Please Stop Saying Mussolini Made the Trains Run on Time
For the record, Mussolini didn’t actually make the trains run on time. Defending fascists technocratically is stupid.
More broadly, the notion that fascist governments are efficient is nonsense. Fascist governments tend to punish failure extremely harshly, due to a combination of low tolerance for the appearance of failure, competition between departments with overlapping duties such that a failure by one is exploited by the other, and a paranoid tendency to see any issue or setback as evidence of disloyalty. This motivates civil servants to cover up problems rather than seek help solving them, which in turn creates a culture of secrecy in which bribery and corruption thrive. The result is a shambolic wreck that becomes very good at creating the appearance of success and efficiency while failing utterly to produce the reality.
Same with the story “Hitler made the German Highways”
No he DIDN’T. The whole project had been planned and started long before Hitler came to power. It was a massive building project that was already up and running. All Hitler did was ‘create jobs’ by replacing efficient modern techniques done by well-paid unionized builders with old fashioned ‘do it all by hand’ jobs that a lot of previously unemployed people could do un-unionized and underpaid. While made the project slower and less successful.
(so no, Hitler also did not ‘create highways to France for his troops’. Roads were leading to the Rheinland because it was an important industrial center and trade route. Hitler
did not decide the direction of a single highway and wasn’t nearly as smart or strategic as these stories make him out to be.)The same is true about pretty much all the other ‘efficient nazi’ myths. They didn‘t solve unemployment. They wrecked their economy and couldn’t even maintain basic food supplies in peace time. Hitler was NOT a military genius in any sense of the world. Nazi leaders were constantly fighting each other. Their
bussiness ventures were bizarre and senseless. Their science was a wreck because they ignored all work done by Jewish scientists. A significant group of powerful nazis believed that all modern medicine could be replaced with ancient german herbs.tldr: Fascists were never ‘strategic’ or ‘efficient’ at anything They were a self-destructive train wreck from start to finish.
Just a reminder, Mussolini granddaughter is also a fascist creep.