Abstract
During the early 1930s, a number of fascist international organisations emerged in Europe and East Asia. Italy's ambition to universalise fascism led to the establishment of the Action Committees for the Universality of Rome (Comitati d’Azione per l’Universalità di Roma, CAUR) in mid-1933. Meanwhile, some months earlier, Japan's continental expansion and the founding of Manchukuo brought about the creation of the Greater Asia Association (Dai Ajia Kyōkai). For a moment, it seemed that the time had come for a proper fascist international aimed at an ultranationalist revision of the League of Nations and at fighting the Comintern on a global level. During the 1930s, fascist internationalism was the ideology-driven motor beyond such projects. However, by the latter half of the decade, all of them had failed. In Europe, heightened competition between Germany and Italy left little space for a pan-European fascist organisation. In Asia, the colonial context of the region and Japan's expansion placed almost insurmountable obstacles in the way of an East Asian fascist international, and it turned out that the connection between the two centres of gravitation in Asia and Europe would not be established through any kind of fascist international organisation. This article discusses how and why the fascist internationals of the early 1930s vanished, stressing that, in the end, the rising Axis alliance was much more driven by transimperial radicalisation. In other words, Italy, Germany and Japan did not rely on a proper fascist international institution to plunge the world into a new world war. Nonetheless, as this article shows, the manner of the failure and vanishing of fascist internationalism is essential in understanding the scope and nature of global fascism in the interwar years.
Was fascist internationalism a phenomenon of the interwar years that plunged the world into a new global war and finally vanished from the surface of the earth with the total defeat of the Axis alliance? Or, put more succinctly, is fascist internationalism just one more vanished institution? Before starting, it is worth noting that the very notion of fascist internationalism as a vanished institution immediately raises more questions. First and foremost, did something such as fascist internationalism ever exist? Recent literature has confirmed this. Nonetheless, there are further questions to consider, as each component of the overarching notion seems to be on shaky ground. A first question mark can be placed just after the qualifier fascist: should the radical right-wing, ultranationalist and anti-liberal cooperation in the quarter century following the end of World War I be labelled fascist? Another question concerns the concept of internationalism: is international the appropriate term to describe the nature of fascist cooperation and border crossings during the interwar years, or are other qualifiers, such as transnational, transimperial or global, a better fit? This connects to a third question: does the idea of an institution, and thus a well-established international organisation, encapsulate the different forms of fascist cooperation? And last but not the least, has the phenomenon of fascist internationalism really vanished? Considering the state of affairs throughout the world today, the rise of right-wing bonding and solidarities points to the contrary. 1
Let us address the questions in order: research has long denied that something like fascist internationalism ever existed. The reason was that the very notion of fascist internationalism seemed to be a ‘contradiction in terms’, an illogical, even paradoxical idea that was doomed from the start. 2 With such an approach, institutional shortcomings and contradictions as well as the great divergence between the high hopes and the total failure of fascist internationalism in the first half of the twentieth century dominated the research agenda. And indeed, there were many arguments for such readings. With their objective being the rebirth of their own nation, fascists tended to bring their countries into fierce competition with their neighbours and were, therefore, more often than not hostile to any form of cross-border cooperation. Furthermore, fascism was defined by its opposition to communist internationalism as well as Western liberal democracy, to the League of Nations and to ‘international Jewry’. The phenomenon was thus seen as a destructive force, unable to create anything meaningful on an international level. Until recently, such views have been commonly held not only in historiography but also in political science and international relations. 3 However, the consequence of seeing fascism as an ‘antithesis of internationalism’ 4 was that fascist regimes and movements were studied for a long time in national isolation.
More recently, new research has shown that despite fascism's extreme nationalist character, transnational cooperation between a broader political right flourished during the interwar years. 5 At the same time, radical right-wingers developed an anti-liberal version of solidarity, by which they aimed to establish an alternative world order. Thus, fascist internationalism has become a significant research topic for the study of fascism on the whole. 6 It has become undeniable that neither the history nor the nature of interwar fascism can be understood if no consideration is given to cross-border interactions. Additionally, these are crucial in explaining why and how the world plunged into a second world war just two decades after the end of the first. 7
So, how appropriate and valuable is the term fascism? For far too long, the dominant belief in the literature was that historical accounts of fascism are best mapped out within national boundaries. 8 Taking this approach, fierce disputes over definitions have led to dead ends in national histories. Japan is a prime example of this research trend. Despite the history the Asian empire obviously shared with European fascism during the quarter century following the end of World War I, Japan has continued to be treated in isolation. The talk of imperial, militaristic, authoritarian or ultranationalist Shōwa Japan – in contrast to fascist Italy and/or National Socialist Germany – has implied a national special path (Sonderweg), erasing the shared history of the Axis. As a result, the never-ending debate over the phenomenon itself has left the global history of interwar fascism unwritten.
Recently, however, a broad push to interpret interwar fascism as a generic as well as cross-border phenomenon has helped to overcome this restricted framework. The proposal has been to move away from seeking a single definition, or a fascist baseline able to be applied to all cases, and instead consider a fascism-in-action perspective that takes into account processes of cumulative radicalisation and imperial violence fuelled by non-European contexts. 9 To this end, transnational, transimperial or global approaches to the history of fascism have been brought into the discussion. 10 As a result, interwar fascism is now no longer understood as a project limited to European nations but as a distinct third way with global ambitions, vying for supremacy against liberal democracy and communism. 11
On the other hand, in studies on fascism in Europe, it turned out to be fruitful to take into the equation various right-wing actors, movements and regimes that in the end never became fully fascist, as well as unsuccessful fascist movements that were side-lined by authoritarian dictatorships during the interwar years. The focus shifted towards an extended group of fascist brokers, quasi-fascists and fascist copycats that has been marginalised for too long in the history of fascism. 12 Overall, it has been shown that the phenomenon of fascism was transnationally co-produced, and broader forms of right-wing interaction, cooperation and solidarity crystallised around fascism during the interwar years in Europe. In the European context, the term fascist internationalism turned out to be the ‘key category to analyse relationships between authoritarian and fascist regimes during the 1930s and 1940s’. 13
However, we still know very little about non-European fascist brokers. For Japanese and Asian fascists, there were basically three options for international cooperation during the 1930s: firstly, they could become involved in the European-dominated League of Nations based in Geneva and attempt to infiltrate it from within. Secondly, they could try to cooperate with European fascist internationalism. Thirdly, they could establish their own pan-Asian and regional fascist international. As the following discussion will show, they came up against some very clear limits when trying the first two options. In the end, therefore, they focused primarily on trying to establish their own fascist international.
