Although we shall never know for certain, it is plausible that if the Italian Fascists never existed, then the Third Reich probably would have never existed either. While many of us know that Fascist Italy was in many ways a model for the Third Reich, fewer of us know that the Italian Fascists set an inspirational example for the German ultranationalists even before October 1922:

Notably, one of the earliest mentions of Mussolini’s movement in the Bavarian press was published in Münchener Beobachter, a newspaper that later changed its name to Völkischer Beobachter and became the mouthpiece of the NSDAP. On October 8, 1919, the paper included a report—sent from the Italian border—about ‘the white revolution in Italy.’ The article claimed that ‘Mussolino [sic], the leader of the highly patriotic national-irredentists’ was becoming the ‘master of the situation’ (Herr der Lage).⁵⁰

The news referred to the [protofascist] occupation of Fiume, which represented a ‘bitter lesson’ for Germans who, in contrast to Italians, were humiliated by the Entente. However, subsequent news on Italian developments did not provide any information of the bleak fate of Mussolini’s movement after the November 1919 elections. Instead, there were depictions of the ‘Bolshevik’ prerevolutionary climate in Italy.⁵¹

It was not until the end of 1920 that the Bavarian press reported again on the Italian fascist movement and the end of D’Annunzio’s adventure in Fiume. A cultural transfer process from Italian Fascism to the Bavarian space of reception did not start until 1921.

[…]

Hitler continued instilling the fascist ethos into his men. In late October 1921, he advised the SA members to demonstrate an iron discipline and obedience, and to cultivate a good relationship with police. The Völkischer Beobachter wrote about the Italian fascists around this date. Therefore, there can be no doubt that Hitler was not oblivious about the methods and style of fascist violence. Surely cognizant of the fact that Italian fascists had taken advantage of the sympathy and connivance of the army and police, Hitler told his men that policemen harboured an ‘inner sympathy’ towards them, ‘because they also hated the Jews.’⁹⁶

[…]

Shortly after the Italian fascists founded the PNF during a congress in Rome, the Catholic Bayerischer Kurier expressed the thought of many and published an article directly comparing ‘Fascism and National-Socialism.’⁹⁸ In this article, the ‘use of violence’ (Gewaltanwendung) was stressed as something ‘characteristic of fascism.’ What Mussolini and Dino Grandi had demonstrated in Rome was of great interest to Germans; their speeches showed the ‘extraordinary inner affinity’ (ausserordentliche innere Verwandtschaft) that existed between the Italian fascist and German [fascist] movements.

According to the Bayerischer Kurier, both cases were expression of a ‘mass-psychological reaction’ against socialism and the socialist revolution. ‘Fascism’ (Faszismus), a concept understood to embrace both the German and Italian movements, stood out for its ‘instinctive, emotional, irrational’ and ‘activist’ inclination to extremes. It was a ‘rare mix of high idealism, true exaltation and will to sacrifice on the one hand, and brutality, savagery and lack of scruples on the other hand.’

Fascism was also a reaction against internationalism and Parliamentarism. Its fundamental nationalism and the connection between Jewry and revolutionary socialism were the reasons for the anti-Semitic orientation of the movement. Fascism was substantially focused on power-political motives and was militaristic and centralist.

In short, the article offered an interesting and detailed comparative analysis of fascism as a phenomenon that included both German and Italian expressions. In a sense, this was probably the earliest theorization of fascism as a ‘generic’ phenomenon, but the article fatefully overlooked the influence that the Italian example had exerted over the Bavarian völkisch movement.

The Völkischer Beobachter took months to reply to the Bayerischer Kurier comparisons, but when it did, it did not clearly deny them. While praising the fascists’ success against socialism, the [German Fascists] argued that Mussolini’s movement did not fight against the Jews, which was a fundamental difference with them.⁹⁹

Quoting Christian Goeschel’s Mussolini and Hitler: The Forging of the Fascist Alliance, pages 18–19:

It is worth considering Hitler’s views of the nascent Fascist government in Italy. A few days after Mussolini’s appointment, Hitler told a German right-wing activist: ‘One calls us German fascists. I do not want to examine to what extent this comparison is right. But we have in common with the fascists the uncompromising love for the fatherland, the will to rip the working class from the claws of the International and the fresh, comradely frontline spirit.’⁴

Hitler here tried to legitimise and publicise [his party] by pointing to the apparent political success of the Italian Fascists, who had been gaining notoriety amongst some and admiration amongst others throughout Europe for their brutal violence against the Italian left.

