There was a driving force towards this absolute social and political control known as totalitarianism. It first began as Fascism as Walter Laqueur's points out in his book Fascism: Past, Present, and Future where he writes, "It rose and spread quickly, because of the ravages of World War I and the political and spiritual vacuum they had left behind. The continent had been shaken by violent political and economic convulsions, and in half of Europe the old conservative order had disappeared but a new one had not been accepted. The moral certainties of the world of yesterday had vanished and the middle classes had become impoverished. To some, the last vestiges of civilization seemed threatened by a new, mysterious, highly contagious phenomenon - Bolshevism. Those who believed that a strong leadership and a new order were needed but who found Communism unacceptable in view of its internationalism and egalitarianism...craved a political alternative." Most apply the term Fascism primaril

During the same period following World War I there was turmoil in Russia. The tsarist regime had survived an overthrow of the government in 1905, but within a decade there was upheaval again in Russia. The Liberalists had hoped that a constitutional government would make advances and cause Russia, which was a backward country, to catch up to the West, but the radicals led by V.I. Lenin, "expected the Russian workers to become the vanguard of a revolutionary advance that would bring freedom and justice to oppressed peoples all over the world." Tsar Nicholas II was overthrown in March of 1917, a liberal provisional government was formed and the Germans were going to partition the country. The Bolsheviks led by Lenin seized power in November of 1917. The seeds were now ready to grow.

The seeds of totalitarianism were planted in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. It was then that a new breed of thinkers rejected "the Enlightenment belief in the essential rationality of human beings." Friedrich Nietzsche, a writer of this period led attacks on democracy, universal suffrage, equality and socialism. He "called for the emergence of the overman or superman, a higher type of man who asserts himself, and lives life with a fierce joy. The overman aspires to self-perfection. He was critical of the Western rational tradition.

Hitler and Stalin had both created totalitarian regimes. Each would use the power they had to annihilate their enemies and had mass murdered millions of people. In the Soviet Union "all those accused of disloyalty to the party and not killed outright ended up in one of the gulags(Soviet forced labor camp). "Over conquered Europe the Nazis imposed a "New Order" marked by exploitation, torture, and mass murder." Hitler created concentration camps, where his elite SS troops exterminated millions of Jews. These murders were carried out "with dedication and idealism; they believed that they were exterminating subhumans who threatened the German nation." The horrors of the German concentration camps are portrayed in the film Night and Fog and those of the Soviet labor camps in the novel A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2068
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)