Transcript 6. Commonalities between Nazi Germany and USSR

Two Most Influential Ideologies
To REJECT Classical Liberalism
• COMMUNISM
• FASCISM
Both communism and fascism
used totalitarian governments
On the USSR’s flag
hammer = industrialization
scythe = collectivized agriculture
On the Nazi’s flag
Swastika – ancient symbol denoting luck
Since Hitler, to most Westerners it denotes evil
• Totalitarianism –
use of government
to exert complete
control over
EVERY aspect of
people’s lives
Commonalities
New technologies made totalitarianism possible and allowed
rulers to maintain an extreme degree of control over their
populations
Turned away from the individual and away from limited
democratic governments
Both had one party rule (no other political parties
allowed)
Both favored a collective, all-powerful state
Both used a hierarchical structure
Single charismatic
party leader
Obedience to
and support
for the party
was notnegotiable
Top party members
(national)
Lower party members
(regional & local)
Masses of people in the nation
Totalitarianism Cartoon
Control of the Masses
FEAR
TERROR
INTIMIDATION
INDOCTRINATION
GESTAPO
NKVD
PROPAGANDA
COERCIVE POWER
The NVKD
was among the most brutal,
repressive, and inhumane
police organisations of human
history.
The NKVD's duties, while multifaceted,
included the administration of the
gulag's and prison system, the
police, internal affairs for the police, and
served as the main apparatus for
carrying out the purges and
mass executions of Communists and
innocent Soviet civilians in the 1930s.
GULAGS – SOVIET FORCED LABOUR PRISONS
During the NKVD's reign of terror (1930-1953),
786,098 Soviet people were executed, 3.5 million
were imprisoned, and 2 million people died in
prison and exile.
The vast majority of executions — 681,692, or 87% of the
total — came in 1937 and 1938, corresponding to the
years the Soviet Government required the NKVD to
fulfill a predetermined quota of arrests and
executions.
This quota indicated that each city in the country held several
thousand "traitors" that must be found and executed. (Data from:
The Road to Terror, Getty and Naumov, Yale University Press,
1999. Pages 587-594.)
NKVD EXECUTIONS
At its height in January 1, 1941, the NKVD held
1,500,524 Soviet people in prisons and
gulags.
Death rates while incarcerated (due to hunger, exhaustion,
disease, and natural causes) varied from 5-10% of all new
arrivals.
The vast majority of those in prison were men
(~ 93% from 1934 - 1941), with 50-70% (depending on the
year in question) between the ages of 25 and 40.
Those with a primary education or who were
semi-literate were the most likely in prison,
steadily representing around 80% of the total. (Data from: The
History of the Gulag, Khlevniuk, Yale University Press, 2004,
pages 307-319).
786,098 Soviet people were executed
Joseph Stalin
Nicknames:
Man of Steel
Ruler with an Iron Fist
Koba
One of Koba’s most famous quotes lives on in infamy:
“Death solves all problems - no man, no problem.”
Koba, it is conservatively estimated, had
some 20 million problems, all of
which he solved via
collectivization, dekulakization,
the famines, the Great Terror,
the purges, the Gulag
Archipelago, Vorkuta, Kolyma,
Solovetsky, Suhanovka - on and on
it went, decade after decade after decade.
Twenty million senseless
killings. Twenty million
‘problems’ solved. Over a
quarter of a century of
relentless, grinding evil.
Metaphor for Indoctrination
THINK AS YOU ARE TOLD – YOUR ARE PART OF
THE COLLECTIVE
Soviet Propaganda
One sided information designed to
persuade its audience
Fuehrer
The Leader of the
NAZI Party
Nationalist
Socialist German
Worker’s Party
ADOLF HITLER
(Geheime Staatspolizei; Secret State Police), a police force,
often including members of the SS, were responsible for state
security and the consignment of people to concentration
camps.
The Gestapo's main tool was the protective custody procedure
which allowed it to take actions against "enemies of the Reich."
By 1934, Heinrich Himmler became head of the
Gestapo throughout Germany. In 1939 the Gestapo was
consolidated with other police forces to form the RSHA (Reich
Security Main Office).
The RSHA, including the Gestapo and the SS, assumed the
task of enslaving the "inferior races" and carried out
a major role in the "Final Solution".
A
U
Hitler’s Final Solution
S
C
H
W
I
T
Z
Death Camps
To kill Jews, Gypsies, Religious Leaders and other Dissenters,
Homosexuals, Disabled People, and all non-whites
Those who will
NEVER FORGET
Millions killed
Indoctrination Cartoon
INDOCTRINATION
IS
BRAINWASHING &
THOUGHT CONTROL
Nazi Propaganda
One sided information
designed to persuade an
audience
Both the Communist Party and
the Nazi Party demanded:
• Support for the party (local, regional and national
level)
• Controlled participation (forced into or excluded
from youth, professional, cultural or athletic
groups)
• Absolute loyalty to the leader and state ideology
(secret police, terror, indoctrination via education
and censorship of media used to achieve this)
Demonstration of support for the party, controlled participation
and absolute loyalty
Loyalty
Through Fear
“The ends justify the means.”
FASCISM VS. COMMUNISM
FASCISM
• Draws support from lower
classes & business.
• Makes decisions in the interest
of the state.
• Focuses activities on the
state.(national)
• Corporate state (private
enterprise)
• Elitism
• Ultra-nationalism(ethnocentric)
• racist
COMMUNISM
• Draws support from working
classes.
• Makes decisions in the interest
of the working class.
• Desire to help working class
around the world.
(international)
• State ownership of the means of
production.
• Nationalities unimportant
(equally)