Introduction

Totalitarianism

The end of World War I and the arrangements made at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 seemed to represent success for parliamentary democracy. But during the 1920s and 1930s, that success proved to be more apparent than real. The 1917 revolution had already brought a Communist regime to power in Russia. During the following two decades, Communist parties spread throughout Europe and were perceived as a great threat, but they did not come to power outside of the Soviet Union. Authoritarian movements of the right became the most immediate danger to parliamentary democracy. The first of these movements was Mussolini's fascism, which became dominant in Italy in 1922. By the end of the decade regimes in Eastern and Southern Europe were becoming more authoritarian. This trend became stronger during the Depression of the 1930s. There was a retreat toward nationalistic economic policies and greater central control by governments attempting to deal with the despair, destruction, and dislocation accompanying the Depression. In Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe, the Depression fueled already strong tendencies toward dictatorships and fascism. The most extreme of rightist ideology was Hitler's nazism, which became dominant in Germany in 1933. By the end of that decade, Europe was embroiled in a new World War even greater than World War I.

Historians and social scientists looking at this period typically focus on the rise of totalitarianism. This is a controversial term that is hard to evaluate objectively. Generally, it refers to a form of government that shares certain traits. It rejects individualism, a single party is in power, and the state controls almost all aspects of life (economic activities, social organizations, cultural institutions, the military, and politics). It has one official, revolutionary ideology, and terror, propaganda, and mass communications are used as tools of power. Yet there have been important differences among totalitarian states. Communism in Russia under Stalin and its professed opposite, nazism in Germany, sprang from different sources and ideologies. Even though German nazism and Italian fascism resembled each other, some scholars question whether Italian fascism was thorough and effective enough to be considered totalitarian. Other nationalistic authoritarian regimes of the right, from Eastern Europe to Spain and Portugal, shared only certain elements of totalitarian fascism. Nevertheless, the concept of totalitarianism does provide us with a tool to use in interpreting important developments between the two world wars.

This chapter addresses a number of broad questions. What were the main features of the totalitarian regimes? How were they similar to and different from each other? How can their appeal and the power they commanded over people be explained? In what ways were they related to nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century trends?

The selections in this chapter survey totalitarianism from a variety of perspectives. The concept itself is questioned. How useful is it? Is it historically bound to a few regimes of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, or is it more broadly applicable? What characteristics do totalitarian regimes share and how do these regimes differ from nontotalitarian systems? The three regimes most commonly identified with totalitarian ism-f asc ism, nazism, and communism-are examined. The selections on Mussolini and Italian fascism focus on the ideology of fascism and its historical place. An effort is made to distinguish German nazism from Italian fascism, to analyze nazism's appeal, to understand the extremes possible under such a system, and to evaluate the role of Hitler in shaping nazism. Three of the most controversial aspects of Stalin and Russian communism are examined: Stalin's justification for the policy against the kulaks in 1929, his analysis of democracy as part of his defense of the 1936 Soviet Constitution, and his massive purges of the 1930s.

In addition to offering broad insights into totalitarianism during the 1920s and 1930s, the selections in this chapter provide some of the background of World War II, which will be covered in the next chapter.

The Doctrine of Fascism

Benito Mussolini

Italy was the first European power to turn to fascism. She was one of the victors in World War I, but the war was costly and Italy did not gain much. After the war the country was marked by instability, weak governments, and an apparent threat from the left. Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), a former leader of the Socialist party and a veteran of the war, organized the Italian Fascist Party in 1919. Stron-aly nationalistic, the party stood against the Versailles Treaty, left-wing radicalism, and the established government. After leading his Blackshirts in a march on Rome in 1922, Mussolini was invited by King Victor Emmanuel III to form a government. Over the next few years Mussolini effectively eliminated any opposition and installed his fascist state system, which would last some twenty years. The following document contains excerpts from "The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism, " an article signed by Mussolini and written with the philosopher Giovanni Gentile that originally appeared in the Enciclopedia Italiana in 1932. It describes the ideological foundations of Italian fascism. These excerpts emphasize the rejection of traditional democracy, liberalism, and socialism as well as faith in the authoritarian, fascist state.

Consider: The greatest sources of appeal in the doctrine according to Mussolini; the ways in which this doctrine can be considered a rejection of major historical trends that had been developing over the previous century; the government policies that would logically flow from such a doctrine.

Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism -born of a renunciation of the struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it. . . .

The Fascist accepts life and loves it, knowing nothing of and despising suicide; he rather conceives of life as duty and struggle and conquest, life which should be high and full, lived for oneself, but above all for others-those who are at hand and those who are far distant, contemporaries, and those who will come after. . . .

Such a conception of life makes Fascism the complete opposite of that doctrine, the base of so-called scientific and Marxian Socialism, the materialist conception of history. . . . Fascism, now and always, believes in holiness and in heroism; that is to say, in actions influenced by no economic motive, direct or indirect. . . .

