created political instability in countries like Italy and Germany. But that instability alone would not have led to fascism. The instability could have led to socialism, communism, or a stronger form of democracy than Germany had after WWI. The reasons that 3 leading countries of Europe embraced fascism vary with each country, but they do have some things in common.
The old orders of monarchist rule were changing or, in Germany, disappearing. Socialism was gaining ground in many European countries, which made the establishment elite (industrialists, military, and church) nervous. The Russian Revolution had just occurred during the war.
Mussolini could not have achieved his absolute dictatorship without the backing of traditional conservatives and the appointment as prime minister by Victor Emmanuel III. Mussolini did very poorly in the 1919 elections, regardless of the economic situation. It was only after he got elected into the government a couple years later, with a very small percent of his party in government, that he began to get some notice, not from the populace, but from RW people who helprd him because they feared socialism..
In Germany, the people overthrew the monarchy at the end of the war. There was a long standing movement in Germany, since the failed revolution of 1848, for a liberal form of government, either as a republic with no monarchy, or as a parliamentarian constitutional monarchy patterned after the UK. The liberal monarch, Kaiser Frederick, and his British wife, Victoria, favored the latter, but he died shortly after becoming Kaiser. His ultra conservative son, Wilhelm II, destroyed all chances of reform (causing my great grandfather to flee Germany as a political refugee). Wilhelm II promoted the nationalism that contributed to the start of WWI. At the end of the war, when Wilhelm II abdicated (or was deposed) Germany established its Weimar Republic, but it was always in jeopardy due to the sharp political split in Germany between the conservative nationalists and more liberal supporters of the republic.
The Weimar Republic held up under the post war chaos and economic instability of post war Germany. Hitler could not get enough political support throughout the 1920s to get into office. Even in the economic disaster of the Great Depression, Hitler could not get enough votes to be a clear cut choice and only got into power through a coalition of support from conservatives who thought they could control him. Then, like Mussolini, he used force to make himself absolute dictator and to destroy his opponents. So, although economic instability helped Hitler gain some votes, it took much more than that for him to become absolute dictator in a racist government.
Spain's polarization was longstanding, driven by divisions between urban and rural life and by movements toward a more liberal form of government vs. the old order of monarchy, church, and military pushing back against reforms and modernization. The liberals won out politically, established a republic, and then Franco waged civil war to destroy the republic and establish a right wing dictatorship. Poverty (economics) was definitely an issue, and socialism was gaining ground politically on behalf of the disenfranchised lower classes, but the political instability and sharp political polarization was long standing in Spain.
Things the nation's had in common leading to fascism were a transition between old order monarchies and modern republics (Spain and Germany), strong nationalism, stirred up and fueled by RW leaders promoting a return to past glories, like Trump with his MAGA appeal to Americans today. For Germany, the past glory was 12th century Frederick Barbarossa. For Italy, it was the glory days of Rome and its empire. For Spain it was the Golden Age of Ferdinand and Isabel.
The US, by contrast, was an older, more firmly established republic. We also experienced the economic instability of the Great Depression during the 1930s,. We had extreme divisions between right wing fascists who supported Nazis in Germany and left wing socialists and communists who supported the Soviet Union. But the majority of American voters chose the left, in the form of the established Democratic Party, not the socialists, communists, or fascists.
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