Native Fascism in the Successor States, 1918-1945

PrefaceIn the spring of 1966 several European scholars from Western and Eastern Europe visited the United States to participate in an international conference devoted to qThe Nationality Problem in the Habsburg Monarchy in the Nineteenth Century: A Critical Appraisal.q Taking advantage of the presence of these renowned experts in our country, the Graduate School of the University of Washington agreed to sponsor a conference dealing with the history of the Habsburg monarchy's Successor States. From the various topics that were discussed by the organizers of this second conference, held in Seattle on April 11-13, 1966, that of Fascism was selected because this movement played a significant role in all the states under consideration and because it is still of relevance and interest.The organizer of the Seattle conference and the twelve scholars who presented papers use the expression, Fascism, in its widest possible sense, to denote all those movements that went beyond the conservatism and the traditional royal or military dictatorships that represented the extreme right wing philosophies and actions in East-Central Europe prior to the first World War and during the period between the two world-wide conflagrations. The term, as used by the authors of this volume, includes movements that are similar to Mussolini's Italian fascism and to national socialism in its German form. The main task of the contributors was to draw the line dividing these movements from those that belonged to the qtraditional rightq of the six states surveyed by them.The twelve scholars -- four from Eastern and two from Western Europe, one from Canada, and five from the United States -- were paired with one European and one American discussing each of the six Successor States. Each of these -- Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia -- was, therefore, investigated from two different points of view. The presentations of the lecturers differed sharply in length and emphasis as well as in scholarly apparatus if not in value. Some of them included footnotes with the texts of their lectures, one scholar attached a bibliography to his paper, while the majority followed the request of the organizers and submitted only their lectures. Your editor decided to keep this variety unchanged although it detracts from the uniformity of the presentatiofi. His decision to do this was dictated by two considerations: The additional information supplied by the footnotes and the bibliography will help those interested in additional reading material; the omission of editorial changes over and above those that had to be introduced retains something of the flavor of the very exciting confrontation of scholars that characterized the discussions at the conference.No preface is complete without the editor's acknowledgment of the efforts of those whose help made the volume that he has assembled possible. I would like to thank, first of all, the twelve scholars whose papers are included in this book. I wish to express my special gratitude to Professor Henryk Wereszycki of Krakow who, although prevented at the last moment from attending our conference, produced the thoughtful paper included among our essays, and to Professor Fritz Fellner of Salzburg who consented to replace another Austrian scholar, originally scheduled to read a paper, and produced his contribution in three hectic days of hard work.n n n n n n