During the inter-war period (1919-1938), totalitarianism emerged in both Italy and Germany. Mussolini and Hitler rose to power in 1922 and 1933 respectively as the totalitarian leader of the state and had a total control in all aspects of life on their nation, dominating all the political, social and economic activities. (Cheung, 2011) However, with different factors, the totalitarian rule of Mussolini and that of Hitler exhibited both similarities and differences in different aspects. Horizontal comparison method would be used to compare and contrast the totalitarian rule of Mussolini and that of Hitler in terms of political, social, cultural, economic, and diplomatic aspects.
As Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, "I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." Roosevelt created the New Deal in 1933 in response to The Great Depression. He was hopeful that it would bring about immediate economic relief and reforms in the government. It was voted in favor by the American people who wanted to see noticeable change in their country. The New Deal was based upon the principle of a government regulated economy that looked to balance opposite economic interests.
Q7. The Fascist nations were extremely powerful during their time, along with the strong leadership they provided. Fascism is a political movement which promotes extreme forms of militarism and nationalism. It includes the denial of individual rights and dictatorial one-party rule. Fascism has several characteristics; for example, social, chief examples, basic principles, political, economic, and cultural characteristics.
When the modern capitalist society has emerged, capitalism has massively impacted on many social aspects. The system had led to the dissolution and to an end of the Feudal system during the Middle Ages. There are many political thoughts, which consisted of significant frameworks for reforming and making some new changes to the society. This essay will mainly focus on two main political ideologies and identify the differences between these two houses, which are Marx and Mussolini. First, the German thinker, Marx, and a letter called “ Manifesto of the Communist Party”, bring about the concept of communism that was being used in many areas back in the olden days.
Communism was an economic-political philosophy founded by Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels. These men both had similar principle which lead to their book named " The Communist Manifesto ". They both desired to end capitalism feeling that it was the social class system that led to exploitation of workers. This led to many conflicts between capitalism and communism as economic systems. Communism posed a domestic threat to America because communism resulted in Red Scare, Era of McCarthyism, and Cold War.
In 1919, Benito Mussolini described fascism as “A movement that would strike against the backwardness of the right and the destructiveness of the left.” That “Fascism sitting on the right, could also have sat on the mountain of the center… These words in any case do not have a fixed and unchanged: they do have a variable subject to location, time and spirit. We don’t give a damn about these empty terminologies and we despise those who are terrorized by these words.” Fascism came into prominence in the early 20th-century Europe. It originated in Italy during World War I.
Fascism is ideology which often uses totalitarianism and nationalism methods. The fascist leaders made people are the subject to the government, and limit the independency of the people, in order to gain the better for the nation. This is somehow similar to absolutism of western Europe during 17th and 18th century. Absolutism had given the monarch absolute power to rule over people, while fascism had given the leader and the nation the power to rule over the people of the state. Moreover, fascism had denied the democratic parliament system, and had only allowed the “elite” to rule over the country.
As depicted in Document J, Lenin “sweeps the Globe Clean” of all inadequate governments. In relation to fascism, the idea of a dictatorship to resolve issues within the country prevailed throughout Russia post-World War I. By 1937, the whole majority of Europe associated with fascism and authoritarian governments. As illustrated in Document C, the two 2 countries that still revolved around Democratic governments included France and Czechoslovakia. By this time, the effects of fascism spread throughout Europe and left only very few democracies to survive.
The cartoon displayed the nationalist ideology of Germany and their desire to pin the blame on the people they deemed inferior or outsiders such as Jewish people. Document A, Benito Mussolini’s The Definition of Fascism written in 1932 described Fascism from the eyes of a Fascist leader. The document laid out the positives of Fascism explained that Fascism was the best government for the people. Mussolini wanted to make the Mediterranean an Italian lake and unite all Italian people. These nationalist sentiments garnered him significant support and gave rise to his fascist regime.
In Germany,the citizens had a common interest to get out of this economic depression and fascism seemed to of given them the option too, so everyone agreed with it (Fest 402). The rise of fascism helped Hitler come to power and turn Germany from a broken nation, into a whole one with a common goal: Turn Germany into the super power it once was, or die
Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany were similar in that both were dictatorships. Both Mussolini and Hitler came to power through legal means and believed that people were divided into either inferior or superior races. For example, Hitler was obsessed with the Aryan race and called for the genocide of Jews during WWII. In addition, both Mussolini and Hitler favored the wealthy, believed that an individual was meaningless and must submit to the decisions of their leaders, and aimed at self-sufficiency so that each could survive entirely without international trade. Furthermore, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy “had aimed for prestige and power for their countries, and brought instead humiliation and destruction” (Tarr, R.,
The communists also used way to suppress opponents, but they were not to the extent of the fascist
Marx saw capital and liberal democracies as the fundamental reasons for the low standards of living and the low social conditions of workers. Karl Marx in particular is especially concerned with the political assumptions behind these two ideologies. According to him, these two types of government should be replaced by communism, since communism would provide a more equal and socially just society. Although this statement may seem unusual, since we tend to associate communism with Stalin and China, the type of communism implemented in these countries is different from the communism that Marx and Engels envisaged in their Communist Manifesto. Marx and Engels’ vision of communism is based on the principle of equality among the people and freedom
376) This description of Fascism indicates a government that is involved in the lives of its citizens to an extreme degree. By illustrating the government as a “powerful form of personality”, Mussolini alludes to the Fascist characteristic of organicism, where the state is seen as an organic whole being. Mussolini continues his
Fascism and Nazism have many things similar, however, there are also some considerable differences between them. Concerning the background, both Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany rose because people were discontented with the weak democratic governments at that time and strongly felt the Paris Peace Settlement unfair. Italians were not satisfied with the limited reward granted to them after the WW1 compared to their huge contribution (i.e. the Italian government had made huge military expenditure and the total cost of the war is 148,000 million lire, twice more than the total sum expenditure of all Italian government for 1861 to 1913) (Lee, 2000).
