on the means of communication. Central direction and control of the economy through state planning. In the book titled Democracy and Totalitarianism (1968), French analyst Raymond Aron outlined five criteria for a regime to be considered as totalitarian: A one-party state where one party has a monopoly on all political activity. A state ideology upheld by the ruling party that is given status as the only authority. State information monopoly that controls mass media for distribution of official truth. State controlled economy with major economic entities under the control of the state. Ideological terror that turns economic or professional actions into crimes. Violators are exposed to prosecution and to ideological persecution. According to this view, totalitarian regimes in Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union had initial origins in the chaos that followed in the wake of World War I and allowed totalitarian movements to seize control of the government while the sophistication of modern weapons and communications enabled them to effectively establish what Friedrich and Brzezinski called a "totalitarian dictatorship." Some social scientists have criticized Friedrich and Brzezinski's totalitarian approach, commenting that the Soviet system, both as a political and as a social entity, was in fact better understood in terms of interest groups, competing elites, or even in class terms, using the concept of the nomenklatura as a vehicle for a new ruling class (new class). These critics posit that there is evidence of the widespread dispersion of power, at least in the implementation of policy, among sectoral and regional authorities. For some followers of this pluralist approach, this was evidence of the ability of the regime to adapt to include new demands; however, proponents of the totalitarian model stated that the failure of the system to survive showed not only its inability to adapt but the mere formality of supposed popular participation. German historian Karl Dietrich Bracher, whose work is primarily concerned with Nazi Germany, posited that the "totalitarian typology" as developed by Friedrich and Brzezinski is an excessively inflexible model and failed to consider the "revolutionary dynamic" that for Bracher is at the heart of totalitarianism. Bracher posited that the essence of totalitarianism is the total claim to control and remake all aspects of society combined with an all-embracing ideology, the value on authoritarian leadership and the pretence of the common identity of state and society which distinguished the totalitarian "closed" understanding of politics from the "open"