Because the only serious way to approach the study of the two original ideologies and political movements that appeared at the beginning of our centu… - François Furet

What was new about Hitler and Stalin was what Friedrich Meinecke, in an attempt shortly after World War II to express his horror at Hitler’s moral nihilism, called a ‘ Machiavellianism of the masses'.

The American people were possessed by the capitalist spirit without ever having had a bourgeoisie; French political society, in contrast, created a bourgeoisie devoid of the capitalist spirit.

Lenin takes power in 1917, Mussolini in 1922, Hitler fails in 1923 to succeed ten years later. Thus, ten years later Mussolini fascism can be considered a 'reaction' to an Italian-style Bolshevism, also arising out of the war and more or less modeled on the Russian example. In the same manner, Nazism can be made into a response to the German obsession with the Komintern, a response along the dictatorial and revolutionary lines of communism.