Author: Not Decided
Status: In Research
Please post any ideas or research for this episode that you want to contribute in this topic. If the episode hasn’t been assigned to an author yet, you can note your intent to write in the string too, and we will contact you to discuss.
Is this episode confined to 1930 or it can be expanded to the whole 30’s?
Topic is the main focus, we need this episode before the German elections of 32 though to understand the context.
@avalantis Valentis, first of all if I haven’t said it before income way: you’re a bright star in the TimeGhost heaven. Your commitment is hugely appreciated.
Please share, as stated earlier this episode needs to focus more on the topic and less on the years it falls into.
I think this will be a perfect time to talk about the communist terror in Bulgaria between 1923-1925, as it can be viewed as a catalyst for the boosting of nationalism and showing the dangers of communism. It can begin with the 1923 attempted counter coup, the brutal crushing of it; then move on to the various socialist-backed terrorist attacks, most notably the bombing of the Sveta Nedelya. These events also lead to Georgi Dimitrov’s exile from Bulgaria and he would later be put on trial for the burning of the Reichstag, so having some early background on him would help.
There can also be a follow-up on the IMRO as they were split into two warring factions at that time, again thanks to socialist backing.
Lovely idea - can you give us more details?
Yeah, Dimitrov (I’ve also seen his name written as Dimitroff) was in many ways a socialist idealists, completely devoted to the cause. During WW1 he was a young deputy in the Bulgarian Parliament and used his position to hold anti-war speeches to the troops at the front. After the war he became the leader the Bulgarian Communist Party which was technically a coalition partner of the Agrarian Government. When that government fell he tried to organize a counter-coup, but it failed (I’ll post all the juicy details on that later) and he fled the country alongside Vasil Kolarov (also a key Bulgarian communist, but without the international recognition of Dimitroff). After that he became an active member of the Communist International and because of that he was trialed for the Reichstagsbrand. He was defending himself without an attorney (I also read long ago that he didn’t speak much German and had to learn it while awaiting trial) and for fiery defense of the ideology was made head of the Comintern.
Those are pretty much the basics, I’ll try to get some more details on the trial itself. There is also some… interesting details about his personal life, most notably him being a ladies man who constantly cheated on his wife but…
‘Hide your wives, Dimitroff is coming.’ - Ljubica Dimitrova (his own wife)
Summary of Eric’s Hobsbawm “The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991” - Chapters 3. Into the Economic Abyss and 4. The Fall of Liberalism
Since late 19th century, the alienation and disappointment of the middle and lower middle class, which felt crushed between the few powerful wealthy capitalists and the growing, assertive working class, led to a fear about losing their economic position and this fear led to a hate against modernity in general. The seeds of future Fascism and Nazism were sown.
After WW1, the Radical Rightist movements were born as an answer to October Revolution and the rise of communism. The Great War and its brutalization paved the way for more extreme ideas, which seemed horrendous to the 19th century world, a world having faith in progress, science and reason. Μany reserve officers returning from the war, and belonging to middle class or petit bourgeois, viewed their war life, their uniform, their discipline as the best thing they did in their lives, their defining moment (the most famous example being Adolf Hitler). Those “Rambos” (as Hobsbawm names them) were the voting reservoir for the Far-Right parties.
For the majority of interwar Europe, the prerequisites for a functional Democracy; a basis of consensus among the people about the system of governance and the social system, and prosperity, were absent.
There were strong authoritarian sentiments among the Right, especially in Catholic Church, the anticommunists and the anti-liberals. Examples can be found in Finland and General Mannerheim, Hungary and Admiral Horty and General Piłsudski in Poland. Those regimes were parliamentary democracies, but with strong conservative and authoritarian elements.
Their distinction with Fascism/Nazism is that the latter is based on the masses, starting from the lower steps of social ladder. Also, the Fascists/Nazis, challenged the old hereditary traditional conservative institutions; the Church or the Monarchy are presented as outdated, the new champions of old values must be raised by merit, and from the people’s ranks.
