Apply these 3 questions to Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Benito Mussolini.

Question

Apply these 3 questions to Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Benito Mussolini.

1. What tactics and strategies did he use to obtain power?
2. How did he hold onto/maintain power?
3. What type of government did he run?

Answer 1

Fear would be the number 1 tactic for each. All 3 used propaganda to try to convince people they would save their respective countries from ruin and/or the West (western Europe and the United States in particular). Stalin was infamous for the Purge where he sent many political adversaries and people he deemed weak and unfit for his Communist society to death (executions) or the gulags (prison work camps, especially in Siberia). He consolidated power and took over for Lenin. Whenever he thought another Communist leader got too much power, he would order their execution and send their families to the work camps/gulags.

Hitler promised a better economy in the early 1930s, so people voted for him. Then, he got rid of the democracy. Hitler invaded and took over other countries to gain power. The Third Reich/Nazi Germany was an authoritarian/Fascist dictatorship.

Mussolini also made big promises to his people. He was the first one to have a Fascist government. Extreme nationalism was what he used to justify absolute power of the state (dictatorship).

The way they all maintained their power was by decreasing or eliminating the freedoms of their people. State-backed businesses (opposite of capitalism), no ability to unionize or protest or have the freedom of speech helped keep people from rising up and getting rid of them.