Rise of the Dictators in the 1920’s and 1930’s:

Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism

Read the reprints and complete the following:
I. Activity One
a. Fold a piece of paper in the hot dog fold
b. Title your paper: Common characteristics of right wing dictatorships
c. Title the left column, common characteristics
d. Title the right column, examples
e. Read the first paragraph of your article, Authoritarianism. . .
f. As you read record the common characteristics mentioned, be sure to skip several lines between each
characteristic
g. Now read the material on Italy, Germany and Japan. As you read and come across specific examples of the
generalizations made in the left column, place them across from the generalization in the right column. Try to
come up with at least 2 examples for each generalization and draw examples from all three states. *If you fail to
find an example, consult your textbook.

II. Activity two

a. Take a piece of paper, landscape in orientation, divide it into 5 columns
b. Title it, Common characteristics of dictatorships
c. Label the columns as follows: characteristic, Soviets, Italians, Germans, & Japanese
d. Put the common characteristic mentioned in the section titled "common features"
e. Put a specific example for each country or each of the common features

III. Activity three (Be prepared to answer the following questions in discussion)
1. The authors say that revolutionary socialism was in opposition to capitalism.
Explain in what ways the Soviets tried to act in opposition to capitalism.
2. Who were the kulaks and what happened to them?
3. How successful was Stalin in building a communist state?
4. What were the purges?
5. Who was attracted to fascism and why?
6. What was the affect of hyperinflation and depression to the rise of Hitler and the Nazis?
7. What was the road to power for Mussolini and Hitler? Explain "atmosphere of intimidation and fraud," and
"peacefully and legally"
8. What was the Enabling Act?
9. How did the Nazis win popular support?
10. How did the Great Depression affect the Japanese?
11. What was the Peace Preservation Law?
12. What were the dominant themes in Japan in the 1930's?

1
 Fascism & Communism a VENN Comparison
Fascism: a political movement that promotes an extreme form of nationalism, a denial of individual rights, and a
dictatorial one-party rule.

Fascism was:

. Reactionary

. Totalitarian

. Militaristic

. Anti-intellectual

. Ethnocentric

. Ultra nationalistic

Communism is: an economic system in which all means of production- land, mines, factories, railroads and
businesses- are owned by the PEOPLE, private property does not exist and all goods and services are shared
equally.

Communism was:

. Based on a defined philosophical base

. Revolutionary, based on Marx

. Focused on the working class

Fascism and communism are alike:

.:. Single party states

.:. Ruled through propaganda and terror

.:. Segregated and persecuted their opponents

.:. Sought to extend their power abroad through force or subversion

.:. Rose in nations with little or no democratic tradition

.:. Came after lengthy domestic crisis

.:. Had a minority posing as saviors

.:. Leaders with great demagogic gifts

2
 Benito Mussolini, "The Political and Social Doctrine of
Fascism"
From Benito Mussolini, "The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism," International Conciliation, 306 (January 1935),
pp. 5-17, passim. Reprinted by permission of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Capitalizing on the economic and political unrest of Italy following World War I, Benito Mussolini (1883-
1945) came to power after his black-shirted fascists marched on Rome in 1922. In 1932 Mussolini, with the
help of Giovanni Gentile, wrote the following definition of Italian fascism.

The years which proceeded the March to Rome were years of great difficulty, during which the necessity for
action did not permit of research or any complete elaboration of doctrine. The battle had to be fought in the
towns and villages. There was much discussion, but-what was more important and more sacred-men died.
They knew how to die. Doctrine, beautifully defined and carefully elucidated, with headlines and paragraphs,
might be lacking; but there was to take its place something more decisive-Faith. Even so, anyone who can
recall the events of the time through the aid of books, articles, votes of congresses, and speeches of great and
minor importance-anyone who knows how to research and weigh evidence-will find that the fundamentals of
doctrine were cast during the years of conflict. It was precisely in those years that Fascist thought armed
itself, was refined, and began the great task of organization. The problem of the relation between the
individual citizen and the State; the allied problems of authority and liberty; political and social problems as
well as those specifically national-a solution was being sought for all these while at the same time the
struggle against Liberalism, Democracy, Socialism, and the Masonic bodies was being carried on,
contemporaneously with the "punitive expedition." But, since there was inevitably some lack of system, the
adversaries of Fascism have disingenuously denied that it had any capacity to produce a doctrine of its own,
though that doctrine was growing and taking shape under their very eyes, even though tumultuously; first, as
happens to all ideas in their beginnings, in the aspect of a violent and dogmatic negation, and then in the
aspect of positive construction which has found its realization in the laws and institutions of the regime as
enacted successively in the years 1926, 1927 and 1928.

Fascism is now a completely individual thing, not only as a regime, but as a doctrine. And this means that
today Fascism, exercising its critical sense upon itself and upon others, has formed its own distinct and
peculiar point of view, to which it can refer and upon which, therefore, it can act in the face of all problems,
practical or intellectual, which confront the world.

