Did Mussolini’s The Doctrine of Fascism betray the same concerns as Hitler’s Mein Kampf? Were Italian
fascism and Nazism the same political ideologies?
How did their understandings of nationalism compare with the nationalism that fueled the First World War?
What was the source of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany? Why was it such a core part of Nazi ideology?
Did it seem like a deeply felt sentiment, or a means to an end (something embraced to achieve.
certain practical goals)? Was the Holocaust inevitable given Europe’s situation after WWI?
Why did the Nazis maintain the facade that prisoners would not be killed so long after their arrival at the extermination
camps? Was this a recognition of the humanity of their victims, or the ultimate means of dehumanizing
them?
The historian Mark Mazower argues that democracy was anything but a “foregone conclusion” in the
twentieth century, and that the extremist ideologies of communism and fascism provided compelling
alternatives that could easily have become dominant forms of political association. What do you make
of this argument? What might have made fascism or hardline communism more attractive
than liberalism and democracy?