Fascism and the Start of World War II Andrew Merriam

Start of Fascism Fascism is a political philosophy or government that advocates a centralized autocratic government lead by one party. It is radical and authoritarian political idea Facism began in the 1920’s under Benito Mussolini in Italy, in the early 1930’s led by Adolf Hitler in Germany and finally in Japan in the 1930’s Fascism had tight control over everything from the economy to the people social life. Fascist governments took power by using thugs and armed men to cause violence and fear within the nations population.

Start of Fascism Italy Italy had many wartime hardship which not only included loss of people and property but economic depression too. Throughout the late 1910’s and early 1920’s many seizures of land spread throughout Italy causing labor strikes. Mussolini gather and organized groups of thugs and ex- soldiers as his combantants calling them Fascio di combattimento. Mussolini dressed his combatants in black uniforms to help him cause fear. In the year 1921 when Mussolini lost the election he sent his combatants loose killing around 3000 men. Mussolini started that the country was going into chaos, and if he was elected he could bring Italy back. flag.gif

Start of Fascism in Germany After World War I, Germany was suffering greatly from economic depression and the loss of many of their people. Adolf Hitler looked up to Mussolini, and like him Hitler started his own group of armed men called the SA Hitler was extremely racist and wanted to create the perfect race. Like Mussolini, Hitler used fear and the instability of the German government to help him get elected. Hitler was able to recover the German economy and started to gain supporters, untill he invaded Poland and started World War II

Japan Before WWII While going through the Meiji rstoration, Japan had had great success in reorganization of their government, administration, economy, industry and finances. Japan started to seize colonies for itself. Japan defeated China in 1904 and became the dominant power. During 1910’s Japan was able to increase its manufacturing by 72% and its national income by 40% calling their large scale companies zaibatsu. In 1919, Japan was seated as on of the Five Great Powers. Japan started to become on of the worlds leading nations in technology before the war too. The zabitsu started to undermine the peoples democratic practice. In the late 1920’s Japans took a step economic drop with 50% of its exports dropped.

Decent towards WWII Even with the League of Nations found in 1920, the League of Nations was not able to keep peace lousing many of peace keeping missions. The league of nations was not able to stop Hitler and Germany from attacking Poland and many other countries. Many meetings between the world were held trying to keep peace, but many of the agreements were broken. The start of World War II was on September 1 st when German forces invaded Poland.