Fascism, Communism, and War

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

From the origins of communism and fascism the midst of total war to their titanic clash on the Eastern Front in WWII, war was at the center of the relationship between Germany and Russia, the Soviet Union and the Weimar Republic, and Stalinism and Nazism. In fact, the new Soviet state was deeply affected by the formative period of “war communism” in 1918-1920 and Bolshevism itself evolved into a kind of ersatz or political warfare, while militarized masculinity and a quest for external domination were fundamental to the development of fascism. But while mature Stalinism undertook compromises yet was too entrenched to be reshaped by the existential crisis of 1941-45, Operation Barbarossa triggered a radical new phase of the Nazi revolution marked by euphoria, genocide, and racial colonization. How did the experiences and legacies of WWI and WWII shape this most consequential relationship of the “age of extremes”? To answer this question involves pursuing key questions in military history but also much more. It requires an investigation of how war and the expectation of it generated profound changes in ideology and politics, helping to reconfigure the social, cultural, and gender orders of Russia/USSR and Germany. Course readings include consideration of such topics as occupation policies and political systems; everyday life in armies and partisan movements; artists and intellectuals at war; the Gulag and the Holocaust in the context of unprecedented military and political violence; rape and sexual crimes in memoirs and diaries; and war in myth and memory politics. These examinations, taken together, provide vantage points from which to reconsider older and newer debates over totalitarianism, the Nazism-Stalinism comparison, and left-right entanglements.