"The leaders of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan took their countries into war because of conditions they had fomented. Cynically exploiting political radicalization, economic pressures, and societal fervor stoked by authoritarian leadership and militarist-nationalist ideology, they dismantled democratic institutions - thus removing the brakes on both repression and aggression - and promulgated pervasive propaganda that created a climate where war appeared both inevitable and justified."
"Once at war, they desperately clung to their illusions of national greatness and delusions of personal grandeur as their countrymen were killed, their nations devastated and their militaries defeated. In the end; with Hitler's suicide in a dank bunker; the bodies of Mussolini and his mistress hanging in a Milan square; and Tojo's drop through a trapdoor with a hangman's noose around his neck; the tigers feasted."
Churchill's metaphor frames dictators as dangerously dependent on forces they cannot control. Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan pursued war through fomented conditions, exploiting political radicalization, economic pressure and militant-nationalist fervor. Authoritarian leadership dismantled democratic institutions, removed checks on repression and aggression, and used pervasive propaganda to normalize war as inevitable and justified. During combat they clung to illusions of national greatness and personal grandeur while populations suffered and militaries failed. Violent deaths of key leaders marked regime collapse. The relationship among historical Axis powers is compared with a recent gathering of an "Axis of Autocracies" in Beijing, including Xi's invitations to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
Read at The Cipher Brief
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