Jessen & Richter (Eds.) (64 page)

mous Mussolini of 1929 had turned into a massive face, which peered

——————

11 De Felice (2001, cd II, “I plebisciti”); Amendola-Iaccio (1999, 7); ASMIL (“Giornale Luce” No A0298.4, March 1929, Roma).

12 GPA: www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/posters/ja1935.

13 ASL: www.linz.at/archiv/nationalsoz/kapitel4.html (“All the people say Yes!”, for
Anschluss
1938).

14 DHM: www.dhm.de/lemo/objekte/pict/pl004015/index.html (“A solid block. A mil-

lion times Yes”).

15 De Felice (2001, cd III, “I plebisciti”); Amendola-Iaccio (1999, 118); ASMIL, (“Giornale Luce” No B0443, March 25, 1934, “Il Plebiscito dell’anno XII”).

246

E N Z O F I M I A N I

down from the façade of the same building (the symbol of the Party’s

absolute power), but this time with quite a different expression, much

more probing, looking into the soul of every passer-by, near or far, as if

trying to search out the infidels, anyone who was not
fascistissimo.
Making up the background and frame surrounding this giant poster, hundreds of

SIs
, in stylized letters (far more modern and attractive than the previous ones), filled the whole wing of the building.

It was also no coincidence that for the same plebiscite the regime de-

cided to call on the services of one of the most famous artists of the time.

For the celebrations surrounding this plebiscite, the graphic artist Xanti

Schawinsky was commissioned to design a thoroughly modern poster, one

that was destined to become one of the most prominent propaganda sym-

bols in times of contemporary plebiscites, and not only in Italy (Silva 1973,

51; Fimiani 2002, 168). With the colors touched up, but still fairly soft

(something Fascism did not often resort to, preferring blacks, grays and

whites), and created with montages, the poster portrayed an enormous

Duce
looking gravely down, his black shirt formed by a mass of thousands of Italian heads during one of the ritual “oceanic rallies”. This was a

graphic feature that could no longer be considered paradigmatically plebi-

scitary. In the foreground, superimposed, there was a colossal
SI
with the triumphant results of the 1934 plebiscite
.
Such a poster was indeed impressive, for its massive size and plebiscitary unanimity as well as for the

perception it offered of how the new visual communication techniques

were entering the sphere of politics, altering the very codes of the propa-

gandistic message.

These peaks of efficacy achieved by the Fascists were taken up by Na-

tional Socialism with the obsessive mobilization to which it subjected the

German people, an increasingly lapidary communicative potency, and de-

signs and colors guaranteed to impress. Of the many examples of this were

the enormous, aggressive
Ja
s and the hands outstretched in the “German

salute”
(deutsche Gruß
) of the posters used for the last
Volksabstimmungen,
the ones that, in 1938, although the totalitarian order had been virtually

achieved and guaranteed, were even more fiercely controlled: in April in

Austria,16 and in December in Sudetenland (where the work of the well-

known graphic artist Karl Gold was used).17

——————

16 www.earthstation1.com/Warposters/jingram/gwwii020.

17 www.earthstation1.com/Warposters/jingram/gwwii002;

www.members.xoom.virgilio.it/mauro51/gold.htm.

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247

Ultimately, then, in the field of electoral campaigns, propaganda and

therefore the collective impression of the idea of plebiscitary “consensus”,

there was a substantial difference between the two regimes.

Fascism, in a certain sense, although swamping Italy with its slogans

and subjecting the Italians to harsh dictatorial oppression, was less radical

in its exploitation of the Party machine for electoral propaganda motives.

