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by Charles River (Author)
It's easy to forget how young Italy was when Benito Mussolini was born on July 29, 1883. It is hard to conceive a territory with such a long and ancient history was once young and troubled with constant conflict and instability. Similar to Germany, Italy was unified in 1861, but contrary to its northern cousin, its previous history was one of separation. Italy had no great romantic idea of a "Great Germany," keeping it unified even during the wars between city-states. Benito Mussolini was born and raised in a highly volatile environment where ideas already considered extreme by most contemporary observers, such as Socialism, would undergo a deep and violent transformation. Mussolini would ride that wave to power, and he would hold it for decades as he opportunistically tried to strengthen Italy's position and empire. That would lead him to foreign interventions in Africa, and eventually an alliance with Nazi Germany's Adolf Hitler, ultimately costing him everything and devastating his country throughout World War II.
It is often claimed that Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany through democratic means, and while that is a stretch, it is true that he managed to become an absolute dictator as Chancellor of Germany in the 1930s through a mixture of politics and intimidation. Ironically, he had set such a course only because of the failure of an outright coup attempt known as the Beer Hall Putsch about a decade earlier. The early 1930s were a tumultuous period for German politics, even in comparison to the ongoing transition to the modern era that caused various forms of chaos throughout the rest of the world. In the United States, reliance on the outdated gold standard and an absurdly parsimonious monetary policy helped bring about the Great Depression. Meanwhile, the Empire of Japan began its ultimately fatal adventurism with the invasion of Manchuria, alienating the rest of the world with the atrocities it committed. Around the same time, Gandhi began his drive for the peaceful independence of India through nonviolent protests against the British. It was in Germany, however, that the strongest seeds of future tragedy were sown. The struggling Weimar Republic had become a breeding ground for extremist politics, including two opposed and powerful authoritarian entities: the right-wing National Socialists and the left-wing KPD Communist Party. As the 1930s dawned, these two totalitarian groups held one another in a temporary stalemate, enabling the fragile ghost of democracy to continue a largely illusory survival for a few more years. The Spanish Civil War has exerted a powerful impact on the historical imagination. Without question, the conflict was a key moment in the 20th century, a precursor to World War II, and an encapsulation of the rise of extremist movements in the 1930s, but it was also a complex narrative in and of itself, even as it offered a truly international theatre of war. It marked one of the seminal moments, along with the 1929 Wall Street Crash, between the two apocalyptic wars of the early 20th century, and since it occurred between 1936 and 1939, Spain proved to be a testing ground of tactics, weaponry, and ideology ahead of World War II. For the Allied powers Britain and France, Spain became a nadir of "appeasement," yet, as the name suggests, the conflict had distinctly Spanish characteristics. The pressures that led to war were particular to the country, its social challenges, and its long and intricate history, and it was a conflict between two sides that included disparate elements like the clergy, socialists, landowners, and even anarchists. It is estimated that somewhere between 500,000-2,000,000 people were killed in the war. Ultimately, the forces of reaction, led by General Francisco Franco, triumphed, and after his victory in 1939, Franco ruled Spain with an iron fist for 36 years.
