The Parallels Between Nazism and Stalinism

The Parallels between Nazism and Stalinism

It is surprising how many similarities there are between Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. The regimes established under these two leaders were incredibly similar when looking at rise and the control of the state. Both systems had an authoritarian form of government, were there was a dictator controlling the whole country. In Nazi Germany, Hitler was the dictator. His political system was based on fascism, but he added this strong emphasis on race. He came to power through a nationalistic movement that wanted to restore Germany to the way it was before World War I. In the Soviet Union, the government was established by Lenin. He based the system on the book by Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, which aimed to unite the proletariat and create total equality for everyone. However, when Lenin died, a man similar in nature to Hitler, Stalin, rose to power after the Bolshevik revolution. Stalin claimed that the Soviet Union was under communist rule, but this was far from the truth.   Two leaders with very similar aspirations and goals now controlled these two supposedly very different governments.
Both rulers had completely control of their governments. Stalin quickly became the dictator of the Soviet Union with help from his secret police, the Cheka. His secret police made it easy for him to eliminate any opposition and send those who were undesired to prison camps in Siberia. People had come to fear Stalin, and this fear gave him the loyalty of his people. Hitler was just as corrupt a leader as Stalin. He ascended to power by creating the Enabling Act, which allowed him to make laws. Hitler then decreed that the only existing party would be the Nazi party. Along with that, he also declared that any association of, collaboration with, or support of another party would result in imprisonment in labor camps, similar to those in the Soviet Union. Furthermore, Hitler created the Gestapo, a secret police, which...