The Role of Fascist and

Communist Ideology in History

Figures Associated
with Fascist Ideology
Benito Mussolini

-Dictator of Italy
-Founder of Fascist movement
in Europe
-Led Italy in fight with Nazi
Germany against the Allied
Powers in WWII

Adolf Hitler

-Dictator of Germany
-Leader of the Nazi Power
-Led Axis Powers against
the Allied Powers in WWII
-Oversaw the systematic
killing of European Jewry

Fascism
-Definition derives from the Italian word fascio, which means bundle.

Characteristics of Fascism
-Totalitarian
Everything in the state, nothing outside the
state, nothing against the state. - Mussolini
-Dictator holds absolute rule
-Rejects Enlightenment idea of individualism
because individualism leads to a weak and
unstable state
-Opposes Communist idea of competing classes
-Purpose of life is to serve the state, therefore
individual happiness is selfish.
-The citizens only responsibility is the
betterment of their nation or race
-Society enabled for war and militarization

Question
Under Fascist ideology, the
citizens total allegiance is
to the state. What might
this mean for personal
liberty and human
happiness?

VIDEO: Hitler calling for absolute submission of people to the state.

Role of Fascism in Shaping History

WWII
-Germany violates Versailles
Treaty and remilitarizes the
Rhineland in 1936
-Germany occupies
Czechoslovakia in 1938
-Germany invades Poland in
1939
Holocaust
-Hitlers Final Solution
-Claimed that Jews were
debilitating German rise to
greatness
-Systematic killing of European
Jewry
-Labor and concentration camps

Figures Associated with Communism

Vladimir Lenin

-Leader of the Bolsheviks

(Communist Party) in Russia
-Led the 1917 Revolution,
which overthrew the Russian
Tsar and established a
Socialist Republic in Russia

Joseph Stalin

-Bolshevik revolutionary
under Lenin
-Took absolute power of
Soviet Union after Lenins
death in 1922

Communism
Characteristics of Communism
-Calls for revolution, by which the
working class overthrows the
bourgeois class (those who own the
means of production)
-Establishes a dictatorship of the
proletariat (working class)
-This dictatorship establishes absolute
control of means of production, and
distributes resources as it sees
necessary
-Rejects Liberalism on the grounds that
the purpose of the individual is to
serve the party, not his or her self
interests.

Question
If the individual is not
allowed to work for him
or herself in a
Communist system, then
what is the citizen
working towards?

Communists Atrocities
Oppression
-In order to keep total control of the
country Stalin purged all suspected
political enemies
-Implementations of Gulags
political prisoners and dissenters
were either killed or sent to Gulags
(labor camps) to die
-Soviet occupation of Eastern
Europe Stalin expands his control
by setting up Soviet controlled
satellite states in Eastern Europe
Video: Soviet Labor Camps

Compare and Contrast

Fascism

Emphasizes strength
of state and race

Communism

Powerful dictator to
keep things stable

Emphasizes strength
of working class

Society
Rejects Liberal idea of
enabled for
individual liberty b/c it leads
war against all
to a weak state
that are
Totalitarian
deemed
racially and
Political Purges
culturally
(dissenter, enemies,
inferior
Private business
people that are
exists, but it is in
considered inferior)
accordance with what
the state needs

Equipped for war

against powers that
threaten economic
policies
Government owns
means of
production and then
distributes
resources to
workers

Question
Now that youve learned about the
characteristics of Fascism and Communism
and their history of oppression what do
these two ideologies have in common?
Where do they differ?