<P> Meanwhile, the Axis in Europe had brought the Soviet Union into the world war as an active belligerent by attacking eastwards in Operation Barbarossa (June 1941). </P> <P> The internationalist - minded, radical Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in November 1917, with the goal of overthrowing capitalism across the world . They supported communist parties in many countries and helped set up similar regimes in Hungary and Bavaria, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia . By 1920 there was a corridor of anti-communist border states just west of Russia . However, these states feuded among themselves, and such alliances they formed, like the Little Entente, were unstable . </P> <P> Italian and German fascism were in part a reaction to international communist and socialist uprisings, in conjunction with nationalist fears of a Slavic empire . A further factor in Germany was the success of Freikorps (voluntary paramilitary groups of World War I veterans) in crushing the Bolshevik Bavarian Soviet Republic in Munich in 1919 . Many of these veterans became early components of the Nazis' SA ("Stormtroopers"), which would be the party's troops in the street warfare with the communist paramilitary Roter Frontkämpferbund in the decade before 1933 . The street violence would help shift moderate opinion towards the need for Germany to find an anti-communist strongman to restore stability to German life . </P> <P> Expansionism is the doctrine of expanding the territorial base (or economic influence) of a country, usually by means of military aggression . In Europe, Italy under Benito Mussolini sought to create a New Roman Empire based around the Mediterranean . It invaded Albania in early 1939, at the start of the war, and later invaded Greece . Italy had also invaded Ethiopia as early as 1935 . This provoked angry words and an oil embargo from the League of Nations, which failed . </P>

What were the economic causes of world war 2