Element contents
The Fascist Zenith
War and Dictatorship under Axis Rule
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 November 2025
Summary
1942 represents the apex of the global wave of autocratization associated with the Era of Fascism, and the expansion of Axis Rule during World War were responsible for this impressive growth of authoritarian 'occupation' regimes. Starting in Asia with the Imperialist expansion of Japan, followed by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in Europe, the number of dictatorships increased substantially. This Element analyses how the three poles of Axis rule, Italian Fascism, Nazi Germany, and Authoritarian Japan, lead the dynamics of institution-building of political regimes of occupation under their direct or indirect control, respective diffusion models and, in some cases, coercive transfers.
Information
- Type
- Element
- Information
- Online ISBN: 9781009706674Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication: 11 December 2025
Bibliography
Select Bibliography
Bang, P. F., Bayly, C. A., and Scheidel, W., eds., The Oxford World History of Empire, vol. 2, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2021.Google Scholar
Barrett, D. P. and Shyu, L. N., eds., Chinese Collaboration with Japan, 1932−1945: The Limits of Accommodation, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Baruch, M. O., Servir l’État Français: L’Administration en France de 1940 à 1944, Paris, Fayard, 1997.Google Scholar
Basciani, A., L’impero nei Balcani: L’occupazione italiana dell’Albania 1939−1943, Roma, Viela, 2022.Google Scholar
Bauer, R., The Construction of a National Socialist Europe during the Second World War: How the New Order Took Shape, London, Routledge, 2020.Google Scholar
Benda, H. J., Irikura, J. K., and Kish, K., eds., Japanese Military Administration in Indonesia: Selected Documents, New Haven, CT, Southeast Asia Studies, Yale University, 1965.Google Scholar
BÖhler, J. and Gerwarth, R., eds., The Waffen-SS: A European History, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2017.Google Scholar
Boldorf, M. and Okazaki, T., eds., Economies under Occupation: The Hegemony of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in World War II, London, Routledge, 2015.10.4324/9781315716275CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bosworth, R. and Maiolo, J., eds., The Cambridge History of the Second World War, vol. 2, Politics and Ideology, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015.10.1017/CHO9781139524377CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourchier, D., Illiberal Democracy in Indonesia: The Ideology of the Family State, London, Routledge, 2015.Google Scholar
Brook, T., Collaborating: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime China, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2005.10.4159/9780674270596CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burgwyn, H. J., Mussolini and the Salò Republic, 1943–1945: The Failure of a Puppet Regime, Cham, Palgrave, 2018.10.1007/978-3-319-76189-3CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cointet-Labrousse, M., Vichy et Le Fascisme: Les Hommes, les Structures et les Pouvoirs, Brussels, Editions Complexe, 1987.Google Scholar
Conway, M., Collaboration in Belgium: Léon Degrelle and the Rexist Movement, 1940−1044, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1993.10.2307/j.ctt211qx80CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Culver, A. A., Glorify the Empire: Japanese Avant-Garde Propaganda in Manchukuo, Vancouver, The University of British Columbia, 2013.10.59962/9780774824385CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dahl, H. F., Quisling: A Study in Treachery, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Dallin, A., German Rule in Russia, 1941−1945: A Study of Occupation Policies, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1981.10.1007/978-1-349-03305-8CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duara, P., Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern, Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003.10.5040/9798881815998CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edelstein, D. M., Occupational Hazards: Success and Failure in Military Occupation, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Faure, C., Le Project Culturel de Vichy, Lyon, CNRS-Presses Universitaire de Lyon, 1989.10.4000/books.pul.15665CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fonzi, P., Oltre i Confini: Le Occupazione Italiane Durante la Seconda Guerra Mondiale (1939–43), Florence, Le Monier, 2020.Google Scholar
Grant, W., Nekkers, J., and Waarden, F. V., eds., Organising Business for War: Corporatist Economic Organisation during the Second World War, Oxford, Berg, 1991.Google Scholar
Grillère, D., L’Autre Occupation: L’Italie fasciste en France, Paris, Nouveau Monde Édition, 2023.10.14375/NP.9782384910847CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gross, J. T., Polish Society under German Occupation: The Generalgouvernement, 1939−1944, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Hedinger, D., Die Achse Berlin-Rom-Tokio 1919–1946, Munich, CH Beck, 2021.10.2307/j.ctv289dss2CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirschfeld, G., Nazi Rule and Dutch Collaboration: The Netherlands under German Occupation 1940–45, Oxford, New York and Hamburg, Berg, 1988.Google Scholar
Hofmann, R., The Fascist Effect: Japan and Italy, 1915–1952, Ithaca, NY, and London, Cornell University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Huff, G., World War II and Southeast Asia: Economy and Society under Japanese Occupation, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2020.10.1017/9781316162934CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ishida, K., Japan, Italy and the Road to the Tripartite Alliance, London, Palgrave, 2019.Google Scholar
Janjetović, Z., Collaboration and Fascism under the Nedić Regime, Belgrade, Institute for Recent History of Serbia, 2018.Google Scholar
Kim, D. S., Rethinking Colonial Legacies across Southeast Asia through the Lens of the Japanese Wartime Empire, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2025.10.1017/9781009070942CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klinkhammer, L., L’occupazione tedesca in Italia: 1943−1945, Turin, Bollati Boringhieri, 2016.Google Scholar
