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Rise of Fascism
Overview
World War I and the Treaty of Versailles made World War II inevitable. Germany, which had been one of the Great Powers of Europe heading into WWI emerged from the war defeated, with a generation of its young men dead and untold material wealth spent. After the war, the victorious Allies saddled Germany with enormous reparation payments, which demanded that Germany claim ‘sole responsibility’ for starting the war and make payments to the Allies for the cost of the war. This left Germany broke and desperate.
Italy, Instability, Radicalism, and Fascism
Italy, nominally one of the Allies and a victor in the war, struggled after the war as well. Many Italians expected that victory in World War I would transform Italy into a Great Power, and allow them to seize large swaths of territory from the former Austrian-Hungarian Empire. However, Britain, France, and the United States instead divided Austria-Hungary into many smaller nations, frustrating many Italians who dreamed of empire.
Further, after the war, the Italian economy dipped into recession. With the war over, many workers were laid-off as there was no more need for weapons and war materials. Added to this was many soldiers coming back from the front, also seeking employment. In addition to this, the Italian economy was burdened with a large war debt, causing further difficulties.
Italian workers, frustrated by what they saw as the failures of capitalism, turned towards the example set by the Russian Revolution. Believing that socialism could solve their problems, many Italian unions went on strike, demanding large-scale reform or even revolution. Soon workers across all of Italy were on strike, beginning a General Strike, or a strike where all of the workers in a place go on strike.
While this was going on, Benito Mussolini was building his fascist movement. Mussolini was a veteran of WWI who was injured during the fighting. When sent back from the front due to his injuries, he started a newspaper by the name of Avanti!, which was vociferously pro-war. At this stage of the war, many Italians were wondering whether they should even be fighting, and so the British government (which feared losing their ally Italy) intervened, providing Mussolini with large sums of money to expand his newspaper.
After the war, Mussolini formed the ideology of fascism. Fascism was a right-wing militarist ideal, predicated on concepts of militarism, national greatness through violence, intolerance of dissent, the crushing of labor unions, and the strengthening of Big Business. Many Italian businessmen, nervous about the growing strike, turned to Mussolini and his supporters to break the strike, providing him with money and weapons.
Mussolini organized his Black Shirts, or followers of fascism, into paramilitary units who swore fealty to Mussolini directly. Many of these Black Shirts were veterans with military training and disillusioned about the future of Italy. Mussolini promised his followers that he would crush their enemies and restore the old Roman Empire.
Mussolini’s Black Shirts engaged in a terrorist campaign against Italy’s labor unions, beating and murdering many union leaders, intellectuals, socialists, liberals, communists, and others. As the strike continued, the fighting became more brutal: between 1919 and 1922 the Black Shirts may have murdered as many as 200,000 people.
Finally, the strike was broken and many of its leaders went underground to evade fascist violence. Mussolini, for his part in the campaign, was touted as a strong man who could lead Italy to greatness. As a result, King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy asked Mussolini to form a government, which he did in October of 1922.
Fascism in Action: The Conquest of Ethiopia
Mussolini quickly moved to crush all opposition to his rule. He outlawed opposing political parties, placed his followers into positions of authority, and integrated his Black Shirts into the Italian military. He had a state-run newspaper (overseen by his brother), from which he disseminated his views.
He had most universities purged of those with differing opinions and moved to empower his Big Business backers: minimum wage laws were reduced, labor unions outlawed, taxes lowered on the rich and raised on the poor, and many government services were privatized. The standard of living for most Italians began to fall under the boot of the fascists.
However, Mussolini looked outwards for glory. In 1935, Mussolini sent Italian forces into Ethiopia, seeking to expand his empire. When Ethiopian resistance proved stiffer than expected, Italian forces unleashed chlorine gas on Ethiopian soldiers and civilians alike, in defiance of international law, which had outlawed the use of chemical weapons, due to the horrors that they caused in World War I.
Ethiopia’s forces, however, were outnumbered and their weaponry was grossly inferior to the Italians’. Many were armed with bows and arrows; only a quarter of the entire army had modern rifles at all. Soon, Ethiopia was conquered and occupied by the Italian army. Italians hailed Mussolini as a powerful conqueror, who was restoring Italy to glory.