The prosperity of the Roaring Twenties was unstable. It was very difficult to find buyers for the vast quantity of industrial products. First, because farmers, who are still numerous, sell cheaply their products and thus earn minimal income. Then, despite the effort made (especially in the US) to raise wages, this raising is at a slower pace than the growth rate of output. This has the effect that products cannot be absorbed by the market, and prices are constantly on the rise.
The Crash of 1929, apart from the closure of many factories and banks, caused economic destruction for agricultural, non-industrialized nations, who based their economy on agricultural exports. This led to state protectionism, which further destabilized world trade. The most important consequence of the Great Depression was that the world abandoned economic liberalism.
At the same time, USSR, detached from the worldwide economic system, was growing (in the period 1928-1938, the soviet share in the worldwide production of processing products rose from 5% to 18%), plus zero unemployment. Even the capitalist countries begun to believe that a central state control was essential for the economy.
Unemployment in 1932-1933 (worst period of the Great Depression)
• 22%-23% in Britain and Belgium
• 24% in Sweden
• 27% in USA
• 29% in Austria
• 31% in Norway
• 32% in Denmark
• 44% in Germany
At the same time, most nations either do not have unemployment benefit (like USA), or this benefit is tiny.
So, three pathways appeared to the desperate of early 30’s:
• Communism
• Capitalism without Liberalism
• Fascism.
The economic demands of Versailles to Germany, made the latter to depend herself upon American loans. When the Depression came, and the loans stopped, Germany was destroyed. The unwritten agreement between the state, capitalists and Labour Movement was finished when the first two saw no alternative but to cut expenses; the unemployment which followed was the final blow to Democracy. The Nazis, who were nothing but a marginal phenomenon in German politics, rose to prominence. After the elections of 1930, the democratic powers lost the majority in the Reichstag, as the Nazis and the Communist greatly increased their votes. In 1932, less than 1/3 of the voters voted for democratic parties. When the Nazi Party acquired power, it didn’t follow the rules of the old political game, but supressed every opposition. For the Nazis, the enemy was not just Communism, but modernity in general, the enemy was every other who was no Nazi; Communism was the convenient bogey.
Nazi theory was not its strong point, as more and more fascist/nazi movements ephasized the supremacy of instict and will against Reason, the complete opposite notion in comparison with 19th century ideals.
Despite the establishment of Italian fascism in early 20’s, the real rise of worldwide fascism occurred after the rise of Hitler in a strong industrialized power like Germany. After 1933, Nazi Germany became a beacon for the Rightists in general, as Soviet Union became an example for many Leftists after 1917.
Fascist/pro-fascist/quasi fascist regimes in Europe during the 1930’s.
• Falange in Spain under Francisco Franco (1937–1975)
• Fatherland Front in Austria under Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt Schuschnigg (1934–1938)
• 4th of August Regime in Greece under Ioannis Metaxas (1936–1941)
• Iron Guard (founded in 1927), in conjunction with the Romanian military dictatorship in Romania under Ion Antonescu (1940–1941)
• Ustaše in Croatia under Ante Pavelić (founded in 1930, terrorist acts in Yugoslavia before WW2, in power during 1941–1945)
• National Union in Portugal under António de Oliveira Salazar (1933–1974)
• Hlinka Guard in Slovakia under Jozef Tiso (founded in 1913, turned pro-fascist in late 1930’s, in power 1939–1945)
• Arrow Cross Party in Hungary under Ferenc Szálasi (founded as Party of National Will in 1935, banned in 1937, reconstituted as the Arrow Cross Party on 15 March 1939)
• Nasjonal Samling Party in Norway, from Vidkun Quisling, in 1933.
• Rexist Party in Belgium, founded in 1935.
