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Totalitarianism in Europe. Totalitarianism loosely denotes a style of leadership adopted by the regimes in Italy, Germany, and the Soviet Union in the period preceding the Second World War, in the 1930s. The leadership manifested in various forms, as a communist regime reigning in Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union, a Fascist regime in Italy, and a Nationalist Socialist Regime in Germany. According to Marvin (1), totalitarianism referred to the regimes of fascists reigning in Italy, the system of communists in the Soviet Union and the regime of National Socialists in Germany. The overriding denominator of the three systems, viewed through the prism of totalitarianism majorly sought to bring individual life under control. Totalitarianism thus sought to dictate individual lives regarding their thoughts, the way of behavior, intellect as well as every other dynamic of the individual’s cultural, political and social way of life. A consideration of the regimes in power in Soviet Russia under Lenin and later Stalin, Fascist Italy under Mussolini and Nazi Germany under Hitler in the 1930s would no doubt bring to the fore different dynamics of totalitarianism. In its attempts at entrenchment and the realization of its objectives of complete control and domination of the individual and state as well as institutions, totalitarianism employed various strategies such as mind control, mythologizing and a purge on perceived state enemies. According to Marvin (2), in efforts at effective mind control of the masses, the totalitarian leadership resort to efforts at social re-engineering by upholding and selling beliefs rooted in warped versions of history, usually advanced in ways
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