Totalitarian regimes: what they are and main examples

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Totalitarian regimes are governments of character authoritarian, repressor and undemocratic. In totalitarianism, the regime (and the leader) has complete control over the state and individuals.

This type of authoritarian government emerged in Europe in the 20th century. Italian fascism, Soviet Stalinism and German Nazism are the main historical examples of totalitarianism.

Totalitarian regimes can be right-wing or left-wing. Despite having particularities related to the political side in which they position themselves, they have important characteristics in common.

Characteristics of totalitarian regimes:

  • Nationalism
  • Militarism
  • One-partyism (only one political party is allowed, the one in power)
  • Concentration of power in the hands of the leader
  • End of individual rights
  • Violence
  • Advertising
  • Expansionism (increase of territory with the invasion of other countries)

Fascism

Mussolini during the March on Rome.
Mussolini and members of the Fascist Party during the March on Rome, 1922.
  • Leader: Benito Mussolini
  • Location: Italy
  • Period: 1925 - 1943
  • Political spectrum: far right
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Context of rise to power

The Fascist regime was the first totalitarian government to emerge in Europe, in 1925. The context that made possible the rise of totalitarianism was the economic and social crisis that Italy faced after World War I. In addition to the consequences of the war, the country also suffered from the large number of unemployed and hunger.

Popular dissatisfaction made socialist ideas attractive to the lower strata of the population. However, a far-right party emerged and quickly became popular. Supported by the elite and the Catholic Church, who feared the growth of communism, the Fascist Party in 1921.

In 1922, the Fascist Party held the March on Rome, a large demonstration in which the party demanded that the King of Italy surrender the government. Under pressure, King Victor Emmanuel III called Mussolini to compose his government. After winning parliamentary elections in 1925, fascism came to power in Italy with Mussolini as its leader.

Features of the Fascist Government

The fascist regime was totalitarian, that is, it was a dictatorship, in which power was concentrated in the hands of Mussolini, the only leader. The state has become bigger than the citizen, people have lost their individual freedoms, such as freedom of opinion and freedom of expression. Anyone who disagreed with or criticized the regime was violently repressed.

Even before coming to power, the Fascist Party was already seen as violent, as it was associated with militia groups, which attacked journalists and political opponents, in addition to extorting small merchants. After taking over the government, these groups were validated by the regime.

Mussolini undid the Italian parliament, ended the newspapers (except those that supported the regime) and invested in propaganda that placed him as the great leader.

Like other far-right regimes, it supported the traditional values and rescued the figures of ancient Roman emperors. During Mussolini's totalitarian regime, Italy exiled and killed thousands of people.

Involvement in World War II

In 1940, Mussolini led Italy into World War II on the side of Nazi Germany. However, Italian participation in the war was a failure, accumulating defeats in significant battles. Mussolini ended up losing prestige within the country, mainly because the population was subjected to a strong food rationing scheme to maintain supplies for the war.

In 1943, Allied troops invaded Italy, in the region of Sicily. Mussolini lost power and was imprisoned. However, in the same year, he was rescued from prison by the Nazi regime.

The Nazis and allies began to dispute Italian territory, in 1945, in an attempt to escape to Switzerland, Mussolini and his lover were captured and killed by the Italian resistance. Their bodies were exposed in a square in Milan.

With the end of fascism and World War II, Italy signed the peace treaty, ceded its colonies and adopted the republic as a form of government, ceasing to be a monarchy.

Stalinism

Tribute paid to Stalin on his birthday in 1949.
Tribute paid to Stalin on his birthday in 1949.
  • Leader: Joseph Stalin.
  • Location: Soviet Union (now Russia).
  • Period: 1927 - 1953
  • Political spectrum: extreme left.

Context of rise to power

Stalinism is seen as a totalitarian regime of the extreme left. It is named after its leader, Joseph Stalin, who assumed power in the Soviet Union after the death of Vladimir Lenin.

Lenin was one of the leaders of the Russian revolution 1917 and commanded the Bolsheviks. With the revolution, the Russians ceased to be an absolutist monarchy called tsarism.

When the Bolsheviks came to power, Lenin made several changes, such as the withdrawal of Russia from World War I; autonomy was given to territories that are currently countries such as Finland, Poland and Ukraine; nationalizations were carried out and properties of the nobility, bourgeoisie and church were handed over to the peasants.

O Russian Communist Party became the only one allowed and the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) began, or simply Soviet Union. By some measures, Lenin's government was already seen as authoritarian, but not totalitarian. The Soviet Union only comes to be considered totalitarian in Stalin's hands.

Characteristics of Stalinism

Despite having been in power since Lenin's death in 1924, Stalinism officially began in 1927. As a leftist regime, Stalinism establishes rules based on interpretations of socialism.

