Compare And Contrast Mussolini And Stalin

During the 1930’s and 40’s, three rulers who used Totalitarian means to control their nation dominated Europe. Totalitarianism is when the government attempted to take complete control over the peoples public and private behavior. With this government people must sensor how they think, speak, ad behave which took away basic rights and liberties. Bento Mussolini, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler were able to easily take control and had such a large influence on their countries (and surrounding countries) because of the venerability that their countries felt post-World War I. Excluding the problem of mass destruction of the land used as battlefields, most of the world fell victim to the Great Depression; which only favored the United Sates. Bento

Stalin was originally from Georgia, was very nationalistic towards Russia. Stalin was head of the communist party and the Soviet government for twenty-nine years. Although he did not truly believe in their ideology and took part of it only for the power he was given. In 1923, he named himself the dictator of the Soviet Union. Stalin used propaganda to convince the people that he was the “Father of Germany”; one of his most famous images was of him and a little girl hugging and smiling. To make himself seem more important Stalin even photoshoped himself into old pictures from the Communist Revolution with Lenin. Although Stalin had much power over Russia he was a very paranoid man, which led him to make harsh and violent decisions. One of his extreme ideas was the KGB, the secret police, which would make the people self-censor themselves. The constant threat of being over heard by the wrong people made the citizens afraid to rebel and also helped suppress all the other political parties, which were illegal. People would tell on their friends and family member’s in fear of they themselves being accused as well. Stalin even killed his best friend Kirov. To raise the Russian economy Stalin created a five-year plan, to ‘catch up’ to the West. Stalin used a “command economy,” which is when the government controls the price of all the products and to whom they are sold to. Peasants were forced to work

With Germany facing the worst of the Depression because of reparations, hyperinflation and most German soldiers loosing their jobs because of the limitation made on the size of their military. Adolf Hitler used this hatred and anger that the Germans held and redirected their anger towards the Jews. Hitler was an Austrian born, who served in the German army during World War I; he won several medals for his service. In 1919, Hitler joined the Workers Party, which was later renamed to the Nazi Party. Within two years the group grew from about forty men to more then three thousand. The goals of this party were o create a bigger and better Germany. They wanted to unite Germany once more, end the Treaty of Versailles, and expel all undesirables so the Germans can have their jobs. To unite Germany Hitler decides to start a revolution on October 30th, 1923, and take over the Bavarian government, leading two thousand men. This included two groups formed the ‘Brown shirts’ (S.A.), which were Hitler’s army and the S.S. who served as Hitler’s personal bodyguards. The Coup D’état failed and Hitler was imprisoned for treason. After being pardoned more then four years early, Hitler released his book Mein Kampf, which shred his beliefs on anti-Semitism and superiority of the Arian race. To help increase the number of supporters, Hitler had Dr. Josef Goebbels run his propaganda campaign. The propaganda mostly