Rise of Totalitarian Regimes
Overview
Totalitarianism
One of the most disturbing developments of the Interwar Period, between the two world wars, was the rise of totalitarian regimes across the world. Totalitarianism emerged because of widespread dissatisfaction over the outcome and aftermath of the First World War, in conjunction with the exploitation of the impulse toward political democratization occurring across the world totalitarian leaders. These leaders seized control of countries around the world, playing to popular dissatisfaction, toward the end of pursuing their agendas of national and personal aggrandizement. The rise of such regimes, particularly in Italy, Japan, and Germany, led to disastrous consequences for humanity, first and foremost being the Second World War and the Holocaust.
Learning Outcomes
- Explain the global challenge to liberalism by totalitarianism through the movements of communism, fascism, and National Socialism.
- Evaluate the factors that led to the global depression in the 1930s.
- Compare and contrast the reactions of nations worldwide to this global depression.
Key Terms / Key Concepts
totalitarianism: an approach to government defined by a central authority exercising complete control over a society
Benito Mussolini: fascist leader of World War II Italy and early fascist leader of post-WWI Europe
Adolf Hitler: Nazi leader of World War II Germany, responsible for the Holocaust
Totalitarianism
After World War I totalitarianism emerged as an approach to government in nations across Eurasia. It was a reaction to the dissatisfaction felt by many citizens in nations where it took hold, including most notably Germany, Italy, and Japan. Totalitarianism is distinct from the absolutist governments of early modern Europe and is defined by the executive branch of a national government, usually the monarchy, enjoying complete control over the government, but not the society. Totalitarianism is also marked by a number of different characteristics, including authoritarianism, national and/or ethnic chauvinism, personality cults, and an industrialized approach to governance. The political developments and organizational and technological advances growing out of the Industrial Revolution made totalitarianism possible. Ironically, the most significant political development that contributed to the rise of totalitarian was the grant of nominal universal male suffrage. Totalitarian leaders such as Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler exploited this development, arguing that each had the mandate of his people. Before these developments and advances, during the early modern era, absolutist rulers such as Louis XIV of France could not conceive of totalitarian control over their countries. During the Interwar period totalitarianism took a number of different forms, including fascism and statism, in a range of attitudes toward the governed, from benign to malignant.
Fascism
Fascism is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism that came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe, characterized by one-party totalitarian regimes, which were run by charismatic dictators, as well as involved glorification of violence, and racist ideology. The first fascist movements emerged in Italy during World War I, then spread to other European countries. Opposed to liberalism, communism, and anarchism, fascism is usually placed on the far-right within the traditional left–right spectrum.
Learning Outcomes
- Explain the global challenge to liberalism by totalitarianism through the movements of communism, fascism, and National Socialism.
- Evaluate the factors that led to the global depression in the 1930s.
- Compare and contrast the reactions of nations worldwide to this global depression.
Key Terms / Key Concepts
fascism: a form of radical authoritarian nationalism that came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe, which holds that liberal democracy is obsolete and that the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state is necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties.
liberalism - ideology based on the concept of equality of opportunity which emerged in early modern Europe, developed by participants in the Enlightenment, This ideology has become one of the principle ideologies in political and economic discourse, along with a basis for a number of national political parties.
communism: a political, social, and economic movement and philosophy in which there are ideally no economic or social classes or private property and resources are owned equally by the people. Karl Marx developed this ideology, with Friedrich Engels, during the mid-nineteenth century in response to the Industrial Revolution.
totalitarianism: an approach to government defined by a central authority exercising complete control over a society
autarky: the economic and political concept of self-sufficiency
Benito Mussolini: fascist leader of World War II Italy and early fascist leader of post-WWI Europe
Factors and Developments underlying the Emergence of Totalitarian Regimes
A number of factors and developments in the aftermath of World War I fueled the emergence of totalitarian regimes during the twenties and thirties. First, those countries which did succumb to totalitarianism, on both sides, were disappointed in the ending this conflict from them. Second, many, if not most supporters, sought simple and easy solutions to complex problems. Third, totalitarian rulers possessed charisma, even if it appealed to negative emotions.
