The Rise of Fascism, Nazism, and Militarism before WWII

In our previous posts, we talked about the world economy's collapse under the weight of Black Thursday, leaving millions desperate and governments powerless. But history has a cruel pattern: where poverty and humiliation take root, extremism finds fertile ground. The 1930s produced dictators; they produced several, and almost simultaneously, on opposite ends of the globe. In Italy, a former journalist transformed street violence into state power. In Germany, a failed artist rewrote the rules of democracy until there were no rules left. In Spain, a civil war became the world's dress rehearsal for the catastrophe ahead. And in the Far East, an island nation decided that the only answer to economic desperation was conquest.

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The Rise of Fascism in Italy: Il Duce and the Blackshirts

Despite being one of the victors of World War I, Italy was dominated by massive disappointment and an economic crisis because it could not get what it wanted at the peace table. This negative atmosphere in the country mostly benefited one man and his ideology: Benito Mussolini, known as “Il Duce” (The Leader), and his Fascist Party.

Following the 1921 elections, the radical ideas of the Fascist Party began to spread rapidly among the masses. Taking advantage of this momentum, Mussolini organized the famous March on Rome in 1922 with the “Blackshirts”, a violent group of volunteer fascist militias. After seizing power that same year following this massive show of force, Mussolini's very first action was to ruthlessly put an end to all democratic practices in the country, establishing his absolute dictatorship.

Having completely silenced the opposition at home, Mussolini turned his eyes to the Mediterranean basin for his foreign policy. Calling the Mediterranean “Our Sea” (Mare Nostrum), just like in Ancient Rome, Il Duce began to pursue an aggressive and expansionist colonial policy aimed at resurrecting the glory of the ancient Roman Empire.

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The Rise of Nazism in Germany: From Weimar to Dictatorship

The political and economic chaos during the early years of the German Republic, established by the Weimar Constitution in 1919, incredibly accelerated the rise of right-wing movements and Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi Party). To increase its power on the streets and violently intimidate its political rivals, the Nazi Party created its own paramilitary forces known as the SA (Storm Detachment) and the SS (Protection Squadron).

Entering the German parliament for the first time in the 1924 elections, the Nazi Party made very clear and radical promises to a desperate public: tearing up the humiliating conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, fighting a relentless battle against communism, and asserting the absolute superiority of the German (“Aryan”) race to the world.

After completely seizing power in the 1933 elections, the Nazi Party used the heavy pressure of these armed forces to ban all other political parties, establishing an absolute Nazi dictatorship in the country. The regime wanted to control the present as well as the future. It went so far as to place special propagandists in party schools and youth organizations established in 1934 to indoctrinate the younger generations. The party established the ruthless secret state police known as the Gestapo to silence opposition and strictly control all public activities.

Germans were developing industry in underground bunkers, defying the strict restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. Generated by AI

Hitler's Foreign Policy: Tearing Up Versailles and “Lebensraum”

Having completely consolidated his dictatorship at home, Adolf Hitler turned his eyes outward. During this period, the German foreign policy shaped by the Nazis was built on three main, aggressive objectives that would drag the world into a new catastrophe:

• Breaking the Chains of Versailles: To completely break free from all the heavy conditions and restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles, which strangled Germany militarily and economically and was seen as a massive humiliation by the public.
• One Nation, One State: To unite all ethnic Germans scattered across different regions of Europe (such as Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, etc.) under the roof of a single, massive state.
• Living Space (Lebensraum): This was the most dangerous principle of the regime. It aimed to conquer and annex the vast territories (especially in Eastern Europe) that the superior German (Aryan) race needed to live comfortably, multiply, and be agriculturally and industrially self-sufficient.

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The Spanish Civil War and the Franco Era: A Nation Divided

Another country affected by this totalitarian storm in Europe was Spain. The process, which began with the army seizing power in 1923, failed to solve the country’s socio-economic problems and pushed social polarization to its peak. This growing crisis dragged the nation into a bloody civil war in 1936.

The Spanish Civil War was fundamentally fought between two irreconcilable factions: the left-leaning Republicans, who formed a government in Valencia, and the right-wing Nationalists, led by General Francisco Franco.

Franco in a meeting of his government, 1939

This war remained solely an internal Spanish issue; it practically turned into an international rehearsal for the approaching World War II. While the Republicans received ideological support from France and military backing from the USSR, General Franco's Nationalist forces received massive weapons and air power support from the Nazi regime in Germany and the Fascist regime in Italy.

This bloody civil war, which lasted for three years and left the country in ruins, ended in 1939 when Franco's forces captured the capital, Madrid. Emerging victorious and seizing absolute power, Franco made a highly cunning move, even though he had come to power with the help of Germany and Italy. Knowing that his country could not survive another devastation, he did not enter Spain into World War II. This strategy of neutrality prevented him from being overthrown like Hitler and Mussolini, and Franco ruled Spain with an iron fist until his death in 1975.

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The Rise of Militarism in Japan: From Washington to the Great Depression

While totalitarian regimes were gaining power in Europe, a different kind of storm was brewing in the Far East. Japan’s aggressive and expansionist policy in Asia from the 1920s onwards drew massive backlash from Western powers (especially the US and Britain) who wanted to protect their interests in the region.

To halt this escalation, the Washington Naval Conference was held in 1922. The primary goal of the Western powers at this conference was to impose strict limits on Japan's rapidly growing naval forces, thereby preventing a potential attack on China.

However, these diplomatic efforts did not last long. The 1929 Great Depression struck Japan, a nation desperate for raw materials and new markets. The desperation caused by the economic crisis incredibly increased the military's power in politics. Seeing the conquest of new territories as the only way out of the crisis, Japan accelerated its expansionist policies and began to base its entire state policy heavily on military power (militarism). This shift would inevitably turn the Pacific into one of the bloodiest theatres of World War II.

The stage was set. The players were in position. Italy was dreaming of a new Roman Empire, Germany was rearming in the shadows, Spain had just emerged from a bloody rehearsal, and Japan was eyeing the vast territories of the Pacific. The world had seen the warning signs and ignored every single one of them.

In the next chapter, we arrive at the moment history had been building toward for two decades: World War II.

See you in the next part.