The first World War left the entire world in a state of chaos, suffrage as well as separation; this was all mainly centred in Europe. The European countries were most effected by this war because it was so close to home. Italy, being such a new country saw these effects in an extreme way. The already regionalised country became more and more separated and saw all the crippling societal results of this war. Benito Mussolini was able to capitalize on the state the country found itself in.
Mussolini and his fascist ideals were able to overthrow Italy and turn it into a dictatorship and lead it into the second World War behind Hitler’s Germany. Mussolini was able to successfully turn Italy into a dictatorship under a fascist regime because of the country’s internally divided war-torn society as well as the weak state of Italy’s minority governments which could not unite to oppose fascism and finally because of his ability to appeal to this country through a false sense of security and nationalism.
In the troubled postwar period Mussolini organized his followers in the Fasci di combattimento, which advocated aggressive nationalism as well as violently opposed the communists and socialists. Amid strikes, social unrest, and parliamentary breakdown, Mussolini preached forcible restoration of order and practised terrorism with armed groups. In 1921 he was elected to parliament and the National Fascist party was officially organized. Backed by nationalists and propertied interests, in October 1922, Mussolini sent the Fascists to March on Rome .
King Victor Emmanuel III permitted them to enter the city and called on Mussolini to form a cabinet. This created the fascist regime under Mussolini. The fascist regime turned society into individuals who would just obey and distrust reason as well as understand violence as an essential tool to order. Ideally the country would transform into a totalitarian state; where the government would have total control over the lives of individuals and this would mean that anything is justified if it serves the states ands. Fascism emphasized victory, glorified war, is cruel to the weak, and is irrational and intolerant.
Mussolini used the condition of the country to his advantage in his journey to becoming the dictator of Italy. Italian fascism had at least four principal phases. Until 1925, it was political action seeking an ideology. Mussolini had himself been variously a socialist, a pacifist, an internationalist, a war hawk, an anarchist, a statist, and, most of all, a pragmatist. When he sought an ideology he found none to satisfy him. When he came to power after the 1922 March on Rome he found himself in charge of the state but without a guiding and inspirational system of thought.
The first phase lasted until the first fascist state was founded in 1925. Fascism was not clearly developed in theory and Mussolini was able to use this to appeal to all the groups irrespective of status. Italy was a country separated amongst itself and there was a great sense of loss after the first World War which set the stage for Mussolini’s March on Rome. There was a sense of disgust within Italy at the terms of the peace treaties, they did not feel they acquired the territories they deserved.
During this period after the war, the economy was chaotic, the government was corrupt and there was little to no order, and when times become bad, extreme political viewpoints begin to become attractive. Mussolini appealed to all of Italy with his ambition to restore ancient greatness and follow in the empirical footsteps of their history. “Fascism then became a product of a general feeling of anxiety and fear among the middle-class of post-war Italy, arising out of a convergence of interrelated economic, political, and cultural pressures.
Italy had no long-term tradition of parliamentary compromise, and public discourse took on an inflammatory tone on all sides. ” Under the banner of this authoritarian and nationalist ideology, Mussolini was able to exploit fears in an era in which post-war depression, the rise of a more militant left, and a feeling of national shame and humiliation stemming from its mutilated victory’ at the hands of World War I peace treaties seemed to converge.
Fascism emerged as a “third way” – as Italy’s last hope to avoid imminent collapse of weak’ Italian liberalism or communist revolution. While failing to outline a coherent program, it evolved into a new political and economic system that combined corporatism, totalitarianism, nationalism, and anti-communism in a state designed to bind all classes together under a capitalist system, but a new capitalist system in which the state seized control of the organization of vital industries.
The liberal and socialist opposites in Italy were separately far too weak to compete with the march of Mussolini’s fascist regime on the country. The two were also incompatible and could not unite to try to combat this impending government. Mussolini was backed by wealthy industrialists and landowners as well because of their own fears of socialist reforms. Also support came, for the first time in government, from Pope Pius XI and the Vatican who saw the Fascists as an opportunity to normalize state – church relationships.
There was such an intense lack of faith in Italy’s institutions that the support of the church was seen in such high regard and helped push many middle-class towards Mussolini. After the March on Rome (October 22) King Victor Emmanuelle, who feared a civil war offered the position of Prime Minister as well as the whole government to Benito Mussolini. The violence of Mussolini’s Blackshirts created this threat of civil war and intimidated their opponents.
