Lesson 14 Aggressive Expansion of Fascist Countries

Foreign Expansion of the Fascist Regime in Italy

In the early days after the First World War, Italy was in economic recession, political chaos, and the rise of the workers' and peasants' movements, and the central government was almost paralyzed. In 1922, the Fascists marched to Rome and established the Fascist regime in Italy. The Italian Fascist regime exercised dictatorial rule internally and was obsessed with territorial expansion externally. In 1935, Italy launched a war of aggression against Ethiopia, and in the following year declared the official annexation of Ethiopia.

The formation of a European war engine

The Great Economic Crisis hit Germany hard, and in 1932, industrial output fell by nearly 40% compared to 1929, agricultural output by nearly 30%, and the number of unemployed exceeded 6 million. Under the impact of the Great Economic Crisis, the masses of the lower and middle classes were suffering and their discontent with the government increased. The Nazis, led by Hitler, took advantage of this opportunity to operate with great vigor. In 1928, there were only 100,000 Nazis in the party, but by 1932, the number had risen to 1.4 million.

In 1932, the Nazi Party became the largest party in the Reichstag elections, and in 1933, Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany and began to take control of the country. Soon after, he dissolved the Reichstag, banned the activities of other political parties and established the fascist dictatorship.

After Hitler came to power, the Nazi Party used the "Reichstag Arson Case" to crack down on the German Communist Party, arresting and persecuting a large number of communists and progressive people, and then the Nazi Party took the opportunity to dissolve the trade unions. The Fascist regime also burned a large number of progressive books in order to strengthen its ideological control. The Fascist regime persecuted Jews cruelly and deprived them of their property mercilessly. Under the Nazi rule, millions of Jews were slaughtered and thousands of outstanding people, including Jewish scientists, were forced to go into exile, among them the outstanding physicist Albert Einstein.

In 1935, Germany openly broke the Treaty of Versailles, introduced compulsory military service and built up a large army. 1936, Germany sent troops to the Rhine demilitarized zone; in 1938, it annexed Austria; and in March 1939, it annexed Czechoslovakia.

The formation of the Asian war epicenter

In 1927, the Japanese cabinet declared that "if we want to conquer China, we must first conquer Manchuria; if we want to conquer the world, we must first conquer China".

In the great economic crisis, the Japanese economy was hit hard. Industrial production shrank sharply, millions of people were unemployed or semi-unemployed; the prices of agricultural products fell sharply, and farmers were heavily indebted. Under the situation of intensified domestic and foreign conflicts, fascist organizations of all kinds emerged in Japan.

The Ministry of War was the core of the fascist forces in Japan. In 1931, the Japanese Kwantung Army planned the September 18 Incident and launched a long-planned war of aggression against China, and the Chinese people started a hard resistance war. The September 18 Incident became the starting point of the Chinese people's war against Japan and opened the prologue of the world anti-fascist war. After that, Japan quickly occupied the three northeastern provinces of China, installed the puppet regime "Manchukuo", and further encroached on the northern part of China.

In 1936, Hirota Hiroyuki, who was under the control of the military ministry, took office and established a fascist dictatorship. Japan intensified the expansion of armaments, and military spending accounted for nearly half of all fiscal revenues. Japan also formulated the "National Policy Standards", which set the fundamental national policy of Japan to "develop the southern seas while securing the empire's position on the East Asian continent". On July 7, 1937, Japan launched a full-scale war of aggression against China with the July 7 Incident.

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