Fascist Ideologies
Fascists saw World War I as a revolution that brought massive changes to the nature of war, society, the state, and technology. The advent of total war and the total mass mobilization of belligerent societies had broken down the distinction between civilians and combatants. A “military citizenship” arose in which all citizens were involved with the military in some manner during the war. The war resulted in the rise of a powerful state capable of mobilizing millions of people to serve on the front lines and providing economic production and logistics to support them, as well as having unprecedented authority to intervene in the lives of citizens.
In the early twentieth century fascists believed that liberal democracy was obsolete, and they regarded the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and respond effectively to economic difficulties. Such a state had to be led by a strong leader—such as a dictator and a martial government composed of the members of the governing fascist party—to forge national unity and maintain a stable and orderly society. Fascism rejected assertions that violence was automatically negative in nature; on the other hand, it viewed political violence, war, and imperialism as means that could achieve national rejuvenation. Fascists advocated a mixed economy with the principal goal of achieving autarky (self-sufficiency) through protectionist and interventionist economic policies.
Reaching its apex during the twenties and thirties, fascism was repudiated by the end of the Second World War because of its association with the Axis Powers. Since the end of World War II in 1945, few parties have openly described themselves as fascist, and the term is instead now usually used pejoratively by political opponents. The terms neo-fascist or post-fascist are sometimes applied more formally to describe parties of the far right with ideologies similar to or rooted in 20th century fascist movements.
Early History of Fascism
The historian Zeev Sternhell has traced the ideological roots of fascism back to the 1880s, and in particular to the fin-de-siècle (French for “end of the century”) theme of that time. This ideology was based on a revolt against materialism, rationalism, positivism, bourgeois society, and democracy. The fin-de-siècle generation supported emotionalism, irrationalism, subjectivism, and vitalism. The fin-de-siècle mindset saw civilization as being in a crisis that required a massive and total solution. Its intellectual school considered the individual only one part of the larger collectivity, which should not be viewed as an atomized numerical sum of individuals. They condemned the rationalistic individualism of liberal society and the dissolution of social links in bourgeois society.
The term fascist comes from the Italian word fascismo, derived from fascio meaning a bundle of rods, ultimately from the Latin word fasces. This was the name given to political organizations in Italy known as fasci—groups similar to guilds or syndicates. At first, it was applied mainly to organizations on the political left. The Fascists came to associate the term with the ancient Roman fasces or fascio littorio—a bundle of rods tied around an axe, an ancient Roman symbol of the authority of the civic magistrate carried by his lictors, which could be used for corporal and capital punishment at his command. The symbolism of the fasces suggested strength through unity: a single rod is easily broken, while the bundle is difficult to break.
After the end of the World War I, fascism rose out of relative obscurity into international prominence, with fascist regimes forming most notably in Italy, Germany, and Japan, the three of which would be allied in World War II. Fascist Benito Mussolini seized power in Italy in 1922, and Adolf Hitler had successfully consolidated his power in Germany by 1933.
Rise of Fascism in Italy
After the First World War Italy became the first major European power to embrace fascism, with Benito Mussolini leading the way. Italy was one of a number of nations around the world which came under the control of various forms of totalitarian governments. Italy foreshadowed the emergence of fascism in other countries, and Mussolini became a model for other totalitarian leaders in Europe, including General Francisco Franco in Spain and Adolf Hitler in Germany.
Learning Outcomes
- Explain the global challenge to liberalism by totalitarianism through the movements of communism, fascism, and National Socialism.
- Evaluate the factors that led to the global depression in the 1930s.
- Compare and contrast the reactions of nations worldwide to this global depression.
Key Terms / Key Concepts
Benito Mussolini: fascist leader of World War II Italy and early fascist leader of post-WWI Europe
Francisco Franco: a Spanish general who ruled over Spain as a dictator for 36 years from 1939 until his death (He took control of Spain from the government of the Second Spanish Republic after winning the Civil War, and was in power 1978, when the Spanish Constitution of 1978 went into effect.)
