As we have seen in P.1, the support for Hitler shown by the Hohenzollern before the seizure of power and the manner in which many family members joined Nazi organizations constituted an important symbolic gesture that was highly visible in Germany by 1933. (See for example the protocol of Karl Wolff, 18 September 1947, Hessian State Archives/Hessische Hauptstaatsarchiv, 520 D-Z, Nr. 519.563)

And where we have seen in P.1 how the German Crown Prince Wilhelm “went all out for the NSDAP,” his younger brother Prince August Wilhelm called Auwi in fact, also had personal ambitions that he thought the Nazis would help him fulfill. Shortly before the Nazis' seizure of power, he told Putzi Hanfstaengl, "I shall make a point of keeping in with Hitler as much as possible myself. After all I am the best horse in the Hohenzollern stable." Prince Auwi also came out with the oft-quoted phrase, "Where a Hitler leads, a Hohenzollern can follow."

But while the Hohenzollern maintained good relations with Hitler and other leaders well into the war years, they did not go so far as the Hesse-Kassel or Schaumburg-Lippe families. A question still surrounds Prince Philip of Hesse's role,  if he was merely a messenger or did his views and his actions affect the outcome of world historical events? Contemporary observers are split in their opinions about his importance. One German official, for example, noted shortly after the end of the war, "without the involvement of the prince, the foreign political rise of Hitler, and in particular, the emergence of the 'Axis' might not have come about." And while Christoph ‘s disillusionment started to build during the war there is no evidence that either Philipp or Christoph moved from trying to influence the Nazi leaders on specific issues to a more general form of resistance.The person who probably knew Philipp best, his friend Eddie von Bismarck, remarked in February 1944, "Sometimes we would speak alone and when it came to the political situation of our country, the situation would be somewhat unpleasant, since I could find nothing good in Nazism and the prince would not tire of praising it." (Swiss Federal Archives, Bern, E 4320, B,19911243, Bd. 98, declaration of Eddie von Bismarck, 3 February 1944.)

France

As an aside one should mention that as seen above, there are the genuine elite positions with the areas of influence retained by the aristocracy which existed both in Germany and in our French example below. During the early part of the 20th century whoever there came to be two kinds, of those who loved to have been 'aristocrats in Germany. Those with neo-aristocratic conceptions who joined the Fascist cause comparable with maybe the Legion of the Archangel Michael in Rumania, whereby such militant-voelkish groups where  absent in France. Then there however also existed in both Germany and France-- non-political rather spiritual and occult inclined groups-- who ‘borrowed terms’ like Volk because it was fashionable or/and of their reading from Grail Romances and so on. These could in Germany sometimes be called semi-voelkish, not in the sense of non-Fascist however. With even less voelkish rhetoric one finds similar although small groups, that might have dreamed of ‘Knights Templar’s’ and so on,  also in France. One  such (non-Fascist) example in the case of France can be seen here.

Even Charles Maurras, the founder of the neo-monarchist movement, may well have dreamed of an alliance between the right-wing intelligentsia and the old aristocracy in his early works, but his later concepts became progressively more pragmatic. His king appeared more like a Fuhrer and the elite he longed for had already been realized in the meritocratic principles of the Republic.1 A further master thinker of the radical right, Maurice Barres, and, following him, much of the Bonapartist right, no longer tried to deny that the revolution had happened in their thinking. A French 'Monck' was always dreamt of, 2 but never a possibility. Since the General Boulanger crisis at the latest, the most successful movements of the radical right had functioned more as parts of the Republic than as agents of the ancien regime, and the participation of prominent aristocrats did not change this.3 Even as an ideal and a dream, the aristocracy no longer represented a guiding principle among the radical right. This represented a marked contrast with Germany, where the aristocracy, especially aristocratic imaginings from the voelkisch movement to the SS, remained a constant and significant point of reference.4

More particularly the following three points concerning the relationship between the aristocracy and the radical right suggest that the French aristocracy's political orientation was much less clear-cut than might at first appear.

In his Recherche du temps perdu, Marcel Proust describes how the anti-Semitism in the Dreyfus affair brought the prince closer to his coachman. Indeed, the aristocracy in France-and probably everywhere in Europe as well-used anti-Semitism as an early and radical weapon against the Republic, but also as a bridge to facilitate communication with the petty bourgeoisie and the lower classes. In the 1890s, Edouard Drumont and Jules Guerin, as publicists, agitators, and politicians, presented one of the most brutal forms of anti-Semitism in Western Europe. Alongside a crude hate campaign, we already see the emergence of armed bands of thugs and terrorists recruited among butcher boys. Their financiers included no less a personage than the duc d'Orleans, pretender to the French throne.5 In the Boulanger affair, in which an anti-Semitic Bonapartist coup attempted to sweep away the Republic, many prominent names from France's richest aristocratic families featured among Boulanger's supporters. The eccentric marquis de Mores and the duchess d'Uzes, whose impressive chateau near Avignon also served as a counter-revolutionary communication centre, are merely the most prominent of many such examples.6 Before and after the Dreyfus affair, and until her death in 1932, a woman with the nom de guerre 'Gyp' was one of the most influential anti-Semites in France. When asked about her profession in a court in 1899, she replied: 'anti-Semite'. Her real name was longer: Sibylle-Gabrielle Marie-Antoinette de Riqueti de Mirabeau, comtesse de Martel de Janville.7 The Dreyfus affair generated an immense paper trail documenting the close link between the aristocracy and radical anti-Semitism. To cite just one example: after the suicide of Colonel Henry, the perpetrator of the forgeries which were intended to prove Dreyfus's guilt, the radical anti-Semitic Libre Parole began a signature and fund-raising drive in honour of the dead forger. The 14,000 signatories included 1,097 aristocrats. Aristocrats themselves made up 0.14 per cent of the population. In the anti-Semitic fund-raising drive the aristocracy provided 8 per cent of the signatories and 16 per cent of the money contributed.8 In Recherche du temps perdu, the duc de Guermantes calls out: 'Quand on s'appelle Ie marquis de Saint-Loup, on n'est pas dreyfusard, que voulezvous que je vous dise!' (When your name is the marquis de SaintLoup then you aren't likely to be a Dreyfusard, what do you expect me to say!) And, in fact, Isabelle Brelot's detailed study9 turns up a broad majority of aristocrats precisely where one would expect to find them: in the anti-Dreyfus camp. However, as Brelot shows, these findings are less clear-cut than would appear at first glance. From a strictly French perspective, the aristocracy appears as one of the most important proponents of a radical, biologically conceived anti-Semitism. But from a comparative European perspective, what is more striking is the significant group of aristocrats who stood out within the Dreyfusard camp as defenders of the Republic. It is precisely the existence of this camp-which continued to grow in the interwar period-which is remarkable and surprising. There was no comparable group within the German aristocracy during the Kaiserreich around 1895; nor would there be two or three decades later.10

Two lines of argument from the acrid debates surrounding France's radical right should be mentioned here: first, the question of a French fascism. One interpretation maintains that there was never a powerful fascist movement in France. Proponents of this view point out the country's long republican tradition, which supposedly inoculated a sufficient majority of Frenchmen against fascism. Non-French historians may note that this interpretation is largely promoted by Frenchmen: Rene Remond, Serge Berstein, Philippe Burrin, and Pierre Milza are some of the bestknown names.11 The second interpretation claims the opposite, going so far as to identify the origins of fascism in the pre-1914 Third Republic. In this view, France is the land of the Revolution. But even more, it is the land of the counter-revolution which had aready donned the garb of fascism before the Dreyfus affair. France, it is maintained, did not have to wait until the Vichy regime in order to bring forth a fully developed and powerful fascist movement. At this point, non-French historians notice that the chief proponents of this interpretation are non-French: Hannah Arendt, Ernst Nolte, William Irvine, Robert Soucy, and above all, Zeev Sternhell.12 This debate is significant in our context because fascism was only able to establish itself where its dynamic encountered weakness and inconsistency on the part of the conservative elites.13

A second line of argument revolves around the ideological classification of the radical right and its origins. Zeev Sternhell raised hackles when he emphasized the radical left-wing origins of the droite revolutionnaire, the allegedly French origins of fascism,14 and maintained that the radical right-wing groups in the period in between were 'neither right nor left'.15 Regarding Italian fascism, Emilio Gentile has emphasized how much the notion of a fascism from the left represents a mirage which has lured-or been generated by-many intellectual historians.16 Following Gentile here, it seems appropriate to leave French right-wing extremism where it belongs in functional terms: on the far right. From the perspective of aristocratic history, the leftist roots of some radical right-wing groups in France are nevertheless significant. It can be assumed that Jacobin elements in thought, language, and style, along with party leaders who had been socialists or Communists in their youth,17 must have had a deterrent effect on a large part of the aristocracy.