And above all, Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of
humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the
utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism-born of a renunciation of the struggle
and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy
and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it. All other trials are
substitutes, which never really put men into the position where they have to make the great decision-the
alternative of life or death. Thus a doctrine which is founded upon this harmful postulate of peace is hostile
to Fascism. And thus hostile to the spirit of Fascism, though accepted for what use they can be in dealing
with particular political situations, are all the international leagues and societies which, as history will show,
can be scattered to the winds when once strong national feeling is aroused by any motive-sentimental, ideal,
or practical. This anti-pacifist spirit is carried by Fascism even into the life of the individual; the proud motto
of the Squadrista, "Me ne frego" (I do not fear), written on the bandage of the wound, is an act of philosophy
not only stoic, the summary of a doctrine not only political-it is the education to combat, the acceptance of
the risks which combat implies, and a new way of life for Italy. Thus the Fascist accepts life and loves it,
knowing nothing of and despising suicide: he rather conceives of life as duty and struggle and conquest, life
which should be high and full, lived for oneself, but above all for others those who are at hand and those who
3
are far distant, contemporaries, and those who will come after.
This "demographic" policy of the regime is the result of the above premise. Thus the Fascist loves in
actual fact his neighbor, but this "neighbor" is nor merely a vague and undefined concept, this love for one's
neighbor puts no obstacle in the way of necessary educational severity, and still less to dif ferentiation of
status and to physical distance. Fascism repudiates any universal embrace, and in order to live worthily in the
community of civilized peoples watches its contemporaries with vigilant eyes, takes good note of their state
of mind and, in the changing trend of their interests, does not allow itself to be deceived by temporary and
fallacious appearances.

Such a conception of life makes Fascism the complete opposite of that doctrine, the base of the so-
called scientific and Marxian Socialism, the materialist conception of history; according to which the history
of human civilization can be explained simply through the conflict of interests among the various social
groups and by the change and development in the means and instruments of production. That the changes in
the economic field-new discoveries of raw materials, new methods of working them, and the inven tions of
science-have their importance no one can deny; but that these factors are sufficient to explain the history of
humanity excluding all others is an absurd delusion. Fascism, now and always, believes in holiness and in
heroism; that is to say, in actions influenced by no economic motive, direct or indirect. And if the economic
conception of history be denied, according to which theory men are no more than puppets, carried to and fro
by the waves of chance, while the real directing forces are quite out of their- control, it follows that the
existence of an unchangeable and unchanging class war is also denied-the natural progeny of the economic
conception of history. And above all Fascism denies that class war can be the preponderant force in the
transformation of society. These two fundamental concepts of Socialism being thus refuted, nothing is left of
it but the sentimental aspiration-as old as humanity itself-towards a social convention in which the sorrows
and sufferings of the humblest shall be alleviated. But here again Fascism repudiates the conception of
"economic" happiness, to be realized by Socialism and, as it were, at a given moment in economic evolution
to assure to everyone the maximum of well-being. Fascism denies the materialist conception of happiness as
a possibility, and abandons it to its inventors, the economists of the first half of the nineteenth century: that is
to say, Fascism denies the validity of the equation, well being = happiness, which would reduce men to the
level of animals, caring for one thing only-to be fat and well-fed--and would thus degrade humanity to a
purely physical existence.

After Socialism, Fascism combats the whole complex system of democratic ideology, and repudiates
it, whether in its theoretical premises or in it practical application. Fascism denies that the majority, by the
simple fact that it is a majority, can direct human society; it denies that numbers alone can govern by means
of a periodical consultation, and it affirms the immutable beneficial, and fruitful inequality of mankind,
which can never be permanently leveled through the mere operation of a mechanical process such a universal
suffrage. The democratic regime may be defined as from time to time giving the people the illusion of
sovereignty, while the real effective sovereignty lies in the hands of other concealed and irresponsible forces.
Democracy is a regime nominally without a king, but it is ruled by man kings-more absolute, tyrannical, and
ruinous than one sole king, even though a tyrant. This explains why Fascism, having first in 1922 (for reason
of expediency) assumed an attitude tending towards republicanism, renounced this point of view before the
March to Rome; being convinced that the question of political form is not today of prime importance, and
after having studied the examples of monarchies and republics past and present, reached the conclusion that
monarchy or republicanism are not to be judged as it were, by an absolute standard; but that they represent
forms in which the evolution--political, historical, traditional, or psychological--of a particular country has
expressed itself.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4
 AUTHORITARIANISM AND MASS MOBILIZATION
Norton. Worlds Together, Worlds Apart
Like the liberal systems they challenged, authoritarian regimes came in various stripes. On the right arose
dictatorships in Italy, Germany, and Japan. These differed from one another in impor tant respects, though all
shared an antipathy to the left-wing dictatorship of the Soviet Union. And heedless to say, the Soviets had no
liking for the fascists. Yet, all the postwar dictatorships, on both the right and left, were forged principally in
opposition to the liberal democracies, whose "decadence" they claimed to have transcended. In place of
liberal inertia, these regimes professed their success in mobilizing the masses to create dynamic yet orderly
societies. All also had charismatic leaders, who personified the prestige, power, and unity of the societies
over which they ruled.

Although dismissive of liberal democracy, postwar dictators insisted that they had the support of the
people. True, they demanded much of the people, treating society as a mass conscript army that needed to be
commanded if the problems of liberal capitalism were to be overcome. But their demands, the leaders
maintained, would result in rebuilt economies, restored order, and renewed national pride. In addition,
dictators gained support by embracing, to varying degrees, public welfare programs. Thus, in the short run,
authoritarians claimed to protect the people's well-being better than did liberal regimes and vowed to deliver
on all of modernity's promises-prosperity, national pride, technology-without having to endure any of its
costs--class divisions, unemployment, urban-industrial squalor, the breakdown of morals. For a time, a large
number of the globe's inhabitants believed them.