Adolf Hitler: Nazi leader of World War II Germany, responsible for the Holocaust
fascism: a form of radical authoritarian nationalism that came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe, which holds that liberal democracy is obsolete and that the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state is necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties.
At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, the Italian political left split over the war. While the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) opposed the war, a number of Italian revolutionary syndicalists supported war against Germany and Austria-Hungary on the grounds that their reactionary regimes had to be defeated to ensure the success of socialism. Angelo Oliviero Olivetti formed a pro-interventionist fascio called the Fasci of International Action in October 1914. Benito Mussolini, upon expulsion from his position as chief editor of the PSI’s newspaper Avanti! for his anti-German stance, joined the interventionist cause in a separate fascio.
The fascists and the Italian political right held common ground: both held Marxism in contempt, discounted class consciousness, and believed in the rule of elites. Italian fascists began to accommodate themselves to Italian conservatives by making major alterations to its political agenda—abandoning its previous populism, republicanism, and anticlericalism, while adopting policies in support of free enterprise, and accepting the Roman Catholic Church and the monarchy as institutions in Italy. Fascists identified their primary opponents as the majority of socialists on the left who had opposed intervention in World War I.
The first meeting of the Fasci of Revolutionary Action was held on January 24, 1915 and was led by Benito Mussolini. This group first used the term “fascism.” During the first meeting of this group in January 1915, Mussolini declared that it was necessary for Europe to resolve its national problems—including national borders of Italy and elsewhere—“for the ideals of justice and liberty for which oppressed peoples must acquire the right to belong to those national communities from which they descended.” Attempts to hold mass meetings were ineffective, and the organization was regularly harassed by government authorities and socialists.
In the next few years, the relatively small group took various political actions. To appeal to Italian conservatives, fascism adopted policies such as promoting family values, including policies designed to reduce the number of women in the workforce by limiting the woman’s role to that of a mother. The fascists banned literature on birth control and increased penalties for abortion in 1926, declaring both crimes against the state.
Though fascism adopted a number of positions designed to appeal to reactionaries, the Fascists sought to maintain fascism’s revolutionary character, with Angelo Oliviero Olivetti saying “Fascism would like to be conservative, but it will [be] by being revolutionary.” The Fascists supported revolutionary action and committed to secure law and order to appeal to both conservatives and syndicalists.
Mussolini and Fascist Italy
Prior to fascism’s accommodation of the political right, Fascism had been a small, urban, northern Italian movement that had about a thousand members. After aligning itself with Italian conservatives, the fascist party rose to prominence using violence and intimidation. In 1919, Benito Mussolini founded the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento in Milan, which became the Partito Nazionale Fascista (National Fascist Party) two years later. In 1920, militant strike activity by industrial workers reached its peak in Italy. Mussolini and the Fascists took advantage of the situation by allying with industrial businesses and attacking workers and peasants in the name of preserving order and internal peace in Italy. The Fascist movement’s membership soared to approximately 250,000 by 1921, with the New National Fascist Party (PNF) Mussolini organized in 1921.
Italian fascism, under Mussolini’s control, was rooted in Italian nationalism and the desire to restore and expand Italian territories. Italian fascists deemed such territorial expansion necessary for a nation to assert its superiority and strength, as well as to avoid succumbing to decay. They claimed that modern Italy is the heir to ancient Rome and its legacy, and historically they supported the creation of an Italian Empire to provide spazio vitale (“living space”) for colonization by Italian settlers and to establish control over the Mediterranean Sea.
Domestically Italian Fascism promoted a corporatist economic system, whereby employer and employee syndicates were linked together in associations to collectively represent the nation’s economic producers and work alongside the state to set national economic policy. This economic system intended to resolve class conflict through collaboration between the classes.