Initially the Comintern believed that the Great Depression was the final crisis of Capitalism, after which, the system would completely collapse, and the Communism was about to take its place. But the isolationist policy that it imposed to the national communist parties (so isolationist that many socialist parties were branded as “social-fascist”) led to the fragmentation of anti-fascists and the unobstructed rise of Nazism to Germany. The rise of Fascism throughtout Europe and the persecution of the Communists in the whole continent, forced Comintern to change course. In 1934, the Communists received new directives, that they should form “Popular Fronts” with all anti-fascist powers, with the aim of stopping the fascist and to establish diplomatic relations with USSR.
South America
USA, from a symbol of Liberty and counterweight to European Colonial powers, became, by late 19th century, the sheriff of the continent, controlling economy through American oil and banana corporations, and through her armed forces. Plus, the Great Depression affected the US image in Latin America. Now the new role model was Nazi Germany and its successful battle against the crisis and unemployment. Many countries had Populist regimes, sometimes based on the Armed Forces, like Getulio Vargas in Brazil, Marmaduke Grove in Chile, the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana in Peru and, immediately after WW2, Huan Peron in Argentina. Those regimes, though, had not as enemy the working class, but the local oligarchs, and thus became quite popular among the workers.
Japan
Japan was already a society believing in racial superiority and need for purity, the complete obedience to the state and the divine emperor. The lack of resources on Japanese territory prompted the expansionist/imperialist policy of Japan during the 30’s.
Summary of Mark Mazower’s Dark Continent: Europe’s 20th Century, Chapters 1, 2, 4
The new nation-states that were born after 1918, were as multi-ethnic as their imperial predecessors, but with the crucial difference that, being born in nationalism, they were less tolerant to their minorities. On the other hand, the minorities, not feeling part of the new countries, followed their revisionist aspirations, in the same nationalistic spirit. All those, combined with the fact that Democracy was not established in Europe, but in fact it was something brand new, without roots, created an explosive mixture.
European parliaments in interwar Europe: Fragmented with many parties, the latter having different ideological identity and, many times, different national identity and representation. Each party viewed the other as an enemy, with no intention of debating. Inability of conciliation between them, inability of forming majority governments, inability of voting laws, inability of the governments to form a program, many elections.
WW1: It brought to surface and exalted a culture of violence, which found herself at odds with “sluggish bourgeois parliamentarism”. The Great Depression made things worse. Michael Oakeshott observed that “Liberalism was out of touch with the people”, and that was the case when the people who suffered the most were seeing, for example, the destruction of stock of industrial and agricultural products, or limiting their output (to raise their prices), while they were hungry.
Sigmund Neumann wrote: The political parties of Germany were rather contrasting than communicating. Every team of supporters, activated in the context of more and more militant party organizations, having their own banners and placards, viewed in hostility the other parts of the society. Political debate and coalition governments were more and more hard to make as “any discussion loses its meaning when the interlocutor has already decided his position even before the start of the conversation… the result was that the spiritual foundations of Liberalism and Parliamentarism were shaken”. Moritz Bonn pointed out that the legislative paralysis “makes stronger and louder the voices which demand a dictator, who will want to make things that the nation wants to be done, without being captive of the financial groups’ power, or even of a majority”. Democracy, seemed to divide the nation, instead of uniting it (S. Neumann, Die deutschen Parteien: Wesen und Wandel nach dem Kriege, Berlin 1932, pp. 110-12; Bonn ibid, p. 82; Kelsen, “Die Krise des parlamentarischen Systems”, listed in J. Bendersky, Carl Schmitt: Theorist for the Reich, Princeton, New Jersey, 1983, p. 110).
Thus, Democracy, instead of uniting the differences, it promoted them. As Hermann Müller, Chancellor of Weimar Germany said in 1930: “It was a Democracy without democrats”.
The renewed isolationism of USA, and the concern of Britain and France about the rise of Communism, led to an indifference towards the rise of fascism. In fact, many Liberals became fascisms out of fear about the communism.
