The rise of fascist movements in Italy and Germany after WWI

1. FASCISM
Italy and Germany
DIANA ALVES. 4ºB 2013-2014
IES FRAY PEDRO DE URBINA.

2. Index
 Introduction to Fascism
 Fascism in Italy:
MUSSOLINI
 Colonial Empire
 How it influenced the
World Wars
 How it ended
 Effects
 Nazi Germany:
 HITLER
 The Holocaust
 World Wars & Foreign
Policy
 How it ended
 Effects
 Hitler & Mussolini's
Alliance

3. FASCISM
 Right-wing political ideology/A radical authoritarian nationalism from the
20th century in Europe.
 Origin: Italy, during the World War I.
 It's a very harsh control or authority from the government (dictator) in
which people are not allowed to disagree with the government.
CHARACTERISTICS
 It banned opposition parties, trade unions and elections.
 Opposed to democracy, liberalism and communism.
 Use of intimidation and terror.

4. FACTORS THAT CAUSED ITS RISE
 Economic factors
 The economic instability weakened the political system
Mass unemployment
 Treaty of Versailles
 Dissatisfaction with the terms of peace treaties of the WWI
 Italy didn't received the territories that were promised
 Germany lost territories

5. Germany's lost territories

6. FACTORS THAT CAUSED ITS RISE

7. FASCISM IN ITALY

8. MUSSOLINI
29 July 1883 – 28 April 1945
Italian politician, journalist and leader of the National Fascist Party, ruling the
country as Prime Minister from 1922 to 1943.
In 1922 he made a coup d’état, gaining the power and becoming a dictator (1925):
 In October 1922, he organized a march to Rome. He commanded his forces from
Milan and ordered them to seize power in Rome. Fearing the beginning of a civil
war, the king Victor Emmanuel gave Mussolini the post of prime minister.

9. MUSSOLINI
 1925 / 1927 - He began to establish his dictatorship by opposing press and non-fascist
parties, and stated to persecute his enemies.
 He also created the OVRA, a secret police force, and made the government entirely fascist.
 And also by:
 Subduing Libya (1922-1932)
 Pacifying Somalia (1923-1927)
 Conquering Ethiopia (1935-1936)
 Helping the Nationalists to win the Spanish civil war (1936-1939)
 Seizing Albania (April 1939)
»» He made Italy predominant in the Mediterranean-Red Sea region. But his military
adventures in 1935-1939 left his armed forces exhausted (military attacks to Abyssinia)

10. Colonial Empire
Invasion of Ethiopia – Italo-Ethiopian War
Ethiopia (Abyssinia), which Italy had
unsuccessfully tried to conquer in the 1890s, was a
prime target because it was still an independent
country, one of only two in Africa.
Mussolini was facing troubles at home because his
government was corrupt. So to divert his people's
attention, he said he would avenge the defeat and
shame they all felt in the Battle of Adwa (1896)
which they had lost.
He also wanted to boost his party’s popularity.

11. World Wars
World War I
During WWI Mussolini was just a soldier in the Italian army who served in the
trenches, and he was even wounded by an accidental explosion of a bomb.
World War II
In May 1938 (one year before the start of WWII), Mussolini promised to fight
alongside Adolf Hitler in any war, against the democracies of the world.
His armies, however, poorly led and not well prepared for war, were defeated
quickly by Allied forces.
Italian resistance to his dictatorship eventualy led to his fall from power and to
his death.

12. The End of Mussolini
 During the last days of the war, Mussolini attempted to escape the
advancing Allied Army by hiding in a German convoy headed toward
the Alps.
 Guerrilla soldiers stopped and searched the convoy and found him in
the back of a truck.
 The guerrilla soldiers took him prisoner and he was later joined by his
mistress, Clara Petacci.
 The council of the guerrilla leaders, lead by the Communists, secretly
decided to execute Mussolini and 15 leading Fascists in
retaliation/revenge.
 They were all executed on April 29, 1945, and their bodies were hung
at a gas station in Milan.

13. Mussolini's Death

14. Effects
After Benito Mussolini's Death:
The conflicts between political parties, which had given rise to a
civil war (1943-45), continued for about three more years.
In 1946, Italians voted to dissolve the Monarchy, then in 1948,
the first political elections were held, establishing the First Italian
Republic.

15. NAZI GERMANY

16. HITLER
20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945.
He was German politician and the leader of the Nazi Party.
Hitler was at the centre of Nazi Germany, World War II in Europe, and
the Holocaust.
In the 1920s he became chancellor.
In 1923, he attempted a coup d'état in Munich to take the power. The
failed coup resulted in Hitler's imprisonment.
After his release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the
Treaty of Versailles and promoting anti-Semitism, anti-communism, etc.
with charismatic eloquence and Nazi propaganda, denouncing capitalism
and communism as being part of a Jewish conspiracy.

17. HITLER
 He eventually won the elections.
 Stared a process of transforming the republic into the Third Reich, a
single-party dictatorship (based on the totalitarian and autocratic
ideology of National Socialism).
 In 1934 he made himself supreme leader:
AUTHORITARIAN DICTATORSHIP » TOTALITARIAN REGIME
 His first six years in power:
 Rapid economic recovery from the Great Depression
 Annexation of new territories to Germany, which gave him significant
popular support.

18. Curiosity - Hitler's Elections Voting
Ticket
YES NO

19. The Holocaust
 The Nazis were anti-semitic, which means they were racist towards
people of other religions, cultures, ethnicities, etc. and considered
themselves superior. Hitler believed that the Jews were the great enemy
of the German people.
 The Holocaust consisted of a genocide: a mass extermination of mainly
Jews (6 million died), but also Romani people, homosexuals, gypsies, etc.

20. The Holocaust
 They were sent to concentration camps, where
they were executed, died in gas chambers, or
died due to starvation or exhaustion from the
forced works.
 Over 11 MILLION people died in the Holocaust
in total.
» The Holocaust documentary

21. World Wars & Foreign Policy
 Like Mussolini, Hitler only participated in the World War I as a soldier,
being decorated as veteran.
 His aggressive foreign policy is considered to be the primary cause of the
outbreak of World War II in Europe:
 March 1938, Anschluss, annexation of Austria into Germany.
 In September 1938, leaders of France and Great Britain met Adolf Hitler to discuss
his demands, granting him control over the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.
In return, Hitler promised to leave the rest of Czechoslovakia alone.
 He broke that promise taking the rest of Czechoslovakia and then invading Poland.
 He directed a large-scale rearmament of his troops and on September 1st, 1939 he
invaded Poland, resulting in British and French declarations of war on Germany.

22. How It Ended
 Hitler ordered the attack to the Soviet
Union, but it failed.
 The United States joined the war, making
Germany turn defensive and suffer many
defeats.
 Germany was fighting the Soviet Union,
The United States and France at the same
time.
 In the final days of the war, Adolf Hitler
commited suicide to avoid being captured
by the Red Army (Russia's army and air
force).
 Germany surrendered in the war one day
after his death.

23. Effects
 There was no freedom of speech in Germany for
many years.
 Death of millions of people, mainly Jewish, in
concentration camps. The Jewish population has
still not fully recovered.
 Around 60 million combatants were killed in
the World War II, which was provoked by
Hitler and Germany when they attacked Poland.
 Nazis are still around to this day.

24. MUSSOLINI & HITLER'S ALLIANCE
 VIDEO