Fascists Under Mussolini Seize Power
Mussolini’s Fascist movement took control of the Italian government in 1922, ruling Italy until 1943. Fascist paramilitaries first struck at political opponents in a wave of strikes against socialist offices, along with the homes of socialist leaders. Included in their targets were the headquarters of socialist and Catholic labor unions in Cremona. The Fascists then escalated their strategy by violently occupying a number of northern Italian cities. Along with occupation, the Fascists imposed Italianization upon German-speaking people in Trent and Bolzano. After seizing these cities, the Fascists made plans to take Rome. The Fascists met little serious resistance from authorities in these strikes and occupations, which emboldened them in their next step to take control of Rome.
On October 24, 1922, the Fascist party held its annual congress in Naples, where Mussolini ordered Blackshirts to take control of public buildings and trains, as well as converge on three points around Rome. The Fascists managed to seize control of several post offices and trains in northern Italy while the Italian government, led by a left-wing coalition, was internally divided and unable to respond to the Fascist advances. King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy thought the risk of bloodshed in Rome to disperse the Fascists was too high. Victor Emmanuel III decided to appoint Mussolini as Prime Minister of Italy. Mussolini arrived in Rome on October 30 to accept the appointment. Fascist propaganda aggrandized this event, known as “March on Rome,” as a “seizure” of power because of Fascists’ heroic exploits.
Mussolini in Power
Upon becoming Prime Minister of Italy, Mussolini had to form a coalition government, because the Fascists did not have control over the Italian parliament. Consequently, little drastic change in government policy occurred initially. Repressive police actions were limited at the beginning of Mussolini’s tenure as well. In addition, Mussolini’s coalition government pursued economically liberal policies under the direction of liberal finance minister Alberto De Stefani, a member of the Center Party, including balancing the budget through deep cuts to the civil service.
The Fascists’ first attempt to entrench Fascism in Italy began with the Acerbo Law, which guaranteed a plurality of the seats in parliament to any party or coalition list in an election that received 25% or more of the vote. Through considerable Fascist violence and intimidation, the list won a majority of the vote, allowing many seats to go to the Fascists. In the aftermath of the election, a crisis and political scandal erupted after Socialist Party deputy Giacomo Matteoti was kidnapped and murdered by a Fascist. The liberals and the leftist minority in parliament walked out in protest in what became known as the Aventine Secession.
During the latter half of the twenties Mussolini progressively solidified his totalitarian control over the government and the country. On January 3, 1925, Mussolini addressed the Fascist-dominated Italian parliament and declared that he was personally responsible for what happened, but insisted that he had done nothing wrong. He proclaimed himself dictator of Italy, assuming full responsibility over the government and announcing the dismissal of parliament. From 1925 to 1929, Mussolini’s fascists further solidified their control over the government and the country by denying opposition deputies access to Parliament and expanding censorship. In a December 1925 decree it was announced that Mussolini was responsible solely to the King.
Between 1925 and 1927, Mussolini progressively dismantled virtually all constitutional and conventional restraints on his power, thereby solidifying his control over the government and the country. A law passed on Christmas Eve 1925 changed Mussolini’s formal title from “president of the Council of Ministers” to “head of the government” (though he was still called “Prime Minister” by most non-Italian outlets). Thereafter, he began styling himself as Il Duce (the leader). He was no longer responsible to Parliament and could be removed only by the king. While the Italian constitution stated that ministers were responsible only to the sovereign, in practice it had become all but impossible to govern against the express will of Parliament. The Christmas Eve law ended this practice and made Mussolini the only person competent to determine the body’s agenda. This law transformed Mussolini’s government into a de facto legal dictatorship. Local autonomy was abolished, and podestàs appointed by the Italian Senate replaced elected mayors and councils.
Mussolini also extended his control over education, the press, and unions in Italy. All teachers in schools and universities had to swear an oath to defend the fascist regime. Newspaper editors were all personally chosen by Mussolini and no one without a certificate of approval from the fascist party could practice journalism. These certificates were issued in secret; Mussolini thus skillfully created the illusion of a “free press.” The trade unions were also deprived of independence and integrated into what was called the “corporative” system. The aim, although never completely achieved, was inspired by medieval guilds and was meant to place all Italians in various professional organizations or corporations under clandestine governmental control.
