Whether conservative modernization might have worked is still an
open question. In the following case studies, Russia and China are clearly examples
of failure culminating in revolution and an ultimate turn to communism as the
vehicle for modernization. Germany appears to have been successful in the period
before 1914, but in defeat she was forced by her enemies to adopt the democratic-capitalist
model of the West. It was an ill-fitting suit, which Germans soon changed for
a modernized version of traditional authoritarianism, which we have come to know
as German fascism, or Nazism. Similarly, Japan appears to have been successful
in the process of conservative modernization, but after disillusionment with parliamentary
democracy in the early twentieth century she also turned to a modern authoritarianism,
which some have called Japanese fascism.