What is the appeal of fascism?

This is a question that has haunted numerous fields of study in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust. The ideology that led to these horrors did not simply pop up out of nowhere with no support from the people. For instance, the Nazis boasted around 8.5 million members in 1945 (while the population of Germany was around 66 million at the time), and got around 37% of the vote in 1932 (becoming the largest single party in the German parliament at the time), before Hitler quickly dismantled the country’s democratic systems.

While not a majority of the country directly, one must also factor in all those who aided, directly or indirectly, in both the party’s immediate takeover of the state and then later involved themselves in the execution of the Nazi agenda.

But what is it that these people saw in the party and its ideology that made them fascists? What was it that led the common German, who outnumbered the Nazis by more than 12 times, to follow along with the party’s ideology? To turn a blind eye at best, and to be directly active in their war effort and systematic annihilation of Jews, homosexuals, Blacks, Romani, the disabled, and more, at worst?

There have been many answers over the years, with their own varying understanding of precisely what allowed the Nazis free reign to commit genocide on an unimaginable scale, and to throw the world into the deadliest conflict in history.

Is it inherent evil?

Racialist and antisemitic conceptions unwaveringly held?

Or perhaps evil is banal, as Hannah Arendt would argue?

Perhaps it is simply the power of groups, as Solomon Asch would state?

The influence of authority and the control it has over us that is socialized in children at extremely young ages, as Stanley Milgrim posited?

We could ask Philip Zimbardo about the power of roles, but his study has deep, unscientific flaws, and therefore is useless.

Maybe it draws people in because of the  burning desire to restore strength and glory to the state, as claimed by the definition Mussolini had put in state-sanctioned dictionaries in 1932?

Could it be instead that fascism is not at all appealing in the slightest, just that the people who are duped were all idiotic losers, as Thomas Mann wrote in his diary in 1933? (Who it should be noted, was a Nobel Prize winning German author at the time whose own opposition to the Nazis led him to produce anti-Nazi radio transmissions for the Allies in German that would be broadcast to Germany in the hopes of harming German morale).

Perhaps instead there is no true answer, or that the answer is different depending on the person, and the specific context. Perhaps there is more than one answer; we humans are complex creatures, so one should not deny the potential interplay of different motivations and subconscious influences.

Account Rendered: A Dossier on My Former Self, by Melita Maschmann, is perhaps another attempt to explain fascism’s appeal. Maschmann herself was a member of the  Nazi party, who was involved in the Hitler Youth (which recruited her), and then the Nazi propaganda machine as a whole. The book was written after the war, and is Maschmann’s own attempt to trace her own path from well-off, upper-middle class girl, to member of the Hitler Youth, to full-fledged member of the Nazi party.

The book is, in my mind, a fascinating look into the thoughts of an ex-Nazi, one who seems to have truly recognized the abject horror the ideology, one she had supported and represented. It is not designed for the readers to forgive her, nor to justify her actions; she makes it very clear that she understands that to many, she is forever beyond forgiveness, except perhaps with immediate death. It is designed to make people understand just how insidious the ideology is, how it can effectively infect anyone, from any background, and turn them into loyal servants of genocidal maniacs. She writes about the power of doublethink, and the ways in which she was able to ignore the inhumanity of the system she served for years, in order to prevent herself from questioning her leaders.

According to her, she was drawn to fascism through a variety of means, some of which she admits she may still not be truly cognizant of. Her family was deeply antisemitic, for instance, and she readily admits that these ideas, introduced at such a young age, likely normalized worldviews that would otherwise horrify the average person. She also explains how for years, she was able to split the concept of “Jewness” from Jews, which was how she could have Jewish friends; to her at the time, they were “good” while all hatred directed at Jews were instead only to be directed at “bad” Jews; she of course admits that this is preposterous and inherently antisemitic no matter how it may be framed. 

But to her, the true draws were the promise of purpose. To her, the state was in shambles, the social classes at each other’s throats, and the economy dead. Something new and innovative had to be done, and in this space of extreme need, came the fascists. They were, in her mind, a revolutionary force for civil unity and glory, one that would restructure the state and create a bright future for Germany. Through this she was able to either ignore, or reimagine the extreme violence the state enacted, so as to not infringe on the promise of egalitarian utopia. In a way, fascism was also a rebellion against her parents, who were traditional conservatives who leaned towards supporting the ousted monarchy; the decay she sensed in them, and their distaste for the Nazis, only pushed her further into the Hitler Youth.

The book is suffused with a thick woe. Maschmann writes the book burdened by extreme guilt brought on by harsh hindsight (unless, as some scholars argue, it is instead at attempt at self-consolation, and that she never truly recognizes the depths of her own guilt), and she constantly ponders if at various stages of her life, she could have made better choices; perhaps she could have aided the resistance, or fought side-by-side with the social democrats. But she chose wrong, and none of that happened. There is no consolation, only shame.

Perhaps all that can be added, was that the book was written in 1963, a period marked by extreme denial of any wrongdoing by vast swaths of the population, and in all levels of leadership. It should also be noted that this book is one of the only pieces Maschmann left behind, and it is what she is remembered by. Is it bravery then, to abandon all pretense and show the world the measure of your crimes? To be one of the first to truly and openly admit what level of inhumanity you had stooped to and supported? Or maybe it is simply the barest of minimums, the tiniest shred of basic human decency in the face of the injustices you aided and abetted? Is someone heroic simply by doing what those who did worse were unwilling to?