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ABSTRACT
This article analyses the transfer of ‘ruralist’ ideas between Germany and Britain, showing how connections can be made across time and space between fascist(ic) ideologies of landscape and rural belonging. Focusing mainly on two individuals who bridged the countries, Rolf Gardiner and Georg Götsch, the author shows that this key aspect of fascism – ironically, one which depended so much on images that glorified ‘local beauty’ – drew on a store of ideas common to much of Europe at the time. Transnational history thus brings new understandings to fields even as well-researched as fascism, returning us to the truism that fascism constituted a modern movement with a combination of technocratic and scientistic as well as nostalgic and romantic elements. Indeed, the history of fascism forces us to reconsider what is meant by ‘modern’ in a transnational context, taking us beyond simple dualisms such as ‘reactionary’ and ‘avant-garde’ or ‘futurist’ and ‘nostalgic’.
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Notes
1. See, for example, the Journal of World History 19, no. 3 (2008), on the UN; Kaiser, Leucht and Rasmussen (eds.), The History of the European Union and Kaiser and Starie (eds.), Transnational European Union, on the EU.
2. Especially in the context of the Cold War and the developing opposition to communism after the Helsinki Process. See, for example, Thomas, The Helsinki Effect; Snyder, Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War.
3. Bashford and Levine (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics, esp. the essays in Part I: “Transnational Themes in the History of Eugenics.”
4. Bauerkämper, Der Faschismus in Europa 1918–1945, 176; Bauerkämper, “Ambiguities of Transnationalism,” 45; See also Durham and Power (eds.), New Perspectives on the Transnational Right; Bar-On, “Transnationalism and the French Nouvelle Droite,” 214–15, where Bar-On argues, rather contentiously, that the existence of pan-European SS brigades during World War II testifies to the existence of a “fascist international.”
5. Eley, Nazism as Fascism.
6. Jerrold, The Necessity of Freedom, 159. Similarly, the BUF activist James Drennan (aka W.E.D. Allen, formerly Conservative MP for West Belfast until he joined Mosley’s New Party in 1930) wrote that ‘The Ulster movement was, in fact, the first Fascist movement in Europe’; see also Drennan, B.U.F. Oswald Mosley and British Fascism, 292.
7. See for example Kellogg, The Russian Roots of Nazism.
8. Finchelstein, Transatlantic Fascism, 38 and passim.
9. See especially Bauerkämper and Rossoliński-Liebe (eds.), Fascism without Borders and the articles in the special issue of the Journal of Global History 12, no. 2 (2017). For a more critical approach to transnationalism in this context and see Roberts, Fascist Interactions.
10. For the ways in which local landscapes could inform nationalist ideas in Germany, see, for example, Lekan and Zeller, Germany’s Nature; Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor and Applegate, A Nation of Provincials.
11. Confino, Germany as a Culture of Remembrance, 46.
12. Griffin, Modernism and Fascism; Griffin makes a similar point (see esp. 255–8) and criticises those historians who focus only on Nazi technocratic visions or on Nazism’s romantic “anti-modernism.” See also the valuable comments in Zander, Right Modern, esp. 63–76; Zander’s claim that the mainstream of British fascism (especially the BUF) admired Italian Fascist schemes for land improvement and aimed to mechanize agriculture is well taken. However, despite his sensible conclusion (p. 76) that fascism aimed at “finding a proper balance between industry and agriculture rather than attempting to be entirely techno-futuristic or entirely focused on a return to the idealised past”, by dismissing fascist rural nostalgia as a minority view he tends to reproduce the modernist/anti-modernist dichotomy that Griffin wants to overcome.
13. Howkins, “Discovery of Rural England.”
14. Bauerkämper, “Ambiguities of Transnationalism,” 54.
15. Hofmeyr claims in Bayley et al., “AHR Conversations: On Transnational History,” 1444, that the “claim of transnational methods is not simply that historical processes are made in different places but that they are constructed in the movement between places, sites, and regions.”
16. See Uekoetter, The Green and the Brown.
17. Cited in Neumann, “National Socialism, Holocaust, and Ecology,” 111.
18. Schattenfroh, Wille und Rasse, 69.
19. As Piers Stephens claims in his critical analysis of Anna Bramwell: “Blood, Not Soil,” 174; Stephens is right to take on some of Bramwell’s more provocative claims, but the fact that mainstream contemporary green thinking has divorced itself from its far-right origins should not lead to a denial of those origins altogether.
20. See the essays in Jefferies and Tyldesley (eds.), Rolf Gardiner: Folk, Nature and Culture in Interwar Britain, especially Richard Griffiths, “The Dangers of Definition: Post-Facto Opinions on Rolf Gardiner’s Attitudes towards Nazi Germany,” and Stone, “Rolf Gardiner: An Honorary Nazi?” 137–49 and 151–68 respectively.
21. Tyldesley, “Rolf Gardiner and Pacifism: The Case of Max Plowman,” in Jefferies and Tyldesley (eds.), Rolf Gardiner, 121–35.