The lands and factories, which previously belonged to the bourgeoisie, passed into the hands of the state. Workers became civil servants with demanding goals to be achieved. The economic development of the regime depended on the production of workers, who became heavily exploited.

Opponents and critics of the regime were killed or sent to forced labor camps. In these types of concentration camps, prisoners were forced to work to death. Stalinism is considered one of the most lethal and cruel totalitarian regimes, even if historians do not can accurately estimate how many millions of people died directly or indirectly at the hands of the regime.

In contrast to the hunger and poor quality of life of the population, the Soviet Union developed economically during Stalinism. It came to compete with the United States for world leadership, after the victory of the two powers in World War II, in the period known as Cold War.

Highly repressive, the Stalinist regime came to an end only with the death of its leader in 1953 from a heart attack. After Stalin's death, Georgy Malenkov, secretary of the Russian Communist Party, takes over the government. In 1991, the Soviet Union comes to an end.

Nazism

Hitler facing the Nazis in 1939
Hitler in front of other Nazi Party members, 1939.
  • Leader: Adolf Hitler.
  • Location: Germany.
  • Period: 1933 - 1945
  • Political spectrum: far right

Context of rise to power

The Nazi regime began in Germany in 1933. The rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party to power took place against the background of a serious economic crisis.

After World War I, Germany was the big loser and forced to make concessions, such as giving colonies, territory and mineral resources to the victors, in addition to having to pay indemnities. This agreement became known as Treaty of Versailles, signed in 1919. The World War I debt was only paid off in 2010, more than 90 years after the conflict.

With the humiliation of defeat in the war and economic crisis, which worsened after the 1929 crisis, the Germans ended up directing their dissatisfaction towards two "enemies", the Jewish community and the Communists.

Popular dissatisfaction also favored the popularization of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, the Nazi Party. In 1923, Hitler was arrested after an attempted coup d'état. In jail he wrote his book Mein Kampf, in Portuguese: "my fight", in which he blamed the Jews for the problems in the country and placed them as great enemies of Nazi ideology.

The worsening economic crisis in 1929 made the Nazi ideology more appealing to the people. In 1922, the party achieved significant victories in parliamentary elections, and in 1933, Hitler came to power.

Features of Nazism

The Nazi regime had a particularity that sets it apart from other totalitarian regimes. Being a far-right government, also trapped by traditional and conservative values, however, Hitler went further and proposed that the Germans belonged to a superior human category, the Aryan race.

From this idea, Hitler proceeded to eliminate other human beings, which he said were inferior. More than 6 million people were murdered by the Nazi regime, mostly Jews, sent to concentration camps in Germany and other European countries, such as Poland. it was the call holocaust.

In addition to the Jewish community, black people, gypsies, homosexuals and communists were also considered inferior and dead. Nazi Germany was also responsible for a series of scientific experiments in which human beings were taken as guinea pigs and tortured.

THE eugenics it was a Nazi practice. The Nazi state created artificial methods to select and control human reproduction in an attempt to improve the Aryan race.

Nazi Germany also used the concept of German superiority to invade and dominate other peoples and territories, in the quest to create what would be the great German empire.

World War II and the End of Nazism

To create the empire, Hitler invaded neighboring European countries such as Poland, Austria, the Netherlands and later France. He was the main cause for World War II, in which he was supported by the fascist regime of Mussolini (Italy) and by Japan.

The Nazi regime came to an end with the surrender of Germany near the end of World War II in 1945. The winners were the Allies, made up of the United States, France, England and the Soviet Union. Hitler committed suicide months earlier, in April 1945, in the underground bunker where he was staying in Berlin.

Is North Korea a totalitarian regime?

While not a consensus, some researchers consider North Korea a far-left totalitarian regime.

Even being an extremely closed state, in which little information about the regime can be confirmed, some totalitarian characteristics are noticed in the country. Nationalism, militarization, one-partyism, the concentration of power in the hands of a single leader, the lack of individual freedoms and propaganda are some of the examples.

Despite not having expansionist objectives, one of the main characteristics of the totalitarian regimes, North Korea was at war with South Korea for domination of the Korean peninsula between 1950 and 1953. Although the war ended in 1953, an official peace agreement was never signed.

Learn more about North Korea history.

Bibliographical sources:

ALMEIDA, A. The Weimar Republic and the Rise of Nazism. Sao Paulo, Braziliense, 1999.

ARENDT, H. Origins of totalitarianism: anti-Semitism, imperialism, totalitarianism. São Paulo: Pocket Company, 2013.

BARROS, A. Una gionarta particolare: a reflection on the public and private sphere in totalitarian regimes. Philosophical Studies, São João del Rei, n17, 101-112, 2016.

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