Summary
Highlights
The Bolshevik party, led by Lenin from 1917, embraced communism as an ideology for an egalitarian, classless society, promoting a 'dictatorship of the proletariat' globally. Stalin, who took power in 1927, aimed to create a 'new man' (Homo Sovieticus) and used the NKVD political police to persecute 'internal enemies.' The 'Great Terror' of 1936-1938 saw widespread arrests, executions (750,000 deaths), and forced labor camps (Gulags). Public trials, like the Moscow Trials, condemned Stalin's opponents to death.
Mussolini's fascist regime, established between 1925-1926, used the 'fascist laws' to control society. Based on a glorious past (Roman Empire) and a cult of the leader, fascism championed strong nationalism, rejecting democracy and communism. A 'culture of war' and state racism, asserting Italian superiority, led to anti-Jewish laws from 1938. While less deadly than Nazi Germany or the USSR, Italy was a police state where political opponents were hunted by the OVRA political police and often deported.
Hitler’s Nazism, detailed in 'Mein Kampf' (1924-1925), was a social revolution aimed at preserving Aryan racial superiority. It targeted those perceived as weakening the Aryan race, such as the disabled, homosexuals, and especially Jews, whom Hitler blamed for Germany's weakness and the 1918 defeat. Anti-Semitism was central, leading to boycotts, the Nuremberg Laws (1935), and professional bans. State violence, orchestrated by the Gestapo, SA, and SS, culminated in the Kristallnacht (1938), a pogrom against Jews, followed by mass deportations to concentration camps.
Totalitarian regimes militarized civilian organizations and youth groups, seeing war as a means to create a new society. In the USSR, war was glorified for communist victory, notably in the 1917-1922 civil war, as a means of survival. Nazi Germany sought to avenge the Treaty of Versailles, regain its central European role, and acquire 'living space' (Lebensraum) through the colonization of Eastern Europe. Italy, initially ambiguous, allied with Germany in 1936 due to Western reticence. The USSR promoted global communist revolution and distrusted other powers, yet joined the League of Nations and made agreements with France in the mid-1930s.
The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) became an ideological battleground. After the Popular Front's victory in 1936, General Franco's nationalist army rebelled. Despite France's non-intervention, the USSR supported the Republicans with international brigades, while Germany and Italy aided Franco's nationalists, testing their troops and equipment (e.g., bombing of Guernica and Barcelona). The war ended with a nationalist victory and over 600,000 deaths.
Post-WWI, Britain and France adopted pacifist policies, leading to appeasement. Their weak response to Hitler's reoccupation of the Rhineland (1936) and annexation of the Sudetenland (1938) demonstrated this. The Munich Agreement (1938) ceded the Sudetenland to Germany, hoping to avoid war. Exploiting this, Hitler annexed Austria (1938) and the rest of Czechoslovakia (1939), then claimed parts of Poland. France and Britain realized war was inevitable when Germany, after signing a pact with the USSR to divide Poland, invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, reluctantly launching World War II.
The USSR, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany emerged from the brutalization of society after WWI and the 1929 crisis. All three rejected democracy and relied on a single party, employing common governance methods to achieve different ideological goals: proletariat dictatorship in the USSR, militant nationalism in Italy, and racist, expansionist nationalism in Germany. They shared a desire for a new European geopolitical order, viewing war as the ultimate means to achieve it, against democracies weary from the Great War.