This leaves us with the question of whether internationalism is a fitting term to best comprehend the nature of fascist cooperation and border crossings during the interwar period. During the 1930s, fascist internationalist organisations emerged as part of the drive to establish an institutionalised fascist international. Such international institutions require a rather narrow definition: put simply, they are well-established institutions that uphold a stable set of norms and rules, meet on a regular basis and include several national participants on an equal footing. Key features are close attachment to nation-states, clear organisational structures and the desire to make a lasting impact. 14
However, one of the main challenges of the concept of fascist internationalism is the inherent Eurocentric bias, which is twofold. First, as a historical phenomenon, fascist internationalism was already Eurocentric, as the organisations that were established within the old continent during the interwar years were deeply racist and tended to exclude all non-Europeans. They specifically focused on cooperation between European national organisations. In an imperial world, most of the world's population simply could not be represented by this kind of Europeanised ‘international’. However, there is also a second, contemporary Eurocentrism in the notion of fascist internationalism: most of the research applying the term focuses on interwar Europe. Fascist internationalism, defined in the narrow sense above, has a clear analytical limitation when applied to interwar fascism as a global phenomenon. In this sense, it is useful to distinguish between the terms international, transnational, transimperial and global when discussing the nature of fascist cooperation. But that in no way means that the discussion of fascist internationalism as a vanished institution is not a worthwhile endeavour. Considering fascist internationalism as a vanished institution tells us a good deal about the nature of fascism as a global phenomenon of the interwar world. 15 In other words, addressing the double Eurocentric bias of fascist internationalism (as a historical phenomenon as well as a concept) allows us to discuss the usefulness and limitation of the term.
This article addresses these issues by discussing, in the next section, the Italian attempts to initiate a pan-European fascist international around 1932/33. During the early 1930s, as will be shown below, a kind of ‘international of the nationalists’ did indeed materialise. 16 However, this was not, as often implied in the research, a solely European affair limited to the old continent. Instead, European fascist internationalism was strongly influenced by global geopolitical changes. The second section, thus, turns to East Asia and the rise of right-wing and ethnocentric internationalism there. The third section delves into the questions of how and why fascist internationalism vanished during the latter half of the decade. This process, so the thesis claims, was closely linked with the emergence of the Axis. At first glance, the alliance between Rome, Berlin and Tokyo may appear to be a prime example of a fascist intergovernmental organisation (IGO). However, the convergence and working of the Axis were driven much more by transimperial processes of mutual radicalisation than by any fascist international organisation. 17 The fourth and last section will focus on the (seemingly) paradoxical vanishing of fascist internationalism against the backdrop of the rise of global and transimperial fascism.
Fascist internationalism in Europe after the March on Rome
Whether in Rome or Milan, Benito Mussolini used every opportunity during the last few days of October 1932 to publicly proclaim his new mantra: ‘In a decade, Europe will be fascist!’ 18 His prophecy turned out to be quite accurate, even though the balance of power in Europe at the end of 1942 may not have been entirely what the Duce had envisioned. However, that does not change the fact that within a decade, the continent was to fall almost entirely under fascist rule. The emergence of a fascist version of internationalism during the early 1930s played a crucial role in this, albeit in a very different way than initially envisioned by the Italian fascists.
It was during the celebrations of the tenth anniversary of the March on Rome that the regime's idea of Italy's ‘universal’ mission was most visibly propagated to Europe and the world. 19 In this context, Italian fascists deliberately almost never spoke of ‘internationalism’; instead, they preferred the term ‘fascist universalism’ (universalismo fascista). 20 In the early 1930s, they used ‘universal’ to underline the reach and totality of their claims. Moreover, in doing so, they distinguished themselves from the competing political visions and global pretensions of liberal cosmopolitanism and communist internationalism. On the ideological level, ‘universalism’ had a strong utopian and spiritual leaning, distinguishing their project from the globalisation processes of liberal capitalism and left-wing materialism. Furthermore, there were historical models at hand: the Roman Empire and the papacy had for centuries broadcast the eternal city's universal claims. Now, the Italian fascists insisted that the time had come for a Third Rome, clothed in fascist garb.
