What were the main ideas behind Hitler's political philosophy? Jews were all of the problems of Germany; that the master race would be people with blue eyes and blonde hair How were military actions in Japan and Spain similar to those of Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler? Everything except on race Hitler and Mussolini both considered that their respective country had been humiliated in the aftermath of World War I though they had been on opposite sides. Germany underwent hyperinflation due to the massive debt that had to be paid back and Italy was belittled geopolitically speaking. Hitler and Mussolini both believed in the strength of their nations, they People were often awed by their direct and riveting stare—Hitler’s eyes a clear and azure blue, Stalin’s a demonic yellow. Naturally there were differences. Stalin was better traveled, having toiled as a revolutionary in Krakow, St. Petersburg, Berlin, London, Stockholm, at home in the sunny Caucasus, and in exile within the Arctic Circle
Comparison of Nazism and Stalinism - Wikipedia
A number of authors have carried out comparisons of Nazism and Stalinism in which they have considered the similarities and differences of the two ideologies and political systemswhat relationship existed between the two regimes, and why both of them came to prominence at the same time. During the 20th century, the comparison of Nazism and Stalinism was made on the topics of totalitarianismideologyand personality cult.
Both regimes were seen in contrast to the liberal West, with an emphasis on the similarities between the two. The political scientists Hannah ArendtZbigniew Brzezinski and Carl Joachim Friedrich as well as historian Robert Conquest were prominent advocates of applying the totalitarian concept to compare Nazism and Stalinism. while noting the concept is both useful and descriptive rather than analytical, with the conclusion the regimes described as totalitarian do not have a common origin and did not arise in similar ways.
Other historians and political scientists have also made comparisons between Nazism and Stalinism as part of their work. The comparison of Nazism and Stalinism has long provoked political controversy [7] [8] and it led to the historians' dispute called Historikerstreit within Germany in the s.
One of the first scholars to publish a comparative study of Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union was Hannah Arendt. In her work The Origins of TotalitarianismArendt puts forward the idea of totalitarianism as a distinct type of political movement and form of government, which "differs essentially from other forms of political oppression known to us such as despotism, tyranny and dictatorship. Not all totalitarian movements succeed in creating totalitarian governments once they gain power.
In Arendt's view, although many totalitarian movements existed in Europe in the s and s, only the governments of Stalin and Hitler succeeded in fully implementing their totalitarian aims.
Arendt traced the origin of totalitarian movements to the 19th century, how were hitlers stalins laws goals & philosophies similar, focusing especially on antisemitism and imperialism. She emphasized the connection between the rise of European nation-states and the growth of antisemitism, which was due to the fact that the Jews represented an "inter-European, non-national element in a world of growing or existing nations.
European imperialism of the 19th century, better known as New Imperialismalso paved the way for totalitarianism by legitimizing the concept of endless expansion.
Arendt refers specifically to the " pan-movements " of pan-Germanism and pan-Slavism which promised continental empires to nations that had little hope of overseas expansion. Arendt argues that both the Nazi and Bolshevik movements "recruited their members from [a] mass of apparently indifferent people whom all other parties had given up," [20] and who "had reason to be equally hostile to all parties.
Their target audience did not have to be persuaded to despise the other parties or the democratic system, because it consisted of people who already despised mainstream politics. As a result, totalitarian movements were free to use violence and terror against their opponents without fear that this might alienate their own supporters. Totalitarian governments make extensive use of propaganda, and are often characterized by having a strong distinction between what they tell their own supporters and the propaganda they produce for others.
Indoctrination consists of the message that a totalitarian government promotes internally, to the members of the ruling party and that segment of the population which supports the government.
Propaganda consists of the message that a totalitarian government seeks to promote in the outside world, and also among those parts of its own society which may not support the government. The type of indoctrination used by the Soviets and the Nazis was characterized by claims of "scientific" truth, and appeals to "objective laws of nature.
Arendt identifies this as being in certain ways similar to modern advertisingin which companies claim that scientific research shows their products to be superior, but more generally she argues that it is an extreme version of "that obsession with science which has characterized the Western world since the rise of mathematics and physics in the sixteenth century. According to Arendt, totalitarian governments did not merely use these appeals to supposed scientific laws as propaganda to manipulate others.