This lead to the complicity of the police and the army and by 1925, Italy was a Totalitarian State, ruled by a fascist dictator, with all personal freedoms abolished, and all opposition eliminated. The king remained the Head of State, but with Mussolini Italy moved into dictatorship. The fascists strengthened their position in many ways. They continued to entice members from all classes in society and continued to use violence against their political opponents in order to intimidate them. The Vatican influence drastically strengthened their push to totalitarianism.
The creation of the Acerbo Law (July 1923) also created a stronger position by stating that the party of coalition which won an election was to be automatically awarded 2/3 of the seats in parliament, this made an incredibly strong government possible. At the end of 1924 Mussolini legally assumed complete control of Italy and introduced several repressive measures to ensure this control. Political parties, trade unions and even freedom of press was all banned. Elected local officials were replaced by officials appointed by the central government and a special court was set up to deal with political crimes’.
These things all strengthened Mussolini and the State rather then the Fascist party. Mussolini actually began his political career as a socialist and then became attracted to fasces, the ancient Roman symbol of the life-and-death power of the state, bundles of the lictor’s rods of chastisement which, when bound together, were stronger then when they were apart – reflecting the intellectual debt that fascism owed to socialism and presaging the symbolism of the renewed Roman imperium Mussolini promised to bring about.
Mussolini claimed that it would help strengthen a relatively new nation (which had been united only in the 1860’s in the Risorgimento), although some would say that, like Lenin, he wished for a collapse of society that would bring him to power. Italy was a member of the Triple Alliance, thereby allied with Imperial Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Mussolini became very skilled at the art of propaganda and public persuasion and was able to gain popularity among ex-servicemen, students, the middle-class and to all anti-Communists.
Perhaps the single-most strengthening move was the Lateran Accords of 1929. Mussolini concluded a treaty with the Pope and the Catholic Church. He gave the Vatican to the Pope who had previously lost Papal estates and also declared Catholicism the only state religion and made it a compulsory school subject. This gained great support from the church making Mussolini very popular among a majority of Italians who were devout Catholics. Italy had a small number of overseas colonies (only 3) and wanted more.
Mussolini declared the Mediterranean Sea as “Mare Nostrum” – Our Sea and then obviously threatened Britain and France’s trade routes. After this declaration to follow up his newly found power, Mussolini decides to invade Ethiopia in 1935. Emperor Selassie appealed to the League of Nations but gets little support and the economic sanctions where not affecting Italy. Mussolini was at first cool to Adolf Hitler and opposed his designs on Austria. However, Mussolini’s diplomatic isolation after his attack (1935) on Ethiopia led to a rapprochement with Germany.
In 1936, Hitler and Mussolini aided Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War; the Rome-Berlin Axis was strengthened by a formal alliance (1939), which Mussolini’s son-in-law and foreign minister, Galeazzo Ciano, helped to create. In 1938, Mussolini allowed Hitler to annex Austria and helped bring about the Munich Pact; in April 1939, he ordered the Italian occupation of Albania. Under German pressure, he inaugurated an anti-Semitic policy in Italy, which found little popular response.
The Ethiopian and Spanish Wars had diminished Mussolini’s popularity, and he did not enter World War II until France was falling in June, 1940. The failure of Italian arms in Greece and Africa and the imminent invasion by the Allies of the Italian mainland at last caused a rebellion within the Fascist party. In July, 1943, the Fascist grand council refused to support his policy-dictated by Hitler- and the king dismissed him and had him placed under arrest.
He was freed two months later by a daring German rescue party and became head of the Fascist puppet government set up in Northern Italy by Hitler. Italy unlike the rest of Europe was greatly affected by the first World War and the state that the country was left in made it vulnerable to the extremist view of Mussolini and was easily transformed into a dictatorship and lead into a fateful alliance with Germany.
Mussolini and his fascist ideals were able to overthrow Italy and turn it into a dictatorship nd lead it into the second World War behind Hitler’s Germany. Mussolini was able to successfully turn Italy into a dictatorship under a fascist regime because of the country’s internally divided war-torn society as well as the weak state of Italy’s minority governments which could not unite to oppose fascism and finally because of his ability to appeal to this country through a false sense of security and nationalism.