However, during the first decade of fascist rule, Mussolini had repeatedly insisted on fascism's distinctive italianità. 21 Especially vis-à-vis Weimar Germany, he proclaimed that Italian fascism would never become a product for export. 22 Nonetheless, the early cross-border ambitions of the Italian fascists were already visible during the 1920s: in 1927, for instance, the regime founded the International Centre of Fascist Studies (Centro internazionale di studi sul fascismo) in Lausanne. 23 Disguised as a scientific research institute, it was, in the first place, a propaganda organisation that focused on shaping international relations by spreading ideas of fascism abroad. A look at the 1928 yearbook shows that social policies, and thereby corporatist solidarity, were central to its mission. 24
The groundwork for promoting the Italian state and society was already done, as interest in all things fascist had surged immediately after the March on Rome. 25 In October 1922, news of the revolutionary events in Italy had stunned governments and people alike all over the world. In those early days, it was, in particular, the anti-communist impact of the Italian revolution that met with much approval globally. The reactions in Japan and Korea (its colony) days after the event are just one example. 26
Soon after, Mussolini's path to power began to provide a template for right-wing coups – most famously for Adolf Hitler, whose putsch failed in Munich in 1923. For others, such as Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the later leader of the Romanian Iron Guard, the march marked a turning point in world history, motivating him to take action. 27 Against this background, the Italian Fascist Organisations Abroad (Fasci Italiani all’Estero) were established to promote fascism through Italian diaspora communities. Moreover, the regime started to build secret networks to support revisionist states and right-wing movements in other parts of the world, hoping to expand the revolution beyond Italy's borders. 28
Such hopes were not entirely unfounded, as by the mid-1920s, dozens of fascist parties had been established. 29 These movements not only imitated the Italian example but also often exhibited a form of solidarity with it. 30 As early as 1925, in the context of the transnational impact of the March on Rome and rising right-wing solidarities, Italian fascists, amongst them the Duce himself, began thinking more systematically about what a future fascist international might look like. 31
Thus, a somewhat contradictory Italian programme, which aimed to create a philo-fascist environment while destabilising other countries’ political structures, went on for the rest of the decade. In the end, however, none of these initiatives went very far. After the post-war order stabilised in the course of the 1920s, the fascist wave failed to materialise. No other like-minded movement came to power, and Italian fascism remained for now on its own. Various ultranationalist movements in Europe were indeed influenced by Italian fascism and looked to Rome for guidance. However, since almost all of these movements were small and not very successful, the interaction with Italian fascism took place in informal settings and was never on an equal footing. Also – and paradoxically – as some of these movements grew in size and success, they turned out to be less and less inclined to acknowledge Italian leadership. Against this background, a fascist international never came into being. Ultranationalist interaction in Europe during the long 1920s was therefore first and foremost transnational and not international by nature. 32
At the same time, Italy was confronting the limits of its foreign policy. During the Corfu Crisis (1923), the regime attempted to challenge the post-war order. Although the weakness of the League of Nations became all too apparent, this remained an isolated incident that had little long-term effect. 33 Thereafter, and to avoid further damage to Italy's foreign relations, international policies had to be more cautious, conventional and pragmatic for the remainder of the decade. In 1928, the Italian Fascist Organisations Abroad were side-lined as a revolutionary and political force when they were incorporated into the foreign ministry. 34 In the end, until the early 1930s, the Italian regime did not even come close to institutionalising any kind of fascist international – and nor did anybody else.
Then, however, everything changed. Major events now facilitated the emergence of fascist internationalism during what became fascism's first global moment. These events included the Wall Street crash of 1929, the ensuing Great Depression, the rise of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP) and several other fascist movements all over the world. At home, in Italy, the reconciliation with the Catholic Church through the so-called Lateran Treaty (1929) freed the hand of the regime. Thus, against the background of a broader crisis in the liberal-democratic post-war order, Mussolini now devoted himself personally to the project of internationalising fascism. He gradually elevated the ideology's ‘universalisation’ to a state doctrine and tailored it to himself. All this amounted to a realignment of the regime, with implications for a new phase of Italian fascism at the beginning of its second decade in power.
Based on the myth of Rome, the Italians now tried to establish a pan-European league of fascists. 35 Asvero Gravelli and other proponents of the movement now openly and confidently spoke of a ‘fascist international’. 36 In November 1932, Gravelli organised the second Volta conference in Rome, during which the regime officially committed to fascist internationalism on a European basis. 37 The participants included two leading National Socialist politicians of the Weimar Republic: Hermann Göring, president of the Reichstag and later Reich minister for aviation, and Alfred Rosenberg, National Socialist chief ideologue and later Reich minister for the ‘Occupied Eastern Territories’. 38 Trying to use the conference to expand his influence over the German right in this decisive phase during the crisis of the Weimar Republic, Mussolini received them both in person.
Finally, six months later, in the middle of 1933, Gravelli helped establish the Action Committees for the Universality of Rome (Comitati d’Azione per l’Universalità di Roma, CAUR), which aimed to institutionalise the ideology of universal fascism. 39 Initially, their programme was met with considerable approval in Italy itself, where many welcomed the opportunity to extend the country's influence beyond its borders and believed in the possibility of gaining prestige through fascism. Abroad too, amidst the crisis of democracies and the rise of dictatorships, many people around the world wanted to be part of the fascist success story. Consequently, in early 1933, just as the NSDAP came to power, a fascist international aimed at replacing the League of Nations finally seemed within reach.
The first global moment of fascism and fascist internationalism around 1932/33
A window of opportunity had been opened, as Italian fascism seemed to offer a real authoritative alternative and a valuable third way – besides capitalism and socialism – that would lead the world out of crisis. In these circumstances, it was, first and foremost, corporatism that became a catalyst for fascist internationalism. 40 During the early 1930s, the corporatist ideology promoted by Italian fascists spread to the global world of dictatorships – to Latin America and Asia and specifically to Brazil, Turkey, India and Japan. 41 Numerous semi-fascist corporatist states surfaced, many of which had European fascist sympathies and were accordingly inclined and willing to cooperate on an international level. Universalisation efforts also included propaganda activities, not least with overseas flights seemingly heralding an alternative modern age. 42 For example, Italo Balbo, one of the leaders of the March on Rome and minister of aeronautics, flew to Brazil with 12 Savoia-Marchetti flying boats in late 1930. 43
Besides Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, the preferred destinations for fascist propaganda were in East Asia, especially Shanghai and Tokyo. The reason for this expansion of efforts was growing Italian interest in this region due to recent geopolitical changes. In September 1931, Japan occupied Manchuria, and the first battle for Shanghai took place early the following year. In February 1933, Japan withdrew from the League of Nations, breaking with the post-war order for all the world to see. The man who led the Japanese delegation out of Geneva's Palais des Nations was Matsuoka Yōsuke – a notorious Japanese fascist. 44
After his return to Japan, Matsuoka called for the abolition of all political parties and a fascist revolution, referring to the March on Rome in Italy and the seizure of power (Machtergreifung) in Germany as his model; furthermore, he believed in the supremacy and the global mission of the so-called Yamato race. 45 This and his bold move in Switzerland made him the most popular man in Japan, as the Italian ambassador emphasised in a report detailing Matsuoka's arrival in Tokyo, where 50,000 people gave him an enthusiastic reception. 46 The right-wing organisation Matsuoka founded soon had several million members. Rumours were that a ‘March on Tokyo’ was imminent. 47 During his stay in Europe, Matsuoka had met with Mussolini and Hitler; eight years later, after the signing of the Tripartite Pact (1940), he would meet them (now as the foreign minister of Japan) once again. 48
Many contemporaries read Japan's withdrawal from the League of Nations within the context of the global wave of fascism and the crisis of the liberal-democratic order, and indeed, Japan's actions triggered a chain of other withdrawals from Geneva and paved the way for an ‘ultranationalist reformulation’ of the League. 49 Events taking place in East Asia are therefore essential to any understanding of the history of the internationalisation of fascism during the ideology's first global moment in the early 1930s.
