The Totalitarian State

The rise of dictatorial regimes in the 1930s had a great deal to do with the coming of World War II.

By 1930, only two major states in Europe, France and Great Britain, remained democratic.

Italy and Germany had succumbed to the political movement called fascism, and Soviet Russia under Stalin moved toward repressive totalitarianism. 

A host of other European states and Latin American countries adopted authoritarian structures of various kinds, while a militarist regime in Japan moved that country down the path to war.

The dictatorial regimes between the wars assumed both old and new forms.

Dictatorship was not new, but the modern totalitarian state was.

The totalitarian regimes, best exemplified by Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany, greatly extended the functions and power of the central state.

The new “total states” expected the active loyalty and commitment of citizens to the regime’s goal, whether it be war, a socialist society, or a thousand year Reich (empire).

They used modern mass propaganda techniques and high-speed communications to conquer the minds and hearts of their subjects.

The total state sought to control not only the economic, political, and social aspects of life but the intellectual and cultural aspects as well.

The modern totalitarian state was to be led by a single leader and a single party.

It ruthlessly rejected the liberal ideal of limited government power and constitutional guarantees of individual freedoms. 

Indeed, individual freedom was to be subordinated to the collective will of the masses, organized and determined for them by the leader or leaders.

Modern technology also gave total states unprecedented police controls to enforce their wishes on their subjects.