Alexander C. Briscoe
Political History
Easter Term, 2024
Cambridge Journal of Political Affairs, 5(1), pp. 106-137

Introduction

The study of genocide has been dominated by scholarship that explores why mass killing and atrocities occur. Significantly less effort, however, has been directed towards examining how mass killing and atrocities are conducted (Goldhagen 2017, 16-17). The basis of this article, therefore, rests upon the notion that the conduct of violence is a salient domain of inquiry that necessitates further examination. What motivated, for example, fascist soldiers to go to the trouble of orchestrating displays of violent spectacle and theatre in their killing of enemies? In this regard, this study follows convention in which ‘Fascism refers to Italian fascism, and ‘fascism’ refers to the generic type. Why, as recounted by Adolf Buchner of an SS Pionerbataillon, did German troops in one unit on the eastern front ‘shoot the children in front of the women and then shoot the women after that?’ (Rees 2017, 220). In another case, recorded in the Surveillance Protocols, a grandiose violent spectacle was orchestrated by German troops in Odessa. ​​The Surveillance Protocols’ are records of surveilled conversations between German prisoners of war by British and American intelligence service (Neitzel and Welzer 2012, 345-351).

Here, a German soldier arrived to be greeted by another who asked him whether he wanted to watch ‘an amusing show’. A premeditated massacre of Jewish women and children was to be conducted as entertainment, and as they were packed into a barn, ‘petrol was poured over them and they were burnt alive’ (Neitzel and Welzer 2012, 125). Such excessive levels of violence were not perpetrated without reason. They were conducted for maximum gruesome effect (Fujii 2013, 413). By examining performative cases of violence, such as these, one can also uncover a great deal about the perpetrators who committed them, such as their beliefs, worldviews, and ideologies. This article, therefore, uses performance analysis to comparatively investigate the role of violent display in fascist violence. It seeks to uncover why violent displays and excessive violence were used by fascist troops, what they were used for, and what was communicated through them. It begins with an overview of fascism and the performance analysis approach. Then, it investigates the perpetration of what is termed here as strategic violent display, followed by expressive violent display.

Section 1: On Fascism and Performance Analysis

This section outlines the methodological approach which will be employed to study the use of violence by fascist troops. It will begin by examining, briefly, the specialist field of comparative fascist studies, and its notion of a distinctive fascist violence. Then, it will outline the shortcomings of the literature on mass killing (defined here as ‘the intentional killing of a massive number of noncombatants’) and genocide, and finally, it will illustrate the use of performance analysis in order to compensate for these limitations (Valentino 2004, 10).

On Fascism

In her The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt (2017, 404-405) argued that Benito Mussolini never attempted to establish ‘a full-fledged totalitarian regime’, instead settling for a traditional dictatorship. Indeed, she maintained that the Italian brand of fascism was almost incomparable to the German one. Modern scholarship has disproved this idea. Despite the existence of much heterogeneity between Fascism and National Socialism, both German and Italian variants of fascism can be linked through what Roger Griffin (1991, 26-27) calls ‘generic ideological features’ in the comparative approach to an ideal concept of fascism. This has been further augmented by Robert O. Paxton (2004, 219-220), who outlines a set of commonalities between both fascist regimes in their theory and practice of politics, and Ian Kershaw (2015, 39-41), who locates Nazism as a type of fascism (in its most radicalised stage), thus stifling those scholars who maintain that Nazism nor Italian Fascism are at all comparable. Of particular importance is our approach to the study of fascism. Fascism lacked a centralised intellectual foundation often found in the classical ‘isms’ such as libertarianism and Marxism. It had no Tocqueville, no Mill, and no Marx (Paxton 2004, 15-17). Therefore, fascism needs to be analysed primarily in how its ambiguous ideas and values were translated into political practice. In short, it is fascism’s semiotic nature, the ‘style of its politics’, and how fascism truly exercised its power where one must focus their attention (Griffin 1991, 26; Paxton 2004, 20-23).

Violence was a pillar of fascism, and fascism was an ideology of performance where ‘nebulous fascist ideals and policies [were] translated into gruesome political realities’ (Burleigh 2007, 110-11; Gentle 2004, 338-39). Therefore, the study of fascist violence is necessary if we are to further our understanding of fascism itself (Paxton 2004, 169-171; Griffin 1991, 14). That fascist violence was unique is a notion forwarded in recent scholarship (Alonso, Kramer, and Rodrigo 2019; Finaldi 2019, 35-37). Here, it is posited that a defining feature of fascist violence was the blurring of boundaries demarcating combatants from non-combatants, alongside, as Paxton illustrates, a fervent belief in its beauty and efficacy that merely radicalised over time (Alonso, Kramer, and Rodrigo 2019, 1-3; Paxton 2004, 169-171). Furthermore, Alan Kramer (2019, 25-50) illustrates the centrality of fascist warfare’s annihilationist drive which originated in colonial violence and the First World War. That fascist terror emanated from the top is clear. In Mussolini’s (3 May 1936) telegram to his occupying forces in Ethiopia in 1936, he expressly ordered that mass killing be instituted in the city of Addis Ababa, and authorised ‘once again, the initiation and conduct of systematic policies of terror and extermination against the [Ethiopian] rebels and those of the population who are accomplices’ (Del Boca 2007, 50). The same can be said of the Nazi regime, where, for example, Hitler’s order for the total eradication of the village of Lidice in a retaliatory paroxysm of anger and destruction for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich may serve as but one of many similar examples (Gerwarth 2012, 280-281). While in this episode there was a clear order for the conduct of mass killing, the polycratic nature of the Nazi regime meant that this was not always the case, an important characteristic which was central to the implementation of genocidal policy (Browning 1992, 86; Kerhsaw 1999, 527-31). As Ian Kershaw (2008, 43) illustrates, ‘Hitler set the barbaric tone’ for Nazi violence. So too, did the indoctrination materials provided to Nazi troops, such as pamphlets and other materials which established the need to ‘proceed ruthlessly and mercilessly’ (Browning 2001, 183). Thus, one can observe fascism’s annihilationist drive in the policies of mass atrocities and terror being implemented from the very top of both regimes. It is important, having observed that annihilationism and the beauty of violence were two central pillars of fascism, to examine how it was conducted by perpetrators in occupied territories.