There was, indeed, a concentration of aristocrats in the two organizations which were entirely free of leftist roots. First, Action francaise, a product of the Dreyfus affair founded by Charles Maurras-a mixture of monarchism, anti-Semitism, bands of thugs, and exalted intellectualism-penetrated deep into aristocratic circles and continued to exert an immense intellectual appeal well beyond the Second World War.18 Secondly, there was the Croix de feu, a mass movement founded in 1927 under the leadership of the colonel and war hero Count Francois de la Rocque. It represented not only the largest group but also a comprehensive, militarily organized, radical right-wing movement in the Third Republic. Some specialists play down the Croix de feu as 'political boy-scouting for adults' (Rene Remond),19 while others, such as Robert Soucy, speak of a fully developed fascist movement with 700,000 members. The organization's vice-president was Duke Pozzo di Borgo. In their Belgian exile, Count de la Rocque's two brothers belonged to the advisory staff of the pretender to the throne, who was among those who financed the Croix de feu.20

The radical right-wing organization Action francaise, too, displayed clear connections with the aristocracy. The prevalence of aristocratic names among the financiers, members, and leaders of both organizations is greater than in all other radical right-wing groups.21 To be sure, any finding of a different nature would be astonishing for a neo-monarchist and anti-democratic group of any size. However, the notion of a fascist invitation to the aristocracy seems untenable on account of the fragmentation of the radical right. Unlike the Italian and German aristocracy, the French aristocracy was never tempted by the existence of a closed fascist fighting movement.

In a highly influential interpretation, Rene Remond has shown that the three monarchies of the nineteenth century corresponded to three political families of the right (legitimistes, orleanistes, bonapartistes) which frequently reshaped themselves but never entirely disappeared in the twentieth century.22 The legitimist heir to the throne, the comte de Chambord, alias Henri V, died without a successor in 1883.23 The Bonapartist prince imperial, Eugene Louis, the only son of Napoleon III, had died in the ranks of the British colonial troops in the struggle against the Zulus in 1879. What remained were the Orleanist pretenders, the due d'Orleans, later the comte de Paris, who financed various radical right-wing groups without ever developing stable relationships with the radical right or being able to prevent conflicts with the Action francaise. The fragmentation of the right into three irreconcilable families, the instability of the constantly shifting organizations-Action francaise,Jeunesse patriotes, Croix de feu, Parti social francais, La Cagoule, La Solidarite francaise, Le Faisceau, Parti populaire francais, and the Rassemblement national populaire-to name just the most important among them, prevented the formation of a homogeneous fascist bloc on the Italian or German model. As a powerful bloc able to seize power and form a new state, fascism in Italy and Germany issued both a challenge and an invitation to the old aristocracy. In all European countries with a strong fascist movement, the aristocracy was effectively faced with the choice of becoming part of a conservative alternative, or else climbing aboard the fascist juggernaut. The Prussian nobility, at least, largely chose the latter option, while the Italian aristocracy found a different answer in October of 1922, marching on Rome, from that of June of 1943, when Mussolini was overthrown. In France, this constellation and challenge, it could be argued, never existed. Without the charisma, the individual radical right-wing associations and leagues were unable to make the old elites an offer, or to challenge them in a bloc.24 For this reason, in France we find merely individual aristocrats in individual radical right-wing organizations whom professional historians have yet to classify.25 in any coherent fashion. There is no evidence to support the existence of a general tendency. After all, for a group like the aristocracy which had international networks, pre-existing models were important. Renzo De Felice, the doyen of Italian fascism research, stated in a frequently cited interview that in at least one respect the responsibility of the conservative elites in Germany in 1933 was considerably larger than that of the Italian elites before 1922, because by 1933 the Germans already knew what they were getting into.26

This notion, and the idea of European aristocracies learning transnational in dealings with the fascist movements of Europe, can also be applied to France. It is obvious that for the French aristocracy the fascist March on Rome was also a constant reference point for a coup d'etat, whereas for the monarchists it was a model demonstrating the compatibility of dictatorship and monarchy. However, in Germany more than in Italy, where this notion developed later among an aristocracy that was increasingly losing political power and whose hopes for restoration had been radically disappointed, it just as clearly represented a negative point of reference. Count de la Rocque, the leader of the largest right-wing organization, who rejected the coup attempt of 1934, retained certain barriers against anti-Semitism and, during the war, kept both the Gestapo and de Gaulle at arm's length, is just one of many examples.27

In addition to the better-known Travail, Famille, Patrie, one of the Vichy regime's watchwords was La terre, elle ne ment pas (the soil does not lie). At least in ideological terms, Vichy was attractive to right-wing intellectuals and aristocrats alike.28 As in the Dreyfus affair, it is hardly surprising that the authoritarian, anti-Semitic Vichy regime with its emphasis on the family, decentralization, soil, and discipline found considerable sympathy among the aristocracy. As part of the French upper classes, and a small part of the functional elites in the state and officer corps, the aristocracy made its own contribution to bringing about what Marc Bloch has analyzed, in masterly fashion, as etrange difaite,29 which went far beyond the military disaster. The attraction that Vichy and its ideology-mixing anti-democratic, reactionary, and radical right-wing elements must have exerted on large sections of the aristocracy seems too obvious to need further explanation. But in view of the opposition facing Vichy, things were more complex here too. The highly complicated situation France had found itself in since the summer of 1940, involving defeat, division, and occupation of the country, as well as the fact that sections of the political right took the path of resistance, prevented collective collaboration between the aristocracy and radical right-wing groups in wartime. Reference to some prominent examples must suffice.

It is worth recalling the officer Pierre Dunoyer de Segonzac, director of the elite school founded in Uriage castle in 1940. The circle assembled there provides one of the best-known examples of an aristocratic humanism that despised both fascism and parliamentary democracy. After the school closed, Segonzac went underground and became a commander in the French Resistance.30 Beginning in 1940, we can find aristocrats among collaborators, among those sitting on the fence, and within the internal and external resistance.31 Patriotic and military traditions and the occupation of the country by the arch-enemy provoked a number of different reactions among the aristocracy, ranging from collaboration to withdrawal into private life to resistance. In Germany, predatory war and the idea of settling the East had captured the enthusiasm of considerable parts of the aristocracy. Similarly, the military struggle, organized from exile and from the colonies, against the German arch-enemy could appeal, largely with success, to aristocratic traditions and potentials. So far, no one has attempted to evaluate these groups systematically. No one has come up with an answer to the interesting questions of whether and to what extent aristocratic chateaux were used as conspiratorial meeting places, and of whether and to what extent aristocratic networks were used to build the resistance movement. In any case, there was no shortage of aristocratic names among the members and heroes of the Forces francaises de l'interieur.

In the case of Charles de Gaulle, the name sounds more aristocratic than his family in fact was. His origins and original sympathy for Action francaise, however, indicate important fault lines within this milieu. Among the most prominent aristocrats, apart from de Gaulle, to denounce Vichy, continue the war in the colonies, and land in France in 1944 were Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, commander of the First Army and signatory of the German capitulation, and Philippe de Hauteclocque- Leclerc, commander of the Second Tank Division, who was celebrated as the liberator of Paris in August 1944.32

Also impressive in this respect is the biography of Emmanuel d' Astier de la Vigerie (1900-69), naval officer and journalist. After the etrange difaite of 1940, this aristocrat founded the resistance group La Derniere Colonne, co-founded the resistance newspaper Liberation, was de Gaulle's envoy to London, and was later a leading member of the Mouvements unis de la resistance and the Comite francais de Liberation nationale. D'Astier, who shared his commitment to the Resistance with two older brothers33 and a niece, became a Gaullist interior minister. Awarded the Lenin Prize, he was a Communist deputy until 1958.34

We shall illustrate what has been outlined here about the adaptation and political differentiation within the French aristocracy by taking one prominent family as an example. A biography of Josee Laval, daughter of the head of the Vichy regime, Pierre Laval, who was executed in 1945,35 reveals an astonishing proximity to collaborationist accounts of themselves, and provides next to no analysis, but is none the less interesting because of its subject. Josee Laval had married Count Rene de Chambrun in 1935. He belonged to an old family which could trace a direct line of descent from La Fayette. With this marriage to the daughter of the rich and powerful Laval, Count Chambrun secured a place in the country's power elite, thus pursuing a policy of modernization which had a long tradition in his family. In the mid-nineteenth century, the counts had, by marriage, inherited the world-famous Baccarat crystal glass factory and thus a considerable fortune. Around 1890, two Chambrun brothers further modernized the family by marrying the daughters of American millionaires, thus ensuring the family close contacts to the ruling elite of the USA. While the international lawyer Rene Chambrun managed the family's wealth as director of Baccarat, the inner circle of relatives included generals, ambassadors, and deputies. One family member, a commanding general in the French army, even became director general of the National City Bank.