Mussolini would say of the invasion:
"At last Italy has her empire.... The Italian people have created an empire with their blood. They will fertilize it with their work. They will defend it against anyone with their weapons. Will you be worthy of it?"
Wiemar Germany and Fascism
Germany had been humiliated by its defeat in World War I and the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. The German economy in the 1920s was mired in hyperinflation and depression, causing terrible strain on working people. Most of the leftist movements had been broken during the 1919 Spartacist Uprising. The Spartacists were groups of German Socialists who tried to seize power after WWI and install a socialist government. They were narrowly defeated and many of them executed. As such, the German Right was particularly strong and unopposed.
A number of friekorps (free corps) movements began to expand. The friekorps were groups of angry, disaffected veterans of World War I, who often could not find work after the war. A myth began to spread amongst these groups that Germany was secretly betrayed by traitors within Germany, and that this betrayal was responsible for Germany’s defeat. This was known as the Backstabbing Myth. The ‘traitors’ identified by the myth-makers were usually liberals, leftists, socialists, or Jews.
Jews had traditionally been a convenient scapegoat for Europeans, especially for European societies entering a period of difficulty. Jews were often targets because, while they lived in the larger Christian communities, they also practiced their own religion and often spoke their own language. This allowed those who were seeking targets for their anger to claim that Jews were not true members of the community, but instead outsiders
The on-going economic instability, largely brought about by the Treaty of Versailles, led to widespread instability, as well. Strikes were frequent and workers were angry and demanding an improvement in their standard of living. The German Business Community feared this upsurge in worker militancy: Businesses did not want to pay workers more, they worried that if they didn’t, it might lead German workers to undertake a revolution like had happened in Russia. And so, the German Business Community resorted to a new plan: violence.
Big Business began to hire the friekorps to act as strikebreakers, who would use violence and intimidation to force workers back to work. A terror campaign was carried out against labor unions and liberal/left political movements with the goal of breaking working peoples’ power.
One of these friekorps was led by a disillusioned World War I colonel by the name of Adolf Hitler. Hitler had been blinded in a gas attack during the last days of the war and spent six months in a hospital recovering his sight. While there, he heard about Germany’s defeats and request for an armistice. Hitler was furious and began to cultivate the Backstabbing Myth. He formed his own friekorps, commonly known as “The Brownshirts,” who served as street thugs to intimidate his enemies.
The German Business Community found Hitler to be a compelling figure and often hired his goons for their strikebreaking activities. In addition to this, Hitler was an excellent public speaker and he found a population that was eager for someone to make them feel strong again. Further, Hitler’s Brownshirts were effective at suppressing labor unions and breaking strikes, making them valuable to German businessmen.
Hitler, eager for power, decided to attempt to overthrow the German government. In 1923, in what became known as the Beerhall Putsch, Hitler led his Brownshirts to a confrontation with authorities in the German city of Munich. The attempt was defeated and Hitler was arrested and charged with treason.
While in prison, Hitler wrote his famous book Mein Kampf (My Struggle) which detailed his vision of a resurgent Germany. So taken were people by Hitler’s charisma that he gained many followers across Germany while in prison. Mein Kampf would soon become a bestseller and Hitler’s political career was on the rise. Eventually he was pardoned by the Bavarian Supreme Court after having served little over a year in prison.
Despite his treason, Hitler was soon a leading political figure in Germany. The Business Community supported him wholeheartedly, making sure that his burgeoning Nazi Party always had plenty of funds for its activities. Business leaders saw Hitler as an important bulwark against socialism or radical labor unions. He traveled across Germany in a private plane provided for him by business leaders and he gave furious speeches to angry crowds.
But it was not until the outbreak of the Great Depression in 1929 that the German people became desperate enough to truly embrace Hitler. In the 1932 German Presidential Elections, Hitler was narrowly beaten by the World War I hero Paul von Hindenburg. Despite his defeat, Hitler was elevated to top-tier political leader. In fact, so powerful had Hitler become, that the German Business Community was able to force a reluctant Hindenburg to appoint Hitler Chancellor of Germany that same year.