Performance Analysis and Violent Display

The performance analysis approach conceptualised by Lee Ann Fujii (2021, 2) propounds the idea that ‘to put something on display’ brings ‘to life what exists in the imaginary’, giving it ‘materiality, visibility, and three-dimensional form.’ The power of ‘violent display’, therefore, lies in its communicative capacity, and is often conducted using ‘extra-lethal violence’ (Fujii 2013, 411). Fujii (2013, 411) forwards two types of performative violence; instrumental and expressive. She typologises both based on their function. Fujii argues that a given violent display is not limited to merely one of the aforementioned types, but can take on an array of functions. However, her typology is limited insofar as she defines instrumental violent display as that which seeks ‘to achieve some end’, and expressive violent display as that which communicates ‘some message or meaning’ (Fujii 2013, 411). The difficulty here lies in the ambiguity in this typology, which would benefit from being more conceptually rigid and thus useful. For example, it is conceivable that a political message used to attain a particular goal could be communicated using a display of violence. As such, this typology of performative violence must be modified to improve upon its conceptual utility. Therefore, strategic violent display is posited as a type of performative violence. ‘Performative violence’, ‘violent display’, and ‘violent spectacle’ are used interchangeably in this article to mean an episode where extra-lethal violence is employed as a means of expression and communication. Performative violence was defined by the presence of a strategic logic, which differentiates it from non-strategic violent display, and concurrently, can be understood as an important causal factor in the perpetration of some displays of excessive violence (Valentino 2004, 66-68). Valentina posits ‘strategic logic’ was the causal factor in mass killing, where it is perceived as ‘necessary and effective’ ; I contend that this can be similarly extended to strategic violent display (Valentino 2004, 66-68).

Thus, strategic violent display allows perpetrators to ‘broadcast’ their power, sovereignty, authority, military power, and in fascist violence, terror, brutality, and horror, to communicate strategic goals such as deterrence or a façade of military strength (Fujii 2021, 2-6).

In the second type, expressive violent display, Fujii focuses on how perpetrators use performative violence to demarcate group boundaries and societal membership (Fujii 2021, 9-11). She posits that, in engaging in violent display, perpetrators ‘are telling others who they are’, allowing them to demonstrate group allegiances and make continued participation ‘a basis for belonging’ (Fujii 2021, 5). Wolfgang Sofsky’s (1997, 224-225) analysis of what he terms ‘excessive violence’ in Nazi concentration camps posits a similar approach to that of Fujii, outlining that ‘cruelty has a social meaning… it occurs in a social context.’ It is thus contingent that extra-lethal violence and violent display occur in given historical contexts, and in their most expressive forms, can communicate facets of the ideologies and worldviews of their perpetrators. Thus, it can be understood that violent display ‘bring[s] to life ideas about how the world should be and more specifically, how it should be ordered—who should have power and who should be included’ (Fujii 2021, 2).

A violent display is constituted by three central elements (Fuji 2013, 413-414). The first element is the perpetrator. Here Fujii outlines that the role of the perpetrator is central insofar as they can delegate their own group allegiances and, concurrently, relegate their victim(s) to other social or political groups (Fujii 2013, 414; Fujii 2021, 5). This accommodates particular approaches within genocide studies which expound deep societal cleavages and inter-group hatred in the conflagration of mass killing and atrocities (Chirot and McCauley 2006). The second element of violent display is the audience, which can range from civilian and military spectators to more distant entities such as governments, military command, political elites, and the international community (Fujii 2013, 414). The audience is a critical component to a violent display because it accommodates the broadcasting and communication of the messages which are embedded in the spectacle (Fujii 2021, 94). The third element in violent display is its ‘staging’, or the setting up of the performance (Fujii 2013, 414). This can involve tailoring the spectacle for the camera or for the surrounding spectators, and, for example, the dressing up of victims and aesthetic arrangement. Both strategic and expressive types of violent display are central to this study, as their analysis has the potential to tell us (1) what strategic utility violence harboured for fascists, and (2) how they may have expressed themselves or their ideologies through violence in non-strategic violent spectacles.

