Totalitarianism In Nazi Germany

Our current perception of totalitarianism, such as in the case of Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia, is “a lawless form of government, where one person has absolute and uncontested power.” Where decisions made regarding that state are made with the interest of the ruler rather than the people in mind. Political theorists Hannah Arendt believed that totalitarianism is simply “one possibility along a path that most countries are on at one time or another.”

Political theorists have noted that the fanatical members of a totalitarian state “can be reached by neither experience nor argument; identification with the movement and total conformism seem to have destroyed the very capacity for experience.” At this point you may think that our current

The totalitarian movements rely not only on the people with an opinion or interest in the political state of the country. They utilised the tension already apparent in their respective societies. The totalitarian movements aim to unite and organize the “great structureless mass of furious individuals.” Not classes, thus the movements depended on the sheer number of

The government at the time were seen as largely corrupt and inept by the populous, this gave rise to a “mob mentality”, where the minorities were seen as the enemy. As the mob seeks for a leader who will bring down the society that they have been excluded from, and the existing government which do not represent their interests. This invites a startling comparison to the society in which we live today, from the growing extremist mob mentality growing in the US, or the wide spread change of the value system in certain parts of the US brought on by the Trump Presidency.

As the mob rally behind the demagogue, who convinces the mob by piquing their interests by talking about what “ordinary party propaganda or public opinion did not care to touch.” Inconspicuous matters, or matters thought of as items of little importance “became of major significance” regardless of actual worth. The mob would believe that the truth lay in whatever the corrupt society that has cast them out had passed over or