Totalitarianism refers to the complete control of the citizens of a given country by tyrannical rulers accompanied by the beliefs that they impose. The totalitarian rulers not only control the public lives of their people but they also meddle with their private lives. Some of the states with experience of this form of governments include German under Adolf Hitler, Russia under Stalin and the ancient Mao under Mao Zedong. One of the profound characteristics of totalitarian governments is lack of freedom and rights. In our case with Adolf Hitler in German, there are various ways through which he impeded the citizens from exercising their fundamental rights (Magstadt, 2017).

First and foremost, Hitler denied citizens their democratic right of choosing their leaders since there was only one ruling party which was the Nazi party that had no opposition. The right to an opinion was not in the menu for Germans since anyone that had an opposite view or went against the set rules was branded disloyal and either faced a death penalty or unfair incarceration. Another way was through the barring of communication or rights to privacy. The government wants to know what everyone is communicating and to who. Hitler ensured that there was the tapping of emails and telephone conversations hence information could not be licked to enemies and opposition is suppressed. Citizens did not have the right to marry whoever they wanted because of marriage between the ‘racially pure’ Germans and black German, Jews and Slavs always prohibited since they regarded that as loss of purity of their race. These atrocities among others are forms through which the rights of citizens get impeded by tyrants (Passerini, 2017).

In addition to stripping of rights of citizens, tyrants like Hitler use an aspect of an ideal citizen or a form of identification. In German Hitler created the idea of pure blood and fatherland. He declared that the Nordic German was the master race and that the other races such as the Slavs, Jews and other people of color are enemies. During the assertion of Hitler, party workers, as well as leaders, were a new kind of breed of people. This aspect became the basis for the atrocities committed to the non- Nordic Germans and all those that were against the government’s ideologies (Magstadt, 2017).

However, most of these dictators come into power through democracy. Some even get reelected repeatedly despite the atrocities they commit to their citizens. This aspect is mainly because of voter apathy whereby the citizens are not caring about who is in power, and they have little interest in activities which could bring change to their problems. During the 1936 and 1938 parliamentary elections and referendum in German, the Nazi party despite their atrocities always won the elections. Voter apathy sustains totalitarianism (Sandberg & Moreman, 2015).

The big question is how dictators succeed in maintaining power for long. Virtually all dictatorial governments including Hitler, Castro, Stalin, and Mao come to power through emancipation movements. Once in power these once revolutionist use ideologies, propaganda, organization, and violence to control their citizens. Achievement of total control is through the use of methods that suppress any form of opposition and at the same time propagate fear and tension into the lives of people for them to offer no resistance. This process involves arresting, torturing, incarcerating or killing those who are opposing the course of the dictator. In Hitler’s time, hundreds of thousands of people were arrested and murdered to suppress opposition and maintain control (Magstadt, 2017).

In conclusion, totalitarianism is a form of leadership that causes nightmares because of the methods these dictators use to maintain control over the citizens. However, in most, cause it’s the fault of citizens that these tyrants persist in power and voter apathy is one reason (Passerini, 2017).

 
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