Totalitarianism in Japan
During the 1920s and the 1930s, a growing number of Japanese embraced political totalitarianism, ultranationalism, and militarism, in a mixture resembling fascism, culminating in militaristic leaders of the Army and Navy taking control of the Japanese government. As part of this process the Japanese government embarked upon an ambitious and aggressive effort to expand the Japanese empire westward across east Asia and eastward across the Pacific Ocean. Ultimately, this led to Japan’s defeat in the Second World War, the dismantling of the Japanese empire, and the end of Japan’s authoritarian government.
Learning Outcomes
- Explain the global challenge to liberalism by totalitarianism through the movements of communism, fascism, and National Socialism.
- Evaluate the factors that led to the global depression in the 1930s.
- Compare and contrast the reactions of nations worldwide to this global depression.
Key Terms / Key Concepts
totalitarianism: an approach to government defined by a central authority exercising complete control over a society
militarism: the belief or the desire of a government or people for a country to maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests; the glorification of the military; the ideals of a professional military class; the “predominance of the armed forces in the administration or policy of the state"
statism: the belief that the state should control either economic or social policy or both, sometimes taking the form of totalitarianism, but not necessarily. It is effectively the opposite of anarchism
Showa era: period in Japanese history corresponding to the reign of Emperor Showa (Hirohito) from 1926 to 1989
Treaty of Versailles: the most important of the peace treaties that ended World War I, which was signed on June 28, 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
fascism: a form of radical authoritarian nationalism that came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe, which holds that liberal democracy is obsolete and that the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state is necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties.
League of Nations: an intergovernmental organization founded on January 10, 1920, as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War; the first international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. Its primary goals as stated in its Covenant included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration.
Statism in Japan
Statism in Japan was a totalitarian political ideology which developed from the Meiji Restoration of 1868 into the 1930s. It is sometimes also referred to as Japanese fascism or Shōwa nationalism, after Japanese Emperor Showa (or Hirohito), who reigned as the emperor of Japan from 1926 to 1989. The period of Hirohito’s reign is also known as the Showa era. This statist movement dominated Japanese politics during the first part of the Shōwa period. It is characterized by a mixture of ideas including chauvinistic Japanese nationalism, militarism, and “state capitalism.”. Contemporary Japanese political philosophers and thinkers developed and advanced these ideas as part of their vision for Japan as an authoritarian and homogenous society with an empire that would stretch across the eastern half of Asia and the Pacific Ocean, making Japan one of the world’s leading powers.
Development of Statist Ideology
One of the catalysts for the development of statist ideology in Japan after World War I was the discriminatory treatment of Japan by Western Allied Powers. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I did not recognize the Empire of Japan’s territorial claims to the same extent that it did British and French imperial territorial claims. Subsequent international naval treaties between Western powers and the Empire of Japan, signed in Washington, D.C. in 1921 and in London in 1930, imposed prejudicial limitations on Japanese naval shipbuilding that put the Imperial Japanese Navy at a disadvantage vis-a-vis the British, the French, and the U.S. Navies. These measures were correctly considered by many in Japan as refusal by the Western powers to consider Japan an equal partner, as well as a part of a pattern of prejudicial treatment that Japan had had to endure at the hands of the Western power in its efforts to secure recognition as a world power since the 1868 Meiji Restoration.
These treaties provoked a surge of nationalism among many Japanese, who saw the discriminatory provisions as a threat to Japanese interests. Consequently, ultranationalist leaders pushed for an end to Japanese participation in such conciliatory diplomacy that put the Japanese empire at a disadvantage. During the 1920s a growing number of Japanese came to reject economic, strategic, military, and diplomatic cooperation with the U.S. and European powers as prejudicial to Japanese interests. By 1931 many in Japan had come to accept military dictatorship and aggressive territorial expansion as the best ways to protect Japan.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the supporters of Japanese statism used the slogan Showa Restoration, which implied that a new resolution was needed to replace the existing political order dominated by corrupt politicians and capitalists, with one which (in their eyes), would fulfill the original goals of the Meiji Restoration of direct Imperial rule via military proxies. Early Shōwa statism is sometimes given the retrospective label “fascism,” but this was not a self-appellation and it is not entirely clear that the comparison is accurate. When authoritarian tools of the state such as the Kempeitai were put into use in the early Shōwa period, they were employed to protect the rule of law under the Meiji Constitution from perceived enemies on both the left and the right. This included the Ministry of Home Affairs arresting left-wing political dissidents beginning in 1930. From 1930 through 1933 the Ministry made over 30,000 such arrests.
