02— Fascist ideology.

Regimes that severely restrict democracy vary widely; there is no definition that can be applied indiscriminately to all countries. But even if they have their individual characteristics, they share a number of common features. Such as the restriction of human rights; such as the replacement of a multi-party system and a culture of debate by a single strong personality, a charismatic leader who symbolises the system; and such as a strong, repressive state apparatus (army, paramilitary forces, bureaucrats, police, gendarmerie) that strikes at those it considers enemies. 

Hungarism, Arrow Cross movement (Budapest, 1944) [Photo: Fortepan / Tivadar Lissák]

These governments try to control people's public and private lives: the system determines who you can meet, marry and spend your leisure time with. And finally, autocratic regimes need minorities, defined as enemies, to blame and hurt for the country's problems to be abused and harmed. The solution offered is the forcible dispossession of property and rights at their expense, which of course has its beneficiaries from other social groups.

March (Budapest VII. Rákóczi Street, the mouth of Klauzál Street on the right; 1941) [Photo: Fortepan / Zsolt Dobóczi]

Arrow Cross members putting up a poster, among them, second from the left, the defected Minorite monk András Kun (Budapest XII., 1944) [Photo: Fortepan / Fortepan]

Christmas window display of the Nagykovácsy Department Store (Budapest V. Kossuth Lajos utca 9., 1941) [Photo: Fortepan / Balázs Mihályi]

Buy only from Christian merchants (Budapest, 1941) [Photo: Fortepan / Tivadar Lissák]

In 1933, Adolf Hitler and his party, the NSDAP, came to power in Germany. Hitler believed that the world was run by an international Jewish conspiracy and that his country, as the representative of the "advanced, superior Aryan race", was the only state capable of saving European civilisation from them.

Budapest International Fair, exhibition area around the Sió Fairy Tale Fountain (Budapest City Park, 1941) [Photo: Fortepan / Ferenc Barbjerik]

Hungarian Village - Long Live Szálasi (Hungary, 1944) [Photo: Fortepan / Pál Berkó]

The economic crisis that followed the First World War also hit Germany hard, and Hitler also blamed the Jews for this decline. Initially, he had only wanted to expel them from the country, but the expansionist policies of the Third Reich brought more and more territory under German control, and success extended the Führer's murderous plans.

Poster - Never Again! (Hungary, 1944) [Photo: Fortepan / Pál Berkó]

The recording was made in front of the Headquarters of the Vasas Trade Union (Budapest VIII. Magdolna /Koltói Anna/ utca 5-7., 1945) [Photo: Fortepan / Sándor Bauer]