This survey of the postwar radical right ends in the two countries where indigenous fascist movements came to power. Italy was the birthplace of fascism, and Germany was where it found its most murderous expression. Since both regimes spent more than a decade mobilizing their populations, it is not surprising that millions of people remained sympathetic to fascism after its defeat and that some of the old elites would not accept this defeat as permanent. Given these broadly similar starting points, the divergent fortunes of radical right parties in the two former axis powers are particularly striking. In Italy, an unabashedly neofascist party first became a member of the government in 1994, along with a populist regionalist party with an anti-immigrant bent. Although the former has become more moderate while the latter has been radicalized, the radical right remains a powerful force in Italian politics. In Germany, the radical right has amounted to little more than a temporary annoyance in state parliaments, except in the east, where the National Democratic Party has sunk somewhat deeper roots.

As for other radical right parties, these trajectories were shaped by a combination of means and opportunity. Although both states had a large reservoir of fascists, a combination of postwar allied policy and state action divided and repressed the German far right, while the Italian far right not only was permitted to reorganize but was even treated as an ally by the Christian Democrats at certain points.