Fascism repudiates the conception of "economic" happiness, to be realized by Socialism and, as it were, at a given moment in economic evolution to assure to everyone the maximum of well-being. Fascism denies the materialist conception of happiness as a possibility, and abandons it to its inventors, the economists of the first half of the nineteenth century. . . .

After Socialism, Fascism combats the whole complex system of democratic ideology, and repudiates it, whether in its theoretical premises or in its practical application. Fascism denies that the majority, by the simple fact that it is a majority, can direct human society; it denies that numbers alone can govern by means of a periodical consultation, and it affirms the immutable, beneficial, and fruitful inequality of mankind, which can never be permanently leveled through the mere operation of a mechanical process such as universal suffrage. . . .

Fascism denies, in democracy, the absurd conventional untruth of political equality dressed out in the garb of collective irresponsibility, and the myth of "happiness" and indefinite progress. But, if democracy may be conceived in diverse forms -that is to say, taking democracy to mean a state of society in which the populace are not reduced to impotence in the State - Fascism may write itself down as "an organized, centralized, and authoritative democracy. "

Fascism has taken up an attitude of complete opposition to the doctrines of Liberalism, both in the political field and the field of economics. . . . Fascism uses in its construction whatever elements in the Liberal, Social, or Democratic doctrines still have a living value; it maintains what may be called the certainties which we owe to history, but it rejects all the rest -that is to say, the conception that there can be any doctrine of unquestioned efficacy for all times and all peoples. Given that the nineteenth century was the century of Socialism, of Liberalism, and of Democracy, it does not necessarily follow that the twentieth century must also be a century of Socialism, Liberalism, and Democracy: political doctrines pass, but humanity remains; and it may rather be expected that this will be a century of authority, a century of the Left, a century of Fascism. For if the nineteenth century was a century of individualism (Liberalism always signifying individualism) it may be expected that this will be the century of collectivism, and hence the century of the State. It is a perfectly logical deduction that a new doctrine can utilize all the still vital elements of previous doctrines. . . .

The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State. The conception of the Liberal State is not that of a directing force, guiding the play and development, both material

and spiritual, of a collective body, but merely a force limited to the function of recording results: on the other hand, the Fascist State is itself conscious, and has itself a will and a personality - thus it may be called the "ethic" State. . . .

If every age has its own characteristic doctrine, there are a thousand signs which point to Fascism as the characteristic doctrine of our time. For if a doctrine must be a living thing, this is proved by the fact that Fascism has created a living faith; and that this faith is very powerful in the minds of men, is demonstrated by those who have suffered and died for it.

Fascism has henceforth in the world the universality of all those doctrines which, in realizing themselves, have represented a stage in the history of the human spirit.

Mein Kampf

Adolf Hitler

The most extreme and racist form of fascism arose in Germany under the Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler (1889-1945). After serving in World War I, Hitler joined and soon took control of the small National Socialist German Workers party. In the early 1930s, after years of relative obscurity, the Nazi party gained popularity with a nationalistic program attacking the Versailles Treaty, the Weimar Republic, the Communists, and above all the Jews. In 1933 Hitler was appointed chancellor and Germany was soon transformed into a Nazi state. Hitler's ideology, his mental processes, and some of the ideas behind nazism are illustrated in his rather formless book Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"). It was written in 1924 while he was in jail for his efforts to overthrow the government of Bavaria in southern Germany. With the growing popularity of the Nazi party in the early 1930s, the book became a best seller. In these selections from Mein Kampf, Hitler displays his anti-Semitism, argues that a racial analysis is central to an understanding of history, and indicates his vision of German expansion eastward at the expense of Russia.

Consider: How Hitler connects the Jews, the Marxists, and German expansion eastward; on what points Mussolini might agree with Hitler here; the ways in which these ideas might be appealing, popular, or acceptable in the historical circumstances of Germany in the early 1930s.

If we were to divide mankind into three groups, the founders of culture, the bearers of culture, the destroyers of culture, only the Aryan could be considered as the representative of the first group. From him originate the foundations and walls of all human creation, and only the outward form and color are determined by the changing traits of character of the various peoples. He provides the mightiest building stones and plans for all human progress and only the execution corresponds to the nature of the varying men and races. . . .

Blood mixture and the resultant drop in the racial level is the sole cause of the dying out of old cultures; for men do not perish as a result of lost wars, but by the loss of that force of resistance which is contained only in pure blood.

All who are not of good race in this world are chaff. . . .

With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people. With every means he tries to destroy the racial foundations of the people he has set out to subjugate. just as he himself systematically ruins women and girls, he does not shrink back from pulling down the blood barriers for others, even on a large scale. It was and it is Jews who bring the Negroes into the Rhineland, always with the same secret thought and clear aim of ruining the hated white race by the necessarily resulting bastardization, throwing it down from its cultural and political height, and himself rising to be its master.