THE SOVIET UNION The most enduring blow against liberal capitalism was struck in Russia, where
liberalism had never had deep roots. In October, 1917, with World War I still going on and the empire in
chaos, the most radical of Russia's political parties, the Bolshevik Party, seized power in the capital. Their
coup d’etat aroused opposition inside and outside the country. Fearing the spread or socialist revolution,
Britain, France, Japan, and the United States sent armies to Russia to subvert or at least contain Bolshevism,
After the Bolsheviks executed the tsar and his family in July 1918, they rallied support for their cause by
defending the homeland against its invaders, They also mobilized to fight a vicious civil war (1918-1921)
that pitted an array of disunited forces (former supporters of the tsar as well as some social democrats and
large independent peasant armies) against the Bolsheviks and their supporters (many soldiers, sailors,
workers, and state functionaries), Their armed opponents came close but failed to dislodge the Bolsheviks
from the Muscovite core of the former Russian empire,

It was precisely in the all-out mobilization against those whom they labeled the Whites, or
"counterrevolutionaries," that the Bolsheviks, calling themselves the Reds, began to rebuild state institutions,
The civil war also provided an impetus for Bolshevik-led armies to re-conquer, in the name of revolution,
many of the former tsarist lands that had seceded from the empire,

The need to requisition grain from the peasantry as well as the military operations that covered much
of the country weighed heavily on the population and interfered with the harvest, From 1921 until 1923,
Russia suffered from a severe famine, Some 7 to 10 million people died from hunger and disease, To revive
the economy in the early 1920s, the Bolsheviks enacted dozens of decrees (collectively known as the New
Economic Policy) that grudgingly sanctioned private trade and private property, In 1924, with the country
still recovering from the civil war, the undisputed leader of the revolution, Lenin, died. Lenin had suffered a

5
series of strokes in 1922, but until that time no one had done more to shape the in stitutions of the
revolutionary regime, including creating expectations for a single ruler. After skillfully eliminating his rivals,
especially Trotsky, Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) emerged as the new leader of the Communist Party and the
Soviet Union.

Stalin and the Soviet leadership understood history as moving in the stages defined by Karl Marx,
from feudalism to capitalism to socialism and to communism. But before achieving communism, a final
stage in which there would be a classless society and a withering away of the state, they believed that the
Communist Party would first have to build socialism. Yet, since socialism as a fully developed social and
political order did not exist anywhere in the 1920s, no one was quite sure how it would work in practice.
During the 1930s, the leadership moved aggressively to resolve this dilemma by defining Soviet or
revolutionary socialism in opposition to capitalism. Since capitalism had "bourgeois" parliaments serving
the interests of the rich, socialism, as elaborated by the Bolshevik leaders, would have "soviets" of worker
and peasant deputies. Since capitalism had unregulated markets, which led to inefficiency and
unemployment, socialism would have economic planning and full employment. Because capitalism
permitted the "exploitation" of private ownership, socialism would outlaw private trade and private property.
In short, socialism would eradicate capitalism and then attempt to invent socialist forms in housing, culture,
values, dress, and even modes of reasoning.

The efforts to build a non-capitalist society were by design violent, and they began in the
countryside, where the majority of the population lived. Peasants had long been organized in village
communes, owning the land together, while working it individually. Stalin wanted to combine the farms into
larger units, called collectives, that would be owned and worked collectively and that would be run by
regime loyalists. Tens of thousands of enthusiastic urban activists and Red Army soldiers, under the slogans
of "class warfare" and liquidation of the class of "kulaks" (supposedly better-off peasants), led a drive to
establish these new collective farms and to compel the farmers working on them to sell all of their grain and
livestock at state-run collection points for whatever price the state was willing to pay. The collectives also
became dependent on the state for obtaining their seed, fertilizers, and farm equipment.

In protest, many peasants burned their crops, killed their livestock, and destroyed their farm
machinery. These protesters, derided as kulaks even if they were dirt poor, were deported to remote areas of
the country. Villages were given quotas for deportation, and often those selected were the people who had
slept with someone's wife or stolen someone's milk; thus, "class warfare" was likely to be based on personal
animosities, greed, ambition, and vengeance. In the midst of this turmoil, harvests again declined, and a
second famine between 1931 and 1933 claimed another 3 to 5 million lives. When the dust settled, the
collectivized peasants were permitted to have "household plots," on which they could grow their own food,
and could even take some of it to legally sanctioned peasant markets.

For the cities, in the late 1920s, the leadership announced the beginning of a frenzied Five-Year Plan
to "catch and overtake" the leading capitalist countries. Millions of enthusiasts as well as deported peasants
set about building a new socialist (non-capitalist) urban utopia, founded upon advanced technology, almost
all of it purchased from the Depression-mired capitalist countries. In just a few years, more than 10 million
people moved to cities, where they helped build or rebuild hundreds of giant factories, as well as hospitals
and schools. A number of the Soviet projects were intended to demonstrate the audacity of the new regime:
huge hydroelectric dams, automobile and tractor factories, heavy machine-building plants. These stood as
symbols of the promise of Soviet-style modernity, which eliminated unemployment, then the scourge of
liberal capitalist societies.

