Adolf Hitler and Fidel Castro were the authoritarian leaders of single-party states during the twentieth century; Hitler, leader of Germany, and Castro, leader of Cuba. This essay will aim to examine the periods in which these two leaders rose to power. For Hitler this was between 1919 and 1933 and for Castro, 1953 and 1959. To answer this question, it is important to acknowledge the significance of the roles of these individual leaders in contributing to the emergence of authoritarian states, for without them the use of force and persuasion would have had very little effect. It is also necessary to define the “use of force” as a physical act of coercion – e.g. involving the use of arms, as opposed to “persuasion”, a non-physical coercive method used to achieve political change. Whilst it is reasonable to argue that these two leaders used both force and persuasion in their rise to power, I would argue that Hitler appeared to rely more on persuasive methods, through his election campaigns and Nazi propaganda as opposed to Castro, who seemingly warmed more to the use of force as was shown in the Moncada Barracks attack, 1953 and in the strategic use of guerrilla warfare. Nonetheless, this essay will focus on contrasting the effectiveness and thus importance of these two conflicting methods to the emergence of authoritarian states and as to whether the two were inherently inter-related or whether it was in fact other factors such as the pressures of the existing government which pushed for a revolutionary change to the ways both Germany and Cuba were being governed, and ultimately led to the emergence of an authoritarian state.
To begin with, it would appear that both Hitler and Castro initially sought to seize power through physical coercion i.e. force. For Hitler, this was the Munich Putsch in 1923 which saw the Nazis attempt to seize control of Munich, which subsequently resulted in the deaths of 16 Nazis and Hitler’s arrest. For Castro, this was the Moncada Barracks attack in 1953, in which he attempted to seize the military barracks which housed units of Batista’s army, intending to strike a blow to Batista’s repressive regime. This too was a failed attempt and resulted in Castro’s capture. Though these two events differ in terms of motives, Hitler wished to claim power, whilst Castro wished to establish the nationalists as a strong opposition; they both were carried out with violence or the threat of violence. From this we can suggest that particularly in this case, the use of force achieved little if not anything but humiliation for both the Nazis and the Cuban nationalists and did not contribute at all to the emergence of an authoritarian state. The effect of using force to establish power in both cases became not only irrelevant to the emergence of an authoritarian state, but actually worked to regress the possibility of one forming as both the image of the Nazis and the Cuban revolutionaries were tarnished. However, it was the aftermath of these two failed uses of force which was important to the emergence of an authoritarian state.
Correspondingly, it would appear that in both cases, the effective use of persuasion manifested itself out of the failures of using force to consolidate power. This was seen in both Hitler’s and Castro’s exploitation of their trials, as they sought to use them as an exercise to spread propaganda, which in turn led to increased support for the ideas which would contribute towards the emergence of an authoritarian state. The corruptness of the People’s Court meant that it allowed the putsch’s instigators the opportunity to present their political convictions – to which Hitler exploited and structured an impassioned speech which was aimed not at persuading the Court, but at every individual German citizen. Hitler stated that “the army which we have formed grows from day to day; it grows more rapidly from hour to hour”. From this excerpt alone we can infer that Hitler had a utopian vision of Germany, which, alongside his charisma and his patriotism, worked to persuade the German peoples to have faith that Germany would be great again. Hitler’s mention of an army is interesting, as in reality, the German military had been severely reduced by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. However, he persuaded the people that a new nationalist army was growing, and that this army needed the co-operation of each individual German if Germany itself was to be saved. This alone encapsulated Hitler’s audience and worked to spread the idea of subordinating to a Nazi regime if it meant that Germany would restore its greatness. Similarly, Castro’s use of persuasion amassed the vital support which was needed to create an authoritarian state. He justified the Moncada Barracks through defending himself as being a committed Cuban patriot fighting for the liberty of the Cuban people. He made such bold claims as the restoration of the constitution and the redistribution of land to the people. All in all, Castro’s persuasive appeal to the Cuban people was taken to be such a threat that he was actually treated with lenience and only served two years in prison. From these two trials it can be suggested that persuasiveness was paramount to the emergence of an authoritarian state. An authoritarian state would not have been able to emerge without popular support. The initial failure of force worked to reduce the appeal of both the Nazis and Cuban revolutionaries. It was the persuasive methods such as the oratory skills of both leaders which worked to not only preserve their ideologies, but to also spread these beliefs to a greater number of people, despite their image being publicly scrutinised whilst in court. Unlike force, persuasiveness seemed to have the effect of appealing to the needs of the poorer classes. Even more, it concentrated primarily on the individual and convinced the ordinary citizen that their co-operation was needed in order to save the country from socio-economic collapse. Co-operation and support from the people were the essential components needed in order for an authoritarian state to emerge and to survive. Because of this, the importance of persuasion must not be underestimated as it managed to amass support, contrary to the initial use of force, which seemed to reduce it.
However, it can be argued that the use of force was sufficiently important to the emergence of authoritarian states. This was certainly the case for Hitler’s physical force, the SA (Sturmabteilung). The SA members felt a keen sense of brotherhood as they were directed by their leaders to attack communists and Jews. They led aggressive marches and torchlight processions which worked to terrify opponents into silence but also spread Nazi ideology to the German people. To contrast, the Granma attack in 1956 proved to be yet another failure for Castro in his use of force. Attempting to take Santiago and to amass risings all over Cuba, Castro’s ship was met by government troops and 70 Cuban revolutionaries were captured. In Hitler’s case, the implementation of force to orchestrate terror and submission to the Nazi Party was significantly successful. From this we can suggest that the use of force was very important to the emergence of authoritarian Germany as it had the effect of gathering support through an establishment of fear. Though these methods were harsh, they worked to discipline the people, a factor which was key to developing an authoritarian state in Germany. Nonetheless, in Castro’s case, the use of force was again completely detached from the emergence of an authoritarian state. The Granma attack was an embarrassment for the Cuban revolutionaries and had no impact on the emergence of an authoritarian state. This suggests that in Cuba the use of force was impractical and a weak course of action for consolidating power. Again, the failure of force became a prompt for the Cuban revolutionaries to shift towards persuasive methods in order to ensure Cuba’s transformation into an authoritarian state.
