1. Totalitarianism is a form of authoritarian government where a determined minority imposes its will on the total life of a society by force. In the twentieth century two ideologies manufactured totalitarian regimes in various nations—communism and fascism. The two systems of thought are usually considered to be on opposite ends of the political spectrum with communism on the far left and fascism on the far right. The leaders who espoused these ideas did see themselves as enemies, but both sides had striking similarities. Both achieved absolute control over all aspects of their societies.
Both attained and held power through propaganda and terror. Both committed great atrocities in enslaving their own people and in persecuting opponents. Both were at times territorially aggressive as they sought through force to conquer or to control neighboring nations. Nationalism was not supposed to be a Marxist ideal, but communists wound up using it to unite their people just as the ultra-nationalistic fascists did. Communist leaders employed socialist economic theories, but so did fascists. Communist propaganda couched the takeover of the means of production in terms of a revolutionary step taken by the lowest classes. Fascists openly advocated a top-down takeover. During the time between the world wars, totalitarian nations arose using these tactics and together plunged the world into the worst war it has yet seen.
2. The only communist totalitarian state was established in Russia in the wake of
Lenin’s death. Through skillfully sinister maneuvering, Joseph Stalin eliminated all rivals and achieved dictatorial control of the Soviet Union by 1929. Stalin attained power by taking control of the Communist Party and declaring it the only source of truth about the interests of the working people the Soviet Union was established to “free.” He used initiatives called “Five-Year Plans” to forcibly industrialize the USSR and to establish collective farms with the intention of bolstering Soviet economic strength. Stalin masked waste and inefficiency by declaring tens of thousands of Russians in the government and in the Red Army “enemies of the people.” In treason trials on trumped up charges several leaders, like Leon Trotsky, were “purged.” Trotsky was exiled then hunted down and assassinated in Mexico in 1940. If defendants wouldn’t confess to these charges, they were tortured. This Soviet Reign of Terror eliminated the possibility of a conspiracy against the Communist regime for decades, and the economy’s industrial capacity increased sevenfold. Because of Stalin’s ruthless efforts, the USSR was the only major power not affected by the Great Depression. Economic ties to the vast Soviet market found Stalin’s government recognized by the USA by 1933, in the League of Nations by
1934, and allied with France and Czechoslovakia against Germany by 1935. The Great
Purge had worried Western powers sufficiently, however, to create deep distrust.
3. As dictators and would-be dictators eyed these events, fascism developed in
Europe with echoes in Japan. Germany, Italy, and Spain were the most noted purveyors of this ideology in which the individual is totally subsumed by the all-encompassing
State. The name comes from the old Roman symbols of authority called fasces in which an axe head protrudes from a bundle of sticks that implied strength in numbers. The rise of fascism fed on the disappointments of nations defeated in World War I as well as those of nations on the winning side which failed to acquire territory they had entered the war to secure. Fascism was also a movement in reaction to the real or imagined threat of communism as the socialist vote grew. When democratic governments failed to find

solutions to these problems, the situation in several nations was ripe for talented demagogues to rise.
4. The first successful fascist leader was Benito Mussolini, otherwise known as Il
Duce (the Leader). He and his Black Shirts organization took power in Italy by 1922 as defenders of law, order, and property in an ultra-nationalist party made up primarily of discontent war veterans. Mussolini said to forget Marx (he was the son of a socialist blacksmith and a socialist in his youth). With a dictator, all classes work together for national greatness. The Black Shirts used violence to terrorize or silence opponents and famously “marched” on Rome. The ineffectual King Victor Emmanuel avoided further bloodshed by inviting Mussolini to form a new government. Stubborn opponents to
Italian fascism were purged. Mussolini’s favorite method was to force a person to drink castor oil until they died, but many other detractors were simply, “taken for a ride.” The
Italian fascists won loyalty by promising greatness for Rome again and by providing grandeur through public marches, parades, and a propaganda campaign that foreshadowed a military one. Slogans included, “Believe!” “Obey!” “Fight!” “War
Cleanses!” “Men make war! Women make babies!” The Roman Catholic Church cooperated with Mussolini when he offered hope for Italy’s recovery, but the Church should have been suspicious when Mussolini created his own Ten Commandments. They are such a revealing piece of fascist propaganda that I include them in their entirety as a model others followed:
1. Remember that those who fell for the revolution and for the empire march at
the head of your columns.
