Imagine you are an alien who wanders into both countries.
- Nazi Germany, you see:
- military on the street asking for papers
- secret police monitoring everyone
- picture of supreme leader hung up everywhere
- dissidents sent to labor camps
- USSR, you see:
- military on the street making sure you comply
- secret police monitoring everyone
- picture of supreme leader hung up everywhere
- dissidents sent to labor camps
Some people think Nazi Germany's system was far different than a communist country. On the things I care about it wasn't.
Yes, they was very similar. Both was socialist countries leaded by socialist party.
As for military on the streets, checking something, in USSR it was police, not military. Meanwhile now police forces in Russia are few times larger than they was in pre-WWII USSR. As for secret police monitoring everyone, really it have no resources that is available now for big corporations, so they physically could not monitor everyone, they mostly rely on neighbours snitching (often false) on each other. I think in Germany it was nearly the same.
Now TPTB really have resources to literally monitor everyone. With high probability you have such snitching device in your pocket. Police forces are many times larger. They also have numerous voluntary civilian snitches that will snitch on you not because of envy or anger as it was in the past, but just because they believe they do a good thing for a greater good snitching on you. And you have corporations logos everywhere, as representation of TPTB supreme leadership. As for camps, they don't even need to send you somwhere and organize a guards, fence, roof and feeding. They just lock you in your home. Much cheaper and much less effort.
It is now a big question if Third Reich and USSR was really worse on that things.