On the other side, the schism in the Left, between Socialist and Communisms, from the events of 1918-19 in Germany and the rest Europe, weakened them both. The Popular Front came to late for Germany, it couldn’t save Spain from Franco and died were it begun, in France.
The European farmers were not as impoverished as their Russian counterparts and thus not so susceptible to Communist ideals. Most farmers were bastion of Conservatism, except for the Bulgarian Agrarian Party, and the landless farmers of Hungary, Po Valley, and Spain (in fact the matter of land redistribution was one factor that led Spanish landowners and the Church to the Far Right and became a cause for the Spanish Civil War).
Radical/Conservative Right: Recognized, respected and worked with the traditional sources of power (Monarchy, Parliament, Church etc)
Fascism/Nazism: Used the traditional sources of power as a mean to reshape society to its norm.
I have a bit tight schedule until November from my regular job, I hope this will help…
The Worldwide Fascist Surge - The Greek case
Greece after WW1 and the Greco-Turkish War is a completely transformed nation. For the first time ever, “nation” and “state” were identified as one and the same. The Anatolian Catastrophe and the exodus of Anatolian and Pontic Greeks from their homeland to Greece, resulted in 1,5 million refugees, the ¼ of the total population. The majority of the Greeks now lived in Greece. A portion of the WW1 territorial gains was ultimately kept by the Treaty of Lausanne. Around 90.000 Bulgarians left Greece and c. 50.000 Greeks left Bulgaria after an agreement for a voluntary population exchange, according to the Treaty of Neuilly and 354,647 Muslims were compulsory exchanged with the Anatolian Greek refugees.The country was economically destroyed from the war and could hardly sustain the new population. The refugees, having a different cultural background (and sometimes lingual background as well), lost everything in a day and had to restart their lives from zero. Greece, to install the huge number of refugees, was forced to proceed in land redistribution, so that every citizen had a minimum property. The arable land was not much, but a society of few rich and many small and medium-sized incomes was created. This was the most absolute agrarian reform implemented in any European capitalist interwar state.
The refugees in the cities lived in slum districts on the outskirts, and they became a cheap labor force for the emerging Greek Industry. As was natural, they evolved into a large proletariat, from which a considerable part strengthened the newly formed Communist Party of Greece (KKE).
Since 1924 the monarchy in Greece was abolished, and a republic was established. But this republic was not a result of the society’s democratization, but the outcome of the quasi civil war which tore apart Greece during WW1 between the Royalists and the Venizelists, the liberal followers of Eleftherios Venizelos. The public outrage for the Anatolian Catastrophe blamed the Royalists leaders, who were tried and executed, and king George II was exiled.
The new regime was rather anti-monarchist than republican; senior military officers were struggling for influence, politicians were seeking their favor to control the state machinery, one putsch after another undermined the parliament and the only thing that kept all fractions united was anti-monarchism. On the other hand, the People’s Party, which represented the royalists, had no respect for the republic and its only two goals were to take revenge against their republican opponents, and to bring back the king.
The Great Depression caused the fall of the Venizelists and the rise of the People’s Party. After two unsuccessful Venizelist coups, the royalist military officers took their revenge. They purged the army from the republicans/antimonarchists and they brought back king George, restoring the monarchy in 1935 by, perhaps, the most rigged referendum in Greek history.
The Depression led to the rise of the Labour Movement and KKE; the mass strikes panicked the establishment, who turned to an ex-general, Ioannis Metaxas. Metaxas was educated in Preußische Kriegsakademie, and he was the mastermind of the Greek General Staff during the Balkan Wars. He is considered by many to be the best professional officer modern Greece produced but, above all, he was an extremist and absolutist, who played central role in WW1 quasi civil war, by essentially acting as agent of Germany and by organizing the royalist militias which attacked Venizelists and the Entente forces.
Greece never had a fascist party and fascism in Greece never gained a noteworthy popular support. A mild Antisemitism existed, but never had a widespread support and was not as sinister as in Central and Easterm Europe, apart few nasty incidents in Thessaloniki. Metaxas had small popular renosance and became prime-minister of minority governments by royal appointments (after five ex-prime-ministers had died in 1936) and the tolerance of the Parliament, with the task of suppressing the Communists.