Section 2: The Strategic Use of Violent Display and the Infliction of Terror

As observed, a central domain of performative violence is its ability to convey messages which are of strategic value. This section will examine how fascist perpetrators utilised violent display strategically to broadcast messages of power, terror, and deterrence into occupied populations. This domain of performative violence, therefore, can be interpreted as utilitarian in nature, and thus ascribes to it an element of rationale usually omitted from other types of violence committed by fascist perpetrators. Strategic violent display is of particular importance to this study insofar as the use of terror is a defining element of fascist violence, and strategic violence, as shall be observed, was used as a tool of inflicting this terror (Alonso, Kramer, and Rodrigo 2019, 2). This section finds that common methods using violent display were employed by both Italian and German fascist perpetrators, alongside similar modes of victim selection.

Nazi Anti-Partisan Violence

Subjection to Nazi violence was not limited to those ethnic groups which were targeted in the Final Solution, and anti-partisan operations made up a large component of Wehrmacht operations within Germany’s occupied territories (Kay 2021, 3). As Timothy Synder (2010, 226) illustrates, the strategic policy of the Wehrmacht regarding partisan groups was to strike ‘such terror into the population that it [lost] all will to resist.’ Partisan operations caused the occupying Germans significant hindrance, especially in their invasion of the Soviet Union. Here, as the German advance pressed on with lightning speed, it cut off many Red Army units which joined with local guerrilla fighters to harass German troops from behind the front lines (2009, 195). Alongside this, many civilians took to the forests to form and join these resistance efforts. The German response materialised primarily in the form of reprisals against civilians, which ‘remained the keystone of operations conducted against the enemy’ (Kay 2021, 63).This is typical of fascist violence, where the boundaries between combatants and non-combatants are lost (Alonso, Kramer, and Rodrigo 2019, 1-3). Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer (2012, 77) argue that Wehrmacht soldiers framed atrocities and operations against partisans through a prism of revenge rather than ideology. However, while they acknowledge the blurring of boundaries between combatant and non-combatant in Wehrmacht reprisals, they fail to identify the German mass atrocities as fascist in character, drawing instead upon the shortcomings of international law. They thus omit the salient role of fascist ideology which, as has been observed, adorned violence (Neitzel and Harald 2012, 77-80). By omitting ideology, they have overlooked a critical variable in the process of mass killing. While the mass atrocities committed against partisans can be interpreted as strategically rational insofar as they were committed to increase operational efficiency by disincentivizing other partisans and non-combatants from engaging in partisan activities, they also acted in terrorising the occupied population more broadly, culminating in what Alex J. Kay (2021, 63) calls ‘preventive terror’.

Strategic violent display was most often carried out using hangings. Figure 2.1 displays a photograph of the hanging of two alleged partisans in a German-occupied part of the USSR. The attachment of signs around the necks of the victims’ corpses is a defining feature of the display. Not only are the victims killed for alleged partisan activities, but they are hanged, and messages are draped over their bodies. As the photograph was taken from behind, it is impossible to view the messages inscribed on these signs, however, it would be reasonable to presume that they contained some form of deterrent message or, at the very least, designated the victims as partisans. A similar inference can be made based on an analogous photograph of victims. Figure 2.2 displays the corpses of two men who were hanged in Vienna in 1945, with both, like the victims in figure 2.1, having signs attached to their bodies. The sign on the corpse closest to the cameraman accuses him of aiding the Bolsheviks. As these photographs illustrate, the use of signage was common practice in strategic and expressive violent display and occurred across Nazi-occupied Europe. During the pogrom of 7 November 1941 in Minsk, Belarus, gallows were erected throughout the city where around 100 people were hanged in public and ‘from their necks dangled plywood signs with the words ‘Partisan,’ ‘For Associating with ‘Partisans,’ ‘Communist,’ and so on’ (Ehrenburg and Grossman 2002, 118). In each of the cases, the signs served as a categorisation of group identity. Thus, the hangings served the perpetrators by constructing meaning and assigning group membership to both their victims and, by extension, themselves (Fujii 2021, 165-166).

Hangings can thus be observed as a consistent type of strategic violent display used by German troops across the occupied territories, with particular emphasis being placed upon the use of signs draped over the victims’ bodies. The inscription of messages allowed perpetrators to broadcast power, terror, and deterrence to the occupied population, granting insight into the logic of perpetration behind the violence committed. That many of the soldiers in figure 2.1 can be seen with cameras shows that they wished to make the event permanent and that it was thus notable – after the men had been hanged, the signs constructed and attached to their corpses, the soldiers wrapped up the performance by photographing the spectacle. The audience in this episode included the perpetrators themselves, alongside, most importantly, civilians. When passing the corpses, they would have doubtlessly been inoculated by the gripping terror at the horrific sight, reading the messages draped upon the victims’ bodies which were inscribed for their consumption. It was a spectacle designed to inflict fear upon onlookers. The display also functioned for the perpetrators as a reaffirmation of their own group identities. This is an important role that all types of violent display had for the perpetrators. The method of hanging also varied, however, and in some cases German troops executed partisans using more torturous methods, as recounted in the Surveillance Protocols by an SS man while conversing with a Wehrmacht paratrooper (Neitzel and Welzer 2012, 310):

They completely wiped out a ‘Wehrmachtskompanie’ (?) there [in Tours] … we caught one-hundred-and-fifty at one go and hanged them in the street… With those one-hundred-and-fifty partisans, whom we hanged, the knots were tied in front, not behind. If the knot is behind, the spine is broken immediately, but in this way they suffocate slowly. That tortures them.