Rather, totalitarian leaders like Hitler and Stalin genuinely believed that they were acting in accordance with immutable natural laws, to such an extent that they were willing to sacrifice the self-interest of their regimes for the sake of enacting those supposed laws. Arendt also identifies the central importance of an all-powerful leader in totalitarian movements.
The totalitarian leader does not rise to power by personally using violence or through any special organizational skills, but rather by controlling appointments of personnel within the party, so that all other prominent party members owe their positions to him. Even when the leader is not particularly competent and the members of his inner circle are aware of his deficiencies, they remain committed to him out of fear that without him the entire power structure would collapse.
Once in power, according to Arendt, totalitarian movements face a major dilemma: they built their support on the basis of anger against the status quo and on impossible or dishonest promises, but now they have become the how were hitlers stalins laws goals & philosophies similar status quo and are expected to carry out their promises. According to Arendt, totalitarian governments must be constantly fighting enemies in order to survive.
This explains their apparently irrational behavior, such as when Hitler continued to make territorial demands even after he was offered everything he asked for in the Munich Agreementor when Stalin unleashed the Great Terror despite the fact that he faced no significant internal opposition.
Arendt points out the widespread use of concentration camps by totalitarian governments, arguing that they are the most important manifestation of the need to find enemies to fight against, and are therefore "more essential to the preservation of the regime's power than any of its other institutions.
Slaves were abused and killed for the sake of profit; concentration camp inmates were abused and killed because a totalitarian government needed to justify its existence. Throughout her analysis, Arendt emphasized the modernity and novelty of the governmental structures set up by Stalin and Hitler, arguing that they represented "an entirely new form of government" which is likely to manifest itself again in various other forms in the future.
The totalitarian paradigm in the comparative study of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union was further developed by Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinskiwho wrote extensively on this topic both individually and in collaboration. Similar to Hannah Arendt, they state that "totalitarian dictatorship is a new phenomenon; there has never been anything quite like it before. In particular, it is distinguished by a reliance on modern technology and mass legitimation.
Unlike Arendt, Friedrich and Brzezinski apply the notion of totalitarian dictatorship not only to the regimes of Hitler and Stalin, but also to the USSR throughout its entire existence, as well as the regime of Benito Mussolini in Italy and the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong.
Friedrich noted that the "possibility of equating the dictatorship of Stalin in the Soviet Union and that of Hitler in Germany" has been a deeply controversial topic and a subject of debate almost from the beginning of those dictatorships.
Friedrich and Brzezinski argue that Nazism and Stalinism are not only similar to each other, but also represent a continuation or a return to the tradition of European absolute monarchy on certain levels.
In Stalinism and Nazism, the leader likewise held all real power, and was considered accountable only to various intangible entities such as "the people", "the masses" or "the Volk, how were hitlers stalins laws goals & philosophies similar.
This depends in part on the personal character of different leaders, but Friedrich and Brzezinski believe that there is also an underlying political cycle, in which rising discontent leads to increased repression up to the point at which the opposition is eliminated, then controls are relaxed until the next how were hitlers stalins laws goals & philosophies similar that popular dissatisfaction begins to grow.
Thus, placing Stalinism and Nazism within the broader historical tradition of autocratic government, how were hitlers stalins laws goals & philosophies similar, Friedrich and Brzezinski hold that "totalitarian dictatorship, in a sense, is the adaptation of autocracy to twentieth-century industrial society.
Totalitarianism can only exist after the creation of modern technology, because such technology is essential for propagandafor surveillance of the population, and for the operation of a secret police. In terms of the similarities between Nazism and Stalinism, Friedrich lists five main aspects that they hold in common: First, an official ideology that is supposed to be followed by all members of society, at least passively, and which promises to serve as a perfect guide towards some ultimate goal.
Second, a single political partycomposed of the most enthusiastic supporters of the official ideology, representing an elite group within society no more than 10 percent of the populationand organized along strictly regimented lines. Third, "a technologically conditioned near-complete monopoly of control of all means of effective armed combat" in the hands of the party or its representatives.
