1. Benito Mussolini, "Doctrine of Fascism" (1932). ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mussolini (1883-1945) was a novelist and journalist before he became actively involved in anti-democratic political agitation in 1918-1919. His "Italian Combat Squad" of armed veterans terrorized Italian communists and anarchists much as the Freikorps did German leftists and labor-union activists in this period. The Combat Squad "blackshirts" were the core members of the National Fascist Party, which in 1922 staged the "March on Rome." First as prime minister and then as Il Duce ("The Leader"), Mussolini exercised increasingly dictatorial control over Italian public life. As of 1928, his was the only legal political party in Italy; teachers and journalists all had to swear oaths of party loyalty. After invading Ethiopia and Albania, Mussolini's Italy entered World War II allied with Hitler's Germany (the Third Reich). Mussolini fell from power in 1943; in 1945, he was shot and killed by a member of the Italian Communist resistance.
1a. Mussolini insists that all politics must start with "reality" and "real men." How is Mussolini defining "reality"? In what ways is this definition different from the one that might be offered by a Communist or by someone who was devoutly religious? Try to make reference to specific examples as you answer this question.
1b. In this text, Mussolini has much to say about what "men" should be and do in a Fascist state. Why might this form of "manliness" have been so important and appealing in the 1920s and 1930s? What about women? What is their role in Mussolini's Italy?
1c. Like Mazzini, Mussolini is an Italian nationalist. Identify and explain at least two important differences between their two kinds of nationalism. Be sure to refer directly to the texts, "Doctrine of Fascism" (1932) and "Europe, Its Conditions and Prospects" (1852).

2.Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, “To be German is to be Strong.” ABOUT THE AUTHOR: A widowed worker's wife with many children, Scholtz-Klink (1902-1999) was appointed as leader of the National Socialist Women's League in 1934. As "Reich Women's Leader," she was expected to train women in Nazi ideology, both through her writing and speaking and through training programs she organized (such as the "Stay-at-Home Mothers' School." After the war, she was briefly held in a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp, but she and her husband escaped by using forged documents. Captured in 1948, she served five years in jail for having forged official documents; she then lived from 1953 to 1999 in a small town in western Germany. Interviewed by the historian Claudia Koonz in the late 1970s, she insisted that women's position under the Nazis was preferable to their status in post-war society.
2a. What, for Scholtz-Klink, is women's "deepest calling"? How does she justify this claim? What sort of language does she use (is it scientific, poetic, religious, etc.)?
2b. What might listeners have found appealing about this speech? What makes it effective as a speech?

3. Fritz Bennecke, ed., On the German People and their Living Space: Handbook for Training in the Hitler Youth (1937). Membership in the Hitler Youth was mandatory for German boys (girls were enrolled in the "League of German Maidens). This book probably was aimed at boys aged 10-15.
3a. Like Mussolini, this writer insists that his perspective is based on "reality." What "facts" does he emphasize?
3b. Is the tone of his writing appropriate for teaching objective facts? Why or why not?
3c. Why did the Nazis go to such lengths to involve children and teenagers?