Introduction: labels and models

Both the Hitler and Stalin regimes were one-party states under dictators. But so were many interwar states. Their ruling parties were ideological and mobilised for mass action. This was rather rarer. Yet quite uniquely these two regimes repressed, enslaved, and then killed millions of their subjects. The recent German debate about the comparability of the two regimes, the Historikerstreit, could only suggest one other comparably murderous regime, that of Pol Pot in Cambodia. True, Nazis and Stalinists denied their regimes were similar. Each viewed the other as its veritable Anti-Christ. Much twentieth-century theory has strongly contrasted ‘left’ communism and ‘right’ fascism. There were major differences – the Bolsheviks abolished capitalism, the Soviet Union was bigger, less industrialised and modern, more secular and ethnically diverse, and women were more equal. Their prior histories and seizures of power also differed. So did the two dictators: Hitler was a lazy charismatic, Stalin a dull workaholic. Nonetheless, despite all this, to a non-specialist like myself, as to their victims and probably to most of humanity, the two regimes belong together. It is only a question of finding the right family name.

‘Totalitarian’, ‘dictatorships’, ‘party dictatorships’, ‘party despotisms’, ‘authoritarian’, have all been popular family names. All have disadvantages. The two regimes were authoritarian, despotic and dictatorial, but so were many blander regimes of the period. These labels conceal the unparalleled terrorism of these two.