The term was first applied to magistrates in the ancient Roman Republic who were given extraordinary powers temporarily to deal with emergencies, modern dictators from Adolf Hitler to Kim Jong-un.
[citation needed] Dictators typically use military force or political fraud to gain power, which they maintain through terror, coercion, and the suppression of basic civil liberties.
[citation needed] Characterized by Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany and Josef Stalin in the Soviet Union, the totalitarian and fascist dictators who came to power during the first half of the 20th century were significantly different from the authoritarian rulers of postcolonial Latin America.
Using fear and propaganda to quell public dissent, they harnessed modern technology to direct their country's economy to build ever more powerful military forces.
[citation needed] After World War II, the weakened governments of several countries in Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa fell to Soviet-style communist dictators.
During World War II, both the United States and Great Britain granted their executives extensive extraconstitutional emergency powers that ended with the declaration of peace.