Despite quick and efficient mass killings being a central theme of Nazi genocide rarely equalled elsewhere, in this episode the lengthier process of erecting a scaffold, attaching nooses, and proceeding to hang 150 alleged partisans (although many were probably non-combatants) was chosen as the method of perpetration (Neitzel and Welzer 2012, 311). Like the previous case and those which shall be analysed below, this display of violence was a ‘graphic form of meaning-filled communication’ (Fujii 2021, 165). Great attention is given to the torturous methods which were chosen by the perpetrators, particularly, to exhibit through the display the horrific consequences of being a partisan.

Verbal recollections of anti-partisan reprisals demonstrate, above all, the annihilationist brutality of fascist violence and the blurring of boundaries between combatant and noncombatant. Wehrmacht responses to partisan activities often materialised in horrific paroxysms of terror and destruction: ‘In the Caucasus, with the 1. GD [Mountain Division], when one of us had been killed, no lieutenant needed to give any orders. It was: pistols drawn, and women, children, everything they saw…’ (Neitzel and Welzer 2012, 79). Although, as observed, violent display was utilised strategically in anti-partisan reprisals in the form of hangings, in other episodes there seemed to be little time to stage such spectacles due to the paroxysms of onslaught that ensued. But can such destructive terror be interpreted as a form of violent display? It is true that it lacks some of the various stages of violent display as theorised by Fujii (2021). However, other features remain, such as the audience, perpetrators, and victims. By eradicating villages and destroying communities, it nevertheless broadcasted a similar if not identical deterrent message: partisan operations will be met with indiscriminate and brutal annihilation. In the following excerpt from the Surveillance Protocols, a Wehrmacht POW recalls how, after perpetrating a massacre in response to a partisan attack, German soldiers left just one village person alive to spread the news of what had just occurred (Neitzel and Welzer 2012, 79):

There were fifty men in the village; forty nine of them were shot and the fiftieth was hounded through the neighbourhood so that he should spread abroad what happens to the populations if a German soldier is attacked.

Despite not serving as overt spectacle, such as the hangings discussed above, such atrocities can be interpreted as more idiosyncratic forms of strategic violent display which deserve their own typology in strictly fascist terms. Where the previous violent exhibits are defined by the use of signage and clear messages demarcating the victims as partisans, and thus assigning to them a group identity, this episode of mass killing is defined by the theme of annihilation. That one man of 50 was left alive and, furthermore, driven through the local area and hounded by the perpetrators, defines this episode as a strategic form of violent display. In this display of violence, the man was not spared out of mercy or restraint. Rather, in keeping him alive, the perpetrators could ensure that the message and memory of what had occurred would prevail and be broadcasted to neighbouring localities, and further drive the idea of Nazi terror into the occupied population.

As Fujii (2013, 420) outlines, ‘some violent acts shock and terrify by what they mean’, just as much as by what they do. That extra-lethal violence can be used to communicate a strategic message has thus far been established, and when this is further incorporated into a typology of fascist violence, one can palpably observe that indiscriminate, barbaric atrocities were used as methods of broadcasting terror, fear, and ruthlessness, thus acting as a deterrent against partisan operations and anti-Nazi actions more generally. The massacre at this village was conducted in a particular way in order to broadcast a message of strategic value. Therefore, mass killing was also used by Nazi troops, alongside violent spectacles such as hangings, in order to broadcast fear and deterrence into occupied populations. The same conclusions can be made from the preceding recollection, where it is shown that Nazi violence did not differentiate between the innocent or the guilty; nor between men, women, and children.

Italian Fascist Strategic Violence

The use of strategic violent display, as shall be observed, was not limited to Nazi anti-partisan retaliation, but was utilised as a classic tool of control in fascist violence more generally. Indeed, Italian Fascist troops exerted similar levels of brutality alongside identical modes of victim identification. In fact, this was pioneered by the Italian Fascists (Campbell 2022, 121). Like its Nazi counterpart, cases of Fascist strategic violent display were often perpetrated in reprisals against partisan activity. This can be best observed in Italy’s imperial invasion and occupation of Ethiopia (1935 – 1941), where the Fascist regime launched the largest colonial campaign in history in terms of manpower, efficiency, and organisation (Rochat 2005, 35). It was also, as is argued here, a distinctively fascist occupation because of the violence which was perpetrated there (Dominioni 2008, 5). Angelo Del Boca (2007, 30) places much of the onus on Il Duce, Benito Mussolini, for the uniquely fascist modes of violence used in what he calls Italy’s ‘war of extermination’ in Ethiopia.

