Kara Gonzales

Word History

Mr. C

Project Part II

Compare and Contrast Totalitarian Dictatorships Essay

During the first part of the twentieth century, a new system of government,

totalitarianism, came into being. The men who governed these governments were called

dictators. These countries shared basic political, social, and economical characteristics but each

ruled in their own specific way. Totalitarian states shared these basic features: (1) a single-party

dictatorship, (2) state control of the economy, (3) use of police spies and terror to enforce the

will of the state, (4) strict censorship and government monopoly of the media, (5) use of schools

and the media to indoctrinate and mobilize citizens, and (6) unquestioning obedience to a single

leader. (Chapter 17.3 PG 458). One man was Joseph Stalin who was the leader of Russia with

communism ideology and had a left-wing style totalitarian government. Another man was Benito

Mussolini who was the leader of the Fascist Party in Italy. The third was Adolf Hitler who was

the leader of Nazi in Germany. Both of these leaders had a right-wing style of totalitarian

government.

First of all, these dictatorships shared some general political characteristics.

Stalin’s Soviet Union, Musselini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Germany all were totalitarian regimes.

They all tried to control all aspects of life with underhanded manipulation and the use of violence

to purge their political enemies. In addition, they all were generally led by a single dictator, who

controlled the police, and the military. (StudyMoose).

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Stalin enforced left-wing totalitarianism, as it has often developed from working class

movements seeking, in theory, to eliminate, not preserve, class distinctions. (Grobman). Joseph

Stalin used ruthless measures to win dictatorial power and impose a new order on Russia. Before

Lenin’s death, he did urge the party to choose a successor “more tolerant, more loyal, more

polite, and more considerate to comrades.” (Chapter 15.2 PG 406) At Lenin’s death, Trotsky and

Stalin competed for the leadership position. He launched the Great Purge, a campaign of terror

directed at eliminating all his opponents who threatened his power. (History Exploration)

Trotsky was murdered in Mexico by a Stalin agent. Therefore, Stalin became the sole leader over

Russia. Another political policy Stalin implemented was the use of propaganda. The key

components of Stalin’s propaganda campaign was ‘The Cult of Personality’. Images of Stalin

were everywhere. They were designed to make Stalin look powerful and good to his people. All

achievements and successes were credited to Stalin. By eliminating the older figures, Stalin was

able to brainwash the younger people to be loyal to him. (History Exploration)

The other two dictators were Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler whose ruling

style is right-wing totalitarianism. This style has typically supported and enforced the private

ownership of industrial wealth. Its regimes, particularly the Nazis, have arisen in relatively

advanced societies, relying on the support of traditional economic elites to attain power.

(Grobman)

Mussolini returned home after serving in the Italian army during WWI, looking for a way

to unify the Italian people. In 1918, he began to deliver emotional speeches, calling for a dictator

to head the country. He argued that only a strong leader could unite the people to overcome

Italy’s postwar mass unemployment, chaotic political party conflicts, and strikes by socialists

and communists. In 1919, Mussolini organized his fascist movement in the northern city of
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Milan. He formed squads of street fighters who wore black shirts. His “Blackshirts” beat up

socialists and communists and threw them out of local governments. Mussolini’s fascist

movement quickly gained the support of anti-communist business people, property owners, and

middle-class professionals. In 1921, Mussolini formed the National Fascist Party. They took the

name from the Latin fasces, a bundle of sticks wrapped around an ax - a symbol of authority in

ancient Rome. He wanted to rule Italy. In a speech before thousands of his supporters in October

1922, Mussolini declared, “Either the government will be given to us, or we will seize it by

marching on Rome.” (Constitutional Rights Foundation) He promised to end corruption and also

spoke of reviving Roman greatness, pledging to turn the Mediterranean into “Roman lake” once

again. (Chapter 17.3 PG 455) A few days later, he unleashed his followers on a massive march to

Italy’s capital city. As tens of thousands converged on Rome, government leaders became so

unnerved that they resigned. King Victor Emmanuel had the constitutional duty to appoint a new

prime minister, who would form the next government. With his Blackshirts and other supporters

swarming the streets of Rome, Mussolini demanded that the king appoint him prime minister.

The king gave in, Mussolini became Italy’s youngest prime minister on October 29, 1922 at age

39. By 1925, Mussolini had assumed more power and taken the title II Duce, “The Leader”. He

started to suppress rival parties, muzzle the press, rig elections, and replace elected officials with

Fascist supporters.

