In 1914, the Italian socialist Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) renounced his internationalist views and announced his support for the war. Mussolini's volte-face led to his expulsion from the Italian socialist party, and the former revolutionary went to the front. In this article from 1914, Mussolini describes the war as a potentially transformative event. After the war, Mussolini spread his message of aggressive nationalism to mobilize support among discontented Italians for his Fascist movement launched in 1919.

Fascism in Italy and elsewhere was less about a coherent set of doctrines than an opportunistic effort to mobilize popular enthusiasm for decisive action in support of the acquisition of power. Mussolini's speeches and charisma, as well as his ability to exploit Italian postwar antipathy toward democracy, attracted converts from the discontented, the disillusioned, and the uprooted. Fascists claimed that their movement could remake the Italian state and bring about a new, revitalized civilization. In this speech, Giovanni Gentile (1875-1944), a philosopher turned Fascist, describes Fascism in these terms.

On October 29, 1922, the constitutional monarch of Italy named Mussolini Italian Prime Minister under threat of an armed insurrection by the Fascists. The Italian parliament soon granted him broad authority to govern. In this speech given on the third anniversary of the so-called March on Rome, Mussolini characterizes Fascism as the spirit of a Third Italian Civilization (after the Roman Empire and the Renaissance). At the time of his speech, Mussolini was moving to consolidate his personal dictatorship.

One of the hallmarks of Mussolini's Italy was the glorification of its leader, Il Duce (an Italian word for "the leader"). His image appeared everywhere in an effort to stress the omnipresence of Italian Fascism and its leader. One Italian at the time commented that "Wherever you look, wherever you walk, you will find Mussolini, still Mussolini, always Mussolini."

After Mussolini established the first fascist state in Europe, imitators soon formed their own fascist parties and attempted to capitalize on the postwar mood. In Germany, the burden of the war and the widespread discontent with the peace settlement and economic misery proved fertile ground for a variety of radical political movements. Hans Fallada's 1933 novel Little Man, What Now? captures the desperation of a single German worker and his family as they struggle with the rising unemployment and inflation. Fallada's account helps to explain the rise of Adolf Hitler and his facist-style National Socialist Party. In the following passage, Pinneberg, the protagonist, attempts to obtain six marks owed his wife.

Hans Schweitzer's 1932 Nazi election poster brilliantly captures the mood presented in Fallada's work. A crowd of desperate, starving, poor Germans stand waiting for their "last hope": Adolf Hitler and his promises to build a vibrant Germany.

Ernst Jünger (1895-1998) became famous in the interwar years as the outstanding chronicler of the Great War in Germany. In his diary, The War as Inner Experience (from which the following selection is taken), and his book The Storm of Steel, Jünger glorified the war experience and argued that the community of the trenches should serve as the basis for a new order. Although he never became a member of the Nazi Party and kept his distance from the regime, Jünger's sentiments echoed many of those expressed by Hitler.

The declaration of war in 1914 caused excitement and regret throughout Europe. In cities throughout the continent, large crowds gathered to cheer the news. This remarkable photograph was shot in Munich on August 1, 1914. Standing in one of the front rows of the crowd that day was a young, unemployed artist who had failed in his career. The man, Adolf Hitler, volunteered for the German army soon after the picture was taken. The experience of the war marked, in Hitler's own words, "the greatest and most unforgettable time of my earthly existence," and it led to his involvement in politics afterwards.

In 1924, while in prison after a failed coup attempt, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) composed his political program, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). In it, Hitler spelled out the primary purposes of his Nazi Party, particularly the primacy of race in politics, the role of anti-Semitism, the uses of propaganda, and the need for German "living space." Hitler's work became a bestseller in Germany following his release from prison, and he began to build a following among Germans discontent with the Weimar Republic. By 1933, Hitler had become Chancellor of Germany and set out to establish his Nazi dictatorship.

Fritz Lang's 1926 film Metropolis explored the dehumanization of modern life, and it served as an apt metaphor for German interwar problems as a whole. The extraordinary advances made in film during the Weimar era would be exploited later by Nazi propadandists.

Much like Mussolini's views on his fascist state, Hitler and his followers believed that the Nazi Party could bring about a renewal of Germany and create a "total revolution." Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), Hitler's Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, gave the following speech in November 1933, declaring the "Nazi Revolution" to be a "total one."

Gregor Strasser (1892-1934) was an officer in World War I who joined the Nazi Party in 1922 and participated in Hitler's abortive putsch of 1923. He eventually became the second-ranking party member after Hitler and in 1926, the year he wrote this document, he became Reich Propaganda chief. Strasser here glorifies motherhood and war, frequent subjects of Nazi propaganda. By 1930, he had fallen out of favor with Hitler, and Joseph Goebbels replaced him as propaganda chief. He resigned from his party offices in 1932 and was murdered in Hitler's purge of 1934.

One of the most extraordinary propaganda films ever made was Leni Riefenstahl's (b. 1902) documentary of the 1934 Nazi Party rally held in Nuremberg. Hitler designed the Nuremberg rally marking the anniversary of the Nazi seizure of power to be a spectacle worthy of the new Nazi Germany. Riefenstahl captured the immense crowds and staged rituals that characterized Nazism as an experience, and presented Hitler as he wanted to be seen by the nation.

Few historians doubt the importance of Hitler's image as the Leader [der Führer] of Nazi Germany. Nazi propaganda stressed the idea of a heroic leader who could create a new Germany. Riefenstahl's film also represents one of the best sources for understanding how Hitler presented himself as this leader.

The rise of fascism prompted a variety of responses from European intellectuals, some positive and some negative. In 1931, the German author Thomas Mann (1875-1955) wrote the article "An Appeal to Reason," in which he characterized the rise of these movements as an indication of the crisis in the European soul.

Historians have struggled with the question of how Hitler, whose radical world view was evident from his earliest writings and speeches, could have enjoyed so much popularity in Germany. While many answers have been given to this problem, Ian Kershaw, one of the foremost scholars of the Third Reich, provides one of the most penetrating analyses of Hitler's popularity. Kershaw focuses on the skillful creation and dissemination of an image of Hitler as a "heroic" leader, which proved enormously attractive to millions of Germans. Many came to view their leader as a unifying, almost spiritual, force.

Michael Burleigh's recent history of Nazi Germany traces the "moral collapse" that occurred in Germany in the Third Reich, changes that led Germans to accept Hitler. His introduction, the beginning of which is excerpted here, is a devastating indictment of how Germans favored a political system based on hope and hatred.