In 1931 the writer Jean Giraudoux had this to say about the counts of Chambrun: 'Oh, I know this family well. It is perfect. In it one finds a diplomat, whose ineptitude is preparing the war, a deputy who is voting for the war, and a general who will lose the war!'36 The family provides an outstanding example of successful adaptation to the modern age while maintaining an unmistakably aristocratic and stylish lifestyle. It also provides an insight into the political fragmentation of individual families. The career path of Count Chambrun, son-in-law of the top collaborationist Laval, reads like the prototype for a collaborationist and, after 1945, for an incorrigible member of the extreme right. In Marcel Ophuls's pioneering film about collaboration and resistance during the Vichy period, Le Chagrin et la pitie (1971) Count Chambrun is portrayed as a brutta figura, who stands out in the whole film for his blase attitude, arrogance, and political blindness, which persists through the decades. But this does not sum up the family history as a whole. Among the cousins we find a Chambrun who was one of the eighty representatives who refused to support Marshal Petain on 10 July 1940-the only French senator to do so. 37 Among the nephews we also find a count who fought as a colonel of the Forces francaises de l'interieur in the Resistance.38 In its feats of social conformity, its successful attempts to reinvent itself socially and culturally, and its political fragmentation, the family brings together the features that can be considered typical of the French aristocracy.

In conclusion to the case example as far it concerns France, one might suggest two possible explanations for the lack of interest historians have shown for the aristocracy. First, we might think that our French colleagues have simply not done their homework and have thereby missed an entire category of research. The second and more likely possibility is that there has been a recognition that a collective history of the aristocracy in the twentieth century amounting to more than a history of separate individuals and families could perhaps hardly be written for France. At the beginning of the interwar period, the French aristocracy had already been waging a 130-year struggle against egalitarianism, and a large section of the aristocracy had increasingly adapted itself to its rules. Still important at local level to the present day, featuring individuals who stand out as positive or negative, and like the aristocracy everywhere a master of self-presentation and memory,39 the highly fragmented French aristocracy was obviously no longer in a position to present itself as a political collective of national significance in the twentieth century. It had suffered far too many deep ruptures. Obviously, after more than a century of social and political fragmentation, after a long struggle between fighting and adapting to the Republic, the chicken without a head was politically dead at last.

Rumania

Aristocracy's link with fascism raises the more general question of the social origins of political regimes in the era of mass politics. It is argued that the Romanian aristocracy traditionally pursued a conservative domestic social policy, but favored tolerance towards ethnic minorities and an inclusive immigration policy. This attitude changed to some extent in the interwar period when, following the social upheaval generated by the First World War and the introduction of universal male suffrage, the Romanian aristocracy experienced a dramatic decline in social and political influence. Even though most aristocrats joined new mass political parties or collaborated with the monarchy, a few prominent aristocrats joined the anti-establishment Iron Guard in the hope of regaining political visibility. Their participation had important symbolic connotations, aristocracy being assigned an important role in the Legion's ideology of national regeneration. Based on case studies of members of two famous aristocratic families associated with the Legion, the Cantacuzinos and the Sturdzas, we can observe the fusion between the fascist charismatic elite and revolutionary ultra-nationalist political ideology on the one hand, and the 'traditional' legitimacy claimed by aristocrats in the movement on the other. These two streams blended to produce a new type of 'charismatic aristocracy' concomitantly promoting a 'regressive' and 'futurist' political utopia based on the glorification of the Middle Ages but embodying the new men.

In a pioneering study, Barrington Moore explored the social factors and conditions that shaped the evolution of modern political regimes in six major societies-those of Britain, France, the United States, China, India, and Japan. 40 Moore identifies four main paths in the transition from pre-industrial to modem industrial society: bourgeois revolution based on 'the combination of capitalist and Western democracy', as exemplified by Britain, France, and the United States; capitalist reaction which 'culminated during the twentieth century in fascism', as exemplified by Japan (and also by Germany, a case that Moore does not analyze in detail); Communism, as exemplified by China (and also by Russia); and a fourth path, specific only to India, where the weak impulse towards modernization meant that neither capitalism nor Communism was the end result. In his view, these outcomes were shaped by 'the ways in which the landed upper classes and the peasants reacted to the challenge of commercial agriculture'.41

Moore's analysis does not include the small countries of Eastern and Northern Europe, South-East Asia, or the Middle East on the grounds that 'smaller countries depend economically and politically on big and powerful ones', so that 'the decisive causes of their politics lie outside their own boundaries'.42 Despite this controversial claim, Moore's interpretative model has been creatively applied to explaining political developments in other parts of the world.43 Pointing out that 'in a fundamental way large countries and small countries do not differ in the era of transformation', the American historian Gale Stokes provides a comprehensive account of the social origins of modem politics in Eastern Europe.44 Stokes argues that an uneven combination of similar exogenous factors and local social configurations produced markedly different political outcomes in the region, namely, 'functioning democracy in Czechoslovakia, vigorous peasant political parties in Serbia and Bulgaria, aristocratic bureaucratism in Hungary, and authoritarian governments in Poland and elsewhere'.45

Romania's bipolar political system was fundamentally altered by the First World War, when the social pressure for change was increased by the mass mobilization of the peasantry. The country emerged from the war as a winner. The incorporation of the historical provinces of Transylvania, the Banat, and Bukovina from Austria-Hungary, and of Bessarabia from Russia doubled Romania's size (from 130,177 sq. km. in 1914 to 295,049 sq. km. in 1919) and population (from 7,771,341 inhabitants in 1914 to 14,669,841 in 1919), considerably strengthening its economic potential. In addition, following the great socio-political upheaval of the war, comprehensive reforms such as universal male suffrage (1919), massive land redistribution (1921), and a new liberal constitution (1923) remodeled the state into a parliamentary democracy, granting full citizenship rights to ethno-religious minorities such as Jews.

Although, arguably, Greater Romania was in many respects a new state, political life in the first post-war decade (1918-28) was largely dominated by the elites of the former Old Kingdom, grouped mainly within the National Liberal Party. Benefiting from the strong personality of their leader, Ion I. C. Bratianu (1864-1927), and his influence over King Ferdinand (1914-27), the liberals were able to implement their views concerning the country's development, in direct continuity with their pre-war strategy. Announced for the first time in 1913, Romania's 1921 land reform was the most radical expropriation in post-war Europe. It transferred 2,776,401 ha from large estates to small peasant properties, radically altering the structure of property ownership.

Unlike in the Old Kingdom, the system of landownership in Greater Romania was overwhelmingly dominated by smallholders, who possessed 81.43 per cent of the total land. The interwar period thus put an end to the economic and political dominance of Romania's landed aristocracy. It is very telling in this respect that in 1920 the Conservative Party, the main port-parole of landlords' interests, disappeared from political life.

Although it declined as a distinct interest group, the Romanian aristocracy in the interwar period was far from extinct. Taking advantage of their political experience and connections, former conservative politicians-individually or in groups-joined new political parties. Some factions joined the newly established People's Party led by General Alexandru Averescu, while others became members of the Transylvanian National Party. With the exception of a few lower echelon 'technocrats', most of the former conservative politicians were, however, misfits in their new mass parties and tended towards reviving their own political party. In 1929, defecting from the People's Party, Grigore Filipescu-the son of an illustrious pre-war conservative politician-established the Vlad Tepes League, renamed the Conservative Party in 1932, but the new organization remained marginal. It is nevertheless important to note that Filipescu did not collaborate with radical parties, but adopted an anti-fascist attitude, thus continuing the pre-war conservatives' tradition of political moderation.