Adolf Hitler fought in the Germany army during WWI. He perceived Weimar

government as weak and ineffective. In 1919, he joined a small group of right-wing extremists

and later became the leader of the National Socialist German Workers or Nazi party. He

organized his supporters into fighting squads. In 1923, Hitler made a failed attempt to seize

power in Munich. He was arrested and found guilty of treason. While in prison, Hitler wrote
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Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”). It later become the basic book of Nazi goals and ideology, which

reflected Hitler’s obsessions – extreme nationalism, racism, and antisemitism. He said the

greatest German enemies were the Jews, whom he viewed as a separate race. In his recipe for

revival, he urged Germans everywhere to unite into one great nation. He said German must

expand to gain Lebensraum, or living space, for its people. Slavs and other inferior races must

bow to Aryan needs. To achieve this, Germany needed a strong leader or Fuhrer. Hitler was

determined to become that leader. After Hitler left prison, he found enthusiastic followers among

veterans and lower-middle-class Germans who felt frustrated about their future. As

unemployment rose, Nazi membership grew to almost a million. Hitler promised to end

reparations, create jobs and defy the Versailles treaty by rearming Germany. Fearing the growth

of the communist party, the conservatives supported Hitler as elected chancellor in 1933 through

democratic means. Within a year, Hitler because the master of Germany. He turned Germany

into a totalitarian state. He suspended civil rights, destroyed socialists and communists, and

disbanded other political parties. He purged his own party by executing Nazis he felt disloyal. He

began scheming to unite Germany and Austria. “Today Germany belongs to us,” sang young

Nazis. “Tomorrow the world.” CH17.4 PG461. To achieve his goals, Hitler organized a brutal

system of terror and totalitarian rule, controlling all areas of German life, from government to

religion to education. His secret police, the Gestapo, rooted out opposition.

Next, the dictatorships of Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler shared some general social

characteristics. All three used the government to control the media, applying the twin tools of

censorship and propaganda. They only allow the media to promote their ideas and beliefs. They

used secret police to purge their opponents whom they felt were not loyal to them. The

government organized a system of terror and totalitarian rule, controlling all area of people’s life,
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from government to religion to education. They ensure the young children were thoroughly

indoctrinate with their ideologies (communism, fascist, Nazi). The citizen’s fundamental

freedom of speech, religion, and analytical thinking were denied. Nonetheless, each dictatorship

had their own specific methods for each of these characteristics. In Stalin’s Soviet Union,

Stalinist propaganda revived extreme nationalism. Headlines in the Communist party newspaper,

Pravda, or “Truth”, linked enemies at home to foreign agents seeking to restore power to the

landowners and capitalists. The Soviet Union was the first state to have as an ideological

objective the elimination of religion. The Communist regime confiscated church property,

ridiculed religion, harassed believers, and propagated atheism in the schools. (Revelation) The

communists transformed Russian life by creating a society where a few elite groups emerged as a

new ruling class. They enjoyed benefits denied to most people. Although excluded from party

membership, most people did enjoy benefits such as free education, medical care, day care for

children, inexpensive housing, and public recreation. The communists built schools everywhere.

In addition to learning basic education, students were taught communist values such as atheism,

the glory of collective farming, and love of Stalin. Women won equality under communists.

They gained access to education and a wide range of jobs. However, Stalin controlled the artists

and writers by forcing them to conform to a style called socialist realism. Its goal was to boost

socialism by showing Soviet life in a positive light and to promote hope in the communist future.

(Chapter 15.3 PG 413)

Mussolini’s social characteristics were aimed to increase his popularity. The battle for

births was an attempt to increase the number of Italians from 40 to 60 million by 1950. More

men were meant to be more ruthless, selfless soldiers. Women were pushed out of paying jobs

and called on them to have babies. His effort gave a short-term boost to the birth rate but despite
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propaganda. (Gerald Yeo) Shaping the young was a major Fascist goal. They were taught to

obey strict military discipline. By the 1930s, a generation of young soldiers were ready to back

Mussolini’s drive to expand Italian power. Fascism appealed to many Italians because it

promised a strong, stable government and an end to the political feuding that had paralyzed

democracy.

Hitler’s social characteristics included spreading the message of racism, urging young

Germans to destroy their enemies without mercy. In Hitler’s My New Order, he quoted,

“Extremes must be fought by extremes. Against the infection of Marxism, against the Jewish

pestilence, we must hold aloft a flaming ideal. And if others speak of the World and Humanity,

we must say the Fatherland – and only the Fatherland!” (CH 17.4 PG 462) “Hitler youth”

pledged absolute loyalty to Germany and undertook physical fitness to prepare for war. Nazis

were dismissed from upper-level jobs and turned away from universities. They rewarded women

for having more children. Nazis purged German culture by denouncing modern art, condemning

jazz, burning books of which they disapproved. Hitler despised Christianity as “weak” and

“flabby”. He replaced religion with his racial creed. Nazis controlled churches by combining all