At home too, Japan was experiencing its own fascism boom at home. 50 ‘No topic is more popularly and more heatedly discussed in Japanese periodicals today than is fascism’, one political commentator observed in early 1932. 51 Intellectuals, now in heated debate on the topic, interpreted this phenomenon in the light of a ‘fascist storm that has now seized the entire world’. 52 But they also admitted that ultraright ideologies had found particularly fertile ground in Japan due to the circumstances surrounding the occupation of Manchuria. Some even went a step further, claiming that what was labelled a ‘Manchurian Incident’ was itself a product of an authentically Japanese form of fascism. 53 And indeed, the establishment of the puppet state of Manchukuo in early 1932 provided an environment for fascism to become fashionable at home. The question that then preoccupied intellectuals, politicians and police alike was whether Japan would turn fascist.
However, the discussions on fascism were by no means limited to the Japanese homeland. Given Japan's dominance over Manchuria, there was a specific international-regional dimension to the Japanese Empire's fascism boom. Due to the region's geopolitics, all of this happened in a transimperial rather than an international setting. Korean intellectuals, for example, discussed fascism widely and praised it, especially for its anti-communist policies. 54 Concurrently, also on the Asian mainland, fascist parties were founded. For instance, the Concordia Society (Kyōwakai), a Japanese-controlled and state-sponsored mass organisation promoting pan-Asianism, was founded in Manchuria in mid-1932. A decade later, the organisation had over four million members, about 10% of the regional population, and had become the Kwantung Army's instrument for totalitarian mobilisation and control over the colony. 55 The society integrated White Russian fascists while side-lining them at the same time. 56 In China, in turn, the Blue Shirts Society was founded in 1932 by Chiang Kai-shek himself. Elitist and dominated by young officers, they aimed to fundamentally reshape Chinese society and thereby bring about a national rebirth, which would help the Chinese expel the Japanese intruders. Its members were all strongly inspired by European fascism. However, afraid of being regarded as unpatriotic for merely copying alien models, Chinese fascists took Confucianism as the basis from which to ‘distill a new national spirit’. 57
The activities of East Asian fascist brokers were spurred as well as limited by the colonial context of the region. Many of those involved would probably not be considered genuine fascists if an Eurocentric definition of fascism based on the Italian and German examples was utilised. After all, (East) Asia in the early 1930s often did not provide the kind of environment in which classical fascist parties, mass movements and regimes could thrive. 58 Furthermore, right-wing intellectuals and fellow fascist travellers in Asia did not take any active part in the emerging European fascist international. There were obvious reasons for this lack of engagement. On the one hand, given its racist and Eurocentric orientation, the CAUR did not welcome non-Europeans. On the other hand, in the colonial context of Asia, European ideas were not easily adopted as models for nationalist movements aiming at political emancipation and decolonisation. As a result, many amongst them turned to the Japanese Empire, which, after the ‘Manchurian Incident’, had started to establish an Asian counter-international. However, Japanese and, for that matter, Asian anti-liberal internationalism is under-researched, as most literature has solely focused on liberal internationalists in China or Japan, that is to say actors who, following fascism's first global moment, still tried to cooperate with the League of Nations. 59 One thing seems obvious: due to the Eurocentric notions of fascist internationalism, the genesis of an Asian version of a revisionist and ultranationalist international has been overlooked.
On the first anniversary of the founding of Manchukuo, on 1 March 1933, the Greater Asia Association (Dai Ajia Kyōkai) was established, soon becoming, in all likeliness, the most influential and active organisation to propagate pan-Asianism. 60 Its members, including later Japanese Prime Ministers Hirōta Koki and Konoe Fumimaro, saw in Manchukuo ‘East Asia's final bulwark against the European conquest of the world’. 61 The association's founding manifesto further stated that ‘reforming Asia to the principles of autonomy and self-reliance for Asians’ would be the ‘first step to stabilizing world politics’. According to the founders, the reconstruction of Asia and thereby the salvation of the world rested on the shoulders of imperial Japan. They considered the Imperial Way (kōdō) – in their eyes a concept unique to the Japanese nation – the key to achieving this goal and wished to establish it ‘throughout the whole world’. In terms of ambitions and reach, the Japanese aspirations were therefore in no way inferior to the Italian endeavours for fascist universalisation. However, just as the Italians had to interact with and involve their European neighbours to achieve their wider aims, the Japanese Greater Asia Association also had to reach out – and this was precisely what they did.
At a very early stage, many non-Japanese, such as the Indian revolutionary leader Rash Behari Bose, became deeply involved in what soon became a proper East Asian international organisation. As Japan expanded further into the Asian mainland, branch offices and research institutes were founded in China, Taiwan, Korea and the Philippines in the years following. 62 The driving force behind this, and probably the most conspicuous figure of the association, was Matsui Iwane, a China expert and general of the Imperial Japanese Army, who, after the war, was executed for its role in the Nanking Massacre. 63 During the early 1930s, he campaigned for an Asian League (Ajia Renmei). 64 Based on his ethnocentric and racist views of pan-Asianism, Matsui aimed to establish a regional international organisation in opposition to the Western-dominated League of Nations. The Japanese public widely discussed such ideas in relation to the Japanese withdrawal from Geneva.
