The Novel 1984 Vs Nazi Germany

In 1984, George Orwell reveals a dystopian society in which fear is created by the existence of Big Brother. The novel is set in and around London, which is the main city of Airstrip One, a province of the country of Oceania. The technologically advanced world is used as a tool to control individuals. In Oceania people have no influence on their own lives, every positive emotion is suppressed and people live under misery, fear, and pressure. George Orwell used real-life historical outcomes of the time to suspect the future of Great Britain. George Orwell’s 1984 based on the theory of “Big Brother” closely resembles the events of Nazi Germany under dictator Adolf Hitler. Both governments and systems portrayed totalitarianism to keep power under control by the Big Brother (is watching you) in 1984 and the Nazi system in Germany. Both Big Brother and Adolf Hitler use brainwashing, torture, and surveillance to keep power in their own hands.

The protagonist of the novel, Winston Smith, is a lonesome person who is incompatible with the environment. Winston Smith seeks to challenge the Great Brother, to oppose the repression he finds out of his mind. His lover, Julia, is backing his resistance. Together they are against the order. They want to build a new life for themselves. However, they do not succeed. There is only one party that constitutes power, and there is no other political structure outside it. The government has four ministries. These include the Ministry of Truth and the Minister of Peace. The Ministry of Love, and the Ministry of Justice. Each ministry handles a specific duty, the Ministry of Truth deals with news, entertainment, education, and fine arts whereas the Ministry of Peace deals with war. The Ministry of Love deals with protecting law and order, and the Ministry of Justice is in charge of the economy. All aspects in the country, including jobs, are under the control of these four ministries.

The German government took over Nazi aspects in 1932 and George Orwell’s 1984 was published in 1949, just a few years after Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler became Chancellor in 1933 and eventually outlined plans for world domination and Jewish extermination. During Hitler's presence, he forced citizens to do what his party declared for everyone one. They controlled the nation, mass media, personality cults, economy, and the restriction of freedom of speech. Similar to Orwell’s 1984, Goldstein controlled Oceania and its economy along with its media and the individuals within. In both Nazi Germany under Hitler and Oceania by Goldstein society was being monitored excessively as the instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely. The power within both societies represents a totalitarian regime. INGSOC in 1984 is an example of totalitarianism. In the ‘twenties “totalitarianism” (as a category to describe the most brutal, highly mobilized, and technically intrusive states the world has yet known grew up to dominate the consciousness of Europe and America during the Cold War.

INGSOC was the government's system to control citizens’ thoughts, emotions, behavior, and language. It controlled one's life from dawn to evening. O’Brien is a member of the Part and works for the Ministry of Truth like Winston admits; “The party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We aren’t interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness; only power, pure power”. However, O’Brien’s views contradict themselves by standing with the Party when he is then seen during Winston’s arrest as the Thought Police, to cure Winston with torture. The party's slogan is written multiple times to evoke “WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH”. It is an example of totalitarian power which is used to influence its people to place reminders of its slogans and ideology everywhere. The Party destroys all sense of independence and individuality. Individuals are expected to obey the party members and no one can stand out. Independent thought is considered a crime and has severe punishment if caught. Books are prohibited and all written information is all controlled. Society is controlled through propaganda. All these things were also done by Hitler during his reign. The development of newspeak inculcates the worldview and mental habits desired by Hitler’s Reich regime and makes all the other modes of thought practically impossible. Winston in 1984 proves that this is the root of the “memory hole”. People within Nazi Germany were forced to act patriotic, attend church, separate themselves from minorities, play more roles in the military, and so on. The chants of Nazi Germany’s “Long Live our Republic” are equivalent to “Long live Big Brother” in Orwell’s 1984. These actions were to be followed by German citizens or else they were to be punished. Certain concepts were built and to be followed by citizens within each section of Germany, and disobeyers were followed and controlled under these laws. Ward states: Many times I saw groups whose clothing and appearance recalled the “paroles” of 1984

In 1984, when Winston Smith was trying to discover what life was like before Big Brother’s rule, he talks to an old worker in a pub found in the prole district. Their conversation, in the end, does not help Winston because the worker can remember only a few memories that are not related to what Winston needs to know, which is if the people were exploited by the capitalists. Although this also shows the true influence and greatness of totalitarianism. The totalitarian society systematically destroys social memory, first, through the forced disintegration of an individual's experience and, second, through the complete elimination of objective records. When Winston Smith interviews the old man he remembers nothing significant to the true question. “Do you feel that you have more freedom now than in the days before, during the brotherhood?”. This question requires someone to have a degree of understanding of social continuity and an attachment to that time, meaning remembering the “better days” (before Big Brother) to the current ones. The fact that the old man cannot remember, shows the ability of totalitarianism application in Oceania to deliberately destroy any past memories and stories. Within such a society there is no longer a sense of the past. The telescreens, the police (not the Thought Police) also have patrols of surveillance & helicopters that fly around examine through people's windows.