A mοther weeps over the dead body of his son, during the Tobacco workers’ strike in Thessaloniki, May 9, 1936. The Police was ordered to hit the strikers with firearms.
Metaxas took by surprise the People’s Party and the Liberals who eventually came into agreement about forming a government and, under the auspices of the king (Metaxas was the childhood tutor of the king), he declared a state of emergency and suspended the Parliament and the Constitution, establishing a fascist regime, on August 4, 1936.
Metaxas declared that the 4th of August Regime was the “Third Greek Civilization” (after Ancient Greece and the Byzantine Empire). He adopted fascist titles, as “the First Peasant”, “the First Worker” and “Arhigos”, i.e. “Leader” among others. He declared that parliamentary democracy was obsolete, he imposed the Nazi salute, permanent censorship, he burned books declared prohibited, (even ancient Greek classics, particularly every reference to the Athenian Democracy, like Pericles’ Funeral Oration) he established a fascist youth organization, the EON, and above all, he hunted down in brutality and jailed the communists and other democratic dissenters. Concurrently he attempted to assimilate the Cham Albanian minority of Epirus and the minority of the Slavic speakers of Macedonia.
Emblem of EON
Flag of EON
Young members of the Greek National Organisation of Youth (EON) hail in presence of Ioannis Metaxas.
Nevertheless, his regime was not based on the popular support and a fascist party, like the rest fascist regimes of Europe, but on the armed forces and the king’s authority. There was no expansionist aspirarition. Antisemitism was absent in the regime, and a Gleichschaltung was never attempted.
However, he had the support of the royalists and conservatives, while most of the people were exhausted from the unstable Democratic regime and its many coups.
Metaxas on the stairs of the old Parliament House, having took off his hat, with members of his cabinet, the so called “Labour Battalions” (the regime’s Labour organization) and the National Youth Organization. They give the fascist salute, propably during a playing of the national anthem.
In his foreign policy, despite being pro-German (one of his first acts was to invite Joseph Goebbels in Greece as official guest, also Nazi Germany was the main importer of Greek products), he understood that, despite his WW1 deeds, he had to rely on Great Britain, as Greece was a maritime nation and the king was anglophile. London was pleased to have a friendly regime in Eastern Mediterranean but could not provide substantial military support to Greece. Thus, Britain accepted the (essentially pro-British) neutrality policy of Metaxas. Nazi Germany viewed favorably Metaxas, as well. But they could not counter British influence, so they accepted Metaxas policy of neutrality, as better than a hostile Greece.
September 21, 1936, a Greek newspaper announces the arrival of Goebbels in Greece.
Goebbels with his family, Metaxas and Greek ministers.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Stojadinović, Metaxas, Comnen. Balkan Pact summit in Ankara, March 1938.
The Greek neutrality was effectively terminated by Fascist Italy. Mussolini included Greece in his imperialistic ambitions and when Italy annexed Albania, on April 7, 1939, it was evident that Greece was next. So, two fascist regimes, Italy and Greece, were at odds, and (spoiler alert) during WW2 Greece not only fought for the Allies, but she achieved the first Allied victory of the war and was, until Operation Barbarossa, the only other Allied nation of Britain during her “Darkest Hour”
Even (the apparently imaginary) Australia flirted with the far right, in the form of the New Guard from early 1931 to 1932. DH Lawrence had a run-in with them, when he visited Australia. Later on, he was to fictionalised the experience in his book ‘Kangaroo’.
Eric Campbell at a New Guard rally doing the fascist salute in 1932 (probably in the Sydney Town Hall)
Random factoid: Apparently, they had used my school’s footy ovals for practicing drill.