For a racially pure people which is conscious of its blood can never be enslaved by the Jew. In this world he will forever be master over bastards and bastards alone.

And so he tries systematically to lower the racial level by a continuous poisoning of individuals.

And in politics he begins to replace the idea of democracy by the dictatorship of the proletariat.

In the organized mass of Marxism he has found the weapon which lets him dispense with democracy and in its stead allows him to subjugate and govern the peoples with a dictatorial and brutal fist.

He works systematically for revolutionization in a twofold sense: economic and political.

Around peoples who offer too violent a resistance to attack from within he weaves a net of enemies, thanks to his international influence, incites them to war, and finally, if necessary, plants the flag of revolution on the very battlefields.

In economics he undermines the states until the social enterprises which have become unprofitable are taken from the state and subjected to his financial control.

In the political field he refuses the state the means for its self-preservation, destroys the foundations of all national self- maintenance and defense, destroys faith in the leadership, scoffs at its history and past, and drags everything that is truly great into the gutter.

Culturally he contaminates art, literature, the theater, makes a mockery of natural feeling, overthrows all concepts of beauty and sublimity, of the noble and the good, and instead drags men down into the sphere of his own base nature.

Religion is ridiculed, ethics and morality represented as outmoded, until the last props of a nation in its struggle for existence in this world have fallen.

Now begins the great last revolution. In gaining political power the Jew casts off the few cloaks that he still wears. The democratic people's Jew becomes the blood-Jew and tyrant over peoples. In a few years he tries to exterminate the national intelligentsia and by robbing the peoples of their natural intellectual leadership makes them ripe for the slave's lot of permanent subjugation.

The most frightful example of this kind is offered by Russia, where he killed or starved about thirty million people with positively fanatical savagery, in part amid inhuman tortures, in order to give a gang of Jewish journalists and stock exchange bandits domination over a great people.

The end is not only the end of the freedom of the peoples oppressed by the Jew, but also the end of this parasite upon the nations. After the death of his victim, the vampire sooner or later dies too. . . .

And so we National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath the foreign policy tendency of our pre-War period. We take up where we broke off six hundred years ago. We stop the endless German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the east. At long last we break off the colonial and commercial policy of the pre-War period and shift to the soil policy of the future.

If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states.

Here Fate itself seems desirous of giving us a sign. By handing Russia to Bolshevism, it robbed the Russian nation of that intelligentsia which previously brought about and guaranteed its existence as a state. For the organization of a Russian state formation was not the result of the political abilities of the Slavs in Russia, but only a wonderful example of the stateforming efficacity of the German element in an inferior race. Numerous mighty empires on earth have been created in this way. Lower nations led by Germanic organizers and overlords have more than once grown to be mighty state formations and have endured as long as the racial nucleus of the creative state race maintained itself. For centuries Russia drew nourishment from this Germanic nucleus of its upper leading strata. Today it can be regarded as almost totally exterminated and extinguished. It has been replaced by the Jew. Impossible as it is for the Russian by himself to shake off the yoke of the Jew by his own resources, it is equally impossible for the Jew to maintain the mighty empire forever. He himself is no element of organization, but a ferment of decomposition. The Persian empire in the east is ripe for collapse. And the end of Jewish rule in Russia will also be the end of Russia as a state. We have been chosen by Fate as witnesses of a catastrophe which will be the mightiest confirmation of the soundness of the folkish theory.

The Informed Heart: Nazi Concentration Camps

Bruno Bettelheim

Organized, official racial persecution was a direct consequence of Nazi theories, attitudes, and practices. During the 1920s and early 1930s, however, the extent of the persecution was unanticipated. The most extreme form of this occurred in the late 1930s, with the introduction of forced labor and concentration camps, later to be followed by camps in which a policy of literal extermination was pursued. In the following selection, Bruno Bettelheim, a psychoanalyst in Austria at the time and now a leading psychoanalyst in the United States, describes his experiences in the concentration camps at Dachau and Buchenwald. He focuses on the dehumanizing processes involved and some of the ways prisoners adapted in an effort to survive.

Consider: The methods used to gain control over the prisoners; the psychological means developed by Bettelheim and other prisoners to cope with and survive this experience; how the existence, nature, and functioning of these camps reflect the theory and practice of Nazi totalitarianism.

Usually the standard initiation of prisoners took place during transit from the local prison to the camp. If the distance was short, the transport was often slowed down to allow enough time to break the prisoners. During their initial transport to the camp, prisoners were exposed to nearly constant torture. The nature of the abuse depended on the fantasy of the particular SS man in charge of a group of prisoners. Still, they all had a definite pattern. Physical punishment consisted of whipping, frequent kicking (abdomen or groin), slaps in the face, shooting, or wounding with the bayonet. These alternated with attempts to produce extreme exhaustion. For instance, prisoners were forced to stare for hours into glaring lights, to kneel for hours, and so on.