The case of the politician Constantin Argetoianu is representative of the political restlessness and frequent migrations of displaced aristocrats. Having been successively a member of all of Romania's major parties in the 1920s, from the National Liberal to the National Peasant and National Democrat parties, in 1932 he founded the Agrarian Union in an attempt to revive conservatism in a new form. While opposed to mass politics and universal suffrage, Argetoianu had no taste for radical politics. He was an adversary of the Legion and later discouraged General Cantacuzino from forging an alliance with the radical right.46 Instead, Argetoianu supported King Carol II's plans to establish a personal regime.

By and large, however, the political orientation of Romanian aristocrats suffered significant changes in early 1930s. Having failed to make a significant impact on the post-1918 political system, a handful of aristocrats embraced radical politics in search of political visibility. Andrew Janos has pointed out that descendants of boyars represented 30.5 per cent of all parliamentary deputies in the first post-1918 decade, but that they fell to 15.2 per cent during the rightist National Union coalition government of 1930-1. While the parliamentary presence of aristocracy decreased, it is very telling that, during the 1930s, boyar descendants made up a significant proportion of radical right-wing organizations, accounting for 7.9 per cent of the deputies of the right-wing Romanian Front and 8 per cent of the Legionary deputies.47 This change reflected the growing crisis of Romania's parliamentary system and the emergence of new personalized forms of politics. On the one hand, popular support for major 'old' parties began eroding gradually. On the other, a multitude of new radical political factions and groupings emerged. The Legion was to prove itself one of the most successful forces among the new parties. The second part of my essay focuses on its emergence and evolution, in an attempt to provide a sociological explanation for the Romanian aristocrats' participation in fascism.
The Legion of the Archangel Michael has generally been considered one of the most complex and unusual 'varieties of fascism' in interwar East-Central Europe, for several reasons. First, it originated independently of Italian fascism and German National Socialism. Secondly, it was a vigorous political movement, and one of the few-along with the Ustasa Movement in Croatia and the Arrow Cross in Hungary-to assume a mass character. In 1937 it claimed an estimated 270,000 members and it received 478,000 votes in parliamentary elections.48 Thirdly, it represented a fully fledged political movement, encompassing all 'five stages of fascism' identified by Robert Paxton.49 In the case of the Legion, these five stages were: the creation of the movement in 1927; its emergence as a significant political player in 1931-3; a bid for power facilitated by the breakdown of the democratic regime at the end of 1937 and the subsequent failure of the authoritarian regime of Carol II in 1938-40; the exercise of power from September 1940 to January 1941; and, finally, the radicalization of the movement, its rebellion, and final ouster from power by General Ion Antonescu, with the support of the army. Most importantly, the Legion exhibited many peculiarities, combining, in a complex syncretism, general fascist characteristics with specific ideological features such as its religiosity and mysticism.

The Legion can be best described as a totalitarian revolutionary movement of change based on the violent counterculture of a radical youth.50 The Legionary ideology furthermore combined, what one could distinguish as three main strategies of political mobilization. These included a charismatic type of legitimacy based on the millennialist cult of the Archangel Michael and the leadership of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu; the messianic mission of the interwar 'new generation'; and integral nationalism, including calls for 'cultural purification' and 'national regeneration' coupled with a rabid anti-Semitism.

Although it enrolled numerous priests, used the religious language of sacrifice, resurrection, and salvation, and attacked materialism and hedonism as signs of moral decay, the Legion was not a religious organization. In essence, it was a secular political movement of charismatic-revolutionary nationalism that, building on the tradition of mainstream Romanian nationalism, appropriated and adapted the vocabulary, symbols, and rituals of Eastern Christian Orthodoxy, as filtered by the Romantic Evangelical-nationalist revival in the first half of the nineteenth century and subsequently institutionalized in practices of sacralizing politics, to articulate its totalitarian political project of the renewal of Romanian society and the creation of the 'new man'. I argue that the Legion's revolutionary fervor and totalitarian orientation differentiate it from traditional anti-Semitic 'parliamentary' parties, placing it firmly within the spectrum of contemporary fascist movements.

As a charismatic movement, the Legion of the Archangel Michael put forward a formula for salvation based on the imminence of the apocalypse and encompassing strong millennialist overtones. In July 1927 Codreanu defined the leading principles of the Legion as 'faith in God', 'faith in our mission', 'love for one another', and 'song as the chief manifestation of our state of mind'. Instead of drafting a concrete plan of action, the Legion defined as its goal the salvation of the Romanian nation.

The messianic formula preached by the Legion shared most of the features of a millenarian salvation, but reinterpreted them in terms of Romanian national symbols and a specific socio-political context. Legionary writings were dominated by the effort of identifying and fighting the enemy. According to the Legion's ideologues, the main threat to Romania's national security was posed by the Jews, who occupied 'a special position', given their sociopolitical domination and their tendency to monopolize the liberal professions, and thus the country's politicalleadership.51 They criticized the Minority Convention signed by Romania in 1919, arguing that 'minority status' was nothing but the legal consecration of privilege.52

Legionary publications were dominated by virulent antiSemitic manifestos. In these writings, the imminent Jewish danger' allegedly threatening the national community was closely associated with the theory of universal conspiracy. The messianic formula proposed by the Legion was based on a 'double' conspiracy theory by lumping together the Jewish and Communist dangers, a feature that accounted for its proselytizing power. This theory provided a psychologically acceptable explanation for the perceived precarious social status of urban Romanians, allegedly caused by the activities of 'privileged' minority groups which were able to influence-in an occult way-the political decision-making process.

The core of the Legionary ideology was the charismatic cult of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, proclaimed as a 'new Messiah', the instrument sent by the Archangel to fulfill his commandments in order to bring salvation to the Romanian people. His biography displays the 'goal fixation' characteristic of charismatic leaders. Although he never held a position of power in the state apparatus, Codreanu succeeded in building a voluntary nucleus of faithful followers, becoming the object of a fanatical personality cult.

The Legion's party organization was shaped by the charisma principle. In August 1927 the Legion announced its first organizational structure, made up of four sections: the first and most important consisted of young people; the second section was composed of 'mature men'; the third section encompassed women; and the fourth was made up of Romanians living abroad.53 Legion leadership was to be exercised in common by a council composed of former or current student leaders, the latter being granted only a consultative vote, and the Senate, made up of elected individuals over 50 years of age, a mixture of aristocratic figures and rightist intellectuals and politicians.54 Originally conceived of as the highest authority within the Legion, the Senate assembled for the first time only in 1930. In fact, it had a merely decorative role, its members being appointed by Codreanu and not elected on a regional basis, as previously intended.55 As a collegial body consisting of elder aristocratic figures, the Senate was meant to give the Legionary decision-making process symbolic legitimacy by formally guaranteeing 'that the law which is applied is really authentically traditional'. 56

Despite its collective leading forums, the Legion had an authoritarian-militarist structure based on the undisputed leadership of 'the Captain' and a hierarchical line of command. The main building blocks of the Legion's structure were its grass-roots cells called cuiburi (nests), defined as 'a group of people united under the command of a single man'. A nest was made up of three to thirteen members and led by a charismatic leader 'emerging naturally'.

The system of nests was very flexible, and assured an exponential expansion of the Legion's membership. After completing their training, members could leave their own nest and initiate a new cell by bringing in new converts who recognized their leadership. Cells stemming from a common original nest were considered part of a 'family' of nests. Such related nests were organized hierarchically, the original cell being the 'superior' one and its leader having authority over all other chiefs in that family. Territorially, nests were grouped in garrisons, sectors, counties, and regions led by chiefs appointed by Codreanu and directly responsible to him. In addition, at national level, above territorial regions, all Legionary sections had a general headquarters. These were led by chiefs appointed by Codreanu, as the Commander of the Legion (Conducatorul, and placed under his direct authority.

The hierarchical structure of the Legion was not democratic but military in character: the leader had to convene his subordinates 'as a commander of a regiment calls to order his subaltern officers'. Legionary chiefs at all levels had to file detailed monthly reports to their superiors, and their activities were attentively monitored. In order to prevent high Legionary leaders from becoming too independent and powerful, they could retain their posts for a maximum period of one year for regional leaders, and two years for political leaders. After being released from their function, Legionary chiefs were promoted, becoming part of the corpus of' charismatic commanders'.

