Mussolini had wanted to make Italy into a great power - to achieve Mediterranean hegemony - and in the process persuaded France and Britain that Italy was a dangerous revisionist state. It was political realism, not ideology that finally made Italy enter the war on the side of Germany. Mussolini believed Hitler offered more that Britain, and that Germany had a better chance of winning. (Overy, Road, 143-182)In the years between the two world wars, the one thing that remained constant in the Soviet Union was the fear that the capitalist countries would join together to destroy the worlds only communist state. Because of this fear, and the isolation Russia was in, the main goal of foreign policy in the 20’s and 30’s was the survival of the Soviet Union, which meant avoiding war at all costs until Russia could defend herself. In the 20’s, there was a profound fear of war in the Soviet Union caused by regular scares that the capitalist states, led by Britain, were preparing to attack the USSR. This created the necessity for Russia to find any friends she could. The Communist International was created to help spread the revolution and to support the USSR, but the communist parties abroad created a hostility and fear of communism so strong that it actually helped the rise of fascism. With the rise of nazism in Germany, and Russia’s weakness during the upheaval of Stalin’s Five Year Plans and collectivization, it was necessary to switch to a foreign policy of collective security. However, the events of the Spanish Civil War destroyed collective security, and showed the USSR that Western statesmen would always be more hostile to communism than to fascism. This would greatly affects Stalin’s decision when in 1939, France and Britain came to him in the hope to recreate the old entente, and Germany in the hope to stop France and Britain. Stalin decided on an alliance with Hitler because he offered more...
