Introduction / Helmut Konrad and Wolfgang Maderthaner -- Crisis and workers' movements / Ferdinand Lacina -- The significance of February, 1934 in Austria in both national and international context / Helmut Konrad -- Avalanches of spring : the Great War, modernism, and the rise of Austro-fascism / Roger Griffin -- Der italienische Faschismus im Spannungsfeld zwischen Reaktion und Moderne / Karin Priester -- Hitler's dictatorship : his role as "leader" in the Nazi regime / Hans Mommsen -- The Second Spanish Republic : the challenges facing a democracy in troubled times / Vicent San Rozalén -- The crisis in the 19301/2s and the rise to power of the Swedish social democrats / Bengt Schüllerqvist -- The United States in the Great Depression : was the fascist door open? / Nelson Lichtenstein -- Turkey in the first world crisis : from authoritarianism to totalitarianism / Erik-Jan Zürcher -- Brazil in the 1930s : state building, nationalism and working-class agency / Alexandre Fortes and Paulo Fontes -- Labour, organisation and gender : the jute industry in India in the 1930s / Samita Sen -- Japan's way out of the crisis of the 1930s as a strategy for overcoming modernity / Hiroko Mizuno -- Reappraising the Nanjing decade (1927-1937): modernizing China during the world economic crisis / Zhu, Weigelin-Schwiedrzik.