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Doesn't the example of the 1930s and then WW2 appear at least to suggest the opposite?
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It does to an extent in both directions. Of the main belligerent states in the 2nd WW, the totalitarian states in the 30s were rapidly expanding economically, militarily, and politically. The democratic ones were moribund.
The wartime bit is a bit tougher to say. The Soviets "won" but only by putting in resources of manpower which is close to unimaginable in a society where you could get rid of the leaders and where dissent was tolerated. Italy was totalitarian but collapsed. Germany was totalitarian and fought till the bitter end. Japan might have done so without the nuclear bombs being exploded over Nagasaki and Hiroshima. France, along with most of the rest of Western Europe, capitulated pretty quickly. Britain was never in a position to discover what its reaction to a German invasion would be thankfully, but I would imagine it would have been very similar to the rest. The US didn't enter the war until it was two years in.
Perhaps a better way of putting it would be that militarily, it is harder to beat a totalitarian state as the population has no way to stop something decided by the leaders. Even then though, Italy disproves that a bit. The UK fought on when it could have came to terms with the Nazis even though it had a form of democracy.
I think it's a bit of a glib thesis which would require very selective use of evidence to support it in all honesty.