fascism, used more coherent and efficacious

methods to achieve the “totalitarian dream figure” of 99 per cent of favor-

able votes (Bracher 1969, 325). The two leaders were also involved in the

electoral-plebiscitary campaigns in different ways: whereas Mussolini never

took part personally, Hitler was always directly involved, taking part in

demonstrations, holding electoral speeches, and flying from one end of

Germany to the other. The relative importance of the plebiscite in Ger-

many is probably due to the fact that National Socialism needed the plebi-

scite more to prove to the world that the German people were united be-

hind the
Führer
’s international decisions. Only one of Hitler’s plebiscites was called on themes of home policy, that of 1934, and after the unsatisfactory result it was not repeated. In Italy, on the other hand, Fascism was

unable to make voting a new form of legitimization in itself.

It is important not to underestimate the fact that, in general, the shelv-

ing of elections in Italy after 1934 was to do with Fascism’s underlying

mistrust of the Italian people. To flatter the people once more by implying

that they were a source of the regime’s legitimization meant conferring on

the Italian people a power that Mussolini felt they did not deserve. Differ-

ences in how the two regimes perceived the
masses
led to different strategies. Fascism, by means of
corporatism
, underlined its division into “bodies”

(on the basis of their economic function). In contrast, National Socialism

stressed community, and therefore unity, from which followed the possi-

bility for the people to express themselves collectively through a vote. Nor

must we forget that in Germany, unlike in Italy, universal suffrage did not

bear the hallmark of democratic emancipation, both as a result of the au-

thoritarian way in which Bismarck had used it, and because of the thrust

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239

that it had given to Hitler in his rise to power (a rise that, unlike Musso-

lini’s, had come about in a context of formal universal suffrage, with

women allowed to vote, too).

However, in one way, Fascism did strongly resemble Nazism: both re-

gimes seemed to have a highly ambivalent attitude towards forms of

popular legitimization, either pandering to, or rejecting it, according to the

context. While actively seeking confirmation by popular consensus, they

also firmly rejected the idea of deriving their political and constitutional

legitimization from the people. This, in fact, would have meant weakening

their totalitarianism, since their rule would have been subject to the whims

of the people, as expressed through the essentially
democratic
act of voting.

Hitler, for example, during a rally in 1937, was clear on the subject: “our

State is in no way founded on the plebiscite, and I stress this most

strongly” (Von Kotze-Krausnick 1966, 132). Under Fascism, many doctri-

naires of the regime had already expressed similar opinions. Commenting

on the first
election-plebiscite
of 1929, Maraviglia wrote: “Popular participation […] reinforces and makes the institutions created by the regime

more efficient; it does not legitimize them” (Maraviglia 1929, 236).

Entrusting the foundations of public power to the variable nature of the

plebiscite, building the
mythopoiesis
of a regime on the democratic act
par
excellence
, meant admitting the role and weight of the hated
popular sovereignty
: the plebiscite or plebiscitary election, even in those contexts furthest from

democracy, called to mind the democratic ideals of the
Grande Révolution—

civil and political rights, equality, and freedom. These were ideals that

Fascism and Nazism opposed, since they considered them to be epigones

of a past that was to be destroyed. Nazism, in particular, boasted of having

been able to build the “most beautiful kind of democracy that exists” (von

Kotze-Krausnick 1966, 123–77), a democracy that contrasted with the

liberal-democratic model of 1789 (Pombeni 1997, 70–1). From such an

attitude there followed a clear use of the collective sanction of political

choice to celebrate a power that was already firmly established:

First I acted—proclaimed the
Führer
during a speech in the Teutonic Order Castle (
Ordensburg
) of Vogelsang on April 29, 1937, on the first anniversary of the foundation of the “Party schools” in Eastern Pomerania—and then I showed the world

that the German people follow me, that’s what it’s about. If I hadn’t been sure that the German people would be behind me, as one, I would have acted all the same,

but I wouldn’t have called the plebiscite. (Von Kotze-Krausnick 1966, 134; Frei

2001, 239)

