Before a nation can be rebuilt, its citizens need to understand how it was destroyed in the first place: how… — Anne Applebaum

Of all the different kinds of damage done by the Second World War, the hardest to quantify is the psychological and emotional damage. The brutality of the First World War created a generation of fascist leaders, idealistic intellectuals, and expressionist artists who twisted the human form into inhuman shapes and colors in an attempt to convey their disorientation. But... the Second World War entered far more deeply... Constant daily violence shaped the human psyche...

[M]any have tried to describe what it feels like to endure the disintegration of one's entire civilization, to watch the buildings and landscapes of one's childhood collapse, to understand that the moral world of one's parents and teachers no longer exists and that... respected national leaders have failed. ...[N]ational failure had profound effects, especially on young people, many of whom... concluded everything... once thought true was false. ...Many ...did resemble Hannah Arendt's "totalitarian personality ...completely isolated ...who derives ...sense of having a place in the world ...only ...to ...membership in the party."

Although... most often used to describe and Stalin's Soviet Union, the word "totalitarian"—totalitarismo—was... [i]nvented by one of his critics... and adapted... by Benito Mussolini... [who] offered... the best definition... "Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state." ...A totalitarian regime ...bans all institutions apart from ...officially approved ...thus has one political party ...educational system ...artistic creed ...centrally planned economy ...unified media, and one moral code. ..."[O]utside of it [the state] no human or spiritual values can exist..."