2. Your comrade is your brother. He lives with you, thinks with you, and is at
your side in the battle.
3. Service to Italy can be rendered at all times, in all places, and by every means.
It can be paid with toil and also with blood.
4. The enemy of Fascism is your enemy. Give him no quarter.
5. Discipline is the sunshine of armies. It prepares and illuminates the victory.
6. He who advances to the attack with decision has victory already in his grasp.
7. Conscious and complete obedience is the virtue of the Legionary.
8. There do not exist things important and things unimportant. There is only
duty.
9. The Fascist revolution has depended in the past and still depends on the
Bayonets of its Legionaries.
10. Mussolini is always right.
5. Remember, Italy had been a part of the Allied Powers in The Great War, and its situation was so dire in the Great Depression that it fell prey to the rhetoric of a thuggish blowhard. Germany was in even more desperate straits with the demand for reparations on top of the devastation caused to her economy by the war. One man said the he alone would “break the chains of Versailles.” He was a failed Austrian artist who had adopted Germany as his home and fought for her in World War I, rising to the rank of lance corporal. By 1933 he used the outrage over the treaty to make himself dictator.
The rise of Nazi Germany is necessarily also the story of the rise of the despotic Adolph
Hitler.

6. After the Kaiser was deposed, the Weimar Republic had been established as an attempt at democracy in Germany, but behind the scenes groups jockeyed for control.
Hitler was thirty years old at the end of World War I in which he was wounded twice and decorated with the Iron Cross. His father had beaten him mercilessly as a child, and he had grown up in poverty in Vienna where he said he had become a “hater of Jews, an enemy of Marxism, and a German Nationalist.” His organizational skills were instrumental in founding the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NAZI).
Passionate oratory, always a key talent of a demagogue, won him rising rank. His rhetoric instigated street wars between his Brown Shirts and German communists. Hitler then used three tools to take control of Germany—promises of an economic turnaround, hatred of the Treaty of Versailles, and anti-Semitism. He was elected German Chancellor by 1933 which was the key post in the Weimar Republic, but after a fire in the capitol building, the Reichstag, Nazis engineered a takeover of the government. The arson was blamed on communists, and Hitler seized emergency powers. As his power grew, he called the democracy of the Weimar Republic “a system of crazy brains.”
7. By the time Hitler convinced everyone to call him the Fuehrer, or Leader, he was a fascist dictator of what he called the Third Reich, or empire (a reference to the 1 st
Reich under Otto I in 962 and the 2 nd
Reich under Bismarck in 1871). Among his first acts was the persecution of Jews. He also said Christianity was nonsense and privately practiced astrology with roots in the pagan religions of the ancient German tribes. The
Nazis took over schools to win over the German youth. “Follow!” “Work!” “Have babies!” “Train for war!” “Hate!” Such slogans touted the supposed superiority of the
“Aryan” race which Hitler announced was destined to rule the world. Like in Italy and in the USSR, the ruling party did not have to be a majority. The Nazis considered themselves elite and actually limited membership. Again, as with the Italians and with the Soviets, if any of the elite threatened or challenged the absolute control of Hitler, he had them purged. On June 30, 1934, he had several hundred possible opponents in
Germany executed. Hitler pulled Germany out of the League of Nations, a diplomatic body that, while it solved some minor problems between small nations, proved powerless to stop the return of nationalism, militarism, and imperialism bolstered by renewed aggressive alliances. By 1935, Hitler had re-armed Germany in violation of the Treaty of
Versailles. Back in 1923, he had written all of this down beforehand in a book while in prison for agitation. His book became the Nazi bestseller, Mein Kampf , translated My
Battle or My Struggle . This book was the Nazi bible, and it certainly did not preach that the meek shall inherit the earth.
