Western civilization.The rise of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. Rise Essay

Western civilization.The rise of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. Rise of Islamic Fundamentalism - Essay Example The study of history can be tedious and cumbersome to most people but provides many of the important lessons and insights that learning from the past offers to anyone interested in it. This is because knowledge of the various social, economic and political events in the past gives and also provides a guide for the future events as well which prevents committing or repeating the same mistakes or errors. Interpretation of the past is a requisite to have a better grasp of today's events, putting them in the right perspective, context, or understanding enabled with the benefit of hindsight. This paper presents four major historical events which still influenced present events despite the passage of several years. Discussion The four major events were the rise of radical totalitarian dictatorships out of the chaotic political and economic conditions at the turn of the twentieth century, which in turn produced important political figures like Hitler and Stalin who took advantage of those c onditions to change the course of world history, the women's movement (sometimes termed as feminism) that originally grew out of the black American civil rights movement and aimed to improve the lot of women like the right of suffrage and lastly, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism or extremism that saw its culmination in the September 11 terrorist attacks and the war in Afghanistan today. The Rise of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin Totalitarian dictatorships are political systems in which only one person or a small group of just a few persons control the levers of political machinery and the government. Radical totalitarian dictatorships in this regard are political systems in which the government or the state controls all aspects of the life of its citizens, including their private lives, hence the term totality is a reference to state control of all sectors of society, everything for the state and nothing is against the state (as the saying goes). A dictatorship is a form of author itarianism, in which only a junta, a committee or a small group composed of members of the political elites, hold power by virtue of their authority but implies not all social institutions are totally under state control. The radical term as used here denotes only one person holds all the powers, like Stalin was in Russia. Adolf Hitler was a German politician who was born in Austria (1889-1945) and he rose to power through the Nazi Party of Germany (NSDAP). He was a decorated World War I hero; he was imprisoned briefly in 1923 for a failed coup d'etat but once released the next year, quickly rose in the party ranks due to his populist ideas of pan-Germanism (extreme nationalism), anti-semitism (hatred of Jews) and strong anti-communism views. He was also a terrific orator and is able to convince the German population of his ideas, especially those repudiating the terms of the Treaty of Versailles (peace treaty in WWI) as pretty onerous to the German economy. He went on re-arming Ger many in violation of this peace treaty and seized adjoining territories in pursuit of his Lebensraum policy (expanding the living space of Germans), with Germany becoming one party dictatorship under Nazism (nationalist socialism). Germany was able to control most of the European continent and North Africa during the height of its military successes, but Hitler and his wife committed suicide in April 1945 to avoid capture by Red Army forces prior to defeat. Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was one of the original Bolshevik revolutionaries who had fought in the Russian Revolution of 1917 that brought down the Russian monarchy and considers himself as the rightful heir of Vladimir Lenin by eliminating most of his serious rivals, primarily Leon Trotsky who was assassinated in Mexico City in 1940 as a threat to Stalin's own ambitions. Stalin was