Research into fascism: Of hares, hunters and historians

Looking back can certainly be a proud one. Of course, he also has to be critical and scrutinizing. I think both are justified: on the one hand, joy and a certain degree of satisfaction can be shown, but on the other hand, one should look for what has been forgiven and in vain. Recognition is possible for what can be described as successful self-assurance after the total upheaval of 1989/90 that was experienced immediately. Radical self-questioning led to self-assertion.

What are we talking about here? From the Berlin Society for Research on Fascism and World War I (BG). This association, founded in March 1992, will dissolve at the end of the year – due to exhaustion and a lack of financial resources. This will probably receive little attention from the public. Nobody will talk about land damage or even protest, as is the case in connection with the closure of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research planned for 2028. Nevertheless, it is worth taking a look at their history.

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This Berlin society was mainly created by members of the dismantled Institute of History at the GDR Academy of Sciences and operated successfully for decades. Thanks also to members from the West German historians’ guild. The BG demanded a “common culture of debate that requires respect for individuals and scientific achievements, but subjects the presented views to criticism with a commitment to truth.” It wanted to be a forum for communication and judgment.

It did not emerge in a vacuum, it worked under certain political conditions that still require critical examination – perhaps even more than ever. However, nothing illuminating can still be expected from the former actors in the “unwinding” and repression processes. For them, the fact that a majority of the GDR’s historians in the “unified” Germany were fired, forced into unemployment and excluded from the state-funded academic world is still a success to be celebrated. More energetically than institutes were cleaned up by Nazis after 1945. They also wanted to win over Marxist views on fascism and anti-fascism.

This is worth remembering, not least because with the end of Berlin society a second “unwinding” may occur, an exclusion of the thinking and commemoration of historiographical, media and digital interpretation of history that it promotes. What the American historian Howard Zinn wrote in his 1980 “History of the American People” still applies: “As long as the rabbits have no historian, the story will be told by the hunters.”

After the “unification,” there was no possibility of continuing fascism research in the academy and university institutes in East Germany that were “cleaned up” and ultimately dissolved. Nothing new would have been possible with the GDR’s historical society, which had failed in itself. Above all, even a critical and constructive continuation of previous research on fascism was not allowed, according to the will of the Federal Government’s Science Council and the West German Historians’ Association. Any organizational merger was strictly rejected. The idea of ​​FU professor Wolfgang Wippermann to create a new, independent institute also did not meet with approval.

After a short phase of illusionary expectations, relatively small circles tried to find their way in the new circumstances and defy the everyday, shameful discredits. What initially emerged – before a certain center could later be formed with the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung – was a colorful patchwork of individual associations, mostly sorted according to scientific disciplines, regional and local conditions, (party) political interests and, last but not least, according to generational aspects. In the field of history alone, the journals “Contributions to the History of the Labor Movement” and “Berlin Debate Initial”, the Archives and Libraries Support Group for the History of the Labor Movement, the Society for Social Scientific Research and Politics and the Society for the Protection of Civil Rights and Human Dignity should be mentioned (GBM) as well as the Alternative Enquete Commission for German Contemporary History and others. Some of these no longer exist.

The Berlin society that we are talking about here seems to have been one of the largest groups with its own scientific activity, and also one that now united research areas that were previously relatively separate: fascism research, world war research, history of resistance and politics of remembrance. From the beginning, historians from the old federal states, including Karl Heinz Roth, also took part in a demanding and supportive role. At the same time, the Berlin society offered space for younger members. She appeared with publications and conferences that received attention throughout Germany, always striving to make new research results known to the public and to show the connections between expansion, fascism, resistance, the world war, genocides and occupation.

The great achievements of the Berlin Society included the series of document volumes “Europe under the Swastika,” which was commendably continued from the GDR era, and the two volumes on the development of GDR history by Werner Röhr, one of the initiators of the BG and also its long-standing executive director. However, it is also clear that over the years, the usual collective and sometimes interdisciplinary working methods have been replaced by increased solitary behavior, which ultimately limited the basis for a further theory of fascism. A greeting on the occasion of the tenth anniversary warned that there would be an “isolation of interest and, as a result, a neglect of the clarification of overarching questions,” from which the work of the BG “seems to be increasingly suffering.” It also went on to say: “Increasingly deep gaps seem to be opening up between historiography, the theory of history and the philosophy of history.” The focus was on the factual and documentary, which was and remains an irreplaceable basis for all representations, as well as a starting point for a viable, as complex as possible theory of fascism . Over the years, the relationship between comprehensive monographs on the one hand and smaller, although in no way downplaying, publications on the other has changed noticeably in favor of the latter.

Nevertheless, Berlin society is likely to occupy a not insignificant place in the history of German historiography and the history of science in general. In military terms, it was created under enemy fire and still achieved something remarkable. One achievement, for example, is that fascism and world war research have been brought together not just with the name, but with the actual work in Berlin society. To a greater extent than was done in the GDR, it focused attention on the racist ideology of German fascism and its potential effects as well as on forms and structures of fascist organization. Efforts were made to clarify and expand a Marxist interpretation of fascism. Contrary to the de-economized thinking that is once again dominant today and new, one-sided ideology-fixated interpretations, which are often limited to nationalism, feminism, racism or especially anti-Semitism, the members of Berlin society also examined socio-economic causes and connections for world wars and fascism.

Following on from Max Horkheimer’s statement that anyone who doesn’t want to talk about capitalism should keep quiet about fascism, it would certainly be more and clearer to note that the term capitalism should not only mean the economy or the economic interests of dominant large industrialists and bankers . What we need to talk about is capitalism as an economic and social system whose social, political, legal and cultural-intellectual conditions are determined by the ongoing pursuit of profit maximization and competitiveness as well as susceptibility to crises. This also takes limited consideration of sustainability, human dignity and social justice under capitalist conditions.

At the same time, it is important to analyze capitalism in its different concrete manifestations and its development processes. Capitalism organized in a nation-state provided a favorable breeding ground for historical fascism. Today capitalism dominates in a globalized network of worldwide relationships. New fascism can certainly develop in a mixture of global capitalism, multipolar world (dis)order as well as regional and national power politics, which is riddled with deep contradictions and crises of all kinds, but could dysfunctionally counteract global interests with its basic nationalist-racist content. In addition: From a political perspective, historical fascism was primarily concerned with the fight against communism and socialism. For large parts of the elite, it was seen as necessary for preserving existing social conditions from possible revolutionary changes. Capital, which prefers bourgeois parliamentary democracy, does not see itself exposed to such dangers. Those forces that advocate left-wing alternatives appear to have been reduced to a tolerable level. Therefore, the possibilities of a new fascism as a dictatorial-terrorist power system at the national level are narrowing considerably. New areas are more likely to open up for him due to a growing willingness to use violence and war, a sharp increase in armament and an effective militarization of all areas of social life. There is a threat of a fascisation of politics in the world’s major centers of power. Capitalistically based pursuit of profit increases competition in the pursuit of a supremacy that can be maintained or achieved.

In every respect, the idea with which Kurt Pätzold and I wrote the book “History of the NSDAP« concluded: “… the initially rejected legacy of fascism has long since been examined and sorted for its usability elsewhere, and its parts are being tested under a different name.” Enemy images, hatred, intolerance and fanatical willingness to use violence cause a decreasing distance to historical fascism . However, its ideas, as well as radicalizing, militant groups and communities, are on the rise.

By Prof. Dr. Manfred Weißbecker, fascism researcher in Jena, has written a more detailed article on the topic in the latest issue of »Z. “Marxist Renewal” magazine appeared.

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