HIST 335 Fascism, Nazism, and the Crisis of Liberal Democracy

The dictatorships of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler remain the among the most terrifying memories of the 20th century. This History course studies the rise, function, and fall of Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany, between 1922 and 1945. In the period between World War I and World War II, new and alternative models for the relationship between state and society challenged the existing political and social order, as many Europeans abandoned democracy as the ideal political system. Many turned to nationalist authoritarianism as the answer to the political, economic, and social crises shaking Europe. Italy, under the National Fascist Party, and Germany, ruled by the National Socialists, were the nations in which this flight from democracy became a full-fledged descent into dictatorship and one­party rule. This course examines authoritarianism and dictatorship in interwar Europe and its characteristics in the two nations that experienced fascist rule. We assess how the elevation of the state and the nation, promoted by these regimes, impacted the societies involved. We study the political, social, economic, and cultural characteristics of Fascism and Nazism, and the ramifications - war and genocide - of the embrace of fascist dictatorship.