ABSTRACT
In the aftermath of the First World War, the re-constructed Europe comprised some twenty-eight states, of which twenty-six could be generally described as democracies. Yet by the eve of the Second World War in 1939, sixteen of these had surrendered to dictatorship of one form or another. Parliamentary forms of government had been abandoned, the range of political parties had been severely circumscribed, and the normal constitutional restraints had become largely ineffectual.
