Mussolini and Fascism in Italy: summary of the ideology and phases from the rise to the fall. How fascism was born, foreign policy and the alliance with Hitler.
Mussolini and fascism
Benito Mussolini , founder of Fascism , also known to history as the Duce , was born on 29 July 1883 in Predappio (Forlì).
Mussolini was the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Italy, he assumed dictatorial powers as well as the title of head of government, prime minister, secretary of state. At a young age he sided with the revolutionary socialists and later became the leading figure of the socialist party and in 1912 he took over the direction of the socialist newspaper ” L’Avanti! “.
In November 1914, finding himself in conflict with the ideas of the party, he resigned from Avanti and founded his own newspaper ( Il popolo d’Italia ) and, siding with Italian intervention in the war, he was expelled from the Socialist Party. At the end of the First World War , Mussolini returned to the direction of his newspaper and in March 1919 he founded the Fasci italiani di combattimento (1919).
The Fasci were mainly joined by nationalists and ex-combatants and the movement’s programme was very confused: it was characterised by nationalist, republican and anticlerical positions, and by the polemic against liberals and capitalism.
But the dominant element was the decisive aversion to socialism. The fascists participated in the elections on November 16, 1919, presenting themselves only in Milan and obtaining less than 5000 votes. The following year, it was the social unrest that offered fascism the opportunity to increase its consensus. Mussolini therefore argued that the union initiatives had to be opposed with force.
For this reason, in 1921, he organized action squads that, especially in the Emilian countryside, violently repressed the farmers’ protest. The fascist squads were mainly composed of ex-combatants, unemployed people and adventurers. They were the protagonists of systematically organized violence: they destroyed the headquarters of the laborers’ organizations, they hit those who had distinguished themselves in the fight against the landowners, the opponents were beaten with truncheons or were forced to drink castor oil, a strong purgative. The police often did not intervene, in fact in some cases they were complicit. The violence of the squads was justified in the name of the revolutionary danger. As we have seen, the landowners and industrialists supported Mussolini.
However, the fascists obtained the widest consensus from the middle classes, that is, from those who were neither proletarian nor bourgeois: small landowners, merchants, employees, teachers, etc. These subjects did not feel represented by the liberals and feared the communist revolution.
In 1921, to gain more consensus, Mussolini transformed the movement into a party: the National Fascist Party (PNF) was born. In 1921, Mussolini ran for election to form a new government; in short, it was thought that the fascists could oppose the communists and the unions and that their violence could slow down the strikes of workers and farmers. Despite the crisis of the socialist party, he failed to obtain the leadership of the country.
The Rise of Mussolini: Summary
On October 24, Mussolini gathered thousands of Blackshirts in Naples , then formed an army and decided to take power by marching on Rome (October 28, 1922).
With the March on Rome, King Victor Emmanuel III gave Mussolini the task of forming a new government (30 October 1922). The supporters of the first Mussolini government (1922-1924) were fascists, liberals and until 1923 also popular. In the first two years of government Mussolini respected the laws and this phase is called legalitarian. But the fascist squads continued in their fight against the socialists. In 1923 the squads were institutionalized through the creation of the Voluntary Militia for National Security (MVSN): an armed force under the command of the Duce. The elections of 6 April 1924 also took place in a climate of tension, violence and irregularities: one candidate was even killed and many anti-fascists were prevented from voting. Despite this, the opposition obtained a significant result, 35.1% of the votes, but the majority went to the fascist list, on which important liberal personalities had also presented themselves. On May 30, 1924, the violence and very serious irregularities that had occurred during the elections were denounced by the socialist Giacomo Matteotti in a courageous and harsh speech to the Chamber.
Ten days later, Matteotti was kidnapped and murdered by the squadristi. His body was found in a wood near Rome on August 6, 1924. The responsibility of Mussolini and his collaborators was immediately clear and the representatives of the anti-fascist parties abandoned the parliament in protest, gathering on the Aventine . The deputies on the Aventine hoped to convince King Victor Emmanuel III to intervene against Mussolini to restore legality but the king did nothing. Mussolini in a famous speech to the Chamber of Deputies, on January 3, 1925, assumed full political and moral responsibility for what had happened.
Fascism: summary
From this moment on, fascism definitively transformed into a dictatorship and a totalitarian state, this because Mussolini had full powers over the state. The following year, all opposition parties were dissolved, all anti-fascist newspapers were closed. The transformation of the liberal state into a totalitarian state was completed with a new electoral law (1928) with which he entrusted the Grand Council of Fascism with the task of presenting a single list of candidates: citizens could no longer choose their representatives, they could only approve or not the proposed list. Free elections were thus replaced by plebiscites. Furthermore, a secret police was born, the OVRA ( Opera di Vigilazione per la repressione degli antifascists ).
Mussolini: Foreign Policy
Mussolini’s foreign policy was nationalist and colonialist : nationalist because it was aggressive towards other European powers (fascism wanted to impose supremacy over other nations); colonialist because it engaged the country in the conquest of new colonies. For Mussolini, colonial expansion would have given prestige to Italy and would have solved the serious problem of unemployment, offering Italians new lands to work. The first objective of the fascist project was Ethiopia.
The alliance with Hitler
After the victory in Ethiopia, he approached Hitler ‘s Germany and with whom he signed the Pact of Steel (1939). In fact, Germany had not disapproved of the conquest and had supported Italy with supplies of weapons and raw materials.
In October 1936, a friendship pact was signed: the Rome-Berlin Axis. The alliance was strengthened the following year, when Italy also joined a German-Japanese pact against international communism: the Anti-Comintern Pact. The most serious consequence of the alliance between Mussolini and Hitler was the introduction of racial laws against the Jews in Italy in 1938. These laws raised much perplexity in public opinion and the harsh condemnation of the Catholic Church and paved the way for the crisis of the regime that would end in the Second World War . Between the two dictators, however, the alliance was strengthened in 1939 with the Pact of Steel. With it, the two nations mutually committed themselves in the event of a war.
