To the Threshold of Power, 1922/33: Origins and Dynamics of the Fascist and National Socialist Dictatorships. Vol. 1. By Knox MacGregor. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2007. Pp. xvi+448. Cloth $75.00. ISBN 0521878608. Paper $22.99. ISBN 0-521-70329-1.

摘要

Other than in President G. W. Bush’s denunciation of global terrorism asnfascism, recent scholarly attempts to understand the rise and impact of fascismnhave provided rather sophisticated insights into why Europe in the first half ofnthe twentieth century was drowned in terror, dictatorship, and violence.nSome outstanding studies, such as Michael Mann’s sociology of fascists,nRobert Paxton’s analysis of power and coalition building, and Robert Griffin’snnotion of fascism as a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism, haventested new approaches or offer provocative theses to understand what wentnwrong. MacGregor Knox, though, is more reserved. Refraining from culturalnand sociological incentives, skeptical about “generic ‘models’” (p. 15), and doubt-nful of generalized views on the broad range of European fascist movements, hisntwo-part work aims at a traditional comparative narrative of political, social,nand ideological developments and decisions in those two countries wherenfascist regimes proved most powerful, Germany and Italy. Only the first halfnof his study is published and under review here. It covers the rise and empower-nment of Mussolini’s Fascism and Hitler’s National Socialism until 1922 andn1933, respectively. Thus, it does not yet explore the most decisive differencenof both regimes: the fact that only Nazism developed uniquely genocidalndynamics.