Social hierarchy in Nazi Germany was primarily based on racial assumptions about the natural capabilities of various ethnicities. The Aryan people were elevated as the only “true Germans,” and in conquered countries where Aryans existed, they were comparably well treated by the invading Nazis. Slavs, Poles, and Russians were considered lesser than Aryans and were forced into work camps. Jews, Roma, and other minorities considered undesirable by the regime were sent to concentration camps by the millions, where they were executed in systematic, bureaucratic fashion.

Mussolini came to power in the early 1920s during a time of massive social unrest and economic stagnation in Italy. His Fascist regime gained the support of the wealthy business owners who feared the rise of communism during the post-World War I economic depression. Mussolini's anti-communist rhetoric and huge emphasis on social order helped to reassure business owners and the wealthy elite that social order would be preserved.

Mussolini’s Fascist government was primarily run as a political organization of the most powerful corporations in Italy. This elevated the status of those associated with these corporations, but lowered the status of just about everyone else. Democracy was gradually quashed and the rights of the common people were dramatically reduced.

All of these countries were interlinked by global capitalism at the outbreak of depression in 1930 except for the Soviet Union, which was outside of the system and run by a “command economy.” The Soviet Union not only was least affected, but in fact thrived during the Great Depression and experienced massive industrial and economic growth.

Intermarriage between Jews and Germans had long been criminalized (since 1935) by the time of the Wannsee Conference. Likewise, almost all Jewish-owned businesses had closed due to official government policies persecuting Jewish business owners in the 1930s. By 1942, Hitler had apparently decided to implement the “Final Solution,” whereby all Jews in Nazi occupied Europe would be transported to concentration camps in Poland to be murdered by the millions (most estimates put the figure at around six million Jews). The Wannsee Conference was convened in early 1942 in order to ensure cooperation from the various administrative bodies that would need to oversee this complicated and horrific plan.

The status of workers in Fascist Germany, as in Fascist Italy, declined during the early years of Hitler’s reign. Striking was outlawed and factory owners were given almost dictatorial control over the lives of workers.

The Nuremberg Laws were passed in 1935 at the annual rally of the Nazi Party in Nuremberg. The Laws made it illegal for “Germans” to marry Jewish people and stated that only ethnic Germans, or those of similar status, could be citizens of the Third Reich. This deliberately ostracized Germany’s large Jewish population and revoked the citizenship of millions of Jewish people. Many Jews fled in the intervening years between the Nuremberg Laws and the implementation of the “Final Solution,” but many others did not or, rather, could not.

The Nuremberg Trials were a series of court proceedings held in the aftermath of World War II in which many Nazi leaders were tried for war crimes.

The Bolsheviks were trying to affect a communist revolution, which logically suggests they would have the support of industrial workers who, in theory, stood to benefit from a socialist takeover. A great deal of Bolshevik rhetoric and propaganda was directed, quite straightforwardly, at "the workers." The Allied Powers of World War I were determined to prevent a socialist uprising in Russia and committed small numbers of troops (comparably small) on the side of the “White Russians.” Rural workers and the landed aristocracy feared for their positions and their lives under a socialist regime. These fears would prove prescient in the coming years.

The Spanish Civil War erupted in 1936 when a group of generals rebelled against the democratically elected left-wing government. The War was fought between the Fascist forces of General Franco and the mostly guerilla forces of Republicanism. Franco and the military won by 1939, and a Fascist government was established until Franco’s death in 1975. During the Civil War, Franco received support from the Fascist governments of Hitler and Mussolini.

The Great Depression, which began in the United States in 1929, spread rapidly around the capitalist nations of Europe. The rise of Communism in Germany unnerved many of the traditional centers of power and a coalition formed to elect the Nazi Party so as to prevent the election of the Communist Party. During the economic depression of the 1930s, extremist parties on both ends of the political spectrum gained support.