After the humiliation of the Granma attack, Castro’s shift to a more persuasive form of politics was confirmed in the effective use of propaganda. In an attempt to rebuild the 26th July Movement, Castro projected an image of himself in a number of interviews as the patriotic freedom fighter who sought to protect the oppressed Cubans from Batista’s repressive regime. The image of youthful revolutionaries fighting for a common cause gave both Castro and Che Guevara a heroic quality which worked to attract attention from the West. The effective use of propaganda was also used by Hitler. Hitler made use of his time in prison to write Mein Kampf, which historian Michael Lynch describes as “the nearest we have to a definitive analysis of National Socialism”. The text laid down his main political thoughts including his hatred of the Jews and Germany’s inevitable destiny as a great Aryan nation. The book was essentially an emotional appeal to the Germans to mark out their enemies and join the Nazis in bringing them down. The effective use of propaganda was a highly important tool for both Hitler and Castro to the emergence of an authoritarian state. For Castro, propaganda helped to draw support from the West and establish his cult of personality throughout Cuba. This heroic image of a soldier involved in a struggle to achieve revolution was what attracted and thus persuaded Cubans to side with the revolutionaries. If anything, the use of propaganda worked to camouflage Castro’s previous failures of using force, presenting the fight for revolution as an adventure and an act of great patriotism. The emotional appeal of Hitler’s Mein Kampf to all German peoples worked to establish a connection between Hitler and the lower middle class, persuading Germans that Nazism was right for Germany. Because of this, the importance of persuasion cannot be dismissed as it was for both leaders the most obvious way to connect indirectly to the people.
Lastly, though Hitler appeared to continue with methods of persuasion in order to establish an authoritarian state, Castro actually chose to revert back to using force. Hitler stated that “If out-voting them [Catholic and Marxist deputies] takes longer than outshooting them, at least the results will be guaranteed by their own constitution!”. From this we can suggest that Hitler had viewed the use of force in Munich with such failure that the use of persuasion was the only feasible way of achieving success. Indeed success in the Reichstag elections in 1932 followed by Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor confirmed Richard J. Evans’ claim that the Nazi vote was a “protest vote”, an “emotional appeal that emphasized little more than the Party’s youth and dynamism“. Again it would seem that it was this continuous emotional persuasion to each German individual which achieved success above and beyond any use of force the Nazis had made up to this point of time. To contrast, Castro relied on guerrilla warfare to defeat Batista’s forces. Castro’s success with physical force actually persuaded the US to support the Cuban opposition groups which propelled the Cubans to advance on Havana. What can be drawn from these instances is that the use of force and the use of persuasion were both important to the emergence of an authoritarian state. Hitler’s decision to abandon the use of force indicates that in the case of Germany, the use of force actually defeated the possibility of the emergence of an authoritarian state. However, in the case of the final stages of defeating Batista’s forces it would seem that both the use of force and the use of persuasion were interrelated with each other. The effects of success with force actually brought on more success for the Cuban revolutionaries as it thus persuaded the US to withdraw support for Batista and favour the revolutionaries.
To conclude, it is simply illogical to assume that the use of force is more important than persuasion to the emergence of authoritarian states. It would seem that both Hitler and Castro had significant success when they resorted to non-physical acts of persuasion. Hitler found success in an emotional appeal to each individual German, promising that with Nazism would come the restoration of Germany into a great Aryan nation. Likewise Castro’s effective use of propaganda restored the faith which had been lost due to the Granma attack. If anything, it is justifiable to argue that the use of force had no importance at all to the emergence of authoritarian states. This was certainly the case for Hitler’s Germany. Though the SA did keep order on the streets and increased Nazi support through terror tactics, this is not a strong enough claim to argue that the use of force had much significance. It is reasonable to assume that the Munich Putsch was a propaganda success, however this surely strengthens the argument that persuasion was more important, more relevant to the emergence of an authoritarian state in contrast to the failure of the use of force. Similarly for Castro, the use of guerrilla warfare was undoubtedly an important component to the emergence of a Cuban authoritarian state, however this was helped by persuading the West to break off relations with Batista’s government. In both cases where the use of force appeared to have had success, the use of persuasion was also at hand. For this reason, it can be argued that the use of persuasion was able to act independent of the use of force, however this could not work vice versa. It is also reasonable to accept that there were factors outside the uses of force and persuasion which were important to the emergence of an authoritarian state. For instance, the Great Depression gave the Nazis a new relevance in Germany and provided them the platform to play on people’s angers over the crippled state of Germany. In the case of Cuba, some might argue that the role of the US was pivotal to the creation of an authoritarian state because after all, the US ended dealings with Batista in 1957, severely reducing the capabilities of his forces. However I would argue that both these factors came as a result of the use of persuasion, since its key motive was to amass support. All in all, the use of persuasion is undoubtedly more important than any other factor. It allowed for the spread of ideology, which thus led to increased support for nationalist groups which in turn led to the emergence of an authoritarian state.
History is our Future 