On its establishment, the Legion functioned as a small male fraternity. In 1929 it boasted an estimated 400 to 1,000 members, the great majority young men of 20-5 years.57 It was originally designed as an alternative elite organization, and not as a mass political party. Its 1927 Statute stipulated that the organization could not take part in parliamentary elections, and limited the total number of legionaries to 3,000, with a maximum of 100 members per county.58

Although Codreanu demanded the abolition of the 'corrupt' and 'unrepresentative' parliamentary system, in 1929 he set 'going to the masses' as the Legion's strategic goal, mostly in the form of electoral marches organized in Moldova and Bessarabia.59 In the first years, electoral gains remained rather modest, mainly because of the hostile attitude of the state administration. Soon, however, taking advantage of the social pauperization caused by the Great Depression (1929-33), the Legion enlarged its territorial basis and social composition. As a charismatic catch-all party, it incorporated diverse elements of society, among which the most important were students, blue- and white-collar workers, members of the lower rural and urban bourgeoisie, members of the rural and urban intelligentsia, ethnic Romanians from Macedonia colonized by the Romanian state in Dobrudja, and members of the aristocracy. While greatly affected by the post-war upheaval, these social strata were united by the feeling of being excluded from the full benefits of the social and political transformation. Codreanu's charisma, based on a compensatory salvational ideology, provided a unifying cement bringing these heterogeneous social strata together in a revolt of 'rising expectations'.

Although numerically they were not significant, aristocrats had a strong influence as part of the Legion's political leadership, the Legionary Senate, and the Friends of the Legion, an organization made up of about 1,000 people with the purpose of sponsoring the movement. The panoply of aristocrats attached to the Legion includes prominent figures such as Gheorghe Cantacuzino, Alexandru Cantacuzino, Mihail Sturdza, and Ilie- Vlad Sturdza, members of prestigious Wallachian or Moldavian princely families, as well as 'transient' sympathizers or collaborators such as Zoe Sturdza (the wife of Mihail Sturdza), painter Andronic Cantacuzino, architect G. M. Cantacuzino, and Prince Niculae, King Carol II's brother, excluded from the royal family in 1936.

Among them, the most prominent was General Gheorghe Cantacuzino. Born in 1869 in Paris, Cantacuzino received military training in France and Romania, and had a successful career, attaining the rank of major and becoming chief of cabinet in the ministry of war (1910). His heroism during the First World War gained him the nickname Gruenicerul (the Border-Guarder), the rank of general (in reserve), and the reputation of being a staunch antiCommunist.61 After the war, capitalizing on his prestige, Cantacuzino engaged in politics as part of the nucleus of generals leading the People's Party. With the decline of that party, he defected to the Vlad Tepes League (later the Conservative Party).

According to Codreanu's own account, Cantacuzino 'converted' to the Legion in 1933 (at the age of 64) during a visit to the Legionary labour camp of Rapa Galbena in]assy. The old General's controversial decision can be partly explained by the political decline of the Conservative Party, leading to a potential blockage in his political career. The General was elected to parliament in 1920, 1926, and 1931 but he correctly anticipated that his new party would fail to gain parliamentary seats in the 1933 general elections. Cantacuzino's new political engagement was also due to the anti-Communist, ultranationalist, and (para)military character of the Legion, and its social discourse emphasizing discipline, obedience, and respect for hierarchy, which were all in line with the General's convictions. According to contemporary accounts, Cantacuzino used to emphasize the paradoxical implications of his political choice, which meant that he, 'the scion of a princely family descending from Byzantine emperors', voluntarily placed himself under the authority of Codreanu, 'the nephew of a forester'. 62 At times, however, the General regretted his association with the Legion, mostly because he was subsequently stigmatized as a 'black sheep' by the political establishment and by other aristocrats.

Upon his 'conversion', General Cantacuzino was appointed a member of the Legionary Senate, and took part in all major events that shaped the movement's evolution. His new political engagement was soon to become notorious. On 9 December 1933, convinced that the Legion's rapid development posed a major challenge to Romania's political establishment, Prime Minister Ion G. Duca, head of the National Liberal Party, signed a decree banning the political section of the Legion, the Iron Guard. Thousands of Legionaries were arrested all over the country and their organization was paralyzed, just before the national elections.

In response, on 29 December 1933, Prime Minister Duca was assassinated by a death squad composed of three Legionaries. The three were captured by the police and charged with conspiracy and murder, along with prominent Legionary leaders or sympathizers including Codreanu and General Cantacuzino. After a short trial, the executioners were sentenced by a military tribunal to life imprisonment and forced labor while Codreanu and Cantacuzino, the moral instigators of the crimes, were acquitted. Cantacuzino's presence among the defendants was regarded by the Legionaries as 'a gift from God' because they were aware that the military jury would hesitate to convict a venerable war-hero general.

After serving a political ban of one year, Codreanu set up a new party called All for the Fatherland in December 1935. In order to mask it’s all too obvious continuity with the Legion, he entrusted the leadership of the party to Cantacuzino. The old General accepted the task only on condition 'that we all recognize Comeliu Zelea Codreanu as our superior chief.62 Cantacuzino's high contacts in the royal camarilla and his political influence allowed the general to act as a 'patron' of the movement, protecting it in relation to the royal palace or other state institutions and conferring on it public prestige. The wealthy General also supported the Legion financially, providing its first headquarters in Bucharest and the plot of land on which the Legionary centre, called the Green House, was built between 1936 and 1937.

Another highly prominent aristocratic leader of the Legion was Alexandru Cantacuzino (1901-39). The son of Alexandrina Pallady (1876-1944) and Grigore George Cantacuzino (1872-1930), and the grandson of the powerful George Gr. Cantacuzino (1832-1913)-former leader of the Conservative Party (1899-1907), prime minister of Romania (1899-1900,1904-;), and one of the richest landowners of his time, nicknamed 'The Nabob'Alexandru was thus the scion of two of the oldest boyar families, proudly bearing the title of 'Prince' to allude to his remote Byzantine imperial origins.

Alexandru received an elite education, studying law at the University of Bucharest (BA, Ph.D.), political science in Paris, and international relations at the innovative Hague Academy of International Law, established in 1923. He started a diplomatic career (1926;), serving also as secretary of Romanian legations in The Hague and Warsaw.64 In 1930 he engaged in journalism, collaborating with various right-wing journals such as Convorbiri Literare, Axa, Cuvantul studenfesc, and Vestitorii, and gradually became involved in the Legion as part of the first massive influx of intellectuals into its ranks.

A dynamic personality and leading ideologue, Alexandru rose rapidly within the Legion. He was one of the main organizers of the Legionary-dominated national student congresses in Craiova (April 1935) and Targu Mure- (April 1936). Appointed 'Commander of the Annunciation', Alexandru was a member of the team led by General Cantacuzino which fought in Spain on the General Franco's side, and was decorated by Franco in 1937. In December 1937 he was elected to parliament, standing for the All for the Fatherland party. In January 1938, in recognition of his activities and the great prestige he had attained, Alexandru was named leader of the newly established paramilitary elite order 'Mota and Marin', meant to glorify the memory of the two Legionary martyrs who died in the Spanish Civil War, and to preach the 'pedagogy of death and resurrection'. 65

During Carol II's royal dictatorship (1938-40), Alexandru Cantacuzino fell victim to political repression along with other leading Legionaries. After Codreanu's arrest in April 1938, Alexandru was interned in a camp with other Legionary leaders and subsequently sentenced to nine years' imprisonment. He managed to escape from the camp and led the Legion clandestinely. Arrested again in January 1939, he was executed on 22 September 1939 with about 250 other leading Legionaries on the order of Carol II. The elimination of the Legion's leadership ended a cycle in its history, bringing a new generation of activists to the forefront.

The transformation of the Legion was concomitant with the sudden transition from a clandestine organization to a ruling party. On 6 September 1940 Carol II was forced to abdicate and General Ion Antonescu stepped in to fill the political void. Requiring a political mass movement to legitimize his authoritarian rule, the General invited the Legion to form a government with the army. At this stage, the most important aristocratic family supporting the Legion was the Sturdzas, represented by the diplomat Mihail Sturdza, his wife Zoe Sturdza, a member of the association Friends of the Legion, and their son Ilie-Vlad Sturdza. Descended from an old princely family, Mihail Sturdza embarked on a diplomatic career, serving in the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs at embassies in Athens, Berne, Washington, Riga, and Copenhagen. His prestigious social origins, diplomatic experience, and opposition to former minister of foreign affairs Nicolae Titulescu's pro-Antante collective security approach (1927-8, 1932-6) meant that Mihail Sturdza was appointed minister of foreign affairs in the short-lived Legionary government that functioned between September 1940 and January 1941. In his memoirs, Sturdza puts forward an apologetic justification of the Legion's activities and defends the right of the aristocracy to act as Romania's traditional political elite. 66

Overall, according to available statistics, only 2-3 per cent of the total of 388 Legionary parliamentary candidates in the interwar period were of boyar descent.67 Although there were not many aristocrats in the Legion, their participation was central to its discourse of political legitimization and social organization. The Legionary ideology invested the native aristocracy with a paramount role in the regeneration of the Romanian nation. Ever since the nineteenth century palingenetic visions of Romanian nationalism had explained decadence in terms of the decline of traditional aristocracy and the loss of its militarist spirit.