Fourth, a similar monopoly held by the party over the mass media and all technological forms of communication. Fifth, "a system of terroristic police control" that is not only used to defend the regime against real enemies, but also to persecute various groups of people who are only suspected of being enemies or who may potentially become enemies in the future.
Two first pillars of any totalitarian government, according to Friedrich and Brzezinski, are the dictator and the Party. The dictator, whether Stalin, Hitler or Mussolini, holds supreme power.
Friedrich and Brzezinski explicitly reject the claim that the Party, or any other institution, could provide a significant counterweight to the power of the dictator in Nazism or Stalinism.
Like Arendt, Friedrich and Brzezinski also identify the cult of personality how were hitlers stalins laws goals & philosophies similar the leader as an essential element of a totalitarian dictatorship, and reference Stalin's how were hitlers stalins laws goals & philosophies similar cult in particular.
Friedrich and Brzezinski write that "unlike military dictators in the past, but like certain types of primitive chieftains, the totalitarian dictator is both ruler and high priest. This is partly due to the way that totalitarian governments arise. They come about when a militant ideological movement seizes power, so the first leader of a totalitarian government is usually the ideologue who built the movement that seized power, and subsequent leaders try to emulate him.
The totalitarian dictator needs loyal lieutenants to carry out his orders faithfully and with a reasonable degree of efficiency. Friedrich and Brzezinski identify parallels between the men in Hitler and Stalin's entourage, arguing that both dictators used similar people to perform similar tasks.
Thus, Martin Bormann and Georgy Malenkov were both capable administrators and bureaucrats, while Heinrich Himmler and Lavrentiy Beria were ruthless secret police chiefs responsible for suppressing any potential challenge to the dictator's power. Friedrich points out that neither the Nazi nor the Stalinist government ever established any official line of succession or any mechanism to decide who would replace the dictator after his death.
The dictator, being the venerated "father of the people", was regarded as irreplaceable. There could never be any heir apparent because such an how were hitlers stalins laws goals & philosophies similar would have been a threat to the power of the dictator while he was alive; thus, the dictator's inevitable death would always leave behind a major power vacuum and cause a political crisis, how were hitlers stalins laws goals & philosophies similar.
In the case of the Nazi regime, since Hitler died mere days before the final defeat of Germany in the war, this never became a major issue; in the case of the USSR, however, Stalin's death led to a prolonged power struggle. Friedrich and Brzezinski also identify key similarities between the Nazi and Stalinist political parties, which set them apart from other types of political parties. Both the Nazi Party and the CPSU under Stalin had very strict membership requirements and did not accept members on the basis of mere agreement with the Party's ideology and goals.
Rather, they strictly tested potential members, how were hitlers stalins laws goals & philosophies similar, in a manner similar to exclusive clubs, and often engaged in political purges of the membership, expelling large numbers of people from their ranks and sometimes arresting and executing those expelled, such as in the Great Purge or the Night of the Long Knives.
While both Nazism and Stalinism required party members to display such total loyalty in practice, they differed in the way they dealt with it in theory. Nazism openly proclaimed the hierarchical ideal of absolute obedience to the Führer as one of its key ideological principles the Führerprinzip. Stalinism, meanwhile, denied that it did anything similar, and claimed instead to uphold democratic principles, with the Party Congress made up of elected delegates supposedly being the highest authority.
Thus, regardless of the differences in their underlying ideological claims, the Nazi and Stalinist parties were organized in practice along similar lines, with a rigid hierarchy and centralized leadership. Each totalitarian party and dictator is supported by a specific totalitarian ideology. Friedrich and Brzezinski argue, in agreement with Arendt, that Nazi and Stalinist leaders really believed in their respective ideologies and did not merely use them as tools to gain power.
Several major policies, such as the Stalinist collectivization of agriculture or the Nazi Final Solutioncannot be explained by anything other than a genuine commitment to achieve ideological goals, even how were hitlers stalins laws goals & philosophies similar great cost. This stereotyped enemy could be described as "the fat rich Jew or the Jewish Bolshevik" for the Nazis, or "the war-mongering, atom-bomb-wielding American Wallstreeter" for the Soviets.