From time to time a prisoner got killed, but no prisoner was allowed to care for his or another's wounds. The guards also forced prisoners to hit one another and to defile what the SS considered the prisoners' most cherished values. They were forced to curse their God, to accuse themselves and one another of vile actions, and their wives of adultery and prostitution. . . .

The purpose of this massive initial abuse was to traumatize the prisoners and break their resistance; to change at least their behavior if not yet their personalities. This could be seen from the fact that tortures became less and less violent to the degree that prisoners stopped resisting and complied immediately with any SS order, even the most outrageous. . . .

it is hard to say just how much the process of personality change was speeded up by what prisoners experienced during the initiation. Most of

them were soon totally exhausted; physically from abuse, loss of blood, thirst, etc.; psychologically from the need to control their anger and desperation before it could lead to a suicidal resistance. . . .

If I should try to sum up in one sentence what my main problem was during the whole time I spent in the camps, it would be: to protect my inner self in such a way that if, by any good fortune, I should regain liberty, I would be approximately the same person I was when deprived of liberty. So it seems that a split was soon forced upon me, the split between the inner self that might be able to retain its integrity, and the rest of the personality that would have to submit and adjust for survival. . . .

I have no doubt that I was able to endure the horrors of the transport and all that followed, because right from the beginning I became convinced that these dreadful and degrading experiences were somehow not happening to me" as a subject, but only "me" as an object. . . .

All thoughts and feelings I had during the transport were extremely detached. It was as if I watched things happening in which I took part only vaguely. . . .

This was taught me by a German political prisoner, a communist worker who by then had been at Dachau for four years. I arrived there in a sorry condition because of experiences on the transport. I think that this man, by then an "old" prisoner, decided that, given my condition, the chances of my surviving without help were slim. So when he noticed that I could not swallow food because of physical pain and psychological revulsion, he spoke to me out of his rich experience: "Listen you, make up your mind: do you want to live or do you want to die? If you don't care, don't eat the stuff. But if you want to live, there's only one way: make up your mind to eat whenever and whatever you can, never mind how disgusting. Whenever you have a chance, defecate, so you'll be sure your body works. And whenever you have a minute, don't blabber, read by yourself, or flop down and sleep."

Fascism in Western Europe

H. R. Kedward

Both fascism and communism, as they were practiced during the first half of the twentieth century, are traditionally categorized as totalitarian systems. Yet fascism is typically placed on the extreme right of the political spectrum, communism on the extreme left. Indeed, the two usually consider each other archenemies. In the following selection, H. R. Kedward, a British historian at the University of Sussex, takes account of these facts in developing and diagraming a working political definition of fascism.

Consider: Why the extreme left should be placed next to the extreme right on the political spectrum even though they consider each other enemies; the historical developments that justify using the second diagram for the twentieth century and the first for the nineteenth century; the characteristics of fascism according to Kedward.

It could be argued that the best way to define fascism is not in a positive but in a negative way, by references to its opposites, but this too presents difficulties. At one time its opposite was naturally assumed to be communism, since fascism was said to be on the extreme Right of politics and communism on the extreme Left. This appeared self-evident when the traditional semicircle of political parties was drawn, i.e.:

Such a diagram served the political scene of the 19th century when socialism was on the extreme Left and autocratic conservatism on the extreme Right, but in the 20th century a new diagram is needed in the form of a circle, i. e.:

This circular image does greater justice to the realities of 20th-century politics by recognizing that extreme Left and extreme Right, communism and fascism, converge at many points and are in some cases indistinguishable. Doriot, for example, moved with ease from French communism to his Fascist P.P.F. without changing his attitudes or methods, and most of the conclusions on Nazi culture in the last chapter could be applied to Stalinism. The circle, however, does not minimize the differences which kept the two systems apart. Travelling the longest route round the circle, it is a very long way indeed from extreme Left to extreme Right. Thus communism and fascism are as distinct in some respects as they are similar in others.

This was most clearly apparent in the Spanish Civil War. If one looked at methods, the Communists were as violent, as authoritarian and as tightly organized as the Fascists; they were both supported by dictators, Stalin on the one hand and Hitler and Mussolini on the other, and they were both as intolerant of any deviation from the party line. They were next to each other on the circle. But if one looked at their history and their ideology the two had little in common: the Communists stood in the Marxist tradition and aimed at proletarian revolution, while the Fascists had their national values and a vision of an organic society. They were quite distinct.

Fascism therefore will only be partly defined by its opposition to communism. it is perhaps more profitable to look for its political opposites across the circle in the centre, where one finds progressive conservatism, liberalism and radical individualism. It is at least historically true that in the countries where these political attitudes were most entrenched Britain, France and Belgium - neither fascism nor communism came to power.