In particular, after 1934 and the subsequent decision to go without parlia-

mentary elections (and thus collective political consensus by means of

ballot-papers), the shows of popular support ended up by seeming almost

“Bureaucratic” and predictable, whether it was the election-plebiscites

every five years or the “oceanic rallies” to listen to the
Duce
from the balcony in Piazza Venezia. After a while, the continual, enthusiastic rallies

of the masses ceased, except on rare, but notable, occasions, such as the

“conquest” of the Empire in 1936. Instead, there was a new feeling of

“weary disillusionment, which spread steadily throughout the
gerarchi
and ordinary activists” (Aquarone 1995, 167) and emerged frequently and in

various forms. As one can read in the many reports written by the Fascist

police, preserved in the central State Archives in Rome, by the early 1930s,

the Italians were already becoming “significantly tired” of having to turn

up for the rallies and meetings, and having continually to show their

support for the regime. It “bored” them and made them “hostile”.18

National Socialism, on the other hand, from the very first days after the

seizure of power, revealed an obsessive preoccupation with making sure

that the Germans did not lose their “enthusiasm” for the new idea of Ger-

many that it represented. Therefore, the use of organizational systems for

electoral propaganda was much more radical. Hitler had always been con-

vinced that “political enthusiasm” risked being diluted by “the gray daily

routine” (Heiber 1962, 178), and this made him seek one success after the

other, even in the electoral-plebiscitary arena, unscrupulously and impru-

dently exploiting the effects. For the
Führer
and for the Nazi propaganda apparatus, it was a question of not allowing “political lethargy to seep

in”—that fearful disease that was always waiting to strike the German

masses (Minuth 1983, 159) and cause them to “rest” on the
Reich’
s successes, and become slothful and indifferent; plebiscites ensured that the
Volk

would be summoned regularly to keep them on their toes.

——————

18 ACS,
PNF
,
Situazione politica ed economica delle provincie
, b. 19, f.
Roma
, rapporto July 6, 1932.

248

E N Z O F I M I A N I

Voting: The Electoral Performance

As regards the formal respect that was given to electoral freedom, the

National Socialist regime, more than the Fascist one, was always very care-

ful not to expose itself to criticism by the international press. For this rea-

son, much effort was devoted to giving the international observer the im-

pression of a perfectly functioning electoral machine and of great
serenity

during the voting period. Although the situation was in reality very differ-

ent, with the coercive methods being ferocious in their restriction of indi-

vidual freedom, this contributed greatly to the impression that Nazism was

a regime
freely
supported by almost all the German people.

In both totalitarian systems, the external icons of democracy and of the

right to vote were in any case present on the political scene, from the poll-

ing stations to the voting booths and ballot boxes. But the methods used—

which were not a privation of the formal guarantee of the right to vote—to

force voters to vote in the affirmative, to reveal the names of those who

had not voted, and to check how the voter had voted, were very different,

as were the methods of psychological and practical pressure brought to

bear. In both regimes, “much publicity was given to the rumors that spoke

of the way votes would be checked and controlled, and the consequences a

negative vote would have for the voter” (Leonetti 1929, 49), and this was

quite enough to make any violence unnecessary: “it was enough for some-

one to
believe
that the secrecy would be violated to frighten him to death”

(Klemperer 2000, 45). As Rudolf Heberle, a German University Lecturer

and coeval witness of the Nazi
Machtergreifung,
wrote in 1934 (Frei 2001, 221):

Here is an example of the type of intimidation suffered by political opponents.

Before the plebiscite of November 1933, there was a rumor, which proved to be

well-founded, that polling would be closely checked, and not only would voting be compulsory, as in fact happened, but that anyone who voted against the government would be found out. Naturally the government denied this and in effect

nobody attempted to violate the ballot-box’s secrecy, as the high percentage of

“no” votes showed, or the differences with respect to the referendum and the

elections for the
Reichstag.
However, the
fear
that there might be
manipulations
induced many of my acquaintances, who were declared enemies of National Social-

ism, to vote
Ja
to the plebiscite and to Hitler at the elections.

The very ballot papers used for the Nazi plebiscites were in themselves

potent propaganda, a psychological pressure on the
voters
and a form of

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249

subtle coercion. In the ballot paper for the
Anschluss
, for example, the space for the cross next to
Ja—
with which every “good Austrian” could

sanction the
Wiedervereinigung Österreichs mit dem Deutschen Reich
, which in actual fact had already taken place—was over double the size of the one

next to
Nein
.19 Graphics were therefore used to serve ideology, and the