The Japanese pan-Asian projects also attracted international attention. The journal Zeitschrift für Geopolitik wrote that Japan's pan-Asian initiatives and congresses were aimed at the ‘creation of an Asian League of Nations’, 65 and archival materials from Italy show that their Ministry of Foreign Affairs followed Matsui's publications and activities closely. 66 In 1933, the ministry felt compelled to create a folder of ‘pan-Asian movements’ so it could follow the activities of the Greater Asia Association in detail. Other countries did the same, as demonstrated by articles on the association in English, German, Russian, Turkish and Chinese. In 1934, the Greater Asia Association could therefore proudly claim that their organisation had ‘sounded an incredible echo throughout the world’. 67 In this context, it is important to note that some of the protagonists of the association were by now rejecting European fascism as the model to follow. Nakatani Takeyo, one of its most prominent members, for example, claimed that the world had to follow the Japanese Imperial Way and not (European) fascism. 68
To this end, the Greater Asia Association made its aim the cultural and political rebirth of Asia. By the early 1930s, such ideas and actions amounted to a fundamental challenge to the Western world and its colonial order. However, the ideological foundations of such ideas can be traced back to the turn of the century. Around 1900, Konoe Fumimaro's father, Konoe Atsumaro, had already cultivated pan-Asian ideas and prophesised a ‘final battle between the white and yellow races’’ 69 After the World War I, these concepts continued to gain popularity in Japan, especially amongst pioneers of pan-Asianism who acted also as fascist brokers, such as Ōkawa Shūmei, Kanokogi Kazunobu or Kita Ikki. During the 1920s, anti-colonial, pan-Asianist cooperation opened the way to a form of Asian internationalism. In 1926, to give but one example, a pan-Asian conference inspired by Sun Yat-sen was organised in Nagasaki; a year later, a further conference took place in Shanghai. 70 Dozens of delegates from China, Korea, India, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Turkey and Persia participated in the two conferences, amongst them Nakatani Takeyo and Rash Behari Bose. This was the environment in which a proper Asian fascist international emerged in the early 1930s, whose ideas of national rebirth and anti-colonial politics were akin to European fascist internationalism.
For Nakatani, the foundation of Japan's new Manchurian empire was the initial step towards a ‘federation of the whole of Asia’, 71 and indeed, with Manchukuo, Japan had gained an enormous colonial testing ground for fascist industrial, social and labour policies. Obviously, when it came to imperial expansion, Japan was far ahead of its future partners. For the rest of the decade, therefore, the Germans and Italians studied the settlement and industrial policy in Manchuria with great interest. 72 As early as the 1930s, Italian fascists were very interested in the (geo)political changes taking place in East Asia. One indication is that Mussolini was studying the reports from East Asia, especially those concerning pan-Asianism, very carefully and in person. 73 Another indication is that in 1930, the Duce sent Galeazzo Ciano, his son-in-law and the future foreign minister, to Shanghai as consul general. Mussolini's daughter Edda, who accompanied her husband, not only experienced first-hand the first battle of Shanghai in early 1932, but also went on a propaganda trip to Tokyo in time for the tenth anniversary of the March on Rome. 74 Consequently, around 1933, it seemed that two competing internationals, one in Europe and one in Asia, both aiming for a regional-national rebirth, would come into existence.
The end of fascist internationalism and the rise of a transimperial Axis
A side effect of the increased exchange was the intensifying competition amongst fascist movements. In the end, the first moment of internationalising fascism was short-lived. By 1935, the moment had passed. In Japan, the terms fashizumu and fassho disappeared from political discourse as quickly as they had appeared. 75 Now, ethnocentric terms pointing to a national rebirth, such as the Imperial Way or Shōwa Restoration / Revolution (Shōwa ishin), prevailed. And in Europe, Italy and Germany could not agree on a joint pan-European programme, as the Reich began to pursue its own international agenda from the second half of 1933 onwards. The initial euphoria the Duce and his followers felt in response to the success of their northern counterparts quickly waned as National Socialism was increasingly perceived as a competitor to Italian fascism. 76 Mussolini became aware that the consolidation of National Socialist Germany jeopardised Italy's leading role in any kind of fascist international. Since the competition for primacy in the field of fascist internationalism was now in full swing, the Italian media began to report critically on the National Socialist regime. For many, the vanishing of fascist internationalism was a cause for hope and joy. In February 1934, Thomas Mann gleefully noted in his diary: ‘Read the newspapers. German-Italian relations could hardly be worse and more unfriendly from both sides. It is amusing, as an illustration of the fascist “united Europe”.’ 77 The rising tensions between the two regimes became all too obvious when Mussolini and Hitler met in person for the first time in Venice in mid-1934. 78 The assassination of the Austrian chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß some weeks later and the failed coup d’état by Austrian National Socialists only increased Mussolini's distrust. For the time being, an alliance between the two regimes seemed a long way off.
One thing, however, was obvious: a fascist international would not be the driving force for rapprochement. On the contrary, fascist internationalism was an obstacle on the long path to the Axis alliance – in Europe as well as on a global level. In response to the increasing competition, the Italian side attempted to consolidate its universalisation project and thereby cement its pioneering role in the internationalisation of fascism. In December 1934, the CAUR organised a conference in the Palace Hotel in Montreux, with delegations from a dozen European countries in attendance. The attendees included representatives of the Romanian Iron Guard, Vidkun Quisling's Norwegian Nasjonal Samling and Marcel Bucard's Le Mouvement franciste. 79 However, neither Germany nor Japan was officially invited or represented. The Montreux conference turned out to be the last Italian attempt to take the lead in fascist internationalism. What should have been an Italian triumph ended in a fiasco – at least from an Italian perspective. The participants were divided over the question of what place anti-Semitism of the National Socialist variety should have in a fascist Europe. 80 In addition, there was barely any agreement on any other point. In the end, the conference promoted a sharpening of national particularisms, an outcome which is not that surprising considering it was a meeting of radical nationalists. 81 Worse still, Italy's supremacy was called into question. Quisling, for example, insisted on the superiority of the Nordic race, thereby disputing the primacy of Rome. 82 As it turned out, the Italian brand of fascism was not exportable to all of Europe and could not be used as a basis from which to drive a right-wing international.