The writer and editor Ion Heliade Rildulescu (1802;2), initiator of the programme of national regeneration, blamed decadence on the harmful effect of upstarts or parvenus (ciocoz) who subverted the class of native boyars.67 Along the same lines, the Romantic poet Mihai Eminescu (1850-89) attributed decadence to the disappearance of native boyars and their replacement by a 'superimposed' cosmopolitan urban class of foreigners who mercilessly exploited the peasantry.69 The regeneration of the nation was possible only by reviving the patriarchal order of the Middle Ages characterized by an 'organic alliance' between the native boyar class and the peasantry. These ideas were emulated by the Legion, which put forward a manifold strategy of regeneration. On the one hand, the national body had to be cleansed of alien elements; if in the first half of the nineteenth century the main culprits had been the Greek Phanariots, in the second half of the century the agents of degeneration were the Jews, regarded as an invading foreign middle class. On the other hand, the political class needed to be radically renewed by fighting 'bourgeois politicianism' and reviving patriotic values and the militarist spirit under the leadership of the new fascist elites in alliance with the last representatives of the Romanian nobility.

In order to explain the link, this briefly explore the symbolic role assigned to the aristocracy in legitimizing the new fascist elite. The Legion had an elitist structure. Its organization combined charismatic leadership at grass-roots and top central levels with appointed officials named by Codreanu at intermediate levels; and the principle of geographical representation with that of central leadership. In its first phase of development, the Legion was dominated by a small inner group of former student activists led by Codreanu, which made up a charismatic nucleus and commonly endorsed major decisions. During this time the circle of 'charismatic aristocracy' was considerably enlarged. In 1933 Codreanu established the rank of Legionary Commander awarded to prominent new legionaries. In 1936 the Captain created the Knights of the Annunciation, a corpus of commanders selected on the basis of their combat merit, trust, and loyalty, and held in high esteem by Legionaries.

Both the Legionary Senate and the corpus of the Knights were conceived of as a fusion between the new charismatic elite and the old Romanian aristocracy. This fusion expressed the dual nature of the Legionary ideology. On the one hand it was revolutionary, preaching radical renewal of the existing social order. On the other, while advocating the building of a totalitarian state, Codreanu looked backwards in history for models of a glorious medieval past, when the national community had been homogeneous and the Romanian aristocracy, allegedly, unmixed with foreigners. In this way Codreanu put forward a regressive utopia, a nativist reaction to social change and parliamentary democracy. In his Pentru Legionari, Codreanu contrasted the patriarchal order of the old Moldavian nobility (vechea boierime moldoveneascii) with the contemporary outlook of Moldavian cities, dominated by Jewish taverns throwing away their dirt, garbage, and slops'.70

The Legionary propaganda created and publicized the image of the patriotic and altruistic aristocrat, portrayed as a natural leader of the 'organic' rural community and thus embodying the main qualities of the charismatic Legionary elite. The prototype of the aristocratic father-figure was General Cantacuzino, whose patriarchal authority-supported by traditional law, Orthodox religious conviction, and his high military rank-was to serve as a 'hero model' in preparing the young Legionary elite. The Legionary press perpetuated 'the myth of the general', advocating a natural alliance between the new, heroic aristocracy of youth and the medieval, pre-Phanariot Romanian aristocracy. In an article written on the occasion of Cantacuzino's burial, Mircea Eliade points to the community of values shared by the alienated aristocracy and the Legionary elite, centered on the spirit of sacrifice, devotion, and militarism:
Embracing the ideals of the Legion, General Cantacuzino recognized in his new spiritual family that love of liberty, that feeling of honour and dignity, that courageous attitude in the face of death, suffering, and repression that he could not find in the soul of his contemporaries. General Cantacuzino found in the Legionary ideals his unspoiled credo. These youngsters who start their life preparing to die today make up the great Romanian family in which the pre-Phanariot virtue and masculinity embodied by General Cantacuzino illuminates the destiny of the entire century. 71

In a eulogy published in 1969, Horia Sima, the Legion's postCodreanu leader---argues that General Catacuzino was among the few aristocrats who understood their historical mission and 'integrated perfectly into the legionary mentality', recognizing in Codreanu 'the leader of the new national elite, originating from the peasant masses, of the new Romanian aristocracy meant to replace the old boyars, exhausted and powerless'. In order to obscure the Byzantine origin of the Cantacuzino family, Sima claims that they were ethnically related to Romanians by their common antique Thracian roots, and by centuries of living together, in harmony with the peasantry.72 Sima's attempt to prove the national character of the Cantacuzinos and their pre-eighteenth-century assimilation was a response to the emergence of an anti-Phanariot discourse within the Legion, promoted mostly by Macedonian Romanians of anti-Greek orientation. In reaction to the increasingly factional competition within the organization in the late 1930s, the 'Macedonians' used the anti-Phanariot rhetoric, discrediting their competitors as antinational.

If General Cantacuzino served as a patriarchal father-figure of the new man, Alexandru Cantacuzino was a prototype of the young generation of fascist aristocrats. Alexandru's political views were influenced by those of his mother, 'Princess' Alexandrina, although his political engagement was certainly more radical. One of the co-founders of the National Orthodox Society of Romanian Women (191O) and its interwar president, Alexandrina combined nationalism with Orthodox ethics and conservative feminism.73 She was one of the most combative activists for women's social and political emancipation, mostly through the charitable work of well to-do women, being convinced that the upper aristocratic classes had a historical duty to 'emancipate' the masses.

Alexandru shared many of these concerns, but reinterpreted them from a fascist perspective. Imbued with an antiCommunist and militant fervour, his writings attempted to reconcile nationalism with Orthodox ethics and the fascist revolutionary spirit. Like George Sorel, Alexandru Cantacuzino hailed violence for its 'purifying' effect, and pleaded for a form of 'heroic Christianity' based on a peculiar road to collective salvation through fascist combat and sacrifice for the national cause. He was primarily concerned with the creation of the Legionary 'new man', defined as a superior type of 'human being' shaped by 'Christian conceptions and a new philosophy oflife'.74

Nevertheless, the 'aristo-fascist' discourse was not always in tune with the Legionary ideology. The aristocracy perpetuated an image of itself that underlined its natural superiority and reclaimed its lost privileges on the basis of its traditional legitimacy. At a time of decline in patronage and growth in professionalism in society, Romanian aristocrats tried to capitalize on their paternalistic treatment of peasants and their role in keeping traditional rural communities together. In its struggle with the bourgeoisie for social, cultural, and economic predominance, the aristocracy depicted itself as the bearer of tradition and religion in sharp contrast to bourgeois materialism and egotism.

In his memoirs covering the period 1937-49, Ilie-Vlad Sturdza compares the 'Romania of the boyars' with the post-1918 bourgeois Romania, emphasizing the contrast between the patriarchal order of aristocratic rule and the dictatorial drive of Ion Antonescu's military regime (1940-4), regarded as the political victory of the bourgeoisie.74 Allegedly, many of the micro-practices of power that he employed during the short Legionary rule emulated those traditionally used on boyar's estates, such as ad hoc courts of justice for poor peasants, which Sturdza also used in judging litigation between Romanian peasants and Jews.76 Significantly, Ilie-Vlad Sturdza postulates an 'accommodating' and issue-oriented anti-Semitism which he sees more as a strategy for the manipulation of elites than as justified on racial or religious grounds. Sturdza also denounces the violence of Antonescu's regime, comparing it unfavorably with paternalistic practices of negotiation in his view characterizing aristocratic rule.

