Compare the totalitarian regimes of Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin.

The three totalitarian regimes aimed to have a total right over their citizens. The political space and the forms of organized social activity ceased to exist outside of what was allowed and managed by the regime itself. Attempts were made to mold the attitudes and behaviors according to their ideological dogmas. Identification with the regime was sustained by an internal enemy. The penetration of the values of the regime in society was lower in Italy and much higher in Germany, the success of indoctrination was focused on the young. The regimes were successful in mobilizing large numbers of idealists and to win popular support as any type of opposition was repressed. In Germany there was more popular support, while in the Soviet Union the support was less authentic as the population was more coerced. The three resorted to heavy-handed and terrorist repression.

The Soviet Union exercised an extraordinary degree of terror directed against its own citizens. The Nazis concentrated on crushing any type of organized political opposition and on the weakest and least numerous minorities. The fascists imposed terror in the Italian colonies that were in Africa. Italy was weak in its ideological dynamism and militarization, in the Italian people there was no excessive fixation with military glory. In the Soviet Union the ideological force was powerful. Its purpose was to mobilize an economy directed by the state, to restructure the agricultural production and to industrialize the country. The ideological dynamism in Germany stands out for its clear focus on the intensification of the persecution of internal enemies and for its preparations to face a military conflict.