A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

1048 Ch. 25 • Economic Depression and Dictatorship

imprisoned. Bloody reprisals against loyalists in Spain began immediately,
and 1 50,000 more Spaniards were executed.
Franco, now known as “Caudillo,” or “leader”—like the Italian Duce and
the German Fiihrer—established authoritarian rule based on the support
of the army, the Church, and wealthy landowners, three forces that had
opposed the republic. But recognizing Spain’s weakness, Franco did not
pursue a policy of expansion that characterized Italian fascism or German
National Socialism. The Catholic Church’s institutional role in Franco’s
Spain or Salazar’s Portugal w'ould have been unthinkable in Nazi Germany,
and was less significant in Italy.

Conclusion

The collapse of the political center in Europe in the aftermath of the

Treaty of Versailles and the Depression helped create the Europe of dicta­

torships. When Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, World

War II began. In retrospect, given the deterioration of the political cli­

mate, the rise of dictatorships, and the violence of the inter-war period of

economic, social, and political crisis in the Europe of extremes, one can

view the entire period between 1914, w'hen World War 1 began, and 1945,

when World War II finally ended, as a war of thirty years.