situation deteriorated in the 1930s. The apparent economic recovery of the mid 1920s offered more stability. There was little or no economic co-operation between these countries and all suffered after the Great slump of 1929. The economic dislocation was not as great as that of Germany that assisted the Nazi rise to power but it was bad enough to disrupt the capitalist system. In the 1930s the region laid between the two powers that offered a viable alternative to liberal democracy, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Communists also made some ground in the region by emphasizing collective security and popular fronts with other parties as a counter for fascism, Nazism, and the ruling right wing authoritarian regimes. The concept of collective security was undermined by appeasement. Communists also had difficulty in explaining the Nazi – Soviet pact. Stalin had been prepared to defend Czechoslovakia but then eagerly partitioned Poland. The communists were however able to redeem themselves in the role they played resisting the Germans. The use of popular fronts was a useful way of gaining popular support and obtaining power without people realising they voting for a communist regime. That strategy would prove most successful in Bulgaria. The adoption of popular fronts came too late to prevent Hitler gaining power in Germany, without that the communists could have made further ground in the region during the Inter war years. The communists of central and eastern Europe like many of their counterparts in Comintern did not see fascism as a serious threat rather more as a portent of capitalism’s demise. If they had have done perhaps the region’s convergence to communism would have happened earlier. The same conditions that helped undermine liberal democracy favoured the fascists and the right wing authoritarian parties as much if not more than they favoured the communists. Fascists might gain power but (the communists hoped) inadvertently accelerate the victory of Marxist – Leninism in the process. In a roundabout way that is what happened in much of the region eventually. Social and economic developments during the Inter-war years meant there was a radicalisation of the working and peasant classes across the region sometimes mixed with ethnic and nationalist tensions in countries such as Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia suffered not only German occupation but a civil war based on ethnic divisions. In reality for large parts of the region the communists seized power after 1945 due to the close proximity of the Soviet army rather than the success or otherwise of the national communist parties during the Inter-war period. Defeating the Germans gave Stalin the opportunity to establish communist regions friendly or submissive towards the Soviet Union. Communists gained power with help from Moscow and with the understanding that the Soviet army would ultimately back them up. The only exception was Yugoslavia were Marshall Tito and his partisans s>