Europe between Democracy and Fascism: Hermann Heller on Fascism as a Threat to Europe and Democracy as a Community of Values

Abstract

Since the entry of the United States in the Great War in 1917 on the side of the Entente powers, the war had also been fought as what American President Woodrow Wilson saw as a universal crusade for democracy. And with the victory of the Western democratic Allied states, the Entente, in November 1918, the superiority of democracy as a political system seemed obvious to almost everybody. Democracy was on top. It was in. The democratic idea of government by the people also spread to most of the new states erected in Europe since 1918, and a form of democratic rule or regime established itself all over Europe in the years to follow. The British historian James Bryce optimistically talked about the ‘universal acceptance of democracy as the normal and natural form of government’ (1921, p. 4). The question was, however, if democracy was really the normal and natural form of government for Europe. That turned out to be a lot more ambiguous and controversial. But democracy, democratic rule and democratic values had been put on the agenda.