Nationalist Politics during the Shōwa Period
Left-wing groups had been subject to violent suppression by the end of the Taishō period, and radical right-wing groups, inspired by fascism and Japanese nationalism, rapidly grew in popularity. The extreme right became influential throughout the Japanese government and society, notably within the Kwantung Army, a Japanese army stationed in China along the Japanese-owned South Manchuria Railroad. During the Manchurian Incident of 1931, radical army officers bombed a small portion of the South Manchuria Railroad and, falsely attributing the attack to the Chinese, invaded Manchuria. The Kwantung Army conquered Manchuria and set up the puppet government of Manchukuo there without permission from the Japanese government. International criticism of Japan following the invasion led to Japan withdrawing from the League of Nations.
The withdrawal from the League of Nations meant that Japan was politically isolated. Japan had no strong allies and its actions had been internationally condemned, while internally popular nationalism was booming. Local leaders such as mayors, teachers, and Shinto priests were recruited by the various movements to indoctrinate the populace with ultra-nationalist ideals. They had little time for the pragmatic ideas of the business elite and party politicians. Their loyalty lay to the emperor and the military. In March 1932 the “League of Blood” assassination plot and the chaos surrounding the trial of its conspirators further eroded the rule of democratic law in Shōwa Japan. In May of the same year, a group of right-wing Army and Navy officers succeeded in assassinating Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi. The plot fell short of staging a complete coup d’état, but effectively ended rule by political parties in Japan.
Japan’s expansionist vision grew increasingly bold. Many of Japan’s political elite aspired to have Japan acquire new territory for resource extraction and settlement of surplus population. These ambitions led to the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. After their victory in the Chinese capital, the Japanese military committed the infamous Nanking Massacre. The Japanese military failed to defeat the Chinese government led by Chiang Kai-shek and the war descended into a bloody stalemate that lasted until 1945. Japan’s stated war aim was to establish the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, a vast pan-Asian union under Japanese domination. Hirohito’s role in Japan’s foreign wars remains a subject of controversy, with various historians portraying him as either a powerless figurehead or an enabler and supporter of Japanese militarism.
The United States opposed Japan’s invasion of China and responded with increasingly stringent economic sanctions intended to deprive Japan of the resources to continue its war in China. Japan reacted by forging an alliance with Germany and Italy in 1940, known as the Tripartite Pact, which worsened its relations with the U.S. In July 1941, the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands froze all Japanese assets when Japan completed its invasion of French Indochina by occupying the southern half of the country, further increasing tension in the Pacific.
Decline of Democracy in Europe between the World Wars
The development of fascism in Italy, Germany, and Spain occurred in the larger context of the decline of democracy in Europe. The conditions of economic hardship caused by the Great Depression brought about significant social unrest around the world, leading to a major surge of fascism and in many cases, the collapse of democratic governments in Europe.
Learning Outcomes
- Explain the global challenge to liberalism by totalitarianism through the movements of communism, fascism, and National Socialism.
- Evaluate the factors that led to the global depression in the 1930s.
- Compare and contrast the reactions of nations worldwide to this global depression.
Key Terms / Key Concepts
fascism: a form of radical authoritarian nationalism that came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe, which holds that liberal democracy is obsolete and that the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state is necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties.
Beer Hall Putsch: a failed coup attempt by the Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler to seize power in Munich, Bavaria, during November 8 – 9, 1923 (About two thousand men marched to the center of Munich where they confronted the police, resulting in the death of 16 Nazis and four policemen.)
