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The totalitarian regimes used methods to control the population such as propaganda, fear and violence.

The three most popular totalitarian regimes are Fascism, Nazism and Stalinism, which we are going to explain by showing how they used said methods.

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Italian Fascism used propaganda to glorify Mussolini as a heroic leader, control media, and instill loyalty through education, youth organizations, and public spectacles.

In this image, Mussolini pictures himself as a part of the working society, to make people believe he is going to make the country develop since he shows empathy towards workers.

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What the Nazi regime did not achieve through law and propaganda, it achieved through terror. Just six weeks after Hitler took power, the first concentration camp was opened in Dachau for anyone who opposed Nazism. The first prisoners in this camp were homosexuals, communists and German liberals who were sent there with the intention of sending a stern message to society.

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The Holocaust, the key to Nazi violence, was the premeditated mass murder of millions of innocent civilians. Driven by a racist ideology that considered Jews “undesirable parasites”.

In this aimagen we see the burning of books that were deemed unfit. It took place on March 10, 1933 and 70,000 people gathered to burn 20,000 books.

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A huge likeness of Benito Mussolini on the facade of the Palazzo Braschi in Rome in 1934. Behind him, the word si (yes) is repeated, reminding the population to approve the National Fascist party’s candidates in the March general election, the last under fascist rule.

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Mussolini used Roman imagery, such as the fasces, to connect the Fascist state with Italy’s ancient grandeur. Making it seem like they were going to restore the glory they had back in the Roman Empire.

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Fire perpetrated against the Reichstag building in Berlin on February 27, 1933. Responsibility for the fire is still a matter of debate12. Subsequent judicial reviews overturned the convictions of Marinus van der Lubbe, a 24-year-old Dutch Communist who was sentenced to death by the German government of Chancellor Adolf Hitler.

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The regime established the Organizzazione per la Vigilanza e la Repressione dell'Antifascismo (OVRA), a secret police force tasked with monitoring, intimidating, and eliminating political dissent. Opponents were arrested, tortured, or exiled.

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On the night of November 9-10, 1938, the Nazi regime coordinated a wave of antisemitic violence in Nazi Germany, which became known as Kristallnacht or “the Night of Broken Glass”. The attack was so named because of the shattered storefront windows that littered the streets after the violence.

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In the Germany in which the Aryan race was the one that should endure and lead the world, the Gypsies were among the group of others, those who simply did not deserve to live. Along with them, Jews, homosexuals or political dissidents.

They said it was a genetic trait, that Roma or Gypsies had criminality in their DNA and it was passed down from parents to children. In the 1920s they began to pass laws prohibiting them from entering public places such as parks, fairs,.... They were registered (with photo and fingerprints) and those who had no fixed employment or home. They were confined to camps.

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Beginning in 1938, Jews in the camps were identified by a yellow star sewn onto their prison uniforms. The badges sewn on the prisoners' uniforms allowed guards to identify suspected backgrounds for incarceration.

Criminals were marked with green inverted triangles, political prisoners with red, “asocials” (including Roma, rebels, vagrants and other groups) with black or, in the case of Roma in some camps, brown. Homosexuals were identified with pink triangles and Jehovah's Witnesses with purple ones.

The Nazis required Jews to wear the identifying star not only in the camps, but also in all the territories of Europe they occupied.

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Nazi propaganda was the National Socialist German Workers' Party's coordinated attempt to influence German public opinion through the use of propaganda in the mass media. Cinema, television and radio were used as propaganda tools by both sides before and during the war. In this poster we observe how a Nazi person is beating someone who is giving his opinion about the political situation. The Nazi person is illustrated in a clean and neat way and the beaten person has been painted ugly and red, indicating what is right and what is wrong.

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In this poster we observe how Hitler shows himself happy and very nice with the children, in this way he assured love with all children, or at least with those who adapted to “the ideal race”.

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The Nazis had a great fondness for propaganda to spread the supposed superiority of the Aryan race. The “perfect Aryan baby,” chosen at the behest of the Propaganda Ministry headed by Joseph Goebbels, was actually a Jewish girl.

Hessy Taft tells how a photo of her appeared in 1935 on the cover of Sonne ins Haus, a Nazi family magazine:

The plump blonde girl fit the cliché of the perfect Aryan child. But Hessy was not only anything but Aryan, she represented everything the Nazis hated.

“When I turned six months old, my parents wanted to have a picture of me, and my mother took me to one of the best photographers in Berlin,” Taft recounts in a video from the Shoa Foundation at the University of California, USA.

The photographer decided to send her to a beauty contest organized by the Nazis to find the perfect Aryan baby. The chosen image would later become the cover of the magazine.

