Edwards definition of a reign of terror is " that a reign of terror is essentially a system .
of government which deliberately uses terror for "social control": "It is a reign not an .
anarchy" (Edwards 1979 175). The aim is to control society through fear: "The most .
important mechanism of a terror is not the killing of people, but the threatening of .
them" (O"Kane 1991 37).
Over the last hundred years terror has been used by states such as Germany and .
Russia to either to enforce governmental rule or to create a country free of .
imperfection. This essay will cover where how and how effectively terror has been .
used to influence and change states and races over the last hundred years.
After Hitler's rise to power, his New Order in Germany introduced .
measures to deal with Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Ukrainians and other "racial .
undesirables".
The Red Terror in Russia differs from the genocide in Germany. Hitler strove to .
"reshape the human composition of an entire continent" (Mazower 1998 163) bringing .
German speaking people back to the Fatherland. In Russia the newly instated .
government used terror to maintain the recent change in the state. Terror was used to .
suppress counter- revolutionaries who would try and change the government once .
again.
Hitler obsession with the policy of lebensraum (living space) German-Soviet .
agreements led to the "re-call to the Fatherland" this drew 50,000 German speakers .
from Lithuania and 130,000 from Bessarabia. Non Germans were forced out of the .
country or into ghettos or work camps. The Untermenschen (sub-humans) posed an .
dilemma for Germany. Were they a necessary labour force or a biological threat to be .
exterminated, if the first is true what then is the role of the pure Aryan German were .
they to "lord it over Slavic helots, manning estates of thousands of serfs" (Mazower 1998 163) .
Special Death's Head regiments carried out executions of Jewish elders, burned .