22. Jefferies, “Rolf Gardiner and German Naturism,” in Jefferies and Tyldesley (eds.), Rolf Gardiner, 60 and Youth cited on 63.
23. See Tyldesley, “The German Youth Movement and National Socialism,” 21–34.
24. For example: Laqueur, Young Germany, 243.
25. Jefferies, “Rolf Gardiner and German Naturism,” 62; Coupland, Farming, Fascism and Ecology, 219–20. Gardiner’s report on the Goslar Bauerntag 12 years later presents an image of a man frightened by the “blind, irresistible forces [that] were being let loose” – a far cry from the sort of terms he used to describe Nazi Germany during the 1930s and See “The Bauerntag Congress,” in Best (ed.), Water Springing from the Ground, 126–7.
26. Darré, Blut und Boden, 2; offprint from Odal: Monatsschrift für Blut und Boden.
27. Darré, “The Peasantry as the Key to Understanding the Nordic Race,” 105.
28. Gardiner, “A Survey of Constructive Aspects of the New Germany. With Some Notes and Suggestions as to the Methods of Projection” (June 1934), 44, 43, Cambridge University Library, Rolf Gardiner Papers, RGP M3/7.
29. Gardiner, England Herself, 170–1.
30. On the English Mistery, see Stone, Breeding Superman.
31. Gardiner, “German Eastward Policy and the Baltic States,” 324.
32. Simons, “Pilgrimages to Holy Places,” 135.
33. Chase, “Review of Jefferies and Tyldesley,” 446.
34. The Springhead Ring News Sheet, 23. Arbeitslager = voluntary work camps.
35. Ludovici, “Hitler and the Third Reich,” 39.
36. Ludovici, “Hitler and the Third Reich, Part III,” 234.
37. Lymington, Famine in England, 118.
38. Ibid., 208.
39. On Kinship in Husbandry, see Moore-Colyer, “Back to Basics” and Moore-Colyer and Conford, “A ‘Secret Society’?” 189–206.
40. Gardiner, England Herself, 49.
41. Buske and Goetsch, “German Leaders’ Report,” Appendix II in Britain and Germany, edited by Gardiner and Rocholl, 259.
42. Buske and Goetsch, “German Leaders’ Report,” 266.
43. Georg Goetsch, “Germany between Russia and England,” in Gardiner and Rocholl (eds.), Britain and Germany, 103–4.
44. Gardiner, diary, July 1928, cited in Moore-Colyer, “Rolf Gardiner, Farming and the English Landscape,” in Rolf Gardiner, edited by Jefferies and Tyldesley, 99.
45. Moore-Colyer, “Rolf Gardiner, Farming and the English Landscape,” 99.
46. Gardiner, “The Musikheim, Frankfurt an der Oder,” 16.
47. Jefferies, “Rolf Gardiner and German Naturism,” 56.
48. Gardiner, “Reflections on Music and Statecraft” (1933), in Best (ed.), Water Springing from the Ground, 100.
49. Gardiner, “The Triple Function of Work Camps and Work Service in Europe,” in Best (ed.), Water Springing from the Ground, 110.
50. Gardiner, World without End, 33.
51. Götsch to Gardiner, August 13, 1939, RGP E2/4.
52. Gardiner to Goebbels, April 25, 933, RGP A2/6, 5.
53. Gardiner to Arthur Bryant, October 8, 1939 (Christendom); December 30, 1941 (reconciliation), King’s College London, Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, Bryant Papers, E19.
54. Gardiner, “Georg Goetsch and the Musikheim,” in Best (ed.), Water Springing from the Ground, 70; Gardiner to Goebbels, April 25, 1933, 4.
55. Gardiner, “Rural Reconstruction,” 107.
56. Gardiner, England Herself, 56.
57. Silone, Fontamara, 91, 96. But see also Pennacchi, The Mussolini Canal, for a portrayal of rural fascism that focuses on a more prosperous peasant family. At one point (195), Pennacchi has Mussolini say: “Out of the towns with you, into the countryside … that’s what Fascism is all about.”
58. See Stone, “Rural Revivalism and the Radical Right in France and Britain between the Wars.”
59. Howard of Penrith, “Lessons from Other Countries,” 284.
60. Gardiner, “The Kassel Festival,” in Best (ed.), Water Springing from the Ground, 136.
61. Gardiner, “The Kassel Festival,” in Best (ed.), Water Springing from the Ground, 134, 136.
62. Matless, Landscape and Englishness, 123.
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Notes on contributors
Dan Stone
Dan Stone is Professor of Modern History and Director of the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author or editor of 16 books, including: Histories of the Holocaust (OUP, 2010); Goodbye to All That? The Story of Europe since 1945 (OUP, 2014); The Liberation of the Camps: The End of the Holocaust and its Aftermath (Yale, 2015); and Concentration Camps: A Short History (OUP, 2017). He is currently writing a book about the International Tracing Service.