“Where do we come from, what are we, where are we going?”: Paul Gauguin's despairing – or flippant – painting title of 1897 asks historical questions. The first chapter offers one set of answers, with regard to the Italian and German dictatorships, to Gauguin's first question. The second seeks to explore his second and third: the nature, structures, and dynamics of the dictatorships themselves. The first concentrates above all on broader historical forces; the second emphasizes the roles of the dictators and of their ideologies. If read sequentially, the two chapters offer a comparative overview that ranges from innocent beginnings in the 1860s to bloody end in 1945.