When Taft's mother learned that her daughter appeared on the front page of a Nazi pamphlet, which in the same issue featured Adolf Hitler reviewing the troops, she ran “horrified” to the photographer's studio.

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The persecution and assassination of Giacomo Matteotti, a socialist politician who had openly condemned the Fascist regime and accused Mussolini's government of electoral fraud.

Shortly after giving an anti-Fascist speech, he was abducted by Fascist agents.

His body was found weeks later, confirming he had been killed.

Mussolini used this event to tighten his power, declaring a dictatorship in 1925 to suppress opposition completely.

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We can see in this poster how Stalin is friendly with the little ones. In this way he tries to show a sweet and reliable side. Many politicians did this so that citizens felt comfortable leaving their children in their "leadership."

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Mussolini’s regime used paramilitary groups, like the Blackshirts, to intimidate, attack, and eliminate political opponents, as seen in the assassination of socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti in 1924 (as explained later in violence I).

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Mussolini banned opposition parties, controlled the media, and conducted public trials and executions to demonstrate the consequences of resisting Fascist rule, instilling fear in the populace.

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During the Italian colonization of Libya, the Kingdom of Italy operated several concentration camps. During World War II, Fascist Italy operated several concentration camps and forced labor camps for the local population of Libya. By the end it was estimated that a total number of 60,000 to 70,000 people died.

the Libyan colonization can be considered genocide because the population was killed intentionally and the cultural, biological and economic basis of the community was completely destroyed and replaced

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Italian Fascism is still today considered moderate in comparison to the Nazi party in Germany, when the truth is that the latter took inspiration from Italian concentration camps and methods of repression.

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The Graziani Massacre (Yekatit 12 Massacre) happened in February 1937 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, after an attempt to assassinate Italian Viceroy Rodolfo Graziani. In response, Italian forces carried out a brutal attack, killing thousands of Ethiopian civilians over three days. Soldiers and Blackshirts destroyed homes, shot people, burned them alive, and used other cruel methods. They also targeted Ethiopian leaders, priests, and monks, killing hundreds at the Debre Libanos Monastery. Between 19,000 and 30,000 people died, making it one of the worst acts of violence during Italy’s colonial rule

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In this image "The great Stalin is the hope of the world".

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Its propaganda was based on the glorification of Stalin. He was portrayed as a wise and benevolent leader, often referred to as the "Father of Nations."

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The NKVD (Soviet secret police) operated as Stalin’s enforcers, arresting, interrogating, and executing individuals suspected of disloyalty.

Constant vigilance created an atmosphere where no one felt safe, even within families or close social circles.

People lived in fear of midnight arrests, as the NKVD often detained individuals without warning or explanation.

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The Gulag system was a network of forced labor camps established in the Soviet Union. Its main purpose was to punish and isolate individuals considered "enemies of the state.". As well as to cause fear in the population and suppress dissent. Prisoners were required to perform grueling physical labor, including logging, mining, and constructing massive infrastructure projects.

At its height in the early 1950s, the Gulag held approximately 2.5 million prisoners at any given time.

Estimates suggest that 18 million people passed through the Gulag system during Stalin’s rule.

Between 1.5 million and 2 million prisoners are believed to have died due to execution, starvation, disease, or exhaustion.

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Any form of opposition, whether political, cultural, or religious, was met with brutal and violent repression.

Intellectuals, writers, and artists who criticized the regime were arrested, executed, or silenced.

Religious leaders and institutions were targeted, with churches destroyed and clergy arrested or killed.

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We can observe that in this propaganda the caricature is accompanied by a phrase. “Товарищ Ленин очищает землю от нечисти “ which means "Comrade Lenin cleanses the earth of evil spirits". With this translation we can see what Stanlin wanted to convey to his citizens.

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Enguelsina Markízova, a seven-year-old Soviet girl from Buryatia, could not have known those words, but she had her 15 minutes of fame after appearing in a photo with the all-powerful leader of the USSR, Iósif Stalin. However, the result was shocking. The photograph of Iósif Stalin with a little girl showed an image of the ruler as a kind leader. However, this fact did not help Enguelsina Markízova (the girl in the picture), whose parents were killed during the Great Purge of the 1930s.

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The Great Purge, although better known in today's Russia as the Great Terror, was the name given to the series of campaigns of political repression and persecution carried out in the Soviet Union in the late 1930s. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet Communist Party members, socialists, anarchists and opponents were persecuted by the police; in addition, public trials were held and hundreds of thousands were sent to Gulag concentration camps.

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Stalin, who had a very hard childhood, took this anger out on those who hadn't provoked it:

«Dictators are not born with a mustache and a gun under their arm. The homicidal personality of Iósif (Joseph) Stalin , is, in part, the result of a terrible childhood and a society that left little room for compassion»

-ABC cultural