Italian political leader who established the fascist regime in Italy (1922-1943). After the First World War (1914-1918), the crisis of liberal democracies, aggravated by the economic crash of 1929, favored a phenomenon that characterize interwar Europe: the rise of totalitarianism. His first demonstration was fascism, a name that comes from the Fasci di combattimento created in 1919 by Benito Mussolini, who seized power in 1922 and imposed a one-party dictatorship. The Italian fascist regime became the main ally of Adolf Hitler in World War II (1939-1945), and ran the same fate after the defeat.
Son of a humble family (his father was a blacksmith and his mother a teacher of school), Benito Mussolini studied teaching, after which he taught for too long periods ever since the teaching combined with continuous trips. He soon had problems with the authorities was expelled from Switzerland and Austria, where he had initiated contacts with the irredentist movement coming sectors.
In his first political affiliation, however, Mussolini approached the Italian Socialist Party, attracted by its more radical wing. Socialism, rather than its reform principles, caught at the revolutionary side. In 1910 he was appointed secretary of the provincial federation of Forli and soon became editor of the weekly La Lotta di Classe (Class struggle). The victory of the radical reformist wing of the Socialist Congress of Reggio Emilia, held in 1912, gave him greater role within the political party, which used to take charge of the Milanese newspaper Avanti, official organ of the party. Still, their views on the fighting of the "Red Week" of 1914 motivated certain restlessness between their companions of rows, frightened by their radicalism.
The division between Mussolini and the Socialists increased with the proclamation of neutrality which launched the match against Italy's entry into World War I in August 1914. Mussolini, who had been one of the most radical opponents of the war in Libya and Italy's participation in the Great War, suddenly changed his mind and openly advocated a hawkish stance, which earned him expulsion from the Socialist Party. In November of the same year he founded the newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia, of ultranationalist tendency. On the hesitations of the Italian Parliament concerning the entry into the war, he even wrote that "it would have been necessary to shoot a half dozen deputies" to give a "healthy" example to others. In September 1915 he joined voluntarily, and served in the army until he was wounded in combat in February 1917.
After the war, Benito Mussolini wanted to capitalize on the feeling of dissatisfaction that gripped the Italian company calling to combat left-wing parties, which pointed out as guilty of the defeat of Italy in the war. In 1919 he created the Fasci di combattimento, brackets agitation or armed groups acting with virtual impunity against leftist militants and were the germ of future National Fascist Party, founded by Mussolini himself in November 1921.
In a context marked by the collective frustration after useless sacrifices of the Great War, by the general discrediting of parliamentary government by the economic crisis and high social conflict (the increasing development of the workers 'and peasants' movement, with factory occupations and land , worried to, fearful of social revolution) upper classes, fascists raised their voices against democracy and the class struggle, which in his opinion weakened and divided the nation. Frontally opposed liberalism and Marxism, advocated national solidarity and collective action around the figure of a charismatic leader, and presented themselves as defenders of the homeland values, law and order, violently confronting the Italian left .
Mussolini got curry favor large landowners and being elected deputy in the elections of May 1921, but his party won only thirty-five of the five hundred seats that made the camera. The impotence of the government to remedy the situation in the country and the dissolution of Parliament paved the way for the so-called March on Rome, which began on October 22, 1922. The October 28, 1922, in a coordinated action, forty fascist thousand converged on the capital from different parts of Italy. Prime Minister Luigi Facta said the stadium site to deal with the threat that hung over the capital, and the refusal of King Victor Emmanuel III to sign the decree, resigned.
On 29 October, pressured by events, the king had signed the appointment of Benito Mussolini as prime minister. The fascist leader, who for some time had resigned his fierce Republicanism, recognizing the role of the monarchy, formed a coalition government on October 30, the same day the black shirts, as they were called fascists by color his uniform, made his triumphal entry into Rome. Relying on a calculated image of moderation, Mussolini got the support of a weak parliamentary chamber on November 25 awarded, provisionally emergency powers in order to restore order, getting in return the commitment of Mussolini pretended to respect the parliamentary system.
