Chapter Overview

The Great Depression reinforced democratic government in many places, but alarmingly, the 1930s saw the rise of dictatorships in places where democratic institutions had not been firmly rooted. In the United States, FDR's New Deal transformed the relationship between the government and the economy, as Keynesian economics laid the foundations of the welfare state. In Britain, the Labour party doubled its representation, but a coalition government was able only to ameliorate the effects of the economic slump. France experienced the rise of fascism, but Popular Front coalitions of the left checked fascism's strength. In Italy and Germany, however, fascism and Nazism took dictatorship to new levels. Racism, violence, the repression of individual liberties, the corporative state, and historic nationalism characterized the new totalitarianism, which would soon lead Europe into war.