The Soviet authorities also embarked upon what they called building socialism in the borderlands. In
6
1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) was formed. It joined the nominally independent
states of Ukraine, Belorussia (Belarus) and the Trans-Caucasian Federation with Soviet Russia to form a
single federal state. The U.S.S.R. also included a number of republics; eventually fifteen, all of which
acquired borders and their own institutions, though they were subject to centralized rule from Moscow. A
policy of "nativization" of the Union republics fostered native-language schools and the development of local
elites. In the 1930s, the collectivization and mass arrests devastated the peasants and nomads as well as the
officials of the republics, but industrialization and urbanization helped to consolidate the power of local elites
who advanced the cause of the Union and socialism.

The Soviet political system grew more despotic as the state bureaucracy expanded its size and reach.
The political police grew the most, partly as a result of their role in forcing peas ants into collectives and
organizing mass deportations. During the early 1935, as the ranks of the party grew, ongoing "loyalty"
verifications also led to the removal or "purge" of members from the rolls, even when they professed
absolute loyalty. Whatever the reason for expulsions, initially most former party members were not arrested.
All that began to change in the mid-1930s. From 1936 to 1938, both public and closed trials of supposedly
treasonous "enemies of the people" resulted in the execution of around 750,000 people and the arrest or
deportation of several million more. They were sent to forced labor camps, collectively known as the Gulag,
which spread across the country. Such purges decimated the Soviet elite-party officials, state officials,
intelligentsia, army officers, and eventually even members of the police who had enforced the terror.

Behind this mass terror stood the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, who relentlessly built up a personal
dictatorship. Although Stalin initiated the mass terror against the elite, his
motives remain unclear. Neither he nor the regime was threatened, and the
loyalty of the leaders was not in doubt. What is clear is that the political
police, given sizeable arrest quotas, often exceeded them. In addition, millions
of ordinary people helped to implement the terror. Some reluctantly turned in
neighbors; some did so to try to save themselves; many showed fanatical zeal
in fingering "enemies." In the end, the terror, like the regime's grandiose rule
more generally, was actualized by the pettiest of motives, to avenge wrongs,
assuage hunger, satisfy greed, but also by a desire to play one's part in the
violent crusade of building socialism in a hostile world. Indeed, it appears that
most inhabitants of the Soviet Union accepted the upheaval and mass arrests as
a response to internal and external opposition and as a method for creating a
new world. Moreover, despite the staggering losses, the elite continually
expanded because the planned economy had a voracious need for officials and
administrators.

Collectivized Agriculture. Soviet plans for the socialist village envisioned the
formation of large collectives supplied with advanced machinery, thereby
transforming peasant labor into an industrial process. The realities behind the
images of smiling farmers-such as in this poster, exhorting - "Work happily, and the crop will be good. Spring,
summer, fall, winter" - were low productivity, enormous waste, and often broken-down machinery.

7
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics came into being after World War I. How did the Russian republic
(RSFSR) dominate the Soviet state? How did the territorial boundaries of the Russian Soviet Federative
Socialist Republic compare with the older Russian empire of the nineteenth century as shown? What were
the larger Soviet republics besides that of the Russian republic? Could these other republics be described as
"borderlands"?

ITALIAN FASCISM Long before the Soviets could boast any accomplishments, disillusionment with the
costs of the Great War, along with inspiration drawn from the Bolshevik takeover in Russia had begun to
alter the political situation in capitalist societies. In Italy, for example, the mass strikes, occupations of
factories, and peasant land seizures swept through the country in 1919 and 1920. In response to this disorder,
rightists, under the leadership of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), seized power.

In 1919, Mussolini, a former socialist leader, sought to organize disaffected veterans into a mass
political movement that he called fascism. His early programs mixed nationalism with social radicalism and
revealed a yearning to sweep away all the institutions discredited by the war. Fascist supporters demanded
the annexation of "Italian" lands in the Alps and on the Dalmatian coast, called for female suffrage, an eight-
hour workday, a share of factory control for workers, a tax on capital, land redistribution, and a constituent
assembly-in short, a populist program.

The fascists believed in the value of direct action and attracted much attention and numerous
followers. Their direct action shock troops wore black shirts and loose trousers tucked into high black leather
boots, and saluted with a dagger thrust into the air. In 1920, the squads
received money from landowners and factory owners to beat up socialist
leaders, and it was at this point that Italian fascism became fully identified
with the right. Still, the fascists saw themselves as champions of the little
guy, of peasants and workers, as well as of war veterans, students, and
white-collar types. By 1921, the squads numbered 200,000.

In 1922, Mussolini announced a march on Rome. The march was

a colossal bluff, an exercise in psychological warfare-but it worked.
Dressed in their black shirts, his followers intimidated King Victor
Emmanuel III (1900-1946), who opposed fascist ruffians but feared
bloodshed, and thus withheld use of the well-equipped army against the
lightly armed marchers. When the Italian government resigned in protest,

8
the monarch invited Mussolini to become prime minister, despite the fact that the fascists had won only 35
seats out of 500 in the 1921 elections.