Adolf Hitler: Nazi leader of World War II Germany, responsible for the Holocaust
Initial Surge of Fascism
The March on Rome, through which Mussolini became Prime Minister of Italy, brought Fascism international attention. One early admirer of the Italian Fascists was Adolf Hitler, who, less than a month after the March, had begun to model himself and the Nazi Party upon Mussolini and the Fascists. The Nazis, led by Hitler and the German war hero Erich Ludendorff, attempted a “March on Berlin” modeled upon the March on Rome, which resulted in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in November 1923. The Nazis briefly captured Bavarian Minister President Gustav Ritter von Kahr and announced the creation of a new German government to be led by a triumvirate of von Kahr, Hitler, and Ludendorff. The Beer Hall Putsch was crushed by Bavarian police, and Hitler and other leading Nazis were arrested and detained until 1925.
Another early admirer of Italian Fascism was Gyula Gömbös—leader of the Hungarian National Defence Association (known by its acronym MOVE) and a self-defined “national socialist.” In 1919 Gömbös spoke of the need for major changes in property and in 1923 stated the need for a “March on Budapest.”
Though it was opposed to the Italian government due to Yugoslav border disputes with Italy, Yugoslavia briefly had a significant fascist movement: the Organization of Yugoslav Nationalists (ORJUNA). ORJUNA supported Yugoslavism and the creation of a corporatist economy, as well as opposed democracy and took part in violent attacks on communists. ORJUNA was dissolved in 1929 when the King of Yugoslavia banned political parties and created a royal dictatorship, though ORJUNA supported the King’s decision.
Amid a political crisis in Spain involving increased strike activity and rising support for anarchism, Spanish army commander Miguel Primo de Rivera engaged in a successful coup against the Spanish government in 1923 and installed himself as a dictator as head of a conservative military junta that dismantled the established party system of government. Upon achieving power, Primo de Rivera sought to resolve the economic crisis by presenting himself as a compromise arbitrator figure between workers and bosses, and his regime created a corporatist economic system based on the Italian Fascist model. A variety of para-fascist governments that borrowed elements from fascism were formed during the Great Depression, including those of Greece, Lithuania, Poland, and Yugoslavia. In Lithuania in 1926, Antanas Smetona rose to power and founded a fascist regime under his Lithuanian Nationalist Union.
The Great Depression and the Spread of Fascism
The events of the Great Depression resulted in an international surge of fascism and the creation of several fascist regimes and regimes that adopted fascist policies. According to historian Philip Morgan, “the onset of the Great Depression…was the greatest stimulus yet to the diffusion and expansion of fascism outside Italy.” Fascist propaganda blamed the problems of the long depression of the 1930s on minorities and scapegoats: “Judeo-Masonic-bolshevik” conspiracies, left-wing internationalism, and the presence of immigrants.”
In Germany, it contributed to the rise of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, which resulted in the demise of the Weimar Republic and the establishment of the fascist regime under the leadership of Adolf Hitler: Nazi Germany. With the rise of Hitler and the Nazis to power in 1933, liberal democracy was dissolved in Germany, and the Nazis mobilized the country for war, with expansionist territorial aims against several countries. In the 1930s the Nazis implemented racial laws that deliberately discriminated against, disenfranchised, and persecuted Jews and other racial and minority groups.
The Great Depression contributed to the growth of fascist movements elsewhere in Europe. Hungarian fascist Gyula Gömbös rose to power as Prime Minister of Hungary in 1932 and attempted to entrench his Party of National Unity throughout the country; he created an eight-hour workday and a 48-hour work week in industry, sought to entrench a corporatist economy, and pursued irredentist claims on Hungary’s neighbors. The fascist Iron Guard movement in Romania soared in political support after 1933, gaining representation in the Romanian government. An Iron Guard member assassinated Romanian prime minister Ion Duca.
