How were Fascist and Communist totalitarian dictatorships similar and different?
BBOTH CONSERVATIVE AND RADICAL DICTATORSHIPS took power in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. Although these two types of dictatorship shared some characteristics, in essence they were quite different. Conservative authoritarian regimes, which had a long history in Europe, were limited in scope. Radical totalitarian dictatorships, based on the ideologies of communism and fascism, aimed at the radical reconstruction of society.
Eugenics in Nazi GermanyNazi “race scientists” believed they could use the eugenic methods of social engineering to build a powerful Aryan race. In this photograph, published in a popular German magazine in 1933, a clinician measures a man’s nose. Such pseudoscientific methods were used to determine an individual’s supposed “racial value.” (© Hulton-