Hitler’s jumping on the Fascist bandwagon was remarkable, since prejudices against the former enemy from the Great War were common in Germany. There was a widespread view of Italians as unreliable, treacherous and undisciplined. Thus, Hitler avoided any direct association with Italy which may have put off potential [NSDAP] supporters. He implied that [his party], a German ultra-nationalist group, were not mere copycats of the Italian Fascists.

Rather than simply a similar ideology, it was strategic considerations that prompted Hitler to point to the Italian Fascists and liken himself to Mussolini. For Hitler, the cultivation of links to Mussolini’s Italy was a means to legitimise and promote [his party] in Germany, while for Mussolini, contacts with Hitler and [other German anticommunists] were a way to assert his rôle as doyen of European fascism and extend Italy’s power.⁵

On many other occasions, [German Fascism’s] leader articulated his adoration for the Duce. But Hitler was not the only far-right German politician making these references to Mussolini.⁶ After the March on Rome, Bavarian newspapers used the new political terminology introduced by the Italian Fascists. They ran reports on ‘the Bavarian Fascists’ and their leader Hitler, ‘the German Mussolini’.⁷

Significantly, not only the German far right but also British diplomats and newspapers soon saw Hitler as the ‘German Mussolini’. Dismissing such references as superficial misses the point, as they reflected the widespread appeal of Mussolini’s nascent régime for the German right. Here seemed to be an ideal pact between the anti-Communist Fascists and traditional institutions, above all the Italian state and monarchy, a political configuration that would bring order and stability to the purported post-war social and political chaos.

A year after the March on Rome, on 2 October 1923, Adolf Hitler echoed this sentiment in an interview with the conservative Daily Mail. He declared: ‘If a German Mussolini is given to Germany […] people would fall down on their knees and worship him more than Mussolini has ever been worshipped.’⁸

Rome also financed the German Fascists, if only modestly or infrequently, prior to 1933 (though not all of the evidence for this is conclusive). Quoting James E. Pool’s & Suzanne Pool’s Who Financed Hitler: The Secret Funding of Hitler’s Rise to Power, 1919–1933, pages 298–299:

In 1929 Hitler was accused by a German journalist, Werner Abel, of accepting Italian Fascist money six years earlier. In turn Hitler sued him for libel. During the trial Abel testified that he introduced Hitler in 1923 to Captain Migliorati, who worked with the Italian embassy in Berlin. Abel said that Migliorati admitted to him that he personally transmitted Italian Fascist funds to Hitler for the putsch.²¹

Abel was sentenced to three years’ hard labor on the count of perjury. However, the verdict was no indication of the truth, nor of justice, because by 1932, when the case was decided, the [German Fascists] had many friends in the Munich courts who clearly acted in favor of Hitler throughout the trial.²²

More evidence showing the relation between the Italian Fascists and the [German Fascists] came from the trial in Rome of an Italian official accused of embezzlement. After it was obvious that the missing funds had been intended for Hitler, the trial was finished in secret.²³

Three other top level sources, men who had access to highly classified secret intelligence information, also confirmed that Mussolini gave financial aid to Hitler. Andre Francois-Poncet, who was the French ambassador to Germany in the 1930s, an expert on German foreign policy, and a master of diplomatic intrigue, wrote in his account of prewar diplomacy that the [German Fascists] received financial backing from the Italian Fascists.²⁴

S.S. General Karl Wolff, an intelligence mastermind, who was Himmler’s personal chief of staff and who served as one of the top commanders of the German Army in Italy during World War II, said that he was certain that Mussolini had given money to the [German Fascists] before they came to power.

The fact that Francois-Poncet, a French diplomat, and Wolff, an S.S. general, who represented the opposite poles of the political spectrum, both confirmed the donor-recipient relationship between Mussolini and Hitler greatly adds to its credibility.

There was also confirmation from a high official of the government of the Weimar Republic, Otto Braun, minister president of Prussia, who indicated he had evidence that the [German Fascists] received funds from the [Italian] Fascists even after the 1923 putsch. Braun told Hermann Ullstein of the famous publishing company that Mussolini contributed money which helped Hitler to win his early electoral successes.²⁵

(Emphasis added in all cases.)