Wie umgehen mit Faschismus und Nationalsozialismus?

The study analyzes for the first time the engagement of Italian, German, and French socialists with fascism and National Socialism over more than four decades from a comparative and relational historical perspective. At the center of the individual and collective biographical investigation are the diverse experiences, expectations, and memories of the actors in the tension between dictatorship and democracy from 1919 to 1960. The work, which is structured both synchronously and diachronically, aims first to depict the processual nature and development of socialists' engagement with fascism and National Socialism, second to enhance the comparison through perspectives of perception and transnational moments, and third to highlight peculiarities and differences as well as similarities and connections. It demonstrates that alongside international orientation and transnational networks, national influences and frameworks of action remained highly relevant for the examined groups of actors, thus making an important contribution to a nuanced transnational history of the European labor movement in the 20th century.