Conquest, foreign and domestic, in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany

Mussolini and Hitler have not been alone in emphasizing the common origins, features, and destinies of Fascism and National Socialism. Theories of "fascism"-that elusive generic phenomenon with a small "f "-have proliferated with abandon ever since the 1 920s.1 Definitions have ranged from the Third International's "open terroristic dictatorship of the most reactionary, chauvinistic, and imperialistic elements of finance capital" through Ernst Nolte's militant anti-Marxism, to the modernization theorists' "mass-mobilizing developmental dictatorships under single-party auspices." Voices of caution have occasionally sounded, urging the "deflation" of a concept that "exists in faith and is pursued by reason," or suggesting that fascism fails to encompass adequately the ultimate evil of National Socialist Germany.2 But the notion is still with us, even if no two theories of fascism coincide. Almost all Marxists equate fascism and capitalism "in the final