thank you for yet another most fascinating post. I appreciate these living snapshots of critical moments in our history.

Some years ago I read a book called “Guns or Butter” by an RHB Lockhart (found in a charity shop in Edinburgh for a pittance). He’s an interesting chap:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._H._Bruce_Lockhart

In this book he travels through eastern europe in 1938 and is well received at the highest levels by all of the little monarchies across that continent. He arrives in Vienna the day after the Anchluss and the description of the atmosphere at the time comes out well.

As for the argument about whether Hitler was of the left or of the right, I feel that he is in fact correctly placed as of the right.

Yes, he held very “socialist” views in many ways, but he ultimately wanted to increase national strength and bring the german Reich forward through enlargement. He would have definitely never considered himself as fitting in with the figures of the left, but rather as fitting in with the figures of the anti-democratic right such as the Prussian Kings of old, Bismark and his old comrade “dictator-as-regent” Ludendorf. He believed in great leaders arriving throughout time to act for Germany and that narrative has nothing to do with the left. He was accepted as the leader even by the conservative establishment in the beginning because of his successes – feeding the people, annexation of German inhabited territories, humiliation of the UK/France over Munich etc…

Of course, the Weimar republic was a failed state that couldn’t even feed it’s own people: this is how Hitler’s rise was possible.

Any association of modern conservatism with Germany under Hitler is just pure hogwash.

I agree with you that fascism is a much abused word. So is socialism, communism, capitalism, and even democracy.

I certainly hope we’ll never see “fascism proper” again. Unfortunately, history has a way of surprising us.

Nazism’s only real connection to the conservatism was its skillful ability to manipulate German right-wing politicians who, as BvH as pointed out, suffered from the vacuum caused by the Left’s abolition of monarchism, etc.

“Fascism” in the broader sense is a much abused word. In the sense that it presages the merger between capitalism and socialism that — arguably — is taking place today, one could say it “remains a threat to civilization”. However, I very much doubt we will see fascism proper ever again. Despite the prognostications of Fox News, the Obama personality cult is nothing like the Duce’s personality cult. (Mussolini’s was both more tasteful, more widespread, and more enforced). Fascism is, more or less, dead.

As for the ridiculous term “Islamofascism”, Islamism is a whole ‘nother kettle of fish from fascism completely. The term is merely used by those tired hacks and pundits who seek to use a typical leftist term of abuse, either 1) to highlight the Islamist threat, or 2) to bolster the neoconservatives who have adopted the Islamists as their bête-noire.

“Falsified by ideology” means what exactly?

I will agree with Mr Cusack that as pure reportage Herr Grossschmied de Mára’s (his real name) paragraphs are full of interest. But then again so is most contemporary reportage about any period which has since been falsified by ideology.

Márai was an average novelist but an excellent feuilletonist. Alas, his novels are gaining a new appreciation in English translations, while (to my knowledge) only three of his feuilleton pieces have ever been translated into English (thanks to the Hungarian Quarterly): The Fountain Pen, a brief rumination about pens, and The Barber of Basel, recording the words of a loquacious Swiss barber.

As for our dear commenting baron, he no doubt suffers from having heard too many harangues about Nazism and the Right. We, here, have always ignored such false and misleading associations, and so they fail to irritate us, but rather pass like water off a duck’s back.

True conservatives of the old school have never felt guilty about Hitler, because they know they were never responsible for Hitler. (Indeed, many of them put great effort in exasperated attempts to kill him that failed, variously, through cowardice, technical failures, or just plain bad luck).