I recently wrote a piece to the TGW team about obscure war stories from Bulgaria in the last days of WW1 and since one of them includes Hristo Lukov (kind of, sort of), the founder of the fascist UBNL I decided to post it here as well. It can give some interesting insights on fascist propaganda at the time.
I am including most of the relevant parts of my research to give the full context:
As part of the Sallonica Agreement, Bulgaria had to surrender 100 000 from their soldiers in Macedonia as POWs, however that did not happen and the final number was much closer to 10 000. This all happened because of one single man: a young telegrapher from the town of Gorna Oryahovitsa. Instead of telegraphing the order ‘Surrender to the nearest Entente soldiers’ he instead transmitted the following order ‘Fight your way back into Bulgaria with all available supplies and equipment’.
(…)
At the dawn of September 28th, Colonel Velichko Velichkov (his memoirs are also the main source) met up with remnants of the 18th and 20th infantry regiments near the old Serbian border. Colonel Hristo Lukov, commander of an artillery regiment, also may or may not have been there. They managed to set up some defenses and even managed to receive supplies from the city of Kyustendil. On the following morning the soldiers spotted a single Serbian battery preparing to fire on them. When it did, Colonel Velichkov’s men retaliated with their own artillery batteries which actually outnumbered the Serbian ones and were of higher caliber.
After the initial response things calmed down and two Serbian cavalry men carrying a white flag approached the soldiers and stated that “A truce has been signed. Your men are to surrender!”
The colonel responded: “I have received no word of this and if you try to advance we will stop you! You can see that our batteries are ready. Tell this to your commander.”
The negotiator, visibly taken aback by this returned back and before long Serbian machineguns opened fire and the Bulgarian position followed suit. The Serbians once again opened fire with their single battery, but was outmatched by the Bulgarian guns which managed to silence it.
The Serbs once again tried to negotiate and this time the brigadier general, Junior Colonel Tomich was among them. His demands we clear: “The truce has been signed! Surrender!”
Colonel Velichkov however reiterated his previous answer and this caused the Serbian commander to turn back ‘pale and visibly angry’. No further fighting was reported and this was the last engagement that Bulgarian took part in WW1.
Context to Hristo Lukov comment: In 1933 now General Hristo Lukov would go on to form the Union of Bulgarian National Legions - a pro-fascist Nazi party. To further boost his own credibility, Lukov did some ‘alterations’ to the previous engagement. Now, the story was that the Serbian forces were marching towards Kyustendil and that all of the Bulgarian soldiers had abandoned their positions, except for Hristo Lukov! He still had the remaining artillery pieces from the regiment and thus he single headedly arranged the defence of the city (which mind you is anywhere between 30-60 kilometres away from Lukov’s supposed position at Tsarevo Selo). He singlehandedly loaded and fired the four big guns at the unsuspecting Serbs and eventually saved the city. In later years he would alter his story to say that he received help from “four sheepherders” which he randomly stumbled by.
There were other nationalist parties before that year, but they are a bit tougher to research since it’s hard to give a solid answer as to which of them can be marked as nationalist and ultranationalist.
Union of Bulgarian National Legions:
Any progress about the episode?
We’re still playing catch up with what we have on camera (your amazing research on the Greco Turkish War is part of it).
After September, I’ll have spare time from my regural job to write something more cohesive, or to update research, if more material is needed here
A sketch of the Greek Liberal newspaper “Free Tribune” on April 22, 1934. Two Far Right prominent ex-officers and politicians, George Kondylis on the front and Metaxas behind, are mimicking Hitler’s postures in front of a Hitler’s portrait. The title says “Rehearsals without (theatrical) show” and the verses below are taken from a 1820’s poem of the Greek War of Independence, paraphrasing the verses to show that both of them want to rule over the people among ruins.
Summary of Robert Gerwarth’s The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917–1923 . Epilogue: The “Post-War” and Europe’s Mid-Century Crisis. Penguin Random House. 2016. ISBN 9781846148118.