Retreat from Totalitarianism

Michael Curtis

In recent years the traditional view of totalitarianism has been called into question. Critics argue that there are such important differences between fascism and communism and between the ideals and policies of various fascist and communist states that it is no longer useful to group all under the single category of "totalitarian. " Michael Curtis, professor of political science at Rutgers University, exemplifies this critical approach, emphasizing that while the term totalitarianism may have been useful for some purposes, it now creates more confusion than clarity.

Consider: How the primary sources support or undermine Curtis' argument; the main distinctions between fascism and communism and whether these distinctions go to the heart of the concept of totalitarianism, making that concept inapplicable to both; whether totalitarianism should be considered only a temporary European development of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.

Useful as the concept of totalitarianism has been as an explanatory tool for distinguishing political systems, reservations of two kinds are in order. The first is that the concept is only partly applicable to the three countries -Germany, the Soviet Union, and, especiallly, Italy -out of whose experience the theory was erected, and this has great importance in properly evaluating these countries. The second is that political behavior in the Soviet Union has changed sufficiently to render the concept inadequate. Moreover, the polycentrism of the Communist countries makes a monolithic explanation incorrect. . . .

The totalitarian concept does not sufficiently allow for the enormously different purposes sought by the three ideologies or beliefs, for the different intellectual levels of those beliefs, for the different styles of behavior and symbolic references of the regimes, and for the different groups who supported and benefited by them. Totalitarianism of the left, as Talmon has argued, begins with man, his rationality, and salvation; totalitarianism of the right begins with the collective entity - the state, the nation, or the race.

To offer brief lists of the major characteristics of the belief systems is to illustrate their different purposes. Nazism was characterized by nationalism, racism, emphasis on the Volk, anti-Semitism, stress on violence and force, appeal to national unity that would supersede the interests and differences of rank and class. With its rejection of democracy, secularization, rationalism, and positivism, its belief in domestic virtues, its vision of an attractive mythical past and rural harmony, its distaste for industrial civilization and urbanism, nazism was the counterrevolution in action and ultimately nihilistic in nature. The precapitalist, feudal aspects of nazism are illustrated by the Teutonic imagery, elitist decision-making through the Fiffirer and the Gauleiter appointed by him, the oath of personal loyalty to Hitler, the stress on honor, blood, and soil, the end to the dependence of the German peasant on the market economy. Ernst Nolte has commented that, while Italian fascism recalled a remote but tangible historical era, the Nazis appealed to the prehistoric and the archaic.

The Nazis drew their main strength from the lower-middle class, marginal groups, military desperados, and those who had suffered by greater industrialization. But, uninterested in changing the nature of the social order, the Nazis were prepared to cooperate with those traditional groups such as the military and the bureaucracy that were not regarded as opponents. Though some 40 per cent of the full professors in economics and the social sciences vacated their chairs between 1932 and 1938, many academics, jurists, and even Nobel Prize winners capitulated before the regime. Hitler, in March, 1933, spoke of his regime as "the union between the symbols of the old greatness and the new strength." And the new strength was based on the manipulation of crowds, the display of strength through demonstrations, parades, and mass meetings, the welding of what Hitler, in Mein Kampf, called "the enormous human dragon" into a potent political force.

Contrasted with these characteristics are the ends of Marxism: that it seeks a society based on equality and humanitarianism. that it envisages the elimination of political coercion, that it seeks to build a rational social order, an industrialized economy, a higher form of democracy than that existing in the capitalist countries, and that it seeks to create a new type of civilization, internationalist rather than insular and parochial in nature. The traditional social and economic elite groups have no place in such a civilization or new type of society, and a wholly new political instrument is necessary. That the Communist regime distorted these high expectations and ended political liberty is not to deny the loftiness of the ideas.

The differentiation between a counterrevolutionary and a revolutionary purpose is crucial in the evaluation of the Nazi and Communist regimes. The objective of the first remains negative-the downfall of the existing regime-or nebulous, depending on the will of the dictator. The regime is

essentially a destructive one in which positive achievement is gratuitous or related only to some destructive function. It is the product of a real dilemma of liberal democracy, a sort of suicidal reaction against a civilization that had failed to provide sufficient emotional satisfaction or material benefits for the mass of the people. In no real way can nazism or fascism be regarded as the continuation or inheritance of the French Revolution. The Nazi movement, as Rauschning wrote, had no fixed aims, either economic or political, either in domestic or foreign affairs. Its strength lay in incessant activity, its Valhalla the lust for power and the quest for adventure.