The Montreux conference was the beginning of the end for the CAUR, as the organisation gradually faded into obscurity in Italian politics. 83 Two more CAUR meetings were held, again in Montreux in 1935 and the last one a year later in Amsterdam, respectively. But by that time, a fundamental shift in Italian fascists’ geographic imaginaries had set in. As a reaction to the growing ideological dominance of the Reich in Europe, they redirected their focus on universal fascism and the idea of pan-European right-wing solidarities from the Europe to the wider world. The thrust now shifted to the Mediterranean, and from there, there were three further possible directions for fascist expansion. Based on the shared Latin heritage, the first went towards South America. 84 The second brought, as shown above, an increased interest and interaction with (East) Asia. The third followed imperial expansion on the African continent. 85
The realignment amounted to a new globalism that affected both the reach and content of fascist expansionism. All in all, fascist universalism became more global and, simultaneously, more imperial – and thereby more dangerous and radical. In the context of this redirected fascist globalism, there was little room left for a genuine pan-European fascist internationalism. The outbreak of the Italo-Ethiopian War in October 1935 accelerated this trend. The consequence for the CAUR was a period of diminishing membership and growing frustration. In February 1937, Galeazzo Ciano, who had been promoted to the post of foreign minister the year before, took over the CAUR and allowed it to disappear gradually. Finally, all operations were formally suspended when the war in Europe broke out in September 1939. 86
Under such circumstances, fascist internationalism in Europe went into decline, which makes it difficult to pinpoint a single moment of death. It is much easier to identify some reasons for its disappearance: first and foremost, the Italian imperial expansion towards the Mediterranean and Africa. The same could be said of Asia: the pan-Asian institutions lived on during the final years of the 1930s. However, after a full-scale war between Japan and China broke out in mid-1937, more and more Asians doubted the credibility of Japan's pan-Asian ideas and turned away from such dogma. As a result, a genuine Asian fascist international with real participation from other Asian nations never really emerged. Nonetheless, for a moment, in Asia as well as in Europe, something like a fascist international had appeared on the horizon. Then, in the second half of the decade, it became clear that there was no potential for an international organisation that could function as a fascist equivalent to the League of Nations.
The history of global fascism during the interwar years should not, however, be reduced to the question of the existence of a well-working fascist international organisation. 87 In this respect, notions of fascist internationalism or a fascist international are somehow misleading, as they tend to raise false expectations. Unlike Marxism-Leninism, fascism did not have an ideological orthodoxy. In this respect, neither Rome, nor Berlin, nor Tokyo was ever given a dominant (ideological) position comparable to Moscow, and, as far as the international order of the League of Nations was concerned, no fascist international could replace Geneva. Most fascist brokers did not want to do this anyway, but more importantly, to achieve their goal of destroying the post-war order and igniting a new world war, they did not even need to do it.
The inadequacies of fascist internationalism became clear in the second half of the 1930s, when the Axis loomed. The alliance was by no means the logical outcome of the fascist internationalism in the early years of the decade. Instead, the regional organisations in Asia and Europe needed to disappear first in order to make room for an alliance with now genuinely global ambitions. Rapprochement in Europe between Germany and Italy began in late 1935, against the background of the Italo-Ethiopian War. In Asia, Japanese pan-Asianists were at first very critical of the Italian invasion of Abyssinia. However, they were soon side-lined, as the anti-British position of Italy, which came with the push into Africa, was genuinely attractive for Japanese expansionists. As a result, during the war in Ethiopia, the anti-Western sentiments of Japanese fascists were partly deepened (with respect to Britain) and partly overcome (with respect to Italy). The regional ethnocentrism that characterised both the European and the Asian fascist international of the early 1930s had obviously reached its limits by the middle of the decade. The beginning of a political ménage à trois between the three powers can, therefore, be dated quite precisely to the period around the turn of 1935/36, coinciding with the Italian war in Africa. Thus, the rapprochement between the three countries was driven by Italy's imperial expansion. It took place in a transimperial setting and not in the context of fascist internationalism.
In the end, the Axis grew out of a series of bilateral agreements between Germany, Italy and Japan, eventually leading to the formation of a tripartite alliance system bound by the Anti-Comintern Pacts (1936/37). The trigger was fascist territorial expansion and, thereby, transimperial cooperation, competition and connectivity between the three powers. The imperial nexus of World War II and the growing inter-relationship of the conflicts and crises in Asia and Europe were never the products of fascist international organisations.
For some contemporaries, this was obvious. At the height of the so-called Munich Crisis in September 1938, Jawaharlal Nehru stayed in Geneva for several days before returning to London. He noted, ‘[…] the beauty and the peace of the lake and the city attract little notice. […] Depression reigns supreme. The League Assembly is sitting but who cares for it? Geneva does not count, the League is dead’. 88 As a seasoned anti-colonialist, he understood that the main danger was coming not from any fascist international organisation but from the nexus of fascism and imperialism. He therefore stressed that the crisis of the post-war world order had started on the so-called peripheries, Manchuria, China and Ethiopia and had now finally reached Spain and Eastern Europe.