The 1924 elections, in which the fascists won 65 percent of the vote, were conducted in an
atmosphere of intimidation and fraud. Mussolini dealt with other challenges by mobilizing his squads and
carrying out police crackdowns on the liberal and socialist opposition. A series of decrees transformed Italy
from a constitutional monarchy into a dictatorship. By the end of 1926, all parties except that of the fascists
were dissolved.

Mussolini's dictatorship came to terms with big business and the church, thus falling short of the
social revolution that the fascist rank and file desired. Nonetheless, it was skilled at using parades, films, the
radio, and visions of recapturing Roman imperial grandeur to boost support during the troubled times of
Depression. The cult of the leader, Il Duce, also provided cohesion and uplift. As the first anti-liberal. anti-
socialist alternative, Italian fascism served as a model for other countries.

Mussolini. Benito Mussolini liked to puff out his chest, particularly when appearing in public. Il Duce
pioneered the leader's radio address to the people and he encouraged fascist versions of the mass spectacles
that also became common in Soviet Russia.

GERMAN NAZISM: (In contrast to Mussolini's vague ideological goals, Hitler had grand aspirations to
impose racial purity and German power in Europe, and perhaps beyond.)

In Germany, too, fear of Bolshevism and anger over the punitive peace imposed after the war helped to
propel the right to power. Here, the dictator was Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), whose rise to power, like
Mussolini's, was anything but easy or inevitable. Throughout 1918, and for several years thereafter, Germany
was in political ferment, marked by the appearance of many small political groups. In Munich, in January
1918, a nationalist workers' organization was formed, dedicated to winning workers over from socialism to
nationalism. In 1920, a young demobilized corporal was ordered by the army high command to infiltrate and
observe this new nationalist group. That corporal, Adolf Hitler, the son of an Austrian customs official, soon
came to dominate the nationalist workers' movement, whose name he changed to the National Socialist
German Workers' Party (National-Sozialisten, or Nazis). Unlike Mussolini, the young Hitler was never a
socialist. The first Nazi party platform, set forth in 1920, combined nationalism with anti-capitalism and anti-
Semitism. The program also called for the abrogation of the Versailles Treaty. It was an assertion of
Germany's grievances against the world and of the small man's grievances against the rich.

The Nazis came to public attention with the "Beer Hall Putsch" in 1923. That year, the French
occupied the industrial Ruhr Valley to obtain German reparation payments that had not been forthcoming,
and German communists made an attempt to seize power in the provinces of Saxony and Thuringia. Making
their own grab for power, Hitler and his associates invaded a meeting of Bavarian leaders in a Munich beer
hall to force them to support the Nazis, The army, however, fired on the Nazis and arrested Hitler. He was
sentenced to five years in prison for treason, though he served less than a year. While in prison, he wrote an
autobiography, Mein Kampf (My Struggle) (1925), which sold widely.

Although the Nazi Party received only 2.6 percent of the vote in 1928, it started to build up support
when it broadened its appeal to small farmers, shopkeepers, and clerks. The Nazis' fortunes grew as
Germany's economy sagged. As more and more people lost their jobs and saw their savings wiped out by
hyperinflation, they lost faith in the leaders of Germany's Weimar Republic and looked to more radical
political alternatives. Fearing the growing popular support of both the Communist and Socialist Parties and
convinced that he could control Hitler, Germany's eighty-five-year-old president, Field Marshal Paul van
Hindenburg (1847-1934), appointed Hitler chancellor (prime minister) in January 1933. Initially, Hitler
9
pledged that the government would be dominated by traditional conservatives. Thus, like Mussolini, Hitler
came to power "peacefully" and legally. True, troops of young men (the "brown shirts," who grew from
100,000 in 1930 to 1 million in 1933) kept up the pressure in the streets with marches, mass rallies,
confrontations, and beatings, But Hitler was invited to become chancellor by the existing elites, who feared a
Bolshevik-like revolution,

Once in power, Hitler's first steps were to heighten the impression that there was a communist
conspiracy to take power. The burning of the Reichstag building in Berlin on February 27, 1933, provided
the opportunity. Without any real evidence, the Nazis blamed the fire on the Communists, and a young, de-
ranged Dutch Communist was arrested. A decree on February 28 suspended civil liberties "as a defensive
measure against the Communists," Hitler then proposed an "Enabling Act," so that he could promulgate
laws on his authority as chancellor, without the parliament.

The Enabling Act that was passed on March 23, 1933, freed Hitler from the parliament and also from
the traditional conservative elites who had agreed to make him chancellor. In May, the offices, banks, and
newspapers of trade unions were seized, and their leaders were arrested. The Socialist and Communist
Parties were outlawed; other parties of the center were dissolved, By July 1933, the Nazis were the only legal
party. Hitler, who became a German citizen only in 1932, soon became dictator of Germany. He moved
aggressively to curb dissent, ban strikes, and stamp out anti-Nazi protests, The Nazis filled the prisons with
political opponents and built the first concentration camps (initially to house political prisoners) when the
jails overflowed. They also unleashed a campaign of persecution against the Jews, excluding them from the
civil service and the professions, forcing them to sell their property, depriving them of citizenship, and
forbidding them to marry or have sex with Aryans (so-called "pure Germans"),

Although some in Germany opposed Hitler's illiberal activism, the Nazis won popular support for
restoring order and reviving the German economy. In 1935, Hitler repudiated certain provisions of the
Versailles Treaty and began a vast rearmament program, which absorbed the unemployed. The Nazis
transformed economic despair and national disgrace into fierce national pride and impressive national power.
Ownership of the economy remained in private hands, but the state directed and coordinated it. It also
financed public works like reforestation and swamp drainage projects, organized leisure, entertainment,
travel and vacations for low-income people, and built highways and public housing. Nazi rhetoric about
nationalism and anti-Semitism persisted, but so did full employment and social welfare programs.

