http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0WALRu-YEM&feature=relatedThe crisis in agriculture was equally severe, and the large landowner (Junker) class demanded even higher subsidies, heavier duties on agricultural imports and an end to agricultural unions. These unions were holding wages up and when wages were being sustained you cut into profits.
So by 1930, most of the large landowners and big industrialists and bankers, especially in steel, coal and mining, had concluded that the Weimar Republic no longer served their interests, and no longer could protect their class, that it was too accomodating to the working class, and to certain sectors of light industry, so they greatly increased their subsidies to Hitler and they propelled the Nazi party onto the national stage.
By 1930 most of the great industrialists and bankers were underwriting the Nazi Party. And what happened in 1930 with this injection of hundreds of millions of marks is that hitler was able to catapult his party onto the national scene. It went from a cult of brownshirt thugs to a national party mobilized. In the elections of 1930 the Nazi Party gained 107 seats in the Reichstag. And in 1930-32 the subsidies from the big industrialists continued to drain in ever-more abundantly. So the Nazis were projected onto the national stage and an ever-larger presence in the Reichstag.
So the threat wasn't really from the left -- the bourgeoisie resorted to fascism less in response from the disturbances in the street and more in response to the disturbances in their own economic system.
The threat was from their own economic system and its contradictions and the fact that democratic forces had developed enough democratic strength to resist the austerity and the rollback that the capitalists tried to impose to maintain their levels of profit...The Italian and German monopolists, the big cartels, also had an interest in an expansionist military regime. They wanted a big rebuilding of the military. One that would, one, compensate for the decline in investment opportunities with huge armament contracts and related public works. In other words, this industrial and financial class wanted a large defense budget, as we would call it, because it was a source of capital investment and enormous capital profits.
Two, they wanted to embark on an aggressive foreign policy to open new markets for export and investment, thereby gaining a more equal footing with French and English competitors.Now I don't mean to say that all the big industrial capitalist supported Hitler with equal fervor. Some, like Thyssen, were early and enthusiastic backers of Hitler. The aged Emil Kurdoff thanked God that he lived long enough to see the Führer emerge as the savior of Germany. They backed Hitler only when he promised to be the best hope for their interests. Light industry, which had lower fixed costs and more stable profits than heavy industry -- they may not have been close to the fascists, weren't but they weren't about to ally themselves with the proletariat against the business class, of which they were a part.
There was another element in these two societies that not only tolerated the rise of fascism, but supported it. I'm talking about the parlimentary capitalist state itself. Not the government or the Parliment as such, but the instruments of the state, the instruments that have the legal monopoly on force and violence -- the police, the army, the courts ande the like -- the secret intelligence agencies and such.In both Italy and Germany, years before Mussolini & Hitler emerged victorious, these elements -- police, courts, army -- showed a real leniency and an open collaboration with fascism -- while harshly repressing the left. Mussolini and Hitler could not have come to power without the help of the state machinery and that state machinery was never really against them.
In Italy, the police collaborated with the fascists in attacking labor and peasant organizations. They recruited criminals for the fascist action squads, squadristi, they promised them immunity from prosecution for past crimes. When applications for gun permits were denied to workers and peasants, police guns and police cars were made available to Mussolini's goons. In Germany the same kind of thing went on. Immediately after the war the military police and judiciary sided with rightists and suppressed the left -- a pattern of collaboration which continued until the day Hitler took power.
In other words, these supposed democracies which were equally opposed to totalitarianism of the right and the left were not equally opposed -- they were opposed to the left and they were very cosy with the of the right. Because the right, while it was out to destroy that destroy that democracy, the right was protecting the interests of property and capital.
But there's something else -- who did fascism support when it came to power?
Well, in Italy and Germany, when they came to power, they began implementing the stern measures that were needed to rescue the capitalist economy.
Labor unions were dissolved, strikes were outlawed, union contracts were nullified, prominent union leaders and other labor activists were imprisoned or murdered, unions property was confiscated, worker publications were banned, opposition political parties were outlawed, their leaders jailed. Civil liberties were suspended.
Fascist-sponsored unions -- quote "unions" -- were set up and their function was to speed up production, prevent wildcat strikes, and apply punitive regulations, including fines, dismissals and imprisonment against workers who agitated or complained of shop conditions.Even a Nazi labor front newspaper had to admit: "Some shop regulations are reminiscent of penal codes."
Workers no longer had the right to change jobs, they could be shifted from one employment to another regardless of their wishes, they could be conscripted into any work assumed to be necessary for the nation's economy without guarantee of wages equal to previous earnings.
In both italy and germany the government exercised compulsory arbitration and regulation of working wages.
By the way, any worker contesting that would be declared an enemy of the state. Not just in conflict with management, but an enemy of the state. So in effect what you got was a perfect wedding of the interests of the state and the interests of the capitalist class.
And by the way, these measures had their effect. According to the figures supplied by the Italian press itself, the already-meager wages in effect in 1927 were cut in half by 1932. By 1939 the cost of living had risen 30% and this constituted an additional decrease in real wages.
Taxes on wages were introduced. The minimum wage law was abolished. There was no more increased pay for overtime. In some regions, sanitary and safety regulations were dropped. In many areas child labor was reintroduced. In other words, all the old abuses, the old evils that Italian workers thought were dead, belonged to a generation ago, were returned under fascists.
In Germany the same story. Between 1933 and 1935 wages were lowered anywhere from 25% to 40%.