According to Friedrich and Brzezinski, the most important difference between Nazi and Stalinist ideology lies in the degree of universality involved. Stalinism, and communist ideology in general, is universal in its appeal and addresses itself to all the " workers of the world, how were hitlers stalins laws goals & philosophies similar.
the " master race " that is destined to dominate all others. Therefore, "in communism social justice appears to be the ultimate value, unless it be the classless society that is its essential condition; in fascism, the highest value is dominion, eventually world dominion, and the strong and pure nation-race is its essential condition, as seen by its ideology.
Friedrich and Brzezinski also draw attention to the symbols used by Nazis and Stalinists to represent themselves. The Soviet Union adopted the hammer and sicklea newly-created symbol, "invented by the leaders of the movement and pointing to the future. Totalitarian dictatorships maintain themselves in power through the use of propaganda and terror, which Friedrich and Brzezinski believe to be closely connected.
Terror may be enforced with arrests and executions of dissenters, but it can also take more subtle forms, such as the threat of losing one's job, how were hitlers stalins laws goals & philosophies similar, social stigma and defamation. According to Friedrich and Brzezinski, the most effective terror is invisible to the people it affects. They simply develop a habit of acting in a conformist manner and not questioning authority, without necessarily being aware that this is what they are doing.
Propaganda is then used to maintain this appearance of popular consent. Totalitarian propaganda is one of the features that distinguishes totalitarian regimes as modern forms of government and separates them from older autocracies, since a totalitarian government holds complete control over all means of communication not only public communication such as the mass media, but also private communication such as letters and telephone calls, which are strictly monitored.
Both Joseph Goebbels and Soviet propagandists sought to demonize their enemies and present a picture of a united people standing behind its leader to confront foreign threats. In both cases there was no attempt to convey complex ideological nuances to the masses, with the message being instead about a simplistic struggle between good and evil. Both Nazi and Stalinist regimes produced two very different sets of propaganda — one for internal consumption and one for potential sympathizers in other countries.
And both regimes would sometimes radically change their propaganda line as they made peace with a former enemy how were hitlers stalins laws goals & philosophies similar got into a war with a former ally.
Paradoxically, a totalitarian government's complete control over communications renders that government highly misinformed. With no way for anyone to express criticism, the dictator has no way of knowing how much support he actually has how were hitlers stalins laws goals & philosophies similar the general populace.
With all government policies always declared successful in propaganda, officials are unable to determine what actually worked and what did not. As the war turned against Germany, there was growing opposition to Hitler's rule, including within the ranks of the military, but Hitler was never aware of this until it was too late such as with the 20 July plot. Induring the early days of the Berlin Blockadethe Soviet leadership apparently believed that the how were hitlers stalins laws goals & philosophies similar of West Berlin was sympathetic to Soviet Communism and that they would request to join the Soviet zone.
Friedrich and Brzezinski refer to this as the "ritualization of propaganda": the totalitarian regime continues to produce propaganda as a political ritual, with little real impact on public opinion. The totalitarian use of mass arrests, executions and concentration camps — also noted by Arendt — was analyzed at length by Friedrich and Brzezinski.
They hold that "totalitarian terror maintains, in institutionalized form, the civil war that originally produced the totalitarian movement and by means of which the regime is able to proceed with its program, first of social disintegration and then of social reconstruction. But to declare that the struggle had been won would have meant to declare that most of the totalitarian features of the government were no longer needed.
Operation Barbarossa: Hitler's failed invasion of Russia
, time: 10:05Comparing Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia - Words | Help Me
The function of the "Hitler myth" was to legitimize Nazi rule, while the function of the "Stalin myth" was to legitimize not Soviet rule itself but Stalin's leadership within the Communist Party. Stalin's personality cult existed precisely because Stalin knew that he was replaceable, and feared that he might be replaced, and so needed to bolster his authority as much as blogger.comted Reading Time: 14 mins Both Hitler and Stalin make use out of different ways of propagandas. Though use of propaganda by Nazis were much exaggerated but Bolsheviks almost used it in same way. Hitler and Stalin started a whole new era of aggressive use of propaganda. This was very helpful with both dictatorships The regimes established under Hitler and. Stalin were incredibly similar with respect to the rise and control of the. state. Both systems were based on entirely different ideology and goals. Hitler's Mein Kampf established the superiority of the German race and the. need to expand as wanted by God
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