For Communist countries, the creation of an equalitarian and humane society, while not necessarily observed in practice, is its informing spirit, and action can be related to that fundamental objective. The Russian Revolution began, Deutscher noted, "with the dazzling blaze of a great vision." There is no inherent insistence on violence in the Communist, as in the Nazi or Fascist., system. In the post-Stalin Communist systems, violence is an incidental factor, a means by which to achieve a desired end. But violence was an intrinsic facet of Nazi or Fascist behavior, unrelated to rational purpose. In Italy, the aggressive defenders of "law and order in the streets" and the strikebreakers became the squadrista. For Hitler, "force was the first law" and war, the normal condition of mankind. The means as well as the ends of the regimes were different in theory. The Nazi and Fascist regimes saw themselves as perpetual dictatorships from the beginning. The Bolsheviks took power on behalf of the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, and the dictatorship of the proletariat has always been regarded as a transitional stage toward a free society. . . .

Totalitarianism, after all, has no ontological or essentialist element about it.

Escape from Freedom

Erich Fromm

Many people find that traditional historical categories are inadequate for a deep understanding of nazism. Thus more than most historical developments, nazism has been open to investigation from a psychosocial perspective. One of the earliest to do this was Erich Fromm (1900-1980), a leading German-American psychoanalyst whose classic Escape from Freedom was first published in 1941. In the following selection from that book, Fromm makes a psychosocial interpretation Of nazism, taking care to place this interpretation in a historical context.

Consider: How Fromm explains the passive acceptance of the nazi regime by one part of the population and the active support of the Nazis by another part of the population; the main distinctions between the political perspective of fascism, according to Kedward, and the psychosocial perspective, according to Fromm.

In discussing the psychology of Nazism we have first to consider a preliminary question - the relevance of psychological factors in the understanding of Nazism. In the scientific and still more so in the popular discussion of Nazism, two opposite views are frequently presented: the first, that psychology offers no explanation of an economic and political phenomenon like Fascism, the second, that Fascism is wholly a psychological problem.

The first view looks upon Nazism either as the outcome of an exclusively economic dynamism -of the expansive tendencies of German imperialism, or as an essentially political phenomenon -the conquest of the state by one political party backed by industrialists and Junkers; in short, the victory of Nazism is looked upon as the result of a minority's trickery and coercion of the majority of the population.

The second view, on the other hand, maintains that Nazism can be explained only in terms of psychology, or rather in those of psychopathology.

Hitler is looked upon as a madman or as a "neurotic," and his followers as equally mad and mentally unbalanced. According to this explanation, as expounded by L. Mumford, the true sources of Fascism are to be found "in the human soul, not in economics." He goes on: "In overwhelming pride, delight in cruelty, neurotic disintegration -in this and not in the Treaty of Versailles or in the incompetence of the German Republic lies the explanation of Fascism."

In our opinion none of these explanations which emphasize political and economic factors to the exclusion of psychological ones - or vice versa - is correct. Nazism is a psychological problem, but the psychological factors themselves have to be understood as being molded by socioeconomic factors; Nazism is an economic and political problem, but the hold it has over a whole people has to be understood on psychological grounds. What we are concerned with in this chapter is the psychological aspect of Nazism, its human basis. This suggests two problems: the character structure of those people to whom it appealed, and the psychological characteristics of the ideology that made it such an effective instrument with regard to those very people.

In considering the psychological basis for the success of Nazism this differentiation has to be made at the outset: one part of the population bowed to the Nazi regime without any strong resistance, but also without becoming admirers of the Nazi ideology and political practice. Another part was deeply attracted to the new ideology and fanatically attached to those who proclaimed it. The first group consisted mainly of the working class and the liberal and Catholic bourgeoisie. In spite of an excellent organization, especially among the working class, these groups, although continuously hostile to Nazism from its beginning up to 1933, did not show the inner resistance one might have expected as the outcome of their political convictions. Their will to resist collapsed quickly and since then they have caused little difficulty for the regime (excepting, of course, the small minority which has fought heroically against Nazism during all these years). Psychologically, this readiness to submit to the Nazi regime seems to be due mainly to a state of inner tiredness and resignation, which, as will be indicated in the next chapter, is characteristic of the individual in the present era even in democratic countries. In Germany one additional condition was present as far as the working class was concerned: the defeat it suffered after the first victories in the revolution of 1918. The working class had entered the postwar period with strong hopes for the realization of socialism or at least a definite rise in its political, economic, and social position; but, whatever the reasons, it had witnessed an unbroken succession of defeats, which brought about the complete disappointments of all its hopes. By the beginning of 1930 the fruits of its initial victories were almost completely destroyed and the result was a deep feeling of resignation, of disbelief in their leaders, of doubt about the value of any kind of political organization and political activity. They still remained members of their respective parties and, consciously, continued to believe in their political doctrines; but deep within themselves many had given up any hope in the effectiveness of political action.