Figures 2.3, 2.4, and 2.5 display the disturbing process of a strategic display of violence used in response to Ethiopian rebel activities. In August 1937, the former governor of the Uag region, degiac Hailù Chebbedè, called upon the population of his region to engage in a ‘holy war’ against the Fascist occupiers. After significant military successes, such as the wiping out of an entire Italian military garrison, Chebbedè’s death became an imperative aim for the Italian regime in Ethiopia (Del Boca 2011, 86). In assigning the capture and execution of Chebbedè to a Colonel Tosti, General Pirzio Biroli ordered the former (Del Boca 2011, 86):

Therefore, you must capture the leader of the rebels, Hailù Chebbedè, dead or alive, and hang him in the square of Socotà; leave for the guns the leaders who are secondary in importance; raze to the ground the towns which had shared in the rebel cause.

Importantly, Socotà was the capoluogo (capital town) of Chebbedè’s region. What General Biroli therefore ordered, was a violent display which, as observed in the photographs of figures 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, and 2.6, was intended to act as ‘a warning to the Ethiopian rebels who did not accept Italian domination’ (Del Boca 2007, 118). Interestingly, the violent display itself was not performed there, in front of a large Ethiopian audience. Instead, Chebbedè’s severed head was transported to the central square in a biscuit box (Del Boca 2007, 115). This violent spectacle went through several stages. First, after his head was severed, it was placed in a biscuit box. Then, his head was intentionally transported to the central square of the capital town of his region. Observable in the photographs of figures 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, and 2.6, the first audience present are actually Fascist soldiers (alongside what seem to be Eritrean askaris) who gaze upon Chebbedè’s head while one photographs it, including a close-up photograph (figure 2.5) to encapsulate it all in its most disturbing detail. By photographing each stage of the display, the Italians sought to make the violent display permanent. As can be seen in figure 2.4, one Italian even laughs as the head is removed from the box. Finally, in its attachment to the long pole in the centre of Socotà, the audience changed to include local Ethiopians who would pass his severed head until it eventually decomposed (Del Boca 2007, 173-175). Importantly, that the order to stage the display of violence was received by Colonel Tosti from General Biroli shows that this violent display was inherently strategic and was intended to broadcast to the Ethiopians the terror of Fascism, its victory over Ethiopian rebels, and the consequences of opposing the Fascist regime. This was a message to local Ethiopians through the use of their former leader’s severed head, and was, like all strategic violent displays, forcefully imposed upon them.

The most infamous episode of mass killing and violence perpetrated by the Fascists in Ethiopia occurred during 19 – 21 February 1937, and erupted as a response to a rebel attack on the Italian colonial viceroy Rodolfo Graziani (Campbell 2017, 49-53). The civilian population of Addis Ababa were the primary victims targeted in the aftermath of the rebel attack. Ian Campbell estimates, based on three methods of analysis, that during the Massacre of Addis Ababa (known in Ethiopia as Yekatit 12) approximately 19,200 individuals were killed in the massacre and retaliations (Campbell 2017, 327-328). Like in the Nazi reprisals, Fascist troops did not target only combatants and rebels, instead inflicting an almost incomparable terror upon the civilian inhabitants of the city, fully unleashing a drive of annihilationism against them. In his secret journal, Ciro Poggiali recorded what he witnessed during the conflagration of the mass killing (Del Boca 2011, 129):

All of the [Italian] civilians who found themselves in Addis Ababa took up the work of the vendetta, which was conducted immediately using the authentic methods of fascist squadrismo. They are going around armed with batons and iron bars, taking as many natives as they can find in the street… I see a driver that, having taken down an old black man with the blow of a bat, pierced his head from one part to the other with a bayonet. Needless to say, the ignorant and the innocent are the victims of the havoc.

In the direct aftermath of the attack, military tribunals were established by the Fascist-colonial regime which, despite being used to exterminate the Ethiopian intelligentsia and others who threatened the occupation, concurrently acted as a constellation of large-scale strategic violent displays used to strike terror and fear into the Ethiopian population (Campbell 2017, 258). The Fascist occupiers, in addition to the three day mass killing carried out executions using portable gallows, conducted in towns and villages. This allowed for the performance to take a tour of occupied Ethiopia (Campbell 2017, 275-276). These mobile theatres of death can be observed in figures 2.7, 2.8, and 2.9 (Campbell 2017, 275-277). The portable gallows allowed for performances of executions to be staged in the localities of Ethiopia, observable in figure 2.9, where a young child is led to his execution by the hangman as a crowd composed of Italian soldiers and local Ethiopians gazes upon the horror. This was designed for the sole reason of inflicting terror upon the population of Ethiopia.

The strategic use of violent display is intimately related to the indiscriminate victim selection which was endemic to fascist violence. This is because, as has been observed, strategic displays of violence were utilised in order to broadcast deterrence, fear, and terror to civilians who could at any moment be mobilised against their occupiers through rebel activities. That they were not only the consumers, but also the victims of violent display meant that, in the consumption of a violent display, individuals were not merely witnessing the executions of rebels from whom they could distance themselves, but rather, they were gazing upon the lifeless bodies of others not unlike themselves. The idea posited by Fujii (2021, 165), that violent displays have the function of demarcating group allegiances and membership, also applied to audience members who neither participated in the perpetration of executions nor in the partisan operations which triggered the reprisals. Yet, they were still able to be assigned a group, so to speak, in the experience of witnessing a violent display. These strategic displays of violence also harmed those who were in attendance and were thus targeted through the spectacles. The displays acted, therefore, in ‘violating and harming the larger social bodies’ who were represented by the victims in the spectacles (Fujii 2021, 165). As has been observed in this section, the methods of strategic violent display used to broadcast fascist terror into the occupied populations, alongside its corollary mode of victim selection, had a strategic logic and were common across both Nazi and Fascist cases, and can therefore be interpreted as powerful tools of fascist violence.

