The dictator’s loyalty, individualism, liberty and equality in WWII

The Dictators of WWII, Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin had contrasting ideologies which resulted in two similar regimes. This is a paradox that is addressed in Richard Overy’s book “The Dictators”. This book gives the first full comparative history of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. The differences of the two ideologies developed into a later synthesis of Totalitarianism. I find that my students are fascinated with studing these villians from World History so I thought I would give you my opinion with Richard Ovary’s help here.

Hitler & Germanys differences from Stalin’s Russia

• Government type Nazi,


• Rehearse his speeches for hours to maximally the impact on his audience,


• Secret Police, the SS who were only 20,000 strong but ultimately responsible for the extermination of 6 million Jewish people.


• Germany was viewed as a predator, because Germany believed that they were fighting for the survival of their race which knew no boundaries.


• Hitler saw the economy as a defense based economy.


• In Germany Jazz was defined as a form of cultural sabotage.


• The Nazi penal system was about extermination and work concentration camps.


• “Punishments were experiments in carefully calibrated sadism that permeated every aspect of life.”

Stalin’s Russia differences from Hitler’s Germany

• Government type Socialist,


• Was more quiet and literary. In his book “Short Course” Stalin attempts to re-write history in line with his personal definition of Socialism,


• Secret Police, Soviet NKVD set up the Gulag penal system. This system of 366,000 employees was responsible for 176,000 deaths in labor camps. ·


• Russia was seen as a defender of the motherland.


• Stalin’s decision to get his soldiers into the planning cycle can be contrasted with Hitler who delegated less as the war went on.


• Stalin said that nations are constructed historically instead of biologically “A common culture and mentality”.


• The Soviet Gulag system was about punishment and work.

Totalitarian Similarities,

• Their dictators possessed remorseless will;


• An obsession for the tactical details of political struggle,


• Unnatural resentment toward anyone who compromised or obstructed their political ambition,


• An unprincipled pursuit of public esteem


• Both men were surrounded by myths of infallibility.


• The political parties that they represented bound the population to the dictatorship.


• Both dictators’ defined minor offences differently by their interpretation of sabotage


• They exploited high unemployment to break down residual solidarity and worker identity.


• The security apparatus in both dictatorships stood above the army and the soldiers feared it.


• Governments were similar in the way they regulated art and literature. Censorship; self imposed artistic silence, and book burnings.


• Each dictatorship constructed a moral universe in order to justify and explain what appeared otherwise to be the most sordid and arbitrary of acts.


• They viewed themselves as the moral instruments of an irrepressible redemptive historical movement.


• Poor planning and economic systems led to black markets being developed without which the country would be economically crippled.


• State planners in both regimes were able to experiment with novel forms of state economic intervention, Under pressure from their political masters.


• Both regimes felt as though they were on the defense


• Wide spread militarization of political life. Distinctions between the military and civilian became blurred.


• Vigilance and permanent alert became the virtues of the day which brought about a permanent state of civil war between friend and foe.


• Both regimes treated the war as an expression of fear and a fight for survival.

The dictators, Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and the countries that they represented were ideologically different, but they expressed themselves very similarly in the totalitarian regime that was synthesized in their struggle for utopia. The two dictatorships created metaphors of permanent conflict as a means to legitimize the regime. Their interpretation of science gave the dictators a rational legitimacy and their anti-individual campaigns endorsed by the hatred of the west gave them a blank check on abusing morals. When I compare left and right politics I find it helpful to look at the extreme ends of the political spectrum as a curve that comes back toward itself. I hope that the diagram above will help. It is by no means perfect but it may help you understand how two dictators who are so ideologically different can have similar expressions of their governments. The outworkings of extreme facism and socialism & communism can become a synthesis of a new kind of government that is called Totalitarianism. The most important virue of this government is loyalty. So when extreme anarchist are able to institutionalize their power as the Jacobins did in the French Revolution the loyalty toward the regime allowed anarchy to look much like an extreme police state. Totalitarianism seems to be the common outworking of all these ideologies when they are not balanced against each other. Totalitarianism allows all the extreme points on the political compass to touch with invisible lines. From these regimes we see the power and the downfall of loyalty, individualism, equality and liberty. When these virtues work together they can lead to a self government filled with meaning for everyone. When they are taken to their extreme and isolated their ends can become one man’s selfish ambition.