Axis
| Automatons led by a lunatic who looked like Charlie Chaplin |
| Notable figures |
| The Third Reich |
| Neo-Nazism |
- Note: This article is not about basis vectors or anything related to any coordinate system.
The Axis was the group of countries, all far-right dictatorships, who were aligned against the Allied Powers (Great Britain, United States, Soviet Union and so on) during World War II.
Their stated goal was to oppose both internationalist capitalist powers (the Allies) and communism (the Comintern). Axis countries generally preferred an authoritarian "state capitalism" which somewhat resembled mercantilism under absolute monarchists.
The three main countries in the Axis were:
- Germany (and Austria) under the Nazi rule of Adolf Hitler
- Italy under the Fascist rule of Benito Mussolini
- Imperial Japan under a military dictatorship (Emperor Hirohito was nominally the leader but more of a figurehead during WWII, at least until the very end)
Other countries in the Axis included:
- Vichy France under the rule of Nazi collaborationist Philippe Pétain between 1940 and 1944
- Croatia, under the rule of Ante Pavelić and the Ustaše (close allies of Fascist Italy) between 1941 and 1945 (the rest of Yugoslavia was invaded and divided among Germany, Italy, and Bulgaria.)
- Hungary
- Romania
- Bulgaria
- And several puppet governments set up by Germany, Italy, and Japan in occupied countries such as Thailand, Manchuria, and Albania.
[edit] Not officially part of the Axis
Spain under Francisco Franco and Portugal under António de Oliveira Salazar were not members of the Axis, and both men remained in power until the mid-1970's. Salazar honored the longstanding Anglo-Portuguese Alliance, and was the only European leader to predict that Hitler would lose the war. In 1940, Salazar allowed for some 2,000 evacuees from Gibraltar to temporarily settle in Madeira and later granted the Allies basing rights in the Azores. Portugal drifted further into the Allied camp after the Japanese invasion and occupation of Portuguese Timor.
Franco, on the other hand, actively identified his regime with the Axis powers. Franco's regime signed the Anti-Comintern Pact in March of 1939, becoming its fourth member alongside Germany, Italy and Japan. While Franco never signed the Tripartite Pact, he actively aided the German war effort in the East, sending nearly 47,000 Spaniards to fight on the Eastern Front as "volunteers." Contrary to popular belief, the vast majority of those who served in the Blue Division were drawn from the regular Spanish Army; less than a third were civilian Falangists. Unlike Portugal who was officially neutral, Spain was "non-belligerent," much as Italy had been before the Battle of France. However, Franco also refused to let Hitler march through Spain to Gibraltar, and at one point made defensive preparations against a possible attempt to do so.
Post-War, Portugal became a member of NATO and the UN, while Spain wasn't part of either until 1956 and 1982, respectively. This was likely because Franco, unlike Salazar, had favored the Axis over the Allies during the war.
Some sources also list Finland as an Axis country. This is because Finland was at war with the Soviet Union at the same time Nazi Germany was and the two countries cooperated in military activity against the USSR. However, after the USSR withdrew from Finland to concentrate on driving Nazi forces out of their country, Finland turned against the Nazis and fought to drive German troops out of their country in 1944-45; as such, they are best described as having merely been cobelligerent with the Axis for a time.
[edit] Usage (or more like it, mis-usage) today
A blithering imbecile has attempted to revive the Axis term, in the context of a modern "Axis of Evil," to refer to something other than the Nazi/fascist dictatorships of WWII and to drum up support for war in the Middle East with a Godwin's Law style. See homeland security for more on his modus operandi.
This usage is probably on the same level as the neologism "Islamofascism." In other words, bullshit rooted in using moral equivalence as a propaganda tactic.