Language is one of the most important tools in the formation of the idea of ​​society and society. Newspeak is the euphemistic language used in the fictional “superstate”, Oceania, designed by its totalitarian government to spread political propaganda and doublespeak “simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them” are brought up to be used as a political and controlling device. Referring back to the book, 1984, it’s written 'It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children...and with good reason.. 'Child hero' was the phrase generally used-had overheard some compromising remark and denounced his parents to the thought police'. Is displays that possessing children into an organization called the Junior Spies, brainwashes and encourages the children to spy on their parents, and even report.

He sank his voice, like someone who is obliged for medical reasons to utter an obscenity. ‘’Down with Big Brother!’ Yes, I said that! Said it over and over again, it seems. Between you and me, old man, I’m glad they got me before it went any further. Do you know what I’m going to say to them when I go up before the tribunal? ‘ and you,’ I’m going to say, ‘thank you for saving me before it was too late.‘‘ ‘Who denounced you?’ said Winston. ‘It was my little daughter,’ said Parsons with a sort of doleful pride. ‘She listened at the keyhole. Heard what I was saying, and nipped o to the patrols the very next day. Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh? I don’t bear her any grudge for it. In fact, I’m proud of her. It shows I brought her up in the right spirit, anyway’.

A party member, who was reported by his own child in the dialogue, is proud of his situation. It shows a person who has been blindly devoted to his party and whose family has been torn apart because of it. The party can make its members feel uneasy and leave no room for them to behave naturally.

Hitler’s vision was making Germans believe his judgment. His main objective was to make an Aryan Race which to him referred to as “pure blood”. A race that included yellow-haired (blonde), blue-eyed Germans, who believe in the German Nation. Hitler had a solution to finalize the plan to become a success by diminishing the Jewish people, the communists, the disabled, and the homosexuals from the world. Hitler saw minority groups as ‘enemies’ of the state and/or the people (e.g., Jews, gays, and communists in Nazi Germany). He had reformed the German education/schooling system and curriculum by integrating German pro-Nazi teachers and lecturers and removal of all Jewish educators. This was to prepare the next generation of Germans to continue the belief of Aryan. Similar to Orwell’s 1984, the Junior Spies were brought up to correctly continue the Oceania superstate.

Goldstein, in 1984 was a member of the inner party that went rogue, he created the Brotherhood. Later revealed to us in the Book that the Party had created the Brotherhood to have an enemy to blame. The party had tortured civilians by putting them into the ministry of love since this was the place for law and order. The most well-known place in the Ministry of Love was Room 101. The room contains the worst fear of the person's life that was put to the test. When Winston was put into the cell; “‘You asked me once,’ said O’Brien, ‘what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.’ ”. Meaning the Party does not only apply physical torture to the captured rebels and criminals along with psychological torture as well. Like The Brotherhood, Hitler blamed the Jewish people in the world for his country's problems. Hitler tortured the Jews in Germany by putting them in concentration camps. Those camps included long hard labor, with the worst living conditions and especially harsh ways of killing the Jews and anyone else in the concentration camp for being morally corrupt. And the German quote: “Arbeit Macht Frei” (work sets you free) is a phrase that was used to disguise the true purpose of concentration camps similar to doublethink. There were 6 million Jews that were killed in the Holocaust. History does not know why Hitler had a grudge against the Jews, but the result of it is visible in modern times.

Nazi Germany had absolute surveillance everywhere. Big brother (is watching you) from 1984 and Nazis Germany leader, Adolf Hitler, have similar characteristics, both regimes mass murdered on a large scale. They have put death for what they and what they didn’t believe about the party. Hitler was killing for the race. Hitler's influence on 1984 is revealed in Orwells, letter to his friend, Willmett in 1944; All the national movements everywhere, even those that originate in resistance to German domination, seem to take non-democratic forms, to group themselves around some superhuman fuhrer (Hitler, Stalin, Salazar, Franco, Gandhi, De Valera are all varying examples) and to adopt the theory that the end justifies the means.