Seen from this perspective, the League vanished not because it was infiltrated, overtaken or replaced by any form of fascist international organisation but because, in the face of territorial expansion of fascist states, it failed to react in any meaningful way. 89 In other words, to grasp the vanishing of the fascist internationalism of the early 1930s and the parallel emergence of the Axis alliance, what is needed is not a European-international but instead a global and transimperial perspective. There is a slight difference between the two, however. A global perspective points primarily to the globality of the Axis alliance, bringing together Europe, Asia and Africa, and thereby plunging the world into war. A transimperial perspective helps to better understand the colonial context of the alliance and the imperial nexus of the world war as such.
Epilogue
Fascist internationalism of the early 1930s had a significant impact that lasted long after its decline. As (or probably because) fascist international institutions never really materialised, fascist internationalism continued, albeit in different forms. 90 This can be seen in the afterlife and legacy of vanished fascist international organisations. It is even possible to identify continuities, particularly when it comes to fascist brokers. The international exchange between fascists during the first global moment of fascism also had a lasting influence on social and political practices. Networks and communities of interest had emerged, many of which were revived during the latter half of the 1930s and ultimately facilitated wartime collaboration. As a result, it is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when fascist internationalism vanished. In fact, it is more useful to speak of two significant attempts at a comeback. The first one was after the signing of the Anti-Comintern Pacts and before the war in Europe started. This period saw another rise in fascist internationalism, particularly in the context of the Spanish Civil War and the escalating conflict in East Asia. 91
During the Spanish Civil War, fascist internationalism flourished once again, as fascists, conservatives, Catholics and other fellow travellers worked together to support the rebellion in Spain. 92 They shared an anti-communist and anti-liberal vision of Europe. As propagandists and lobbyists, they provided diplomatic support and significantly boosted Franco's war effort. Members of those networks, especially in France and Britain, were then instrumental in 1938 in promoting appeasement. At the same time, groups of international fascist experts cooperated in the fields of social politics, welfare and health in the context of the Spanish Civil War. 93 This kind of social and warfare cooperation would make a comeback even on a global level after the signing of the Tripartite Pact and in the context of the Axis Alliance 1940–42. 94 But as early as the second half of the 1930s, Japanese fascists were very outspoken about their support for Franco. In their eyes, the bloody conflict in Spain lent meaning and purpose to the Anti-Comintern Pact. 95 Their message was that Japan was fighting the same ideological conflict against its enemies in Manchuria, Outer Mongolia and China. Both conflicts were, for fascists all over the world, ‘holy wars’, fought against the global nemesis of communism. In this context, then, we see fascist solidarities developing globally. The Spanish Civil War was therefore a crucial moment for fascist internationalism and its revitalisation. However, in the end, nothing resembling a fascist international organisation emerged. Although there were indeed around 1,000–1,500 fascist English, Irish, French, White Russian and Romanian volunteers fighting for Franco on the battlefield of the Spanish Civil War, they were very few compared to the 70,000 Italian troops and 20,000 German military specialists (as well as the 40,000 members of the International Brigades on the opposing side). 96 Support for Franco thus was very much driven not by any kind of a fascist international institution but by fascist states.
In the early part of 1937, the German side established a Permanent Commission to Combat the Communist International (Ständige deutsche Kommission zur Bekämpfung der Kommunistischen Internationalen). The commission included National Socialist leaders such as Hermann Göring, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler and Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. 97 Its aim was to facilitate technical cooperation in areas such as policing, propaganda, social engineering and economic exchange between the members of the Anti-Comintern Pact. Soon, similar institutions were also set up in Rome and Tokyo. Meanwhile, Italian fascists were still working on infiltrating and taking over more ‘liberal’ international organisations, such as the International Colonial Institute – a task that was accomplished by 1938 when further Volta conferences took place in Rome on the topic of colonialism in Africa. 98 What also flourished during the peak of Axis power was a new kind of fascist diplomacy dominated now by Berlin, Rome and Tokyo. However, when the pact between the three powers was not expanded, and Germany temporarily aligned itself with the Soviet Union in August 1939, the Axis and, thereby, global fascism found itself in crisis again.
The second attempted comeback was after German victories in Western Europe and the signing of the Tripartite Pact in September 1940, expanding the alliance between Berlin, Rome and Tokyo once again. Some new fascist international organisations were emerging, which were first and foremost intergovernmental by nature. In December 1940, political, military and economic commissions were set up in Berlin, Rome and Tokyo to implement the agreement. Matsuoka, now Japan's foreign minister, had personally lobbied for their establishment. 99 In theory, were to be trinational organisations that would meet regularly and interact closely. Within this increasing scope of interaction, the year following the signing of the Tripartite Pact saw renewed, remarkable exchange between, and spectacular staging, of the Axis. 100 At the same time, the Axis alliance system was also reviving broader forms of fascist internationalism from the decade before, especially in the capitals of allied or occupied countries, as new partners joined the Tripartite Pact, such as Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. These nations were also amongst the signatories of the Anti-Comintern Pact, which was renewed for a second, and last, time in Berlin on 25 November 1941. On this occasion, Denmark, Finland, and Wang Jingwei's Chinese puppet regime were also included.
