Comparing Mussolini's and Hitler's Seizures of Power

The idea

The exam likes to ask how the two men took power, and the honest answer is the same way, with two differences. Same: a paramilitary, Blackshirts or SA, that made the streets unsafe and the party look like order; a fear of communism that made conservatives, business and the Church prefer the fascist to the alternative; a head of state, Victor Emmanuel III or Hindenburg, who appointed the leader as a bulwark and expected to control him; and then the legal destruction of legality, Italy's from twenty-two to twenty-six, Germany's in six months of thirty-three. First difference: the vote. Mussolini's party was tiny when appointed and won its majority afterward under intimidation; Hitler's was the largest party at thirty-seven percent before appointment. Second: doctrine. Italian Fascism was about the state; Nazism was about blood, and the Nuremberg Laws followed within three years while Italy's racial laws waited until thirty-eight. Practice on six items and say which regime, or both: corporatism, the Enabling Act, the March on Rome, the Long Knives, banned unions, sterilization.