The liberal ideas break down in the post-war time, the economic destabilization, the role of women, and the advancement of technology.
The first world war started in 1914 and ended in 1919, it was a global wide war that influences all aspects of society around Europe. After the war, liberal ideas broke down, people tend to believe that liberal ideas will only give too many rights to the government and be corrupt. Also, economic depression happened all over Europe, especially for Germany, they needed to pay a large amount of money according to the Treaty of Versailles. Technology also improved a lot during the first world war because the advanced technology can lead them to be superior during the war. In such a condition, Fascism was appealing to people because it can solve the problems of the economic depression, spreading the notion of nationalism, and becoming new Faith of people to lead restoring. The book is all quiet on the Western front, it showed us about t how the war will destroy people's fantasy about the war originally and led soldiers to be hopeless about the future. The book the doctrine of Fascism showed us how Fascism was against liberal ideas and can be a spiritual force to support people to restore the country.
Fascism can be attractive to people because it can be a new faith to the people so that they can get rid of future hopelessness. The first world war, it totally changed the ideas of people about the cruelty of war. People felt hopeless for the future when they came back from the war front. In All Quiet on the western front, 161 pages Were it very bad out there, Paul? Mother, what should I answer to that? You would not understand, you could never realize it, and you shall never realize it.1 Here, it just shows the people different kinds of understanding about the war. Their emotion toward Paul was not just bad or good can express, the feeling was way more complex and far more than bad. I bite into my pillow. I grasp the iron rods of my bed with my fists. I ought never to have come here. Out there I was indifferent and often hopeless--- I will never be able to be so again. I was a soldier, and now I am nothing but agony for myself, for my mother, for everything that is so comfortless and without end. I ought never to have come on leave. In this part, just can show Paul's emotion was distorted, in the front, he saw so many deaths so that his emotion was inhabited by him. He hoped to back home to have a release but just found that he was indifferent here, he cannot really find the feeling when he was 18 here, becoming a soldier destroy all his emotions so he found his mother worrying about him just making him have a distortion in his mind. Page 185, and He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come. 296
'Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear. The life that has borne me through these years is still in my hands and my eyes. Whether I have subdued it, I know not. But so long as it is there it will seek its own way out, heedless of the will that is within me.'295
Thus, we can see that the war totally changes people, it killed countless people during the war, destroy people's illusion about the war, and gave them a sense of hopelessness and disillusion.
During the First World War, it causes harsh social problems in European society. And Mussolini provides the solution---Fascism. During the period after World War One, as a defeated countries, Germany and Italy needed to pay large amounts of compensation, which increased the severity of the social problem in the country. Even more, In 1929, because of the great depression happened, America took all of the money out of Germany, and suddenly increased the unemployment rate to about 40 percent, and people were starving, whole German society was in a depression. Then, In Germany, as a leader of the fascist party, Hitler promised that he will handle the problem of the economic depression and restore Germany again, which other parties cannot do. When Hitler seized power in Germany, they began work-creation and infrastructure programs and exhorted businesses to take on workers, doled out credit. It was effective to bring Germany to the stabilized Country again. All the actions that Hitler took in Germany were to reject the idea of liberal economics, and he limited a lot of freedoms in Germany to restore the German economy. And this kind of idea was in accord with the idea in the Doctrine of Fascism that Fascism is definitely and absolutely opposed to the doctrines of liberalism, both in the political and the economic sphere. Now liberalism is preparing to close the doors of its temples, deserted by the people who feel that the agnosticism it professed in the sphere of economics and the indifferentism of which it has given proof in the sphere of politics and morals, would lead the world to ruin in the future as they have done in the past. This explains why all the political experiments of our day are anti-liberal, and it is supremely ridiculous to endeavor on this account to put them outside the pale of history, as though history were a preserve set aside for liberalism and its adepts; as though liberalism was the last word in civilization beyond which no one can go.4 Hitler and the book both blamed liberal ideas as the main factor for destroying the world, which led people to be disappointed about the liberal values of the economy and attracted by Fascism.
Also, nationalism can be one big reason for Fascism to appeal to people. After the first world war, When Hitler seized the power in Germany, he blamed the reason for economic depression and losing the war on the Jewish people. He said Jewish were the inferior race and started Holocaust to eliminate Jewish and to build a new Germany with a pure race. This kind of behavior will be more appealing to the German people than other parties because it plays a role in stabilizing the politics and the fear among the Germans about losing the war. Also, the super-heated nationalism was rising in German, and that feeling just fostered Germany to unified because of the hate in the Treaty of Versailles. Then, Hitler promulgated laws to lower the status of the Jewish people and drove them away from German. Because of all the actions that Hitler took, German felt more united and had a strong sense of national pride, which led them to be more convinced about the Fascism government.
Also, Hitler started to make Fascism a new Faith in Germany. In his depiction, Nationalism should have a soul, and the man who was a soul should be the leader of the country and superior to all other people, which was Hitler himself. And Hitler emphasizes the importance of the communist state, opposing the right-bearing individuals. Individuals should think as a group and act as a group so that they can contribute to society. Furthermore, Fascism stated that the spiritual was more important than the material, and the government will be more ritual just like people gathering in the church, people will be more faithful because it did not have any material relation, it was more about the spiritual and can have a stronger relationship between country and individual. The doctrine of fascism, also stated that Fascism will be a spiritual force and that individualism should be avoided. Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal, will of man as a historic entity. Just like what wrote in the doctrine of Fascism, Hitler also tended to emphasize the country as a whole state, that individualism only can exist because it was accord with the benefit of the whole country. Also, the spiritual value of Fascism states that
The Fascist State, as a higher and more powerful expression of personality, is a force, but a spiritual one. It sums up all the manifestations of the moral and intellectual life of man. Its functions cannot, therefore, be limited to those of enforcing order and keeping the peace, as the liberal doctrine had it. It is no mere mechanical device for defining the sphere within which the individual may duly exercise his supposed rights. The Fascist State is an inwardly accepted standard and rule of conduct, a discipline of the whole person; it permeates the will no less than the intellect. It stands for a principle that becomes the central motive of man as a member of civilized society, sinking deep down into his personality; it dwells in the heart of the man of action and of the thinker, of the artist and of the man of science: the soul of the soul. In this part, the doctrine of Fascism told us that the state, as a spiritual force, was every rule and moral standard in human life, and this kind of motivation will be purer because it was without any human drives and it can be a refreshing of a human being. This was the same for Hitler because he also wanted to emphasize that he will become a new faith of German and use his spiritual power to control Germans and attracting to people.