An additional incentive for the loyalty of the majority of the population to the Nazi government became effective after Hitler came into power. For millions of people Hitler's government then became identical with "Germany." Once he held the power of government, fighting him implied shutting oneself out of the community of Germans; when other political parties were abolished and the Nazi party "was" Germany, opposition to it meant opposition to Germany. It seems that nothing is more difficult for the average man to bear than the feeling of not being identified with a larger group. However much a German citizen may be opposed to the principles of Nazism, if he has to choose between being alone and feeling that he belongs to Germany, most persons will choose the latter. It can be observed in many instances that persons who are not Nazis nevertheless defend Nazism against criticism of foreigners because they feel that an attack on Nazism is an attack on Germany. The fear of isolation and the relative weakness of moral principles help any party to win the loyalty of a large sector of the population once that party has captured the power of the state.

In contrast to the negative or resigned attitude of the working class and of the liberal andCatholic bourgeoisie, the Nazi ideology was ardently greeted by the lower strata of the middle class, composed of small shopkeepers, artisans, and white-collar workers.

Members of the older generation among this class formed the more passive mass basis; their sons and daughters were the more active fighters. For them the Nazi ideology -its spirit of blind obedience to a leader and of hatred against racial and political minorities, its craving for conquest and domination, its exaltation of the German people and the "Nordic Race" - had a tremendous emotional appeal, and it was this appeal which won them over and made them into ardent believers in and fighters for the Nazi cause. The answer to the question why the Nazi ideology was so appealing to the lower middle class has to be sought for in the social character of the lower middle class. Their social character was markedly different from that of the working class, of the higher strata of the middle class, and of the nobility before the war of 1914. As a matter of fact, certain features were characteristic for this part of the middle class throughout its history: their love of the strong, hatred of the weak, their pettiness, hostility, thriftiness with feelings as well as with money, and essentially their asceticism. Their outlook on life was narrow, they suspected and hated the stranger, and they were curious and envious of their acquaintances, rationalizing their envy as moral indignation; their whole life was based on the principle of scarcity - economically as well as psychologically.

Hitler: A Study in Tyranny

Alan Bullock

It is difficult to analyze nazism without focusing on its leader, Adolf Hitler. The close connection between nazism and Hitler raises two questions of particular importance for historians. First, what was the role of the individual in shaping history, here of Hitler in shaping German nazism? Second, to what extent were Hitler and nazism uniquely German developments related to particular characteristics of Germany's past? Alan Bullock, a British historian and author of what has long been considered the most authoritative biography of Hitler, addresses these issues in the following selection from his Hitler: A Study in Tyranny.

Consider: Whether Hitler should be viewed as an extreme of a broader historical trend affecting not only Germany but Europe as a whole during the 1920s and 1930s; how someone taking a more psychological approach might argue with Bullock's interpretation of Hitler and nazism; how this approach fits with that of Kedward.

Many attempts have been made to explain away the importance of Hitler, from Chaplin's brilliant caricature in The Great Dictator to the much less convincing picture of Hitler the pawn, a front man for German capitalism. Others have argued that Hitler was nothing in himself, only a symbol of the restless ambition of the German nation to dominate Europe; a creature flung to the top by the tides of revolutionary change, or the embodiment of the collective unconscious of a people obsessed with violence and death.

These arguments seem to me to be based upon a confusion of two different questions. Obviously, Nazism was a complex phenomenon to which many factors-social, economic, historical, psychological -contributed. But whatever the explanation of this episode in European history - and it can be no simple one -that does not answer the question with which this book has been concerned, what was the part played by Hitler. It may be true that a mass movement, strongly nationalist, anti-Semitic, and radical, would have sprung up in Germany without Hitler. But so far as what actually happened is concerned - not what might have happened - the evidence seems to me to

leave no doubt that no other man played a role in the Nazi revolution or in the history of the Third Reich remotely comparable with that of Adolf Hitler.

The conception of the Nazi Party, the propaganda with which it must appeal to the German people, and the tactics by which it would come to power - these were unquestionably Hitler's. After 1934 there were no rivals left and by 1938 he had removed the last checks on his freedom of action. Thereafter, he exercised an arbitrary rule in Germany to a degree rarely, if ever, equalled in a modern industrialized state.

At the same time, from the re-militarization of the Rhineland to the invasion of Russia, he won a series of successes in diplomacy and war which established an hegemony over the continent of Europe comparable with that of Napoleon at the height of his fame. While these could not have been won without a people and an Army willing to serve him, it was Hitler who provided the indispensable leadership, the flair for grasping opportunities, the boldness in using them. . . .

The view has often been expressed that Hitler could only have come to power in Germany, and it is true -without falling into the same error of racialism as the Nazis -that there were certain features of German historical development, quite apart from the effects of the Defeat and the Depression, which favoured the rise of such a movement.

This is not to accuse the Germans of Original Sin, or to ignore the other sides of German life which were only grossly caricatured by the Nazis. But Nazism was not some terrible accident which fell upon the German people out of a blue sky. It was rooted in their history, and while it is true that a majority of the German people never voted for Hitler, it is also true that thirteen million did. Both facts need to be remembered.