With internal foes disciplined or silenced and the economy revived, Germany reemerged as a great
power with expansionist aspirations. Hitler called his state the "Third Reich" (the first being the Holy Roman
Empire and the second the empire created by Bismarck in 1871). He claimed that the Third Reich would last
1,000 years, just like the Holy Roman Empire. In contrast to Mussolini's vague ideological goals, Hitler had
grand aspirations to impose racial purity and German power in Europe, and perhaps beyond. As the song
went, "Today Germany, tomorrow the whole world,"

10
Hitler. Adolf Hitler, perhaps better than
other dictators, staged mass rallies and pro-
jected an image of dynamism and
collective will which he claimed to
embody.

Hitler Youth. Youth became a special target of Nazi recruitment and socialization, just as under the Italian
fascists and the Soviet Communists.

Cult of the Dynamic Leader

Nazi political theorists offered no apologies for dictatorship. On the contrary, like their Soviet, Italian, and
Japanese counterparts, they bragged about it as the most efficacious form of mobilizing the energies of the
masses and directing the state, The Fuhrer, or Leader, stood above the Nazi party and all government
institutions, and embodied the supposed will if the German nation. The Fuhrer also decided who belonged,
or did not belong to the nation. Even though Nazi administration proved to be chaotic, the Fuhrer and the
idea of dictatorship were popular. The following excerpt, taken from the writings of Ernst Rudolf Huber,
Germany's major constitutional expert of the 1930s, elaborated on the awesome powers that were being
conferred on Hitler as Fuhrer.

The office of Fuhrer has developed out of the National Socialist movement. In its origins it is not a
State office. This fact must never be forgotten if one wishes to understand the current political and legal

11
position of the Fuhrer, The office of Fuhrer has grown out of the movement into the Reich, firstly through
the Fuhrer taking over the authority of the Reich Chancellor and then through his taking over the position of
Head of State, Primary importance must be accorded to the position of "fuhrer of the movement"; it has
absorbed the two highest functions of the political leadership of the Reich and thereby created the new office
of "Fuhrer of the Nation and of the Reich," , . ,

The position of fuhrer combines in itself all sovereign power of the Reich; all public power in the
State as in the movement is derived from the Fuhrer power. If we wish to define political power in the
volkisch Reich correctly, we must not speak of "State power" but of "Fuhrer power," For it is not the State as
an impersonal entity which is the source of political power but rather political power is given to the Fuhrer as
the executor of the nation's common will. Fuhrer power is comprehensive and total; it unites within itself all
means of creative political activity; it embraces all spheres of national life; it includes all national comrades
who are bound to the Fuhrer in loyalty and obedience. Fuhrer power is not restricted by safeguards and
controls, by autonomous protected spheres, and by vested individual rights, but rather it is free and
independent, exclusive and unlimited.

Source: Ernst Rudolf Huber, Fuhrergewalt, in Nazism /9/9-/945: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts,
edited by J. Nokes and G. Pridham (Exeter. England: University of Exeter Press. 1984), pp. 198-99.

MILITARIST JAPAN Unlike other authoritarian regimes, Japan's power and pride were not wounded
during World War I. To the contrary, because wartime disruptions greatly reduced European and American
competition, Japanese products found new markets in Asia. Japan managed to expand production, exporting
munitions, textiles, and consumer goods to Asian and also Western markets. During the war, the Japanese
gross national product: GDP) grew 40 percent, and the country built the world's third largest navy. Like the
United States, Japan had been a debtor nation in 1913, but it became a creditor by 1920. After the war, the
nation continued on what seemed a successful road to modernity. Between 1910 and the 1930s, Japan
experienced a twelve-fold increase in manufacturing and a three-fold increase in the production of raw
materials. Having suffered a devastating earthquake and fire in 1923, Tokyo was rebuilt with steel and
reinforced concrete, symbolizing the new, modern Japan.

Initially, postwar Japan seemed headed down the liberal road. When Japan's Meiji Emperor, a
symbol of national power and prosperity, died in 1912, his third son took over and ruled from 1912 to 1926,
overseeing the rise of mass political parties, These eclipsed the oligarchic rule of the Meiji era, Suffrage was
expanded in 1925 to all males over twenty-five, increasing the electorate from around 3 million to 12.5
million.

Still, this democratization was accompanied by new repressive measures. Although the Meiji
Constitution remained in effect, a Peace Preservation Law, passed the same year that male suffrage was
enacted, specified up to ten years' hard labor for any member of an or ganization advocating a basic change in
the political system or the abolition of private property. The law served as a club against the mass leftist
parties, such as the Japanese Communist Party, which was founded in 1922.

Japan veered still further from the liberal road after Emperor Hirohito succeeded his enfeebled father
in 1926. In Japan, as in Germany, a major catalyst in the eventual shift to dictatorship was the Great
Depression. Japan's trade with the outside world had more than tripled in value between 1915 and 1929, but
after 1929 China and the United States imposed barriers on Japanese exports. The demand for silk and cotton
goods also dropped precipitously. These measures contributed to a 50 percent decline in Japanese exports. At
the same time, unemployment surged.