Section 3: The Expressive Use of Violent Display and the Materialisation of Ideology

The use of violent display as a tool of fascist violence has thus far been understood in terms of its sheer brutality and indiscriminate selection of victims. Now, the use of displays of violence as mediums of expression, lacking strategic logic, shall be observed. This section shows how fascist perpetrators used displays of violence as modes of expression and illustrates the prominence of ideology and worldview in such performances.

German Cases of Expressive Violence

On 17 August 1942, the Second Company of the German Order Police, Reserve Police Battalion 101 descended upon the town of Łomazy in Lublin, Poland, to carry out the liquidation of the 1,700 Jews who resided there (Browning 1992, 78-80). In analyses of episodes such as these, where German troops executed genocidal policy with cold efficiency, the role of ideology has often been significantly overlooked. Christopher R. Browning’s (1992, 184-189) study of the men of this battalion places the onus for participation in mass killing on social pressure and conformity, the group dynamics which expounded a hypermasculine ‘toughness’ in the face of the killings, and the brutalisation of war which hardened the perpetrators while facilitating an environment where Nazi genocidal policy could flourish. Ideology, therefore, is peripheral in Browning’s analysis (Lewy 2017, 5).

Despite this, Browning’s (1992, 82-83) study of the perpetrators does not omit instances of violent performances in which ideology was expressed. One such episode occurred outside the forest of Łomazy during Second Company’s operations there. While awaiting the digging of a mass grave by a group of Jews, Lieutenant Hartwig Gnade (the company commander) staged a spectacle of violent degradation:

Even before the shooting began, First Lieutenant Gnade had personally picked out some twenty to twenty-five elderly Jews. They were exclusively men with full beards. Gnade made the old men crawl on the ground in the area before the grave. Before he gave them the order to crawl, they had to undress…The noncommissioned officers went to the edge of the forest, fetched themselves clubs, and vigorously beat the Jews with them.

While Browning (1992, 82) reflects upon this performance as mere ‘entertainment’, its use as a form of violent ideological expression is palpable. The victims were chosen by Lieutenant Gnade according to three primary characteristics: they were all elderly, bearded men. This is important because the aesthetics of a violent display are crucial in its communicative capacity (Fujii 2021, 117). Particular emphasis should be placed on the fact that the victims were chosen because they were bearded. Finally, the selection of elderly male Jews is of particular importance given that elders, in Jewish culture, enjoy a status of respect and superiority (Goldhagen 2007, 188-189). In Nazism’s pseudo-scientific racial worldview, a set of given characteristics distinguished the inferior Jews from their Aryan superiors, seen in anti-Semitic materials which described Jews as being racially identifiable by ‘the crooked nose, the beards and flat feet’ (Oberlindober 1937).

That Lieutenant Gnade’s victims were exclusively bearded, likely illustrates that he selected them for the display based upon their likeness to Nazi racial illustrations of ‘the Jew’. By making them crawl naked on the ground, bearing in mind that they were also exclusively elderly, was an act orchestrated to degrade his physically stereotyped Jewish victims. This spectacle of degradation was insufficient, however, and in the penultimate stage of the display, the victims were all violently beaten by hitherto spectating non-commissioned officers. The display concluded when Gnade and the other perpetrators drove the Jews to the execution area and killed them all (Browning 1992, 83). This was a display of violence used to degrade Jewish victims, specifically chosen for their physical characteristics, and lacking any strategic logic or rationale.

In another expressive violent display perpetrated by men of the same battalion, one can observe a very similar performance seen in figure 3.1. Here, a member of the Battalion shaves the beard of a Jewish victim while two other members of the Battalion laugh, another photographing the spectacle. As Daniel Goldhagen (2007, 246) argues, the cutting of the victims’ beards established a relationship of total dominance by the Nazi perpetrator over the Jewish victim. Furthermore, victims were emasculated by the forceful removal of facial hair, symbolic of masculinity. The photographs were taken from a vantage point which allowed for the victims to be on full display for the camera, while concurrently capturing the shearer (who deliberately posed for the photograph) and the other members of the Battalion who were partaking as audience members. This display was photographed to memorialise the work of the men and their mastery over their victim. It was also an act intended to assign a status of inferiority to their emasculated victims, who were forcefully put on display to gratify the perpetrators. Photographs were later ‘laid out on the wall and anyone, as he pleased, could order copies of them’ (Goldhagen 2007, 547).

