Nationalism

What now most impresses observers of the twentieth century is how powerful nationalism was as the great ideological driving force of its time. Right-wing movements such as Nazism and fascism were defined by their belief in the virtue and power of the nation-state. That also applied on the Left. To be sure, there were international communists such as Lenin who believed that the days of the nation-state were over and that class would become the determinant of all future societies. However, Lenin was in a minority. All the leaders of communist nations, including his own immediate successor in the USSR, Stalin, subordinated their communist ambitions to the needs of the states they led. Communism was the means to an end: the survival and development of the nation. In China, Mao Zedong adopted communism because it provided a political and social mechanism by which he could achieve his basic goal - the regeneration of the Chinese nation.

Religion opposed

No free movement of citizens

Leaders are the ideology Propaganda

Each leader removed from reality Organized hatred Terror and prison systems Cultural transformation Either anti-religion or undermining it Ideologies as secular faiths Economic revolutions Nationalists

Religion undermined Free movement of citizens allowed

SUMMARY DIAGRAM

Comparing Stalin’s Soviet Union, Hitler’s Germany and Mao’s China