During the February 6, 1934 crisis, France faced the greatest domestic political turmoil since the Dreyfus Affair when the fascist Francist Movement and multiple far-right movements rioted en masse in Paris against the French government, resulting in major political violence.
Totalitarianism beyond Europe
Fascism also expanded its influence outside Europe, especially in East Asia, the Middle East, and South America. In China, Wang Jingwei’s Kai-tsu p’ai (Reorganization) faction of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party of China) supported Nazism in the late 1930s. In Japan, a Nazi movement called the Tōhōkai was formed by Seigō Nakano. The Al-Muthanna Club of Iraq was a pan-Arab movement that supported Nazism and exercised its influence in the Iraqi government through cabinet minister Saib Shawkat, who formed a paramilitary youth movement.
Learning Outcomes
- Explain the global challenge to liberalism by totalitarianism through the movements of communism, fascism, and National Socialism.
- Evaluate the factors that led to the global depression in the 1930s.
- Compare and contrast the reactions of nations worldwide to this global depression.
Key Terms / Key Concepts
fascism: a form of radical authoritarian nationalism that came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe, which holds that liberal democracy is obsolete and that the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state is necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties.
National Socialism: fascist and totalitarian ideology associated with Adolf Hitler, also known as Nazism, characterized by antisemitism, anticommunism, and scientific racism
Several, mostly short-lived fascist governments and prominent fascist movements were formed in South America during this period. Argentine President General José Félix Uriburu proposed that Argentina be reorganized along corporatist and fascist lines. Peruvian president Luis Miguel Sánchez Cerro founded the Revolutionary Union in 1931 as the state party for his dictatorship; it was later taken over by Raúl Ferrero Rebagliati who sought to mobilize mass support for the group’s nationalism in a manner akin to fascism. Ferrero even started a paramilitary Blackshirts arm as a copy of the Italian group, although the Union lost heavily in the 1936 elections and faded into obscurity. In Paraguay in 1940, Paraguayan President General Higinio Morínigo began his rule as a dictator with the support of pro-fascist military officers, appealed to the masses, exiled opposition leaders, and only abandoned his pro-fascist policies after the end of World War II. The Brazilian Integralists, led by Plínio Salgado, claimed as many as 200,000 members, although following coup attempts it faced a crackdown from the Estado Novo of Getúlio Vargas in 1937. In the 1930s, the National Socialist Movement of Chile gained seats in Chile’s parliament and attempted a coup d’état that resulted in the Seguro Obrero massacre of 1938.
Fascism in its Epoch
Fascism in its Epoch is a 1963 book by historian and philosopher Ernst Nolte, widely regarded as his magnum opus and a seminal work on the history of fascism. The book, translated into English in 1965 as The Three Faces of Fascism, argues that fascism arose as a form of resistance to and a reaction against modernity. Nolte subjected German Nazism, Italian Fascism, and the French Action Française movements to a comparative analysis. Nolte’s conclusion was that fascism was the great anti-movement: it was anti-liberal, anti-communist, anti-capitalist, and anti-bourgeois. In Nolte’s view, fascism was the rejection of everything the modern world had to offer and was an essentially negative phenomenon. Nolte argued that fascism functioned at three levels: in the world of politics as a form of opposition to Marxism, at the sociological level in opposition to bourgeois values, and in the “metapolitical” world as “resistance to transcendence” (“transcendence” in German can be translated as the “spirit of modernity”). In regard to the Holocaust, Nolte contended that because Adolf Hitler identified Jews with modernity, the basic thrust of Nazi policies towards Jews had always aimed at genocide: “Auschwitz was contained in the principles of Nazi racist theory like the seed in the fruit.” Nolte believed that for Hitler, Jews represented “the historical process itself.”
Attributions
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Title Image - Nürnberg, Reichsparteitag, SA- und SS-Appell, September 1934. Attribution: Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-04062A / Georg Pahl / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons. Provided by: Wikipedia Location: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_102-04062A,_N%C3%BCrnberg,_Reichsparteitag,_SA-_und_SS-Appell.jpg License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
Boundless World History
"The Rise of Fascism"
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