This distinction departs from the Legion's radical antiSemitism as an indication of the aristocracy's more tolerant attitude towards the Jews. As such, it illustrates social-ideological divisions clearly evident among the heterogeneous Legionary membership. Discourses of legitimization put forward by the Legion and the aristocracy coincided in their harsh criticism of the bourgeoisie, their rejection of parliamentary democracy, and their endorsement of an elitist social structure based on military hierarchical subordination. Both discourses called for the revival of the glorious, pre-Phanariot, 'national' past.

Although they had this much in common, there were nevertheless significant differences between these two 'related' political projects. The aristocracy was not committed to mass politics, but argued for a return to the traditional order of the Estates. Representing the economic interests of large landowners, it favored free trade and the development of a cosmopolitan middle class made up of foreign elements. Although it adhered to the nationalist discourse, the traditional aristocratic representation of the peasantry was that of a poor, 'dirty', and ignorant class unable to manage itself. In its turn, the Legion advocated building a modern, totalitarian, political order based on a homogeneous ethnic community purged of foreign elements. Its ultranationalist discourse idealized the peasantry as the authentic repository of the Romanian national character. Although it endorsed a corporatist organization that would apparently revive the Estates and guilds of the Middle Ages, the Legion called for a strong centralized economy, protectionism, and state intervention in the economy, expressing the interests of the native middle class. In the long run, the aristocracy's specific interests were thus not only subordinated, but in fact also largely divergent. Plus as in other Central and Eastern European countries, in Romania the history of the nobility can be written as a story of decline from medieval 'glory', via a gradual loss of influence in the era of mass politics, to its final downfall under Communist repression.

Also in Italy, the end of the monarchy came with the end of fascism. Against all expectations, Victor Emanuel III managed, at the last minute, in July 1943, to separate himself from Mussolini thanks to a successful coup d’etat,75 But the serious omissions in the armistice announced on 8 September 1943, and the king's and the government's precipitate and undignified flight from Rome to Brindisi put an extra burden on the dynasty, which was already deeply compromised by its decades of cooperation with fascism. The abdication of the king and a rapid transfer of the crown to his relatively uncompromised son, Umberto, might have strengthened sympathy for the monarchy in Italian society. But Victor Emanuel III offered stubborn resistance and did not transfer power to his son in the form of a regency until June 1944, when he was under the pressure of an Allied ultimatum.

The fate of the aristocracy as an institution was sealed with that of the monarchy. Article 14 of the transitional regulations in the constitution which came into force on 1 January 1948 reads: 'Aristocratic titles are not recognized. Titles which existed before 28 October 1922 now form part of the name .... The law will regulate the abolition of the Heraldic Council.' Thus after the monarchy, the nobility also quietly came to an end, almost without discussion. The planned law concerning the Heraldic Council never materialized. The institution as such continued to function for another ten years. In 1959 its archives were handed over to the Archivio Centrale dello Stato.76 The constitutionally highly contradictory undertaking by the Italian state, based on the Concordat of 1929, to recognize aristocratic titles conferred by the pope in Italy also continued in force. An appendix to the Gazzetta Ufficiale no. 73 of 22 March 1961 lists registration costs. The notification of a Principe title cost 300,000 lire. A simple Nobile cost 40,000 lire.77 The exiled King Umberto II, too, continued to use his right to confer titles. By 1977, he had ennobled about 170 Italians from his base in Caiscais (Portugal).78

It may be seen as a quasi-symbolic ending that in 1948 the Societa del Whist merged with the leading bourgeois association in Turin, the Accademia Filarmonica, 'to form a great club, a meeting place for all the best elements in the city'. A few years later Turin was the setting for the brilliant wedding of the heir to the Fiat group, Giovanni Agnelli, grandson of the firm's founder, and Marella Caracciolo, an heiress from one of the oldest Neapolitan aristocratic families.
 

1.On Maurras's ideas about king and elite cf. Nolte, Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche, 61-190; Pierre Boutang, Maurras: La destinee et lYEuvre (Paris, 1984); and Victor Nguyen, Aux origines de l'Actionfianfaise (Paris, 1991).

2. This is a reference to Oliver Cromwell's general, George Monck (1608-70), who played a key role in the restoration of Charles II.

3. Zeev Sternhell, Maurice Barres et Ie nationalismefianfais (Paris, 1972).

4. Eckart Conze describes the SS's (imaginary) closeness to the aristocracy in his 'Adel unter dem Totenkopf: Die Idee eines Neuadels in den Gesellschaftsvorstellungen der SS', in Eckart Conze and Monika Wienfort (eds.), Adelsgeschichte als Gesellschqftsgeschichte:
Deutschland im europiiischen Vergleich im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Cologne, 2004), 151-80; Alexandra Gerstner, Rassenadel und Sozialaristokratie: Adelsvorstellungen in der viilkischen Bewegung (1890-1914) (Berlin, 2003); Breuer, Nationalismus und Faschismus, 178-94.

5. Michel Winock, Edouard Drumont et Gie: antisimitisme etfascisme en France (Paris, 1982); Stephen Wilson, Ideology and Experience: Antisemitism in France at the Time of the Dreyfus Affair (New Jersey, 1982).

6. William D. Irvine, The Boulanger Affair Reconsidered: Royalism, Boulangism and the Origins of the Radical Right in France (New York, 1989), 73-124; Philippe Levillain, Boulanger: Fossoyeur de la monarchie (Paris, 1982), 139-63.

7. Willa Z. Silverman, 'Profession, Antisemite: Ideology and Gender in the Life and Works of Gyp', Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 23!r-3 (Winter 1994-5), 222-43; ead., 7he Notorious Lift of Gyp: Right- Wing Anarchist in Fin-de-Siecle France (New York, 1995).

8. Stephen Wilson, 'Le Monument Henry: la structure de I'antisemitisme en France, 1898-1899', Annales Economies, Societes, Civilisations, 32/2 (1977), 265-91.

9. Claude-Isabelle Brelot, 'Entre nationalisme et cosmopolitisme: les engagements multiples de la noblesse', in Pierre Birnbaum (ed.), La France de l'Affaire Dreyfus (Paris, 1994),339-61. For the quotation from Proust see ibid. 339.

10. Malinowski, Vom Konig zum Fiihrer, 594-609'

11. Rene Remond, La Droite en France de 1815 Ii nosjours: Continuiti et diversiti d'une tradition politique (Paris, 1954); Serge Berstein, 'La France des annees trente allergique au fascisme: a propos d'un livre de Zeev Stemhell', XXe .rieele, 2 (Apr. 1984), 87; Pierre Milza, Fascisme franfais: Passe et Present (paris, 1987); Philippe Burrin, La Dirive fasciste (Paris, 1986); Jacques Juillard, 'Sur un fascisme imaginaire: a propos d'un livre de Zeev Stemhell', Annales ESC, 39 (1984), 849-61; Leonardo Rapone, 'Fascismo: ne destra ne sinistra?', Studi storici, 25 (1984), 799-820.

12. Arendt, Elemente und Urspriinge; Nolte, Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche; William Irvine, 'Fascism in France and the Strange Case of the Croix de Feu', Journal of Modern History, 63 (June 1991), 294; Robert Soucy, French Fascism: The First Wave 1924-1933 (New Haven, 1986); id., French Fascism: The Second Wave 1933-1939 (New Haven, 1995). On this debate cf. Michel Dobry (ed.), Le My the de l'allergiefranfaise aufascisme (Paris, 2003).

13. As Stanley G. Payne has recently shown most convincingly in his comparative study, A History of Fascism, 1914-1945 (Madison, 1995).

14. Zeev Sternhell, La Droite revolutionnaire 1885-1914: Les onginesfranfaises dufascisme (paris, 1978).

15. Id., Ni Droite, ni gauche: L'idiologie fasciste en France (Paris, 1983).

16. Emilio Gentile, Qy'est-ce que Ie fascisme? (Paris, 2004); id., Stona del Partito Fascista (Rome, 1989). For criticism of a definition of fascism drawn from the history of ideas cf. Michel Winock, 'Fascisme ala franyaise ou fascisme introuvable?', Le Dibat, 25 (May 1983),41.

17. Sternhell, Xi droite, ni gauche and, on two of the most important exponents of this type, Marcel Deat, Perspectives socialistes (Paris, 1930); Reinhold Brender, Kollaboration in Frankreich im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Marcel Diat und das Rassemblement national populaire (Munich, 1992);Jean-Paul Brunet, Jacques Donot: du communisme aufascisme (Paris, 1986).