Such turmoil invited calls for stronger leadership, which military commanders were eager to provide.
12
Already the leaders of Japan's armed forces were beyond civilian control. In 1927 and 1928, the army flexed
its muscles by twice forcing prime ministers out of office. New "patriotic societies" echoed the call for order.
Professing dedication to the emperor and nation, these squads used violence to intimidate political enemies.
Violence culminated in the assassination of Japan's prime minister in 1932, accompanied by an uprising of
young naval officers and army cadets. This coup failed, but it further eclipsed the power of the political
parties.

During the 1930s, militarism and expansionism became dominant themes in the Japanese press. In
1931, a group of Japanese army officers arranged an explosion on the Japanese owned South Manchurian
Railroad, using this as a pretext for taking over Manchuria. The following year, the Japanese formed the
puppet state of Manchukuo, adding Manchuria to its Korean and Taiwanese colonies. At home, "patriots"
continued their campaign of terror against uncooperative businessmen and critics of the military, while
intimidating others into silence. As in Italy and Germany, the Japanese state took on a sacred aura. This was
done through promotion of an official religion, Shinto, "the way of the gods," and of the emperor's divinity.
By 1940, the clique at the top dissolved all political parties into the Imperial Rule Assistance Association,
ending even the semblance of parliamentary rule.

COMMON FEATURES: COMMUNISM AND FASCISM

Communist Russia, fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and militarist Japan may seem too diverse to be
compared. But, in fact, they shared many traits and, to some extent, imitated one another. All four rejected
parliamentary rule as ineffective, and sought to revive their countries' power through authoritarianism,
violence, and the cult of the leader.

In the economic sphere, all were convinced that modern economies required state direction. In Japan,
the government fostered the emergence of huge business conglomerates, known as zaibatsu. The two largest
zaibatsu, Mitsui and Mitsubishi, were probably the biggest private economic empires in the world. The
Italians encouraged big business to form cartels. In Germany, the state also looked to the private sector as the
vehicle of economic growth, but it expected entrepreneurs to support Germany's racial anti-democratic, and
expansionist ambitions. The most thorough form of economic coordination took place in the Soviet Union,
which enthusiastically adopted American-style mass production, while eliminating private enterprise.
Instead, the Soviet state owned and managed all the country's industry, with separate government ministries
overseeing the manufacture of different products, Here, as elsewhere, state-organized labor forces replaced
independent labor unions.

Employing mass organizations for state purposes was a second common feature of the four
authoritarian regimes. Russia, Italy, and Germany had single mass parties; the Japanese had various rightist
groups until a merger occurred in 1940. All sought to rally the young, often with dynamic youth movements,
such as the Hitler Youth and the Union of German Girls, the Soviet Communist Youth League, and the
Italian squads marching to their anthem Giovinezza (Youth).

Three of the four states adopted large-scale social welfare policies for members of the national
community. Only the Japanese failed to enact innovative social welfare legislation, but the Home Affairs
Ministry eagerly enlisted helpmates among civic groups, seeking to co-opt the new middle classes to raise
savings rates and improve childrearing, The Nazis emphasized full employment, built public housing, and
provided assistance to families in need as long as they were racially Aryans, The Italian National Agency for
Maternity and Infancy, created in 1925, provided services for unwed mothers and infant care. The Soviet au-
thorities proclaimed social welfare as one of the fundamental tenets of the socialist revolution.

13
Unemployment benefits ended when the government announced the end of unemployment in 1930. Still, the
state created or extended programs to deal with disability, sickness, old age, death, maternity, and retirement.
Unencumbered by private property interests, the Soviet state had ceased to think of welfare assistance as a
stopgap in cases of social breakdown; instead, it was viewed as an ongoing, comprehensive program that
distinguished socialism from capitalism.

A fourth common feature of the dictatorships was their ambivalence about women in public roles.
Most propaganda emphasized women's traditional place in the home and their duty to produce healthy
offspring for the nation. The state targeted them in campaigns aimed at higher rates of reproduction. It
rewarded mothers who had many children, and it restricted abortion. State officials were eager to honor new
mothers as a way to repair the loss of so many young men during the Great War. Yet, women were also
entering professional careers in greater numbers, monetary losses that middle-class families suffered during
the war, coupled with a rise in the number of single women, compelled many women to become primary
wage earners. In Italy, the fascist authorities were forced to accept the existence of la maschietta-the new
woman, or flapper, who wore short skirts, bobbed her hair, smoked cigarettes, and engaged in freer sex. In
Japan, she was called the moga or modan garu (modern girl), and though her presence provoked consid-
erable negative comment, the authorities could not suppress the phenomenon. The Soviets offered the most
glaring case of contradictory behavior. In 1918, they declared men and women equal, legalized (and
subsidized) abortion, and eased divorce laws. The state changed its mind, however, and in 1935-1936, new
laws made divorce nearly impossible, drove abortion underground, and rewarded "hero mothers" of multiple
children. But the rapidly industrializing Soviets had by far the highest percentage of women in the paid
workforce.

