ABSTRACT
The defeat of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in World War II helped reinvigorate democracy in Western Europe, as the nations they conquered reinstated parliamentary democracy following liberation. Italy became a republic in 1946, and the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) was formed under a democratic government in 1949. Eastern European nations, however, merely changed masters. The Soviet Union forcibly established satellite Communist governments in the nations they freed from Nazi occupation. Democracy would not return to these countries for almost fifty years.