“ On March 23, 1919, we raised the black flag of the fascist revolution, the precursor of the European renewal. Veterans of the trenches and young men rallied around the flag creating groups willing to fight against coward governments and fatal eastern ideologies, to liberate the peoples from the negative influence of 1789. Thousand comrades have fallen around this flag fighting as heroes, with the most substantial meaning of the Roman word, on the streets and the plazas, in Africa and in Spain. Their memory is always alive and present in our hearts. Maybe some have forgotten the hardships of the post-war years [a guy from the crowd shouts “ Nobody! ”] , but the squadristi did not forgot them, they can’t forget them [a guy from the crowd shouts “ Never! ”].
Mussolini’s speech in 1939, for the 20th anniversary of the foundation of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento.
Fascism wasn’t created by the Great Depression, but it was strengthened by it. Fascism was conceived amidst the violence of World War I and was born during the tumultuous time immediately after the Armistice. The peoples lost their faith in Democracy and economic liberalism, as both proved unable to solve their problems, mainly the unemployment, and turned to the extreme political spectrum, Right and Left. At this time, it seemed fitting to many conservatives, just as in Italian case in 1922, that the Nazis were an alternative against the communists.
Before 1914, the European states were proud of themselves about the level of security they provided to their citizens, and even during WW1 they kept the monopoly of violence. The violent legacy of the Great War’s aftermath, was that the states lost that monopoly, starting from the October Revolution. Soon enough, the “internal enemies” were not portrayed as humans, and thus they did not deserved mercy. The majority of the killed during inter-war were civilians. The Right believed that only the removal, by every mean, of all “foreign elements” or all who “were preventing the balance in society”, would create a strong and ethnic “pure” nation. Hitler believed that the German Empire failed to “civilize” and subjugate Eastern Europe because she didn’t used enough means before and during WW1. This goal could succeed only with a total war, against the “internal enemies” as well, not just the external ones. On the other side, the extreme Left believed in class struggle, in the armed revolution and not the parliament, and the elimination of class enemies. Events like the Nazi purges, the Stalinist purges, and the coining of terms like “The 5th Column” were realizing this particular spirit.
From the end of WW1, a culture of violence as a mean to the political ends was established in most parts of Europe. From the Freikorps in Germany to the SA, the Hungarian Arrow Cross, the Austrian Heimwehr, the Croatian Ustashe and the Patriotic Guards in the Baltics, the Lithuanian Riflemens’ Union, the Latvian Aizargi and the Estonian Kaitseliit, all devoted themselves against the spread of communism, in general, and the paramilitary units of the European communist parties in particular, guided by the Comintern and aiming the international revolution. In Bulgaria, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (active since 1893), which aimed the creation of a Bulgarian autonomous state in the region of Macedonia, was strengthened after its role in the 1923 coup and murder against prime minister Aleksandar Stamboliyski, it became a state within the state and, until 1934, carried out over 460 armed operations in Yugoslavian territory (assassinations, kidnappings etc.). IMRO actions in Greek territory resulted in a short Greco-Bulgarian war in 1925.
In Portugal, the Ditadura National was established by a coup in 1926, and the country remained under dictatorial regime until 1974. In Spain, the coup of general Miguel Primo de Rivera established a fascist-inspired dictatorship, with the support of the king, from 1923 until 1930. His inept leadership and his regime discredited the monarchy and alienated the armed forces, so the king called for elections in 1931, and when the republicans won, the king abdicated, and a republic was proclaimed. The new republic was hit by the Great Depression and the high tensions between the Republicans and the Right, both of them radicalized. Especially the new Constitution which instituted secularization along with anti-clerical violence of extreme Leftists, pushed the conservatives to hardline political views. In response, the Left, seeing that the landowners and the armed forces challenged the new regime, moved to more extreme views as well. In 1936, when the Popular Front (the coalition between Socialists and Communists) narrowly won the elections and subsequently formed a minority government, the armed forces responded by a coup which immediately evolved into a full-scale civil war.
