Social Studies 30: Dictatorships

This week, we are going to be going through two different dictatorships: The Communist dictatorship under Stalin in the USSR and the Fascist dictatorship under Hitler in Germany. The biggest thing that you need to focus on is looking at what it was specifically that these dictatorships rejected about liberalism and exactly how they intended to fix it.

List of Dictatorships

Last week, we looked at 5 techniques that dictators use and how that helps them to maintain control. Like we discussed in class, not all dictatorships use all of these characteristics, but they will use some. The stricter the dictatorship, the more techniques that will be used. The main point being that there needs to be a different interpretation of the word freedom and that it is not individual rights that will help achieve the common good of society, but that people give up some of their liberties to help society as a whole to be successful. Only when a society looks out for each other and has common goals to achieve can it truly be successful.

This will pretty much the only week we are going to spend specifically on dictatorships - a lot more of the detail will come in completing your projects. Like I said in class, I am highly recommending that you hand in your assignment on May 25 - BEFORE grad with a hard deadline of June 2.