In striving to achieve national greatness, Italian Fascism and German Fascism looked in opposite directions. Author A. Cassels explains that “where Mussolini might exhort his countrymen to emulate the deeds of the ancient Romans, the Nazi revolution of the spirit aimed at inciting the Germans, not only to do what the distant Teutonic giants had done, but also to be those same tribal heroes reincarnated in the twentieth century.”

Germany, on the other hand, sought to regain former glory by retreating into a mythical past.

The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich agrees with this appraisal, explaining that social Darwinism was “the ideology behind Hitler’s policy of genocide.” In harmony with the teachings of Darwinian evolution, “German ideologists argued that the modern state, instead of devoting its energy to protecting the weak, should reject its inferior population in favor of the strong, healthy elements.” They argued that war is normal in the struggle for survival of the fittest, that “victory goes to the strong, and the weak must be eliminated.”

Fascism, German Style

“Despite the coincidence of their paths to power,” says the book Fascism, by A. Cassels, “Italian Fascism and German Nazism were markedly different in temperament and in their vision of the future.”

Besides the aforementioned German philosophers who served as forerunners of Fascist thought, others, like 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, helped create a brand of Fascism uniquely German. Not that Nietzsche was a Fascist, but he did call for a ruling elite, a race of supermen. In doing so, however, he had no one race or nation in mind, least of all the Germans, for whom he had no particular liking. But some of his ideas were close to what National Socialist ideologists considered ideally German. So these ideas were appropriated, while others, not agreeing with Nazi doctrine, were discarded.

Hitler was also strongly influenced by German composer Richard Wagner. Extremely nationalistic and patriotic, Wagner viewed Germany as destined to perform a great mission in the world. “For Hitler and Nazi ideologists Wagner was the perfect hero,” says the Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. It explains: “The composer epitomized Germany’s greatness. In Hitler’s view Wagner’s music justified German nationalism.”

Author William L. Shirer adds: “It was not his [Wagner’s] political writings, however, but his towering operas, recalling so vividly the world of German antiquity with its heroic myths, its fighting pagan gods and heroes, its demons and dragons, its blood feuds and primitive tribal codes, its sense of destiny, of the splendor of love and life and the nobility of death, which inspired the myths of modern Germany and gave it a Germanic Weltanschauung [world view] which Hitler and the Nazis, with some justification, took over as their own.”

The thinking of both Nietzsche and Wagner was shaped by Comte Joseph Arthur de Gobineau, French diplomat and ethnologist, who, between 1853 and 1855, wrote Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines (Essay on the Inequality of Human Races). He argued that racial composition determines the fate of civilizations. Diluting the racial character of Aryan societies would ultimately lead to their downfall, he warned.

The racism and anti-Semitism that developed from these ideas were characteristic of German-style Fascism.