In 1933, the Reichstag (the German Parliamentary building) burned down. There is some evidence that this might have been secretly done by the Nazis themselves, but they blamed Germany’s Communists/Socialists for the attack. Hitler was able to get the Enabling Act passed, which effectively granted the government enormous powers to suppress anyone that it did not like. The next year, Hindenburg died at the age of 86. Rather than have an election, Hitler appointed himself President. He then fused the office of President and Chancellor together into the single title of Furher, or Leader. Germany had quickly descended into authoritarianism, or rule by an unquestioned leader.
Austria, Czechoslovakia, and the Non-Aggression Pact
Hitler set about rebuilding the German Empire that had been dismantled as a result of the Treaty of Versailles. First, Hitler moved to form a ‘political union,’ with Austria, which absorbed the country into Germany. Hitler argued that Germany and Austria’s shared language and close history meant that they were actually “One People.” This was achieved through a national vote in Austria, however there is evidence of widespread fraud and violence in the election. Regardless, in 1938, Austria was joined with Germany.
Next followed the Sudetenland. The Sudetenland was a part of Czechoslovakia with a large, German-speaking population. Hitler demanded that the territory be turned over to Germany. However, the Czech government was wary of doing this: during the 1920s, they had built a series of powerful fortifications in the territory which were meant to protect the country in the case of war with Germany. Turning over the Sudetenland meant putting those fortifications in German hands.
Czechoslovakia, however, was allied with Britain and France. Secure with her fortifications and armed with powerful allies, the Czech government was confident that it could protect itself.
The Soviet Union, fearful of Hitler’s ambitious and wary of fascism in general, took notice. The Soviet government contacted Britain and France and offered to provide assistance in defending Czechoslovakia from fascist aggression. Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, offered more than one million troops to the cause.
The British and French, however, were nervous of war with Germany. Mired in the Great Depression, the people of France and Britain had no desire for another world war. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain instead traveled to Germany to sign the Munich Agreement: in it, Chamberlain agreed that they would not assist the Czechs in defending their country (and, in fact, seized Czech gold reserves which were invested in the London Stock market) and in exchange, Hitler agreed to only take the Sudetenland.
The Czechs were shocked by this betrayal. Alarmed, the Soviets stood by their agreement to protect the Czechs. However, Poland stood between the USSR and Czechoslovakia. Poland (partially at the insistence of its French and British allies) refused to allow Soviet troops to pass through their territory to assist the Czechs. In fact, Chamberlain made public statements indicating that he believed that the fascists could be useful in containing Soviet-style Communism from spreading across Europe.
Seeing no hope, the Czech government allowed Hitler to take the Sudetenland. Six months later, Hitler would order German forces to conquer the whole of Czechoslovakia; without their fortifications and bereft of allies, Czech resistance quickly collapsed. Britain and France reacted with outrage and informed Hitler that if he made any more conquests in Europe, they would declare war on Germany.
The Soviets were very worried. The failure of the British and French to stand up to Germany over Czechoslovakia, coupled with Chamberlain’s public statements about the useful of fascist states set off considerable alarm in Moscow. Stalin realized that he could not rely on the British and French to help contain the threat of fascism. Alone, the Soviets did not believe that they had the military capability to defeat the Nazis: they needed time to build-up their forces.
The Soviets therefor sought a non-aggression pact with Germany. Known as the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, the treaty required that neither the Soviets nor the Germans would attack one another for ten years. Once the pact was signed, Stalin began a frantic military build-up: he didn’t trust Hitler and believed that it was only a matter of time before the Nazis attacked the Soviet Union and he wanted to be prepared.
Poland
On September 1st, 1939, Hitler ordered German troops to invade neighboring Poland. Claiming that Poland was secretly preparing for an invasion of Germany, Hitler claimed to be acting to defend Germany from Polish aggression. Two weeks later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. The Soviet Union, who had recently agreed to a Non-Aggression Pact with the Germans, remained on the sidelines.
World War II had begun.