From this point of view Hitler's career may be described as a reductio ad absurdum of the most powerful political tradition in Germany since the Unification. This is what nationalism, militarism, authoritarianism, the worship of success and force, the exaltation of the State, and Realpolitik lead to, if they are projected to their logical conclusion. . . .

Hitler, indeed, was a European, no less than a German phenomenon. The conditions and the state of mind which he exploited, the malaise of which he was the symptom, were not confined to one country, although they were more strongly marked in Germany than anywhere else. Hitler's idiom was German, but the thoughts and emotions to which he gave expression have a more universal currency.

Hitler recognized this relationship with Europe perfectly clearly. He was in revolt against 'the System' not just in Germany but in Europe, against the liberal bourgeois order, symbolized for him in the Vienna which had once rejected him. To destroy this was his mission, the mission in which he never ceased to believe; and in this, the most deeply felt of his purposes, he did not fail.

Revolutionary and

Soviet Russia:

Stalin's Purges

E. H. Carr

In 1934 a colleague of Stalin was assassinated by a member of the Communist party. Shortly afterward, Stalin initiated mass purges of the Communist party. By 1939, when the purges had ended, vast numbers of people had been executed or imprisoned. Analysts have tried to explain these purges in a variety of ways. In the following selection, E. H. Carr, author of an authoritative, sympathetic multivolume history of Soviet Russia, interprets the causes of the purges, arguing that they were a logical extension of the revolution initiated in 1917.

Consider: In what ways this interpretation is consistent with the evidence provided in the two documents by Stalin; whether purges, or their like, are an inherent or predictable characteristic o any totalitarian regime; the differences between Stalin's purges and Hitler's efforts to exterminate the Jews.

First, the purges represented a national backlash against the international aspects of the revolution. Stalin had proclaimed the national goal of 11 socialism in one country." Alone among the early Bolshevik leaders, he had never lived in western Europe and spoke no Western language. He was notoriously contemptuous of the Communist International and of the prospects of revolution outside the Soviet Union. The victims of the purges included almost everyone associated with the international ideals and aims of the revolution, as well as nearly all the foreign Communists living in Moscow. It is a sobering reflection that, in the party struggles of the 1920's, nearly all the Western observers who understood anything of what was going on favored Stalin as a "safe" man against the hot-headed Trotsky and Zinoviev. Stalin, they felt, would never give the capitalist world any troublel Trotsky said once that Stalin stood for the primitive, national Russian element in Bolshevism; and if you add that this included a streak of primitive cruelty which Russian backwardness had not yet outgrown, it would, I think, be a fair comment.

Second, the purges represented the conservative reaction which sets in at the second stage of any revolution-the desire to consolidate its achievements, to stabilize and to halt it. The picture here is rather complicated. In everything that pertained to the material power, efficiency, and prosperity of the country, and especially in the intensified drive for industrialization, Stalin carried on the revolutionary momentum with enormous vigor. But politically and ideologically, he was a conservative. He wanted no new revolutionary ideas, no innovations, to disturb the solid framework of order and conformity. Emphasis was laid on legality. Old forms and old names - the Council of Ministers, for example- replaced the revolutionary creations. The word Bolshevik, suggesting the turbulence of the revolutionary epoch, fell out of favor. The purges exterminated potential troublemakers and disturbers of the peace, old Bolsheviks, people who still dreamed of completing the unfinished work of the revolution. It was the Communists who provided most of the victims. In this aspect the purges resembled a White terror more than a Red terror.

Third - and this is another aspect of the same phenomenon - the purges were the reaction of the hard-headed, practical man of affairs against the utopian intellectual, the man of theory. There may be a personal element here; perhaps Stalin took a malign pleasure in sending to the firing squad the very people who had once despised him for his intellectual deficiencies, his lack of culture, his poor grasp of Marxist principles. Certainly there was no place for independent intellectuals under Stalin, for men who dreamed dreams and nourished revolutionary ideals or split hairs over what Marx or Lenin really intended. Ideological conformity was the counterpart of political and social order, and those who indulged in dangerous thoughts were easy victims of the purges.

The real historical significance of the purges seems to me that they were intended to mark and did mark - the terminal point of the revolution.

Chapter Questions

1.    In light of the evidence and interpretations presented in this chapter about the nature of totalitarianism, how would you explain its appeal or relative success in the twentieth century? In what ways should Italian fascism, German nazism, and Russian communism be distinguished here?

2.      Considering some of the theories and practices of totalitarian governments during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, would you conclude that totalitarianism almost inevitably leads to violence and war, or rather that it happens to involve violence and war because of particular historical circumstances of the times? In this respect, should fascism be distinguished from communism? Why or why not?

3.    In what ways do Italian fascism and German nazism differ in theory and practice from liberal democracy? In what ways does Russian communism differ from both?