Protestant secs to a single state church. They closed all Catholic schools and muzzled the

Catholic clergy. Hitler set out to drive Jews from Germany. The Nuremberg Laws placed severe

restrictions on Jews, prohibiting them from marrying non-Jews, attending or teaching at German

schools, etc. On November 9 and 10 of 1938, Kristallnacht or the “Night of Broken Glass”, Nazi-

led mobs attacked Jewish communities, smashing windows, looting shops, burning synagogues,

and beating Jews on the streets. Hitler’s campaign against Jews intensified. Tens of thousands of

Jews were sent to concentration camps. Nazis even made evil plans to exterminate all Jews.
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Finally, dictatorships of Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler shared some general economic

characteristics. In all three, their countries experienced severe economic and financial problems

after World War I. Inflation grew and industrial and agricultural workers were on strike, creating

more divisions. One effect of the economic crisis was increased government activities in the

economy. Economic adversity led to political upheavals. People followed the leaders who

promised to provide economic improvements. That’s the reason why the three dictators came to

power during this economic depression. To combat the economic crisis, all three dictators

brought all economic activity under government control. Nevertheless, each dictatorship had

their own ways of carrying out their economies. In the USSR under Stalin, the NEP (New

Economic Plan) was replaced by a system called a Command Economy. The economic focus

was on heavy industry and less on consumer goods. The government of the USSR had abolished

capitalism and owned all the property. Stalin made a significant shift in economic policy when

he launched his First Five-Year Plan. The purpose was to transform Russia from an agricultural

into industrial country. However, the standard of living in Russia remained poor. With rapid

industrialization came an equally rapid collectivization of agriculture, a system in which private

farms were eliminated. Instead, the government owned all the land, while the peasants worked it.

(The West between the Wars, 1919-1939, PG762) Peasants resisted collectivization, and Stalin

imposed a Ruthless Policy by destroying kulaks, or wealthy peasants. The government

confiscated kulaks’ land and sent them to labor camps. Thousands were killed or died from

overwork. (CH 15.2 PG 408)

Unlike socialists, Mussolini preserved capitalism. Under Mussolini’s “corporate state”

representatives of business, labor, government and the Fascist Party controlled industry,

agriculture and trade. Workers were forbidden to strike, and their wages lagged. Fascists found
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allies among business leaders, wealthy landowners, and the lower middle class. For Hitler, his

economic priority was reducing or eliminating unemployment. He launched large pubic works

programs. Tens of thousands of people were put to work building highways and housing or

replanting forests. Hitler preserved capitalism but brought big business and labor under

government control. “Strength Through Joy'' programs offered workers vigorous outdoor

vacations that also made them physically fit for military service. (CH 17.4 PG 461)

Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, and Adolf Hitler all three were major dictators that made

a huge impact in what we know as history today. They all came to power during an economic

depression after WWI. They all created their totalitarian parties and states (Stalin’s Communist

Party, Mussolini’s Fascist Party, and Hitler’s Nazi). Their totalitarian systems had different

goals. Despite the differences between these totalitarian states, they all shared several common

characteristics. USSR, Italy and Germany all tried to control all aspects of people’s life with

manipulation. They used violence to purge their political opponents. Also, all the three countries

were led by a single dictator, who controlled the police, the military, the media, and the

educational systems. Finally, they brainwashed their people and required their obedience to their

ideologies instead of allowing them to have any political, social, and economical freedoms.
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Work Cited

Totalitarianism, http://plaza.ufl.edu/lcurta/totalitarian.html

"Totalitarianism in the Soviet Union, Italy, and Germany." StudyMoose, 26 Jun 2016,
http://studymoose.com/totalitarianism-in-the-soviet-union-italy-and-germany-essay

History Exploration, http://ssthumanities.weebly.com/stalins-political-policy-and-impact.html

Constitutional Rights Foundation, Bill of Rights in Action, Summer 2010 (Volume 25, No.4,
https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-25-4-mussolini-and-the-rise-of-fascism.html

History Exploration, Stalin’s social policy and impact, http://ssthumanities.weebly.com/stalins-

social-policy-and-impact.html

The domestic policies of Mussolini, Gerald Yeo,

https://github.com/yeojz/articles/blob/master/articles/history/20071223-the-domestic-policy-of-
mussolini.md#:~:text=Mussolini's%20social%20policies%20were%20also,birth%20rate%20but
%20despite%20propaganda.

United States Holocaust Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia,

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-propaganda-and-censorship

Revelations from the Russian Archives, Anti-Religious Campaigns,

https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/anti.html

The West between the wars, 1919-1939,

https://www.cisd.org/cms/lib6/TX01917765/Centricity/Domain/595/chap24.pdf