Inscribed on the other side of the photograph reads, ‘He should work, but he must be clean-shaven’, a palpable expression Nazism’s racial worldview that characterised Jews as indolent and work-shy (Goldhagen 2007, 547). As Goldhagen (2007, 188-189) highlights, there were several other instances of violent display in which victims were selected and targeted along identical lines, with the most torturous of these events occurring when members of Police Battalion 309 set fire to the beards of elderly Jewish men after making them dance in front of them (Goldhagen 2007, 188-189). Expressive violent performances such as these occurred across battalions, and in each, victims were targeted based upon their perceived Jewishness.

Violent displays of the expressive kind were not exclusively perpetrated by men of the Order Police. On 7 November 1941, in Minsk, one of the worst violent extravaganzas was perpetrated by the Gestapo during a pogrom against Jews of the Minsk Ghetto, who were victims of a violent display intended to replicate the celebrations of October Revolution Day, the Soviet national holiday marking the 1917 triumph of Bolshevism observed on November 7. This date was deliberately chosen for the mass killings and atrocities perpetrated across Minsk. The city thus became, as Timothy Synder (2010, 225) outlines, ‘a kind of macabre theatre, in which they [the German perpetrators] could act out the ersatz victory of killing Jews’ and Bolsheviks. In the ghetto, the Jews were ordered by the Gestapo to don their finest clothing and to dress their children in holiday clothes, and told to bring infants along with them (Ehrenburg and Grossman 2002, 118; Rubenstein and Altman 2008, 237-238). Once congregated in columns and dressed to mimic the celebration of the Soviet holiday, they were given Soviet flags and forced to sing revolutionary songs, all the while having to smile for the camera being used by the perpetrators to capture the performance. (Synder 2010, 225-226). The extravaganza was concluded by the sound of machine gun fire as the victims were decimated by the German troops hitherto gazing upon the grandiose performance (Ehrenburg and Grossman 2002, 118). The ideological features of this harrowing spectacle of performative atrocity are clear, and are intimately related to both Nazi ideology and the current state of international affairs that the German perpetrators were responding to.

The Gestapo perpetrators orchestrated this violent display in the context of Germany’s then recent invasion of the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. The flags and revolutionary songs that the Jewish victims of the performance were forced to carry and sing, therefore, were the symbols, ideas, and choruses that represented, for the Gestapo perpetrators, the enemy in the East. That the victims, who were dressed to mimic the celebration of the triumph of Bolshevism in the Soviet Union, were Jewish, was a representation ever more intimately connected to National Socialist thought, which emphasised Bolshevism and the Jewish population as one and the same (Kay 2012, 3). Their decimation by machine guns, therefore, was both an act of ideological fulfilment and an expression of German victory over the Jewish-Bolshevik enemy.

Italian Fascist Expressive Violence

Having ordered Viceroy Graziani to initiate policies of mass terror and extermination against rebels in Ethiopia, already shown to have been perpetrated against the wider civilian population, Mussolini, by 8 July 1936, had instituted a truly fascist-colonial occupation. In his diary on 16 March 1936, Giuseppe Bottai (1989, 102) recorded what he saw as the transformation of Italian Fascist soldiers from ‘heroism to cruelty’ in what he called ‘episodes of imbestiamento’ (the transformation of a person into a beast). He was evidently disgusted by what he was writing. One of the stories noted by Bottai (1989, 102), which was recounted to him by Galeazzo Ciano, saw Achille Starace (a Fascist Party secretary) use a group of prisoners for target practice. He wrote that:

Having arranged [the prisoners] in a line in front of him, he started his target practice, aiming at their hearts. Skilfully, he never missed. At the fourth prisoner, he stopped: ‘this way they don’t suffer enough!’… And from the fifth, he aimed first at their testicles, and then, but only to finish off his victims, at their hearts.

This episode of excessive violence was defined by three elements. First, the use of prisoners for target practice, in the place of more conventional objects, was in itself an act of sadistic entertainment for Starace. Second, Starace targeted, specifically, the hearts of his victims. Why not, for example, merely aim at the victims’ heads? The targeting of his victims’ hearts was done not only for its delivery of an instant death, but also for its symbolic expression. This is because the heart as an organ harbours myriad symbolic qualities, being not only the life-giver of the human body, but also representing emotions such as love, euphoria, and romance, antithetical to the fundamental beauty of violence and the importance of a strong, unyielding masculinity propounded by fascism (Paxton 2004, 34-35; Payne 1995, 13). By targeting his victim’s heart, therefore, Starace was destroying his enemy with a fierce blow to the most vital organ in both a physiological and symbolic sense. This was, however, not enough for the ardent fascist perpetrator, who inflicted more suffering by shooting, first, his victims’ testicles, brutally emasculating them prior to killing them with a symbolic shot to the heart. The idea of atrocities of emasculation by Ethiopians against Italians was already being used by the Fascist regime to justify its use of aerial chemical warfare to the international community (Sbacchi 2005, 49-50). It was thus a wholly expressive display of violence perpetrated for self-gratification, lacking any instrumental motive.

