By the mid-1930s a new kind of radical dictatorship — termed totalitarian — had emerged in the Soviet Union, Germany, and, to a lesser extent, Italy. It can be argued that totalitarianism began with the total war effort of 1914–1918 (see Chapter 28), as governments acquired total control over all areas of society in order to achieve one supreme objective: victory. This provided a model for future totalitarian states.

In 1956 American historians Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski identified at least six key features of modern totalitarian states.1 The six features are (1) an official ideology that demanded adherence from everyone, that touched every aspect of a citizen’s existence, and that promised to lead to a “perfect final stage of mankind”; (2) a single ruling party, whose “passionate and unquestionably-dedicated-to-the-ideology” members were drawn from a small percentage of the total population (following Lenin’s “vanguard of the proletariat” model; see “Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution” in Chapter 28), hierarchically organized, and led by one charismatic leader, the “dictator”; (3) complete control of “all weapons of armed combat”; (4) complete monopoly of all means of mass communication; (5) a system of terror, physical and psychic, enforced by the party and the secret police; and (6) central control and direction of the entire economy.

While all these features were present in Stalin’s Communist Soviet Union and Hitler’s Nazi Germany, there were some major differences. Most notably, Soviet communism seized private property for the state and sought to level society by crushing the middle classes. Nazi Germany also criticized big landowners and industrialists but, unlike the Communists, did not try to nationalize private property, so the middle classes survived. This difference in property and class relations led some scholars to speak of “totalitarianism of the left” — Stalinist Russia — and “totalitarianism of the right” — Nazi Germany.

Moreover, Soviet Communists ultimately had international aims: they sought to unite the workers of the world. Mussolini and Hitler claimed they were interested in changing state and society on a national level only. Both Mussolini and Hitler used the term fascism to describe their movements’ supposedly “total” and revolutionary character. Orthodox Marxist Communists argued that the Fascists were powerful capitalists seeking to destroy the revolutionary working class and thus protect their enormous profits. So while Communists and Fascists both sought the overthrow of existing society, their ideologies clashed, and they were enemies.

European Fascist movements shared many characteristics, including extreme nationalism; an anti-socialism aimed at destroying working-class movements; a crushing of human individualism; alliances with powerful capitalists and landowners; and glorification of war and the military. Fascists, especially in Germany, also embraced racial homogeneity. Indeed, while class was the driving force in communist ideology, race and racial purity were profoundly important to Nazi ideology.

Although 1930s Japan has sometimes been called a Fascist society, most recent scholars disagree with this label. Some European Fascist ideas did appear attractive to Japanese political philosophers, such as nationalism, militarism, the corporatist economic model, and a single, all-powerful political party. However, there were also various ideologically unique forces at work in Japan, including ultranationalism, militarism (building on the historic role of samurai warriors in Japanese society), reverence for traditional ways, emperor worship, and the profound changes to Japanese society beginning with the Meiji Restoration in 1867 (see “The Meiji Restoration” in Chapter 26). These also contributed to the rise of a totalitarian, but not Fascist, state before the Second World War.