Once a dictatorship has been set up it cannot be got rid of again from within: Germany and Italy were set free from without. All attempts from within came to grief. This might be a coincidence. But if we call to mind the way in which a terrorist régime operates with the means of total planning and bureaucracy, it becomes evident how fundamentally insurmountable is the machine that maintains itself almost automatically, and in which everything that appears to oppose it from within is obliterated. The means of modern technology give the de facto ruler a tremendous preponderance of power, if he makes ruthless use of all the means at his disposal. There is just as little chance of overthrowing such a régime as there is of the inmates of a penitentiary overthrowing the governor and his staff. The machine reaches the peak of impregnability when the terror includes all, in such a manner that those who do not wish it become terrorised terrorists, killing in order not to be killed themselves. Hitherto such despotic terrorist régimes were local. Thus they could be annihilated from without, if not from within. If, however, the peoples should fail to absorb this into their consciousness and into their concern for the future, if they should all slip unawares into such a dictatorship in the shape of a world dictatorship, there would be no further prospect of liberation. The danger of this state of affairs coming about is all the more acute when people feel safe from it, and suppose, for example, that only the servile Germans could find themselves in such a situation. If the same fate befalls the rest of the world, there will be no more outside. The rigidification of the whole in total planning, stabilised by terror, would annihilate liberty and mean the road to increasing ruin for all.

— Karl Jaspers