Finally, the four dictatorships used violence and terror against their own citizens, colonial subjects, and
"foreigners" living within their state borders. Violence was not an external element but was viewed as an
essential lever for remaking the socio-political order, To be sure, the extent of that violence varied greatly,
The Italians and the Japanese were not shy about arresting political opponents, particularly in their colonies,
but it was the Nazis and the Soviets who filled concentration camps with those deemed to be enemies of the
state. In Germany, repression meant that almost every German Jew faced systematic persecution.

Still, brutal as all these regimes were, they were founded on mobilizing popular support for their
schemes, Their successes in mastering the masses were apparent enough at home. Across Europe and the
Americas, these accomplishments drew envious glances even from those still trying to stay on the liberal
road. Given the power projected by dictatorships, above all, by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, it is not
surprising that they attracted imitators. British and French fascists and Communists, though they never came
to power, formed national parties and proclaimed their support for foreign models. Numerous admir ers of
Hitler, Lenin, and Stalin could also be found among politicians, intellectuals, and labor organizers in Latin
America and the United States. Often, admirers saw what they wanted to see rather than the realities in the
political and economic systems of Germany and the Soviet Union. They also sometimes admired the
methods of mass mobilization and mass violence, which they hoped to use for their own ends. This was
particularly true of anti-colonial movements.

THE HYBRID NATURE OF LATIN AMERICAN CORPORATISM

Wiarda, H. J. (1995). Latin American Politics. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company.
(Control of the government by small interests groups)
In Latin America, leaders devised solutions to their problems that had elements of both authoritarianism and
democracy.

14
 Latin American nations were subject to the same pressures that produced liberal and authoritarian
responses to modern problems in Europe, Russia, and Japan. But here leaders devised solutions to their
problems that had elements of both authoritarianism and democracy. The Latin American countries had
stayed out of the fighting in the First World War, but their export economies had suffered. As trade
plummeted, popular confidence in oligarchic political regimes fell, while radical agitation rose. During the
war years, trade unionists in the port of Buenos Aires took control of the city's docks, and the women of Sao
Paulo's needle trades inspired Brazil's first general strike, Bolivian tin miners also took up the banner of
protest and, inspired by events in Russia, they proclaimed a full-blown socialist revolution.

The Great Depression brought even more severe challenges to the status quo from workers' groups,
More than in any other region of the world, the Depression hammered at the trading and financial systems of
Latin America. Responding to the Depression's destruction, Latin American governments, with the
enthusiastic backing of people from the middle classes.

Latin America's politics have their roots in a system called corporatism. Corporatism is a system of
governing where various socioeconomic groups or corporations surround the central authority and compete
for power and for a place at the governing table. During the days of the Spanish crown, the corporations were
the landed aristocracy, the Catholic Church and the military conquerors. In this period, a democratic process
did not exist - the Crown was all-powerful and authoritarian. This system created a closed, exclusive
structure, with political and economic inequalities. Even into the contemporary period, the conflict between
the traditional elitist corporations and new power contenders such as labor unions, student associations,
peasant movements, political parties, leftist revolutionaries and drug cartels continued, creating great
political instability.

Some countries such as Costa Rica and Venezuela attempted to create stable democratic institutions
such as checks and balances and separation of powers. These efforts expanded the political participation
opportunities for new power contenders. Other countries were less willing to let new power contenders
participate in the governing process, and thus democratic institutions were in place, but in actual practice the
power was still held by a powerful, charismatic leader, surrounded by socioeconomic elites and supported by
the military.

To further understand corporatism, a comparison with the United States is helpful. Although Latin
American politics have become more pluralist than before, the number of interest groups in Latin America is
far fewer than those in the United States. In Washington D.C. thousands of interest groups are represented,
whereas in Latin America the number of interest groups is much less. The other difference is that these
groups are organized under the state in Latin America, whereas in the United States they are independent of
government. This system of organization in Latin America is a direct example of corporatism.

However, much change has occurred in the last 30 to 50 years in the numbers and types of interest
groups. Wiarda claimed that there was an "explosion" in the numbers of interest groups. "It is not just the
army, the church, and the oligarchy who are organized anymore, but also the middle class, workers, peasants,
women, indigenous groups, university students, government workers, and internationally based groups"
Wiarda stated. However, Wiarda cautioned that although there are more interest groups, pluralism in Latin
America is still a limited pluralism compared to other areas of the world such as the United States. Most of
the new groups are unorganized and inarticulate, and the political bias still leans toward the "privileged few
rather than the many.” Wiarda claimed that Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica and Uruguay have a level of
pluralism that mimics the United States. Others that are "approaching pluralist democracy" include Brazil,
Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Panama and Venezuela.

15
 Although pluralism is increasing, Wiarda claimed that "Latin America consists, for the most part, of
small, intimate societies where everyone who counts knows everyone else who counts, as well as their
families, life histories, and business.” Thus, the personal influence model of public relations, where
practitioners strive to establish personal relationships with key individuals in the media, government, or
political and activist groups, would tend to thrive in Latin America (The Public Relations section includes an
analysis of public relations models). The personal influence model may also operate as a component of the
other models, for example, as a tactic employed in the press agentry model. This aspect of Latin America has
implications for the development of the Internet. E-commerce is not a personal business. Consumers buy
products without ever touching the item or talking to a salesperson. Thus, e-commerce sites will need to
come up with creative solutions to meet these culture-specific challenges.

16