240

E N Z O F I M I A N I

Behind this similarity, however, the two regimes did use electoral and

plebiscitary instruments differently in practice. One of the main reasons for

this was the place that each gave in their doctrine to the relationship be-

tween the people and the state (Rapone 2010, 166–67). If both systems

denied the existence of a variegated public opinion that called to mind the

hated democracy, Fascism, in giving huge importance to the state, was

oriented towards overcoming the separation of state and people, and to-

wards incorporating the latter into the former. National Socialism, in con-

trast, tended to raise the position of the
Volk
, seeing it as the repository of moral values and the source of the regime’s and the state’s spiritual and

creative energy. Appealing to the
Volk
, and giving it voice and legitimacy, implied recognizing its juridical and moral personality as distinct from the

organs of the state. Fascist culture went in the opposite direction, towards

the annulment of any duality between the people and the state, which was

achieved also through a mutation of the nature and function of parliament.

While Fascism tended towards the imprisonment of the people in the

grip of the state, in Nazi ideology the people were the (only formal) basis

for the conception of the state and the law, although not, of course, as a

sociological entity and even less as an autonomous political subject, but as

a mystical community, founded on racial identity and on constitutive fac-

tors of blood and soil. Hitler felt himself to be the incarnation of the

“community of the people”, an interpreter of the interests of the people

from whom he held himself to be the emanation. The
völkisch
order of

ideas saw the people as a spiritual, meta-historical entity
beyond
the state, which was a result of the conviction of the
excellence
and the
peculiarity
of the German people. The text of the decree with which Hitler asked for the

plebiscite in 1934 ended thus:

Firmly and deeply convinced as I am that all state power derives from the people and must be sanctioned with a free and secret vote, I ask that the decision of the government be submitted to the German people without delay with a free plebiscite. (Minuth 1983, 1387)

Such a phrase would have been inconceivable in an official document of

the Fascist government.

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241

Why Imitate the Democratic Order? Stages in Regime

Development and the Use of Plebiscitary Votes

Plebiscitary votes were above all a consequence of an already consolidated

situation
.
They did not turn out to be a direct consequence of theoretical-ideological constructions that might have prepared for them in some way.

On the contrary, they were almost always held
ex-post
with regard to

changes in power that had already taken place, before the
will of the people
was called upon in an election.

Albeit with different methods and times (quicker for Nazism—just

over a month for the first poll after January 30, 1933 and just over nine

months for the first plebiscite; less rapid for Fascism—almost a year and a

half between the seizure of power and the first election, and over six years

before the first plebiscite was held), the Italian
Popolo
and the German
Volk
were allowed to vote according to not dissimilar schemes. This was synthe-sized, cynically and publicly, by Alfredo Rocco, one of the founders of the

totalitarian state in Italy and Minister of Justice. Presenting his “Bill” on

the new electoral mechanisms in Parliament in 1928, which transformed

elections into plebiscites, he calmly declared that, “as always occurs in the

evolution of Fascist institutions, […] here, too, facts have preceded

norms” (Rocco 1928, 4). Ten years later, his Nazi counterpart, Hans Frank,

in an attempt to place the new system on a legal footing, echoed his words

during a speech on June 18, 1938: “The
Führer
creates a constitution that is not based on legal prescriptions […], but on historical actions” (Frank

1953, 466). In other words, both regimes began by moulding reality ac-

cording to what suited them. It was only later that a juridical framework

was found, and it was no mere coincidence that Hitler himself defined his

times as the “epoch of accomplished facts” (Hitler 1965, 155, 169; Hoff-

mann 1955, 82). At that point, the electoral rites could take place (with

juridical and political value), which consolidated this reality. From the mil-

lions of affirmative votes, all possible advantages could be drawn, and it

was not so much specifically Nazi or Fascist ideological objectives that

were achieved but gains in terms of
democratic
recognition and an image of a
united
country, which were then directed at public opinion both at home

and abroad.

In effect, in the history of France, Italy and Germany between the end

of the eighteenth and the mid-twentieth century, there was never a plebi-

scitary pronouncement that signified the authentic and recognized birth