Even more harrowing expressive displays of violence were conducted in the Addis Ababa Massacre, outlined in the preceding section. In the utter anarchy and chaos throughout the massacre, there was little time to stage highly coordinated performances such as that conducted by the Gestapo in the Minsk Ghetto. Instead, what occurred in Addis Ababa were displays of violence which sought to communicate terror, fear, and fascist tenets of superiority, victory, and the beauty of violence, devoid of any strategic logic. The use of trucks as weapons eventually developed into a harrowing form of violent display, in which, as recounted by an Ethiopian eyewitness and survivor (Campbell 2017, 121):

Ethiopian blood flowed like water everywhere. Saddest of all was that at first they tied dead bodies to the back of their trucks, and pulled them along the road while shouting and singing, but later, they also started to tie the living to their trucks, so as not to waste bullets. It was very disturbing to see human bodies being torn to pieces alive, by stones and bushes.

As Campbell (2017, 121) notes, the tying of victims to vehicles was a method of excessive violence that ‘earned the Blackshirts notoriety’ in the 1920s, and so its use in Addis Ababa by those same units displays a continuity of classic fascist methods in Ethiopia. In this case, the use of vehicles as a weapon by fascists developed into a sinister form of mobile violent display, which was palpably used to demonstrate the most salient fascist tenets of terror, fear, violence, but also of Italian superiority and power over their racially inferior African enemy. In Italy, ideas of racial superiority separating white Italians from black Africans evolved from the occupation of Ethiopia (Smith 1997, 112-13). By the time of the massacre at Addis Ababa in February 1937, black Ethiopians were already seen as inferior in Italian Fascist legislation (Smith 1997, 112-13). What differentiates this display is that it lacked any strategic logic. It was done to communicate and express fascist terror, but only for the gratification of the perpetrators. It did so in response to what it perceived to be an Ethiopian enemy, but it was also designed to communicate fascist destruction and horror to the civilian inhabitants of the city.

The efficient killings characteristic of the Nazi genocidal programme stand in contrast to the much more laborious expressive displays of performative violence examined in this section on Fascist violence in Ethiopia. The expressive displays were historically rooted, such as the massacre which replicated the Soviet’s October Revolution Day, perpetuated amidst Nazi Germany’s war against the Soviets. Clear similarities relating more broadly to the central tenets of fascism can be detected across both cases. First, the theme of emasculation occurred in both. Where the beards of Jewish victims of Nazi violence were sheared while German troops gazed upon them laughingly, Ethiopian victims had their genitals mutilated in a game of human target practice. Emasculation functioned as the antipode to the fascist masculine ideal and was thus a clear expression of the fascist ideology of the perpetrator. If the ideal fascist man was one imbued with the virtues of unyielding masculine prowess, his victims were characterised in an antithetical manner. They were stripped of their masculinity, dominated by the perpetrators. They also communicated key fascist tenets like terror, military superiority, and the beauty of violence itself, seen unambiguously in the Italian case in which fascists used a truck as a mobile form of violent display. Expressive displays of violence concurrently communicated why perpetrators were killing their victims – they killed them because they were stereotypically Jewish, or because they were Bolsheviks, and so on. This demonstrates that ideology was not entirely amiss in fascist mass killing and atrocities, and was powerfully communicated through expressive displays of violence.

Conclusion

Using performance analysis, the use of violent display by fascist perpetrators has been examined in this article. By dividing violent display into strategic and expressive forms, the role of display in fascist violence has been illuminated. First, this article has shown that German and Italian fascists shared common violent practices. Both German and Italian fascist perpetrators used strategic violence to broadcast messages of deterrence and terror in the context of anti-fascist guerrilla activity. Therefore, given that strategic violent display was used as an instrumental mode of control because of its communicative power, it had a strategic logic. It was committed outside of or alongside reasons such as expression, entertainment, or revenge. Its perpetration contained a strategic rationale not present in other drivers of mass atrocities. Its enactment differed, too, in that in some cases excessive violence was perpetrated and developed into a violent display which contained an instrumental element. Examples include the Wehrmacht massacre of forty-nine civilians where only one was left alive. In others it was explicitly ordered by military superiors.

In expressive displays of violence, it can be observed that fascist perpetrators communicated facets of ideology, worldview, and war through spectacle. Importantly, it is clear that, in the episodes that were examined in Section 3, ideology was in fact present in the conduct of mass killing and atrocities, and that the perpetrators, therefore, were informed by the respective ideologies of their regimes. Perpetrators of fascist violence cannot be separated from their fascism. For example, the grandiose performance enacted in the Minsk Ghetto would not have been carried out in such a manner if the Gestapo perpetrators were not adherents of National Socialism. However, as has been seen in the Italian cases, expressive violent display was not used exclusively to communicate ideology. Here, other tenets of war, annihilationism, and the beauty of violence were expressed in the sadistic and symbolic emasculation and killing of Ethiopian prisoners and the use of trucks as a mobile spectacle of terror and destruction. The use of the truck, and the game of target practice using prisoners, did not overtly express fascist ideology in the same way that those which have been examined in the Nazi cases did. However, they still communicated important tenets of war and annihilationism, which are central precepts of fascism more generally. This shows that many fascist perpetrators did not perpetrate mass killing and atrocities merely because of group pressures or processes of social conformity. It demonstrates that fascist perpetrators were willing to express their adherence to fascism through violent spectacle, and that the conduct of violence represents a central facet of genocide which necessitates further scholarly attention.