Almost every prominent figure in the new regimes of the 30’s recognized his “political awakening” in the period of 1918-1923, and most of them took part in the violent events. Later, when they rose to power, they believed that it was time to settle the old scores. Men like Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, Rudolf Höss, Robert Ritter von Greim, Hans Albin Rauter were members of Freikorps units. The White Terror in Hungary during 1920-21, apart antisemitic pogroms, produced the leaders of the Hungarian National Fascist Party in 1932 and the same men in 1944 fought the Soviets in Budapest along the Nazis, like Pál Prónay and Ferenc Szálasi. The traditional Austrian antisemitism ant Slavophobia was further enhanced by the mass migration of Jews from the former Austro-Hungarian provinces to Vienna, after the war and resurfaced after the Great Depression.
The Treaty of Lausanne, the reversal of a WW1 treaty, the conversion of a defeated side to a victorious one, the expulsion of minorities and the creation of a new homogeneous, secular nation, impressed Mussolini and Hitler, who found a role model on Mustafa Kemal’s successful military action against the Entente. In Hungary and Bulgaria, where the loss of territory and population from the Great War’s peace treaties was grave, the revision of the post-war status quo was still very popular. Japan, deeply insulted by the USA and the British dominions, which blocked the stipulation about racial equality in the Covenant of the League of Nations, and pressed by Japanese military and industrial circles (the latter known as “zaibatsu”), which demanded an imperial expansion to acquire raw materials that Japan lacked, became an ultra-nationalist totalitarian state, that shared many commons with the fascist states, such as the hatred towards communism and liberal economy.
In many countries, the anticapitalistic and anti-parliamentary spirit was realized in authoritarian and ultra-Right regimes, in the pretext of re-establishing “stability” and “order”. In Bulgaria, Zveno, a political/military organization, having links to the coup that overthrew and killed prime minister Aleksandar Stamboliyski in 1923, came to power after a successful coup in 1934, dissolved all political parties and trade unions and introduced a corporatism similar to that of fascist Italy. In less than a year, they were overthrown by a coup organized from king Boris III, who established his own regime, despite the presence of Parliament and political parties. In neighboring Yugoslavia, struggling between the centralization of the government, the Serbian supremacy, and the desire of the constituent nations for more autonomy, king Alexander suspended the constitution and established his dictatorship in 1929, after the assassination of five Croats MPs. Eventually he was assassinated in Marseille by the joint effort of Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, and the Ustashe, an organization aiming the creation of an independent Croatia. In Poland, General Józef Piłsudski, carried out a successful coup in 1926 and stayed in power until his death in 1935. Although Poland never became a fascist/dictatorial country, the new regime was far more authoritarian than before 1926. A similar path was followed by Estonia and Latvia in 1934.
In Austria, prime minister Engelbert Dollfuss, in a midst of an economic crisis, the closing of Creditanstalt Bank (the largest bank of Austria) and clashes between the paramilitary organizations of the political parties, shut down the Parliament, persecuted socialists and Austrian Nazis and established himself as a fascist dictator. In 1934 he was assassinated in a failed coup attempt by the Nazis and his successor, Kurt Schuschnigg, continued to rule Austria by degrees until the Anschluss.
A lot of the “fascist surge” had to do not just with economic conditions but also with the horror stories emanating from the Soviet Union by émigrés (many true stories, some false, some exaggerated). There seems to have been a genuine fear of communism (certainly not unwarranted) because of its revolutionary nature and the terror practised against civilians.
This led people to lean towards fascism more and more as the “lesser of two evils” or maybe as something people thought would work. Plus, the fascist experiment in Italy (despite some repression and even some terror) seemed on the surface to be working pretty well (emphasis on “on the surface”) which was in direct contradiction with the red terror in Stalin’s Russia. Mussolini’s concordat with the pope even earned him praise from FDR.
I believe many fascist supporters of the early 1930s may have been more anti-communist than they ever were pro-fascist.