Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini: Totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century

Rising to a great challenge in this remarkable study, Bruce Pauley compares the origins, development, and demise of all three forms of European totalitarianism, explaining why the old regimes that preceded the dictatorships failed, how the totalitarian movements arose, and how they captured, consolidated, and eventually plummeted from power.
Although its vivid portraits of the dictators' youths, early careers, relationships with women, management styles, and cults of personality–that they and their propaganda machines crafted–are certain to fascinate all readers, Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini is much more than a triple biography; it is a unique, interpretive comparison of the economics, culture, education, and health-care systems of all three dictatorships. While more conventional subjects such as diplomacy and war are by no means neglected, Professor Pauley goes further to explore the regimes' treatment of women, young people, and their terroristic oppression of religious institutions and minorities.

Bruce F. Pauley, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Central Florida, holds degrees from Grinell College, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and the University of Rochester. He also studied at the University of Graz (Austria) and the University of Vienna. He is the author of The Habsburg Legacy, 1867-1939; Heimatschutz und hakenkrenz: Steirischer Heimatschutz und Osterreichischer nationalsozialismus, 1918-1934; Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis: A History of Austrian National Socialism; and Der Weg in den Nationalsozialisms: Ursprunge und Entwicklung in Osterreich. His book, From Prejudice to Persecution: A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism, won the Chrles Smith award from the Austrian Cultural Institute. Its German translation, Eine Geshichte des osterreichischen Antisemitismus: Von der Ausgrenzung Zur Ausloschung, was a best seller in Austria. He has been granted a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship and several stipends from the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 1966 and 2005 he received distinguished alumni awards from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is currently completing a book on ethnic conflict in Central Europe with Charles Ingrao of Purdue University.