18. Eugen Weber, Action franfaise: Royalism and Reaction in Twentieth-Century France (Stanford, Calif., 1962).

19. For criticism of Rene Remond's position, see the discussion in Kevin Passmore, 'Boy-Scouting for Grown-Up Paramilitarism in the Croix de Feu and PSF', French Historical Studies, 19/2 (Fall, 1995),527-57.

20. Soucy, French Fascism: The Second Wave, 104-203, esp. 135; Weber, Actionfianfaise, 312; Kevin Passmore, 'The Croix de Feu: Bonapartism, National Populism or Fascism', French History, 9/I (1995), 67-92.

21. Weber, Actionfrancaise, 124-36, 257,6.

22. Remond, La Droite, 15-45.

23. Marvin L. Brown, The Comte de Chambord: The Third Republic's Uncompromising King (Durham, NC, 1967).

24.Breuer, NatWnalismus und Faschismus, '97.

25. Renzo De Felice, Der Faschismus: Ein Interview Don Michael A. Ledeen (Stuttgart, '977).

26. Jacques Nobecourt, Ie Colonel de La Rocque 1885-1946, ou les Pieges du Nationalisme Chretien (Paris, 1996).

27. On the 'mythical' connection with 'the soil', see Pierre Barral, 'La terre', in Sirinelli (ed.), Histoire des Droites, iii. 49-69. The saying famously attributed to Petain, incidentally, was coined by Emmanuel Berl, an urban intellectual. It stands for the connection between aristocratic tradition and the thinking of radical right-wing intellectuals, which can be found in many European countries.

28. Marc Bloch, Strange Defeat: A Statemeut of Evideuce Writteu in 1940 (New York, 1968); French edn.: L'Etrange Dijaite (Paris, 1940).

29. Bemard Comte, Une utopie combattante: L'Ecole des cadres d'Uriage, 1940-1942 (Paris, 1991).

30. Jean-Luc Pinal, '1919-1958: Le temps des droites?', in Sirinelli (ed.), Histoire des Droites, i. 291-389, at 327-36.

31. Bernard Destremau,]ean de Lattre de Tassigny (Paris, 1999); Christine Levisse-Touze, Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque (1902-I947): La Ligende d'un MOS (Paris, 2002).

32. Franyois d'Astier de la Vigerie (1886-1956), Saint-Cyrien, cavalry officer, served as an officer at the front in the First 'World War, pilot, air commodore 1936, head ofthe French air force 1939, member of the Derniere Colonne, commander of French troops in Britain, ambassador to BraziL Henri d'Astier de la Vigerie (1897-1952), Polytechnicien, artillery officer in the war, member of various resistance groups, chief of police in Algiers, 1942, organized the assassination of the collaborator Admiral Francois Darlan. The assassin, a young Royalist named Fernand Bonnier de la Chapelle, claimed to have acted in agreement with the comte de Paris, the successor to the throne.

33. Emmanuel d'Astier de la Vigerie, Septfois septjours (Paris, 1961); id., Les Dieux et les hommes: 1943-1944 (Paris, 1952); Laurent Douzou, La Desobeissance: Histoire d'un mouvement et d'un journal clandestins. Limigration-Sud (I940-1944) (Paris, 1995).

34. Yves Pourcher, Pierre Laval vue par saftlle, d'apres ses carnets intimes (Paris, 2002).

35. In the original version: J e connais bien la famille. Elle est complete: on y trouve un diplomate dont les maladresses meneront, peut-etre it la guerre, un parlementaire qui la votera, un general qui la perdra.' Jean Giraudoux, quoted in Pourcher, Pierre Laval, 65.

36. Marquis Pierre de Chambrun (1865-1954), deputy and senator for Lozere, left-wing Republican, then independent deputy.

37. Gilbert de Chambrun, colonel of the Forces francaises de l'interieur, regional commander in the Languedoc. On this cf. Gilbert de Chambrun, Journal d'un militaire d'occasion (Montpellier, 2000).

38. Marcus Funck and Stephan Malinowski, 'Masters of Memory: The Strategic Use of Memory in Autobiographies of the German Nobility', in Alan Confino and Peter Fritzsche (eds.), The Work of Memory: New Directions in the Study of German Society and Culture (Urbana, Ill., 2002), 86-103.

39. Barrington Moore Jr., Social Origins if Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making if the Modern World (London, 1966).

40. Ibid. p. xiv.

41. Ibid. p. x.

42. For an attempt to explain the social origins of politics in the Middle East in terms of Moore's model, see Heim Gerber, The Social Origins of the Modern Middle East (London, 1987).

43. Gale Stokes, 'The Social Origins of East European Politics', in Daniel Chirot (ed)., The Origins of Backwardness in Eastern Europe: Economics and Politics from the Middle Ages until the Early Twentieth Century (Berkeley, 1989), 210-52.

44. Ibid. 226.

45.Arrested in November 1940 under the short-lived Iron Guard government, Constantin Argetoianu managed to escape death and was subsequently imprisoned under the Communist regime.

46. Andrew C.Janos, East Central Europe in the Modern World: The Politics of the Borderlands from Pre- to Postcommunism (Stanford, Calif., 2000), 170-1.

47. Armin Heinen, Legiunea 'Arhanghelul Mihail': Miscare sociala si organizatie politica. 0 contributie la problema faseismului international (Bucharest, 1998), 17.

48. Robert O. Paxton, 'Five Stages of Fascism', Joumal of Modern History, 70 (Mar. 1998), 1-23.

49. Constantin Iordachi, Charisma, Politics and Violence: 77ze Legion of the 'Archangell'Michael' in Inter-war Romania (Trondheim, 2004).

50. Ion I. Mola (alias Zyrax), 'Problema minoritara in Romania', Axa, 2/5 (22 Jan. 1933), p. ii. 51. Ibid.

52. 'Legiunea Arhanghelul Mihail', Piimiintul Striimo~esc, 1/2 (15 Aug. 1927), 3-4; and 'Organizarea Legiunii Arhanghelul Mihail', Piimiintul Striimo~esc, 1/5 (I Oct. 1927),3-4

53 Ibid.

54. Heinen, Legiunea 'Arhanghelului Mihail, 136.

55. Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline if InterpretatWe Sociology, 2 vols. (Berkeley, 1978), i. 274.

56.Heinen, Legiunea 'Arhanghelului Mihail, 139.

57. 'Organizarea Legiunii Arhanghelul Miliail', 5.

58. Cornelu Zelea Codreanu, 'Spre masele populare', in his Pentru legionari (yd edn.; Bucharest, 1940),331/8.

59. Lucian Predescu (ed.), Enciclopedia Cugetarea (Bucharest, 1940), 165.

60. Horia Sima, 'Generalul Cantacuzino-Granicerul', Man existente legionare, 1/1O (I Aug. 1965).

61. Cuvantul Argesului, 1 (10 Aug. 1935),5, cited in Zigu Ornea, The Romanian Extreme Right: The Nineteen Thirties (Boulder, Col., 1999), 282-3.

62. Predescu (ed.), Enciclopedia Cugetarea, 937-8.

63. '0 noua unitate legionara in cadrul Partidului "Totul Pentru Tara"', Buna Vestire, 270 (23Jan. 1938), p. i.

64. Michael Sturzda, The Suicide if Europe (Boston, 1986).

65.Janos, East Central Europe, 170-1.

66. Ion Heliade Rildulescu, Opere, 2 vols. (Bucharest, 2002), ii. 339.

67. Dumitru Murarescu, Nafionalismullui Eminescu (Bucharest, 1994),68-81.

68. Codreanu, 'Problema oraselor', Pentru legionari, 91.

69. Mircea Eliade, 'Mitul Generalului', Buna Vestire, 1 (14 Oct. 1937), 189.

70. Sima, 'Generalul Cantacuzino-Granicerul'.

71. Predescu (ed.), Enciclopedia Cugetarea, 162.

72. See Alexandru Cantacuzino, Opere complete (Munich, 1969).

73 See Ilie- Vlad Sturdza, Pribeag printr-un secol nebun: De La Legiunea Arhangelului Mihailla Legiunea Straina (Bucharest, 2002).

74 Ibid. 40.

75. Jens Petersen, 'Sommer 1934', in Hans Woller (ed.), Italien und die Grossmaechte 1943-1949, Munich, 1988, 23-48.

76. Pericoli, Titoli nobiliari niconosciuti in Italia, Rome,1963, 7. 45

78. Giorgi Rumi, La politica nobiliare del Regno d'Italia 1861-1946 in La Noblesses europeennes, 2nd edn;Rome,1971, 585.