Totalitarian architecture

Totalitarian architecture is a term utilized to refer to "the officially approved architecture of dictatorships, over-centralized governments, or political groups intolerant of opposition, especially that of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union, etc. As an international style, it often drew on simplified Neoclassicism, and sculpture based on 19th-century realism and Classicism for massive oversized State monuments." Such architecture was intended to support the leaders and the ideology of the regime. Beyond Neoclassicism, which is not unique for totalitarian systems, the descriptions of totalitarian architecture sometimes focus on brutalism, often in the context of Le Corbusier and his associations with Benito Mussolini. Other authors have upheld brutalism and socialist realism as modernist art forms which exist beyond simply being physical manifestations of totalitarian ideology. Though many architects and architectural historians believe that significant similarities exist in the planning and construction of buildings within totalitarian regimes, it is frequently not considered a unique architectural style.