Bolsheviks, Fascism, and Nazi Racial Policy: A Concise Analysis
The Conquest of Power by the Bolsheviks
The Bolsheviks became the most popular alternative to the interim government. The Petrograd Soviet, Moscow, and other cities in the north, central, and southeast also supported the Bolsheviks.
Living conditions worsened remarkably under the Russian Emperor. The factory committees took control of many companies. The peasants demanded the surrender of land. The soldiers demanded the democratization of command and the end of the war.
Lenin took advantage of the chaos to seize power immediately. On October 9th, he returned from exile, and 10 days later, at a reunion of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party, he convinced his colleagues to adopt the principle of armed revolution.
The survey was postponed to coincide with the opening of the Second Congress of Soviets of all Russia on October 25th, to transfer all the power.
October Revolution
Trotsky coordinated the operations of the Military Revolutionary Committee and prepared to take power.
On the night of October 24th to 25th, troops loyal to the Bolsheviks and the Red Guards took over the banks, telephone exchanges, etc. They surrounded the Winter Palace and sent the cruiser Aurora, which targeted its guns on the palace. Bolshevik troops arrested the members of the government; Kerensky fled.
The Second Congress of Soviets across Russia met. Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries protested what they considered a coup and left the room. Lenin and Trotsky formed a new government that came to be known as the Council of People’s Commissars, chaired by Lenin.
Fascist Ideology
The ideology had well-defined characteristics:
- Fascism advocated the establishment of a totalitarian state, prioritizing the rule and denying the principles of liberalism.
- It supported a one-party dictatorship with a personality cult of the leader.
- It was radically anti-communist and anti-capitalist, advocating the creation of a “national socialism.”
- It promoted aggressive nationalism, orienting these ideas toward war.
- Racism and anti-Semitism became the central doctrine, emphasizing the superiority of the Aryan race.
- It rejected rationalism, materialism, and egalitarianism, extolling irrational elements and behavior.
- It advocated violence as a positive force.
- It emphasized mass mobilization to the party and its paramilitary organizations, highlighting the importance of symbols.
- It extolled masculine principles, with political forces led by men.
The Corporate State in Italy
Fascism chose the corporatist system. The fascist state sought to organize the economy and control social organizations. Corporatism began with labor laws and the Charter of Work (1927), which allowed the fascist unions and declared strikes illegal.
Fascism initially applied a liberal economic policy, which later led to an interventionist policy.
After the 1929 crisis, state intervention in the economy increased, and the country chose autarky. Industrial concentration was enhanced, and in 1933, the Italian Institute for Industrial Reconstruction was created to channel state investment into industries of strategic value. Since 1936, a real war economy was designed.
Racism and Antisemitism
One of the main objectives of the Nazi state was the replacement of social class division with unity and racial supremacy, eliminating any person outside the Aryan stereotype. It introduced a program of euthanasia.
The largest group of victims was the Jewish community. Nazi measures against them went through three phases:
- Between 1933 and 1938, legislation was enacted that abolished their social and political rights and plundered them of their property. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws were enacted (excluding Jews from German citizenship and prohibiting mixed marriages).
- Since late 1938, anti-Semitism became more violent, with free pursuit. The night of November 9th to 10th, 1938, is known as the Night of Broken Glass.
- In 1942, Hitler ordered the Final Solution (extermination of the Jewish population), resulting in approximately 6 million Jews killed.
Germanization and Genocide
The most brutal German occupation resulted in the purification of the Aryan race and the theory of “living space.”
In Eastern Europe, the program execution of the Slavic peoples was developed.
The most horrible aspect of Nazi racial policy was the Holocaust: the extermination of Jews deported to concentration camps or ghettos.
After the Wannsee Conference in 1942, the mass extermination of Jews began, with planned extermination camps. In just two years, more than half the Jewish population of Europe had been killed, not including homosexuals, gypsies, the handicapped, political opponents, etc.