ABSTRACT
In Chapters 2 and 3, it has been suggested that many of the ideas now associated with fascism were born in response to the problems of pre-1914 ‘liberal’ Europe and, appropriately developed and refined, given a new relevance in the very different Europe forged by the First World War, the Versailles settlement, and the Russian Revolution. The Europe of 1890–1914, however, for reasons that have been explored, had seen neither truly formidable mass movements of the far right nor, with unimportant exceptions, dictatorships of the kinds that proliferated in the 1920s and 1930s. This chapter examines the emergence of fascist and right-wing movements between the two world wars, their successes and failures, and considers the place of fascism within the wider spectrum of the European interwar antidemocratic right.
