Radical Totalitarian Dictatorships

- Emerged in the 1920s and 1930s
- Bernito Mussolini spoke of the "fierce totalitarian will" in Italy
- Believed in willpower, preached conflict and worshiped violence
- Individuals were infinitely less valuable than the state
- Opposite of Liberalism (rationality, peaceful progress, economic freedom, strong middle class)

- Reached maturity in 1930s in USSR and Nazi Germany
-1950s and 1960s it used modern technology and communications to exercise complete political power
- State took over and tried to control the economic, social, intellectual and cultural aspects of people's lives
- Deviation from the norm (e.g., art or family behavior) could become a crime
- Represented a radical revolt against liberalism
- People involved through commitment to nationalism and socialism

- Permanent Revolution
- Unfinished Revolution
- Rapid, profound change imposed from on high, went on forever

- Soviet Communism, grown out of Marxian Socialism, seized all private property for the state and crushed the middle class
- Nazism, growing out of extreme nationalism and racism, but both private property and middle classes survived
- USSR was called Totalitarianism of the Left
- Nazi Germany was called Totalitarianism of the Right

- A term of pride for Mussolini and Hitler
- Used to describe the supposedly "total" and revolutionary character of their movements
- It was severely criticized
- Generally failed to gain political power

1) Remains a valuable tool for historical understanding. Correctly highlights Hitler's Germany and Stalin's S.U."total claim" on belief and behavior of citizens
2) Anti-democratic, antisocialist facist movements were all over Europe, but was only to take power in Italy and Germany
- The problem of Europe's radical dictatorships is complex and there are few easy answers