The institutional framework of the League of Nations’ technical cooperation has recently been discussed in the Asian as well as the global or colonial context. 101 However, much less is known about forms of technical cooperation between European and Asian fascists. Nevertheless, it seems evident that the intensity of exchanges between the Axis countries in the socio-political sphere increased sharply after the signing of the Tripartite Pact. This was particularly visible during the celebrations marking the 2,600th anniversary of the Japanese Empire in 1940. At this time, traces of fascist internationalism can be found in the cooperation over World Exhibitions and Olympic Games. Dating back to the 1930s, such collaboration was revitalised and strengthened. Originally, a World Exhibition and the Olympic Games were to be held in Tokyo in 1940 to mark the anniversary, but both events were hindered by the war, as was the World Leisure Congress, also scheduled for 1940. 102 This had now become impossible, but in order not to completely ignore the international nature of the anniversary celebrations advanced by the Japanese, it was decided to hold slimmed-down versions of the exhibition, the games and the congress as pan-Asian events. Given the war, German and Italian participation naturally had to be much more modest than originally planned. Originally, the German side had big plans for the Olympic Games: 20,000 people should have been selected to be transported to Japan on ships belonging to the Nazi leisure organisation Strength Through Joy (Kraft durch Freude, KdF). Despite the reduction in those arriving from Germany, efforts were made to keep the cooperation alive: the Recreation Congress for Asian Development (Kōa kōsei taikai), which took place in Osaka in the autumn of 1940, was attended by representatives of various Asian countries as well from the Italian National Afterwork Club (Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro, OND) and the German Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront, DAF). 103
One year later, the renewal of the Anti-Comintern Pact allowed for the propagation of a pan-European and anti-Soviet coalition once again. All of this intensified when the military situation deteriorated and the Germans were in need of support. Accordingly, the last years of the war in Europe saw the revival of international organisations for cultural exchange and renewed interest in pan-European right-wing solidarities to counter communism. 104 Similar developments can be observed in Asia. Given swift Japanese victories in the first half year after the attack on Pearl Harbor, a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere seemed within reach. 105 As the tide turned against Japan, more autonomy was granted to the conquered territories. This was demonstrated in the Greater East Asia Conference in November 1943, attended by political authorities from Japan, Manchukuo, Burma, the Philippines and Thailand, as well as the puppet regime of the ‘Republic of China’ and the ‘Provisional Government of Free India’. 106 In both Europe and Asia, ‘there was an anticolonial moment in the Second World War’. 107 During the years of the Axis’ decline, a fascist anti-colonial international seemed a possibility.
In some ways, one could therefore claim that the war years saw a resurgence in fascist international organisations. However, even if there were many instants of fascist internationalism in the context of the Axis cooperation and expansion, at no point did a fully developed international organisation materialise that brought together European and Asian fascists. For instance, the tripartite commissions took over a year to hold their first meeting, which only happened after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. 108 So although it is true that, driven by Japan's astonishing victories and renewed Italian and German advances in Russia and North Africa in 1942, there was a moment of optimism for institutionalised cooperation between the powers (which in the longer run could have led to an intergovernmental Axis organisation), the commissions seldom ever met again – in either Berlin, Rome or Tokyo. Against the background of, overall, poorly coordinated joint warfare during the rest of the war, the few discussions of military and political questions that did indeed take place were conducted mainly binationally between German and Japanese officers.
After suffering a series of defeats beginning in the latter half of 1942, the fascist powers in Europe and Asia found themselves increasingly isolated. Consequently, a global fascist league of nations was no longer an option. What then emerged in Asia and Europe were (again) more regional forms of internationalism, which reminds us of the initiatives of the early 1930s. However, there were also crucial differences. Overall, the Axis internationalised a condition of fascist hierarchy instead of establishing a new fascist international of equal partners. Therefore, the nations that joined the Tripartite or Anti-Comintern Pacts were denied equal status, since they were, in the first instance, vassal states or occupied territories at the mercy of three main powers. Their contributions and room for manoeuvre in the final years of the war are still under-researched.
What can be said with certainty is that given the cynical and brutal realities of fascist dominion in Europe and Asia, there was little room for maintaining any international organisation in any meaningful way. In Asia, despite the pan-Asian rhetoric, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere primarily brought destruction and death to its inhabitants. In Europe, the situation was no better. Fascist collaboration all over Europe did not lead to a European fascist international. 109 It was only during the final years of the war and in the face of defeat that regional fascist internationalism underwent a kind of renaissance. A certain irony is undeniable here: if the National Socialists had won the war, the result would have been an imperial order that left little room for any international fascist institutions. The defeat of fascism, in turn, made the more extended existence of any type of fascist international organisation impossible.
With this realisation, however, there is little need to speculate whether the Axis victory would have brought about a fascist league of nations. 110 As the years before 1942 have shown, in victory, the Axis powers had little inclination to create international organisations in the literal sense. Accordingly, if an international organisation is defined as a well-established institution that upholds a stable set of norms and rules, meets on a regular basis and includes several national participants on an equal footing, the chances of a fascist version of it emerging were slim right from the start.
All in all, the processes of cooperation and radicalisation between fascists in Asia and Europe were more transimperial than international by nature. But is there any benefit in insisting on the difference in terms? I think so, as the notion of internationalism has too often come with a Eurocentric bias. Its clear limitations have also long favoured the opinion that meaningful cooperation between different fascist nationalists was never possible. However, as the shared history of the Axis alliance shows, the limitation of fascist internationalism was no obstacle to the global expansion of fascism. Furthermore, to conceptualise fascism as an ideology spreading in the interwar years from Europe to the rest of the world is, in many ways, misleading, as fascism had been a global affair since its inception. The notion of fascist internationalism thus also privileges (European) inside-out perspectives, when in fact more outside-in approaches are needed. 111 In other words, neither fascism's potential for radicalisation at the global level nor its imperial nexus can really be measured on the scale of the creation of a fascist international. But, as this article has shown, the notion of fascist internationalism as a vanished institution still tells us a good deal about the nature of fascism as a phenomenon with global reach in the quarter century after the end of World War I.
During the Axis’ existence, it is tricky to pinpoint a single moment marking the demise of fascist internationalism. However, 1945 was different and certainly marked an end. Having set out to establish a new world order, the fascist powers had failed miserably on all fronts: neither militarily, politically, economically, nor socially had they proved superior to their enemies. Thereafter, the chances for a resurgence of a fascist international and broad-based fascist internationalism were slim, as there was no easy way back from its total defeat. Even the fascist anti-colonial international movement, which briefly came into view during the war, disappeared in the context of the Cold War and decolonisation, as none of its surviving advocates wanted to be associated with the fascist legacies of their struggles for national independence. The sheer fact that in recent years the world is experiencing a renaissance of anti-liberal, right-wing internationalism in Europe and far beyond should, therefore, be all the more remarkable and concerning. 112
