The Italian Fascists imposed totalitarian rule and crushed political and intellectual opposition, while promoting economic modernization, traditional social values and a rapprochement with the Roman Catholic Church.
[1] The Nazi Party, led by Adolf Hitler, espoused a form of fascism[2][3][4][5] that incorporated fervent antisemitism, anti-communism, scientific racism, national socialism, and the use of eugenics into its creed.
[6] Nazism subscribed to pseudo-scientific theories of a racial hierarchy[7] and social Darwinism, identifying the Germans as a part of what the Nazis regarded as an Aryan or Nordic master race.
Einsatzgruppen paramilitary death squads accompanied the German armed forces inside the occupied territories and conducted the mass killings of millions of Jews and other Holocaust victims.
In 1940, Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoye established the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, or the Taisei Yokusankai, to consolidate all political parties under a single umbrella group.
[9][10][11] The ruling Awami League party, led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, has been accused of consolidating power and suppressing dissent.
[21][22] Others argue against this position from the fact that Vargas followed the Caudillismo ideology, which is strongly Positivist, described as incompatible with Fascism's metaphysical, traditionalist, almost occultist ideas.
[24][25] The Blue Shirts Society, a fascist paramilitary organization within the KMT that modeled itself after Mussolini's blackshirts, was anti-foreign and anti-communist, and it stated that its agenda was to end the influences of foreign (Japanese and Western) imperialists in China, crush Communism, and eliminate feudalism.
[26] In addition to being anti-communist, some KMT members, like Chiang Kai-shek's right-hand man Dai Li were anti-American, and wanted to expel American influence.
[32][33] The Sino-German relationship also rapidly deteriorated as Germany failed to pursue a detente between China and Japan, which led to the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War.
As early as October 1940 the Vichy regime introduced the infamous statut des Juifs, that produced a new legal definition of Jewishness and which barred Jews from certain public offices.
It had a National Youth Organisation based on the Hitlerjugend, developed an armaments-centered economy, established a police-state akin to that of Nazi Germany (Greece received tactical and material support from Himmler, who exchanged correspondence with the Greek Minister of State Security Konstantinos Maniadakis) and brutality against communists in big cities such as Athens (communism was not known in the small towns and villages of Greece yet).
In July 1944, armor-colonel Ferenc Koszorús and the First Armour Division, under Horthy's orders, resisted the Arrow Cross militia and prevented the deportation of the Jews of Budapest, thus saved over 200,000 lives.
This act impressed upon the German occupying forces, including Adolf Eichmann, that as long as Hungary continued to be governed by Horthy, no real Endlösung could begin.
Following the tradition of uniformed right-wing paramilitary groups, the Blue Shirts were an organisation advocating syndicalism and unionism, inspired by Benito Mussolini's brand of Italian Fascism.
His unionist platform was based on leftist ideas of social justice, such as "a minimum family wage", "paid holidays", "working class education", and a world in which workers are "guaranteed the right to happiness".
Salazar denounced the National Syndicalists as "inspired by certain foreign models" and condemned their "exaltation of youth, the cult of force through direct action, the principle of the superiority of state political power in social life, and the propensity for organising masses behind a single leader".
The Iron Guard turned more and more into a pro-Nazi and pro-German movement and took power in September 1940 when Ion Antonescu forced King Carol II to abdicate.
The Ossewabrandwag was a far-right movement of mostly Afrikaners who opposed South Africa's participation in World War II and was sympathetic to the Nazi and Fascist regimes in Europe.
In Italy it is called Fascism, in Germany National Socialism and in South Africa, Christian Nationalism.”[48] The Ossewabrandwag led insurrections against the Union government, resulting in some of the leadership, including Vorster, to be detained under emergency regulations.
Prior to World War II, fascist or quasi-fascist movements also appeared in democratic nations, often taking their inspiration from the regimes established by Mussolini and Hitler.
The Blueshirts wanted to establish a corporate state in Ireland and frequently clashed with Republican supporters of the ruling Fianna Fáil, who were using force to disrupt that party's meetings.
A reactionary nationalist movement called Acción Revolucionaria Mexicana (Mexican Revolutionary Action), founded by former Villista general Nicolas Rodriguez Carrasco, agitated for right-wing causes, such as the deportation of Jews and Chinese-Mexicans, throughout the 1930s.
It was succeeded by the Vereeniging De Bezem (Association 'The Broom') which was founded on 15 December 1928 by some men who previously were active in the Verbond van Actualisten.
On 14 December 1931 Anton Mussert and Cornelis van Geelkerken founded the Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging in Nederland (NSB), the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands.
On 29 June 1932 Jan Baars (previously active in the Vereeniging 'De Bezem') founded the Algemeene Nederlandsche Fascisten Bond (General Dutch Fascist Federation).
Afterwards, the SFF was more strongly influenced by Nazism and changed its name to Sveriges Nationalsocialistiska Folkparti (SNF; Swedish National Socialist People's Party).
Sir Oswald Mosley, an admirer of Mussolini, established the British Union of Fascists in 1932 as a nationalist alternative to the three mainstream political parties in Britain.
The relative stability of democratic institutions, the long-time assimilation of Jews, and the lack of a strong, threatening Communist movement, had made it difficult for fascism to succeed in Britain.
The Silver Legion of America (1933-1941), claiming to have around 15,000 members, managed to run a candidate for President on a third-party ticket, but it was outlawed after Nazi Germany's declaration of war on the United States in December 1941.