8. By now it was apparent that fascism was infectious among nations weakened by economic crisis and political instability. “Strong Man” Regimes arose in Spain,
Portugal, Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Poland, Austria, and Hungary. Even an
Asian power, Japan, was led down the path to fascism by its young military officers.
They envisioned the replacing of Western imperialism with their own. When assassinations of moderate political leaders began, the Japanese government executed a few ring leaders but also made concessions that solidified control of the country in the hands of the army. The Japanese were also enemies of the communist Soviet Union and allied with Germany and Italy in a pact against this other extreme ideology. This agreement foreshadowed the Rome/Berlin/Tokyo Axis that would set the world on fire beginning with Japan’s takeover of Manchuria in China by 1932. Again the League of

Nations did nothing. Japanese fascism differed from that of her allies slightly, however, in that no one Leader emerged. Instead, a clique of high-ranking army officers exerted such pressure on the government that Japan was propelled headlong into war with all her neighbors. The Emperor of Japan, like the King of Italy, was merely retained as a useful symbolic figurehead pinned on the front of the ship of state.
9. The significance of the growing Axis alliance became evident in connection with the Spanish Civil War. Spain had become a republic in 1931, but the traditionally pro-monarchist forces—clergy, army, and aristocracy—still wielded considerable power.
The republican regime had been unable to cope with the economic consequences of the
Great Depression. In 1936, a “Popular Front” of opposition republicans, socialists, and communists had won a major election victory. This successful coalition, however, merely hastened the inevitable clash between this divided collection of ideas with the more assertive fascist Nationalist Party. In July of 1936 General Francisco Franco, with army units stationed in Spanish Morocco, rebelled against the Republic of Spain and launched what is known as the Spanish Civil War.
10. Had the Spanish been left alone, the war would hardly have become the major tragedy it turned out to be, but Hitler and Mussolini favored Franco and sent men and supplies to his aid. The Soviets backed the Republic in what therefore became the first of several “proxy” wars we will study. A proxy war is one in which large, powerful countries avoid direct conflict with each other yet back combatants in a smaller clash between similar ideologies. Due to geography and other circumstances the USSR could not provide adequate support for the government of Spain to fend off Franco’s armies alone. Again, the League of Nations, and England and France in particular, were no more willing to risk a general war over Spain than they had been over the aggression of
Japan in Manchuria or that of Mussolini who had ordered Italy to invade Ethiopia in East
Africa. Some romantic foreign individuals like Ernest Hemingway served as volunteers in the Spanish Civil War long enough to have their romanticism shattered as was that of this important American writer’s. Italians and Germans volunteered in Franco’s armies.
President Roosevelt of the US determined to quarantine aggressor nations, and the US
Congress passed Neutrality Acts to disallow trade with either side of the war in Spain in an attempt to stay out of another European conflict. This move merely hurt the forces loyal to the Republic of Spain, however, because Franco could readily be supplied by his fascist friends.
11. The Spanish Civil War lasted three years and caused 200,000 deaths, many due to the first extensive use of German aircraft for the bombing of cities. By the time the last of the
Republic’s armies surrendered in March of 1939, events in Spain had been eclipsed by the stunning expansion of Hitler, a topic for another discussion. Suffice it to say that by September of 1939, World War II is said to have begun officially with the response of Britain and France to
Germany’s invasion of Poland. The reluctant winners of World War I were finally awakened out of their stupor. For a time the fascist totalitarians were able to make peace with their communist counterparts as long as there was plenty of territory for all land-hungry empires to acquire some.
Then when latent animosity and territorial competition grew too severe, the USA and our allies wound up in an uncomfortable alliance with the USSR against the Rome/Berlin/Tokyo Axis and their allies. Stay tuned for a more thorough analysis of the origins of World War II and for the horrible consequences of totalitarian power in the hands of industrialized nations that were subservient to some of the most unfortunately successful opportunists in world history.