Historian MacGregor Knox is noted for his comparative studies of fascist dictatorships, notably Italian Fascism and German Nazism. In several works, including Common Destiny: Dictatorship, Foreign Policy, and War in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, and Hitler's Italian Allies: Royal Armed Forced, Fascist Regime, and the War of 1940-43, Knox contends that fascism attempted to create an all-embracing system of belief in which the military was viewed as an ideologically driven force. His major argument is that both Hitler and Mussolini shared the ideological goal of transforming their citizens into "fighting creatures" and that "War" was an essential tool to achieve this objective. This paper will address the role that the concept of "foreign conquest" and "war" played in Nazi German and Fascist Italian foreign policy.
In both Italy and Germany between the two world wars of the 20th century, ideology, reinforced by charisma, functioned as the bridge between political power and the deliberate pursuit of war as an instrument of policy. For both Hitler and Mussolini, there appears to have been a certain urgency in their zeal to articulate their views publicly and thereby construct a foundation and rationale for their claims to political leadership.
The case of Germany illustrates the nexus of opportunism, ideology, and political instability. Hitler's Mein Kampf, written partly in the wake of the abortive Munich beer hall putsch, put Nazi ideology decisively on the record and had the effect of enabling Hitler to position himself and his marginalized political movement favorably in the context of the weaknesses of the post-World War I Weimar Republic, which was beseiged by communists left and any of a variety of monarchist, militarist, and nationalist opponents of the terms of the Versailles Treaty on the right. One view of the matter is that the ostensibly democratic Weimar Republic was floundering in a culture that had no experience ...