Kneuer, M. and Demmelhuber, T., eds., Authoritarian Gravity Centers: A Cross-Regional Study of Authoritarian Promotion and Diffusion, London, Routledge, 2021.Google Scholar
Kott, S. and Patel, K. K., eds., Nazism across Borders: The Social Policies of the Third Reich and Their Global Appeal, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2018.Google Scholar
Kranjc, G. J., To Walk with the Devil: Slovene Collaboration and Axis Occupation, Toronto, The University of Toronto Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Kratoska, P. H., ed., Asian Labor in the Wartime Japanese Empire: Unknown Histories, London, Routledge, 2015.Google Scholar
Lehmann, S., Bohn, R., and Danker, U., eds., Reichskommissariat Ostland: Tatort und Erinnerungsobjekt, Konstruktionen, Paderborn, Ferdinand Schöningh, 2012.Google Scholar
Lemkin, R., Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress, Washington, DC, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944.Google Scholar
Mark, E., Japan’s Occupation of Java in the Second World War: A Transnational History, London, Bloomsbury, 2018.10.5040/9781350022225CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, B. G., The Nazi-Fascist New Order for European Culture, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Matthienssen, S., Japanese Pan-Asianism and the Philippines from the Late 19th Century to the End of World War II: Going to the Philippines Is Like Coming Home?, Leiden, Brill, 2016.Google Scholar
Maw, B., Breakthrough in Burma: Memoirs of a Revolution, 1939−1946, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1968.Google Scholar
Mazower, M., Inside Hitler’s Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941−44, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Mimura, J., Planning for Empire: Reform Bureaucrats and the Japanese Wartime State, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011.10.7591/cornell/9780801449260.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitter, R., The Manchurian Myth Nationalism, Resistance, and Collaboration in Modern China, Berkeley, The University of California Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Morgan, P., Hitler’s Collaborators: Choosing between Bad and Worse in Nazi-occupied Western Europe, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2018.Google Scholar
Newman, J. P., Yugoslavia in the Shadow of War, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015.10.1017/CBO9781107707597CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinto, A. C., ed., Corporatism and Fascism: The Corporatist Wave in Europe, London, Routledge, 2017.10.4324/9781315388908CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinto, A. C., ed., An Authoritarian Third Way in the Era of Fascism: Diffusion, Models and Interactions in Europe and Latin America, London, Routledge, 2022.Google Scholar
Pinto, A. C., and Adinolfi, G., eds., Building Dictatorships under Axis Rule: War, Military Occupation and Political Regimes, London, Routledge, 2025.10.4324/9781003463313CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prusin, A., Serbia under the Swastika: A World War II Occupation, Champaign, University of Illinois Press, 2017.10.5406/illinois/9780252041068.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reynolds, E. B., Thailand and Japan’s Southern Advance, 1940−1945, New York, S. Martin’s Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Rodogno, D., Fascism’s European Empire: Italian Occupation during the Second World War, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Sato, S., War, Nationalism and Peasants Java under the Japanese Occupation 1942−1945, Armonk, NY, M. E. Sharp, 1994.Google Scholar
Shin‘ichi, Y., Manchuria under Japanese Dominion, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Soutou, G.-H., Europa! Les Projects Européens de L’Allemagne Nazie et L’Italie Fasciste, Paris, Tallandier, 2021.10.14375/NP.9791021050242CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steinberg, D. J., Philippine Collaboration in World War II, Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan Press, 1967.Google Scholar
Stirk, P. M. R., The Politics of Military Occupation, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Šustrová, R., Nations Apart: Czech Nationalism and Authoritarian Welfare under Nazi Rule, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2024.10.5871/bacad/9780197267639.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, J. E., Iconographies of Occupation: Visual Cultures in Wang Jingwei’s China, 1939–1945, Honolulu, University of Hawai‘i Press, 2021.Google Scholar
Trager, F. N., ed., Burma: Japanese Military Administration, Selected Documents, 1941−1945, Philadelphia, The University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971.Google Scholar
Verney, S., L’Indochine sous Vichy. Entre Révolution nationale, collaboration et identités nationales 1940−1945, Paris, Riveneuve éditions, 2012.Google Scholar
Ward, J. M., Priest, Politician, Collaborator: Jozef Tiso and the Making of Fascist Slovakia, Ithaca, NY, and London, Cornell University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Warmbrunn, W., The Dutch under German Occupation, 1940−45, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1963.Google Scholar
Warmbrunn, W., The German Occupation of Belgium, 1940−1944, New York, Peter Lang, 1993.10.3726/978-1-4539-0997-3CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yellen, J., The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2019.10.7591/9781501735554CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, L., Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism, Berkeley, The University of California Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Zanasi, M., Saving the Nation: Economic Modernity in Republican China, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 2006.10.7208/chicago/9780226978741.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Accessibility standard: Unknown
Why this information is here
This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.Accessibility Information
Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this Element is currently unknown
and may be updated in the future.