The Totalitarian Rise:

Joseph Stalin

Stalin's Rise Rap Sheet:

• He used his secret police to stop any riots and arrest or kill anyone who spoke out against him.
• In 1933, he began the Great Purge to eliminate his political rivals in the Communist Party and the government.
• He began a series of Five Year Plans to improve the Soviet Union’s industries.
• This plan involved seizing farms in order to control all production, leading to many deaths of Stalins own citizens.

Adolf Hitler

Hitler's Rise Rap Sheet:

• Germany was devastated after World War I, later Hitler would join a Fascist group called the National Socialist German Worker’s Party or the Nazis.
• Hitler and the Nazis gained popularity and power through propaganda and close relations with government officials. Eventually Hitler was given the position of Chancellor. Hitler ended democracy and took absolute power.
• . He encouraged feelings of anti-Semitism, discrimination against the Jews. Hitler refused to follow the Treaty of Versailles and began to rebuild the military. He ignored the League of Nations as he began to expand Germany’s borders into Austria and Czechoslovakia. These actions gave Germans a sense of extreme nationalism and confidence.
• In 1939, Hitler’s invasion of Poland prompted Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany.