The old saw is that history repeats itself. Not exactly, suggested Neapolitan scholar Giambattista Vico (1668-1744). It’s more like a spiral: it develops or moves through repetitions, much like a spiral staircase ascends and descends the same space but at a different level.
President Trump is dealing with the conflict in Ukraine very much like Mussolini had to deal with an explosive situation in Austria in 1933. The bad actor then was Adolph Hitler who had the same goal as Vladimir Putin does today – to unite his ethnic brethren. To Putin, the Ukrainian people are really Russians only they won’t admit it; Ukraine shouldn’t exist and should be a region of the Russian Federation.
On 20 August 1933, Mussolini announced to the world that Italy would not allow Germany to absorb Austria, an independent German-speaking nation. What prompted this action? Only seven months before, in January, Adolph Hitler had become Chancellor of Germany. His fanatical beliefs were well-documented in a book he wrote while in prison after a failed coup in 1924, titled Mein Kampf (“My Struggles”). In it he promised that his first deed upon gaining power would be to absorb Austria and then reclaim all the Germanic lands lost in the First World War, a Third Reich (“empire”)
Putin made known his territorial plans for Ukraine in 2021 with a lengthy essay on the internet. He wanted to reconstitute the Russian Empire under the czars. No longer a secret, Trump as well as every European leader knows a spiral staircase when they see it.
In 1933, Europeans knew that Hitler’s plan for Austria, his homeland, was a step in the wrong direction for European peace. In fact, one of the treaties that ended World War I forbade Germany and Austria from joining together. That same treaty had given victorious Italy part of alpine Austria known as the South Tyrol which it renamed Alto Adige. Mussolini didn’t want Nazis next to Alto Adige, hence his August 20th warning.
Within Austria itself, the inhabitants were divided over an Anschluss (“annexation”) by Nazi Germany. (Today, eastern Ukraine contains an ethnic Russian population that wants Putin to annex them.) Luckily, the Austrian leader Engelbert Dollfuss was an admirer of Fascist Italy and a personal friend of the Duce. He not only resisted Hitler’s overtures but jailed Austrian Nazis.
To make sure Hitler got his message, Mussolini invited the Führer to meet him at Venice in early 1934. Before the meeting the Duce was appalled to learn that Hitler had purged his own party, murdering hundreds of fellow Nazis in one bloody night. This barbaric act confirmed Mussolini’s disdain for Hitler. In no uncertain terms he warned Hitler off any Austrian adventure.
Like Putin in Ukraine, Hitler figured he could keep stirring the Austrian pot. On July 25th, Nazis assassinated Dollfuss and planned a Nazi takeover. But a furious Mussolini sent 75,000 troops to the Austrian border ready to invade and oust any German forces. Hitler finally got the message. It was his first defeat. France and Britain lauded the move but didn’t lift a finger to help nor did they learn any lessons on how to deal with Hitler.
In fact, Italy singularly continued to protect Austria from Hitler up to 1938 until most Austrians were seduced by German successes. When Italy walked away the Germans moved in and brought the Holocaust. That’s when Jews including actress Heddy Lamarr, cosmetic queen Evelyn Lauder, and Dr. Sigmund Freud fled the country.
If you have never heard this story, it’s because it doesn’t fit the narrative of the causes of World War II. And you can be sure that if Putin isn’t chastised in Ukraine the narrative might well fault the U.S., and not Europeans, for the spiral yet to come. -JLM
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