Technique Du Coup D'etat

The Technique Of Revolution by Curzio Malaparte Morris Productions Aurora, Il FOREWORD In 1931, Italian journalist and political writer, Curzio Malaparte, published a book in Italy entitled TECHNIQUE DU COUP D'ÊTAT. This work was based on his own personal observation of the activities in Russia at the time of the Revolution, Poland at the time of the Bolshevik invasion of 1920 and Berlin during the Kapp putsch. Malaparte was an early supporter of Mussolini and had first-hand knowledge of the means by which Il Duce had come to power in 1922. His observations into the means by which power is acquired are acute and accurate but it is interesting to note that in 1931, he dismisses Adolf Hitler as a “fat Austrian” and little more than a second-hand imitator of Benito Mussolini. Malaparte’s work studied the successful, and unsuccessful, coups d’Etat or seizure of power and his work was both seminal and topical for a European audience of the 1930s. However, when this book was translated into English and released in America in 1932, it appeared at the most serious time of the worldwide depression when millions of angry Americans had been thrown out of work; seen their life savings vanish, reduced to humiliating poverty and unable to provide for their families. Herbert Hoover was president and he had made no visible public efforts to address the growing and bitter frustrations in the United States. Malaparte’s book, showing the relative ease with which a modern nation could be conquered by a handful of determined men, was not well received in the corridors of power in America and the book was soon viewed as dangerous and in essence, banned. In a democracy, books are never banned; only officially ignored which amounts to the same thing. This is a very important work that should prove to be of interest to any student of both politics and history. What is past is prologue to the future. PREFACE Although it is my plan to demonstrate how a modern State is captured and defended, which was, more or less, the subject treated by Machiavelli, this book is in no sense an imitation of The Prince-not even a modern imitation, which would be something necessarily remote from Machiavelli. In the age from which Machiavelli drew his arguments, his examples and the matter for his reflections, public and private liberties, civic dignity, and the self-respect of men had fallen so low, that I should fear to be insulting my readers in applying any of the teachings of the famous book to the urgent problems of modern Europe. At first sight the whole political history of the last ten years may seem to he the tale of the operation of the Treaty of Versailles, of the economic consequences of the war, and of the attempts of Governments to ensure the peace of Europe. The true explanation is, however, different, and is to be found in the struggle between the defenders of liberty and democracy, and of the parliamentary State, against the adversaries of those principles. The attitudes of the various parties are political aspects of this struggle. To understand many events of recent years, and to foresee the future of politics within various European States the behavior of political parties must be considered from this point of view and this alone. In nearly every country there are on the one hand parties out to defend the parliamentary State and to apply the Liberal and democratic method of preserving an internal balance of power. Among these I count every kind of Conservative, from Right Wing Liberals to Left Wing Socialists. And on the other hand there are the parties whose view of the State is revolutionary, parties of the extreme Left and the Extreme Right, Fascists and Communists, modern Catilines. The Catilines of the Right are concerned with the preservation of order. They accuse the Governments of weakness, incapacity and irresponsibility. The