| Fascism developed as the third major competing ideology of the first half of the 20th century. It was not simply an assertion of dictatorial or military rule, nor was it a socially conservative perspective, although many conservatives preferred it to either communism or democratic liberalism. Fascist movements that emerged after World War I took a number of different forms, but they shared an ideological perspective that subordinated the individual to the state, opposed class struggle, and affirmed nationalist identities and a corporate state. Structures were elitist rather than egalitarian, and there was an emphasis on the role of the great leader. The first major Fascist leader to come to power was MUSSOLINI in Italy, who became prime minister in 1922 and seized full power by 1926. Other states came under the control of dictators in the interwar period, including Poland (1926), Lithuania (1926), Portugal (1932), and Estonia (1934). The most important Fascist-style regime was established in Germany during the 1930s by the NAZI MOVEMENT led by HITLER. Fascist-style governments also came to power in Greece in 1936 under General Johannes Metaxas, and in Spain with the victory in 1939 of the Falange led by Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War. In Argentina, a group of military officers impressed by Nazi achievements seized power in 1943, and their dominant leader, Juan Perón, established a Fascist-style dictatorship in 1945. In JAPAN a distinctive statist authoritarian regime developed in the interwar era, and it established ties with the major European Fascist states in the late 1930s. Fascist-style movements also developed in a number of countries: the Iron Guard, founded in Romania in 1927; the “Black Shirts” of Oswald Moseley in Great Britain (formed in 1932); Young Egypt (the “Green Shirts”), formed in Egypt in 1933. Elsewhere, including in the U.S., many people became convinced that some form of authoritarian fascism was necessary in the face of the Communist challenge and the difficulties of the Depression. | 1 |
