Tier A: the consensus fascist regimes
Seven regimes. On these, the major frameworks converge: a genuine fascist movement, in control of a state, exercising power. Disagreements about them are disagreements of interpretation, not classification.
Kingdom of Italy under the PNF, 1922 to 1943
The founding case, narrated in full at the Italy page. Note the structure of the dates: power arrived in October 1922, but the dictatorship was built in 1925 and 1926, and the regime ended by internal coup in July 1943.claim type: fact
Nazi Germany, 1933 to 1945
The most extreme case, narrated at the Germany page. The debate over whether Nazism’s racial core sets it apart from the genus is real and is treated at the debates section; it is a debate within Tier A, not about membership in it, for nearly all comparativists.
Independent State of Croatia, 1941 to 1945
The Ustaše movement that ran the Independent State of Croatia was a genuine fascist formation with roots in interwar terrorism, a palingenetic national program, and an eliminationist project against Serbs, Jews, and Roma that it pursued with camps of its own, most notoriously Jasenovac.claim type: fact The state was an Axis creation and survived on German and Italian tolerance, but the movement’s ideology and violence were domestic products, which is what separates a puppet state run by fascists from a mere occupation administration.claim type: inferenceThe Slovak State, 1939 to 1945
The Slovak State under Jozef Tiso, a Catholic priest, is the standard case of clerical fascism: a Hlinka Party regime with a paramilitary Hlinka Guard, a single-party state under German protection, and participation in the deportation of its Jewish population.claim type: fact Specialist literature debates how much of the regime was fascist conviction versus clerical authoritarianism under duress; its placement here follows the standard surveys.
Hungary under the Arrow Cross, October 1944 to 1945
The Arrow Cross government of Ferenc Szálasi, installed by German intervention in October 1944 after Horthy attempted to exit the war, was a genuine fascist movement in power: months of terror in which Arrow Cross militia murdered thousands of Jews in Budapest while the deportation machinery ran.claim type: fact It must be distinguished sharply from the preceding quarter century of Horthy’s regime, which sits in Tier C.
Romania: the National Legionary State, September 1940 to January 1941
The Iron Guard shared power for four months in the National Legionary State, an interval of pogrom and score-settling that ended when Antonescu crushed the Legion’s rebellion in January 1941.claim type: fact Four months of fascists in power; then a military dictatorship that belongs in Tier B. The Romanian case is the cleanest demonstration that regime classification has to track dates, not countries.