Focusing on portrayals of Mussolini's Italy, Hitler's Germany, and
Stalin's Russia in U.S. films, magazine and newspaper articles,
books, plays, speeches, and other texts, Benjamin Alpers traces
changing American understandings of dictatorship from the late
1920s through the early years of the Cold War.
During the early 1930s, most Americans' conception of dictatorship
focused on the dictator. Whether viewed as heroic or horrific, the
dictator was represented as a figure of great, masculine power and
effectiveness. As the Great Depression gripped the United States, a
few people--including conservative members of the press and some
Hollywood filmmakers--even dared to suggest that dictatorship might
be the answer to America's social problems.
In the late 1930s, American explanations of dictatorship shifted
focus from individual leaders to the movements that empowered them.
Totalitarianism became the image against which a view of democracy
emphasizing tolerance and pluralism and disparaging mass movements
developed. First used to describe dictatorships of both right and
left, the term "totalitarianism" fell out of use upon the U.S.
entry into World War II. With the war's end and the collapse of the
U.S.-Soviet alliance, however, concerns about totalitarianism lay
the foundation for the emerging Cold War.