Ideologies of Hitler and Stalin

In spite of having very conflicting views, the practices of both Communism and Fascism shared many similarities with each other. Driven by their ideologies Stalin, under Socialism, and Mussolini, under Fascism, used these ideas to advocate and carry out their own policies. However, it is important to realise that many areas of their policies did veer away from the direction of their original ideologies. This shows that, although Stalin's and Mussolini's policies were decided largely by their respective ideologies, they were in many situations neglected by the leaders for personal reasons. During Stalin's Russia, Stalin had two main policies which he would follow. The first would be his consolidation of power, by purging anyone who would show signs of opposition against him, Stalin ensured to gain control of Russia through any means necessary. In doing so, he used similar but much more extreme methods of how Lenin got control of his government after the revolutions, this time period would be known as the Great Purges of 1934 - 1939. This method was a clearly not a part of his ideology of Socialism, by using temporary violence during the proletariat revolution to lead the country to a path of Communism. and taking matters in to his own hands. In doing so, it is obvious that ideology did was not detrimental to Stalin in order to create his own Russia. Stalin's second method were his domestic policies. In order to transform Russia from the backwards country it was during the early part of the 20th century to a fully independent and industrialized major power, Stalin used collectivization and set up multiple Five-Year plans from 1928 through 1941 (which would have surely continued had Hitler not invaded Russia).Stalin urged to increase nationalism in 1931 by saying "We are 50 to 100 years behind the advanced countries. We must catch up this distance in 10 years". As a result of these methods, Russia had gained the largest army by the 1940's and had seen the