This book explores how much social change took place in western countries between the two world wars and whether such change was due to World War I or parliamentary processes. The central chapters provide a comparative study of three one-party dictatorships, Russia, Italy and Germany, after 1933 and ask how far it is true that the fascist and national socialist regimes were both born out of war and destroyed by war. The nature of "internal war" in Russia is examined. The book also questions whether "mass society" was something new and distinctive in the inter-war years and concludes with an analysis of World War II.