Strategies for Survival of Displaced Fascists: The Romanian Legionaries in the Western Hemisphere, 1945-1965

The project sheds light on an understudied aspect of post-war fascism: the mobilization of East European 'expatriate fascist parties' (Griffin 1991) which had been kept alive by émigré fascists as embryonic entities in the West.

Why did East European fascists deem it necessary to provide continuity to old political instances in the context of post-war displacement and settlement in the West?

Considering 'nostalgia' (Griffin 1991) and 'fanaticism' (Eisenberg 1967) to be inadequate categories for analyzing the reissuing of fascist interwar social movements in the context of fascism's global ostracization, the project draws from post-war displacement studies and it identifies need as the drive for post-war political mobilization of displaced fascists.

By biographical method and network analysis, the project will show that, in the context of displacement, keeping bonds with old comrades was vital for personal salvation and that, in the successive settlement in the West, mobilization absolved the same forward-looking function but the improved materials conditions offered also possibility to normalize the infamous collective identity.

With focus on selected Romanian fascists displaced after the war and settled in the German Federal Republic, and on key individuals from their global networks, the analysis of their printed literature and of states’ and intelligence archival sources will outline a history of the strategies for survival implemented by displaced fascists.