Most European states had adopted dictatorship before World War II without revolutionary upheaval

Evidence

The breakdown of the European party system occurred in a spectacular way with Hitler’s rise to power. It is now often conveniently forgotten that at the moment of the outbreak of the second World War, the majority of European countries had already adopted some form of dictatorship and discarded the party system, and that this revolutionary change in government had been effected in most countries without revolutionary upheaval. Revolutionary action more often than not was a theatrical concession to the desires of violently discontented masses rather than an actual battle for power. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 656

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies how ‘revolutionary’ change could proceed without revolution — a useful distinction for anti-Fascist literature that assumes overthrow requires mass upheaval.
• XREF: connects to: European regions hosted revolutionary situations nearly a quarter of the time after 1492 — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 997