Mussolini in power
Fascism came to power with the support of conservative environments, principally agricultural landlordism, and thanks to its ability to present itself as the core of a block of conservative order, capable of defending the national bourgeoisie was strengthened democratic dangers represented mainly by the Socialists, with their communist faction. With the meeting for the first time in December 1922, the Grand Council of Fascism, strengthening the party, which soon would leave behind its extreme anticlericalism with overtures towards Catholicism and the Holy See, at the same time increasing repression began policy.
The new government found in the "squadristi" (the Voluntary Militia for National Security) a force imposed by violence and terrorism their positions in the campaign for the elections of April 1924, in which the National Fascist Party won 69 percent of the votes cast. From that moment, political violence was increasing, and gradually (although with greater impetus after the murder of Socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti in 1924) Benito Mussolini emerged as one power, annihilated any form of opposition and eventually transform its government in a dictatorship; in 1925 after being outlawed all political parties except the National Fascist Party, the rise of fascism State laws culminated in November 1926 Defense.
A lack of a coherent ideology, fascism developed a rhetoric that stressed a number of reasons: nationalism and the cult of power, hierarchy and the personality of the Duce ('Leader' or 'Boss', title adopted by Mussolini in 1924); militarism and colonial expansionism (with more than a century late); xenophobia and exaltation of a glorious past traced to the Roman Empire and the Roman world as a civilizing idea.
Abolished the right to strike and trade unions and employers, employers and workers they had to join the corporate organizations created by the government. The regime imposed a social structure of corporations annulling individual rights and gave the state complete control; work, economic life and leisure activities were regulated by the government, which paramilitarization of society, mass propaganda acts, control of the media and the education of children under a fascist creed joined. But even in the productive substantive changes they were given; economic power remained in the hands of those who already owned before World War I, and corporatism was reduced to an ideology facade.
Supported by a broad sector of the population and with the trump card in his favor that effective propaganda apparatus, the fascist regime invested heavily in infrastructure. But overall fascism, nuanced economically by a strong state intervention and a tendency to autarky which intensified after the crash of '29, was unable to provide throughout the 1920s and 1930s the intended and proclaimed progress material for the sake of which the Italians demanded the sacrifice of individual freedom.
Did know, however, replaced by widespread psychological euphoria, in which the Italian people was imbued with the conviction that his country was experiencing a new national revival. In support of that sentiment, and trying to make sensational successes in foreign policy with which magnetize the Italians, Benito Mussolini regained old expansionist projects, such as the conquest of Abyssinia (1935-1936) and the annexation of Albania (1939). Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) was considered by Il Duce as a natural area of expansion and logical connection between the Italian colony of Eritrea and Somalia; passivity of France and England before the invasion created a bad precedent.
Second world war
After coming to power of Adolf Hitler in Germany, Mussolini was approaching Nazism; in fact, the Nazi leader was inspired by his ideas, and both leaders admired each other. After a first friendship treaty in 1936, the alliance between Rome and Berlin was firmly established in the Pact of Steel (1939). Hitler and Mussolini openly gave military support to General Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), a prelude to the world war. The aggressive expansionist policy of Hitler finally provoked the reaction of French and British, who declared war on Germany after the occupation of Poland.
And the Second World War broke out (1939-1945), and after the first German victories, who judged definitive, validated his pact with Mussolini and Hitler declared war on the Allies (June 1940). However, the failure of the Italian Army unprepared in Greece, Libya and East Africa as well as the advance of Allied troops (which had already begun an unstoppable landing on the island of Sicily, from which invade Italy), led the Great Fascist Council to depose Mussolini (25 July 1943). The next day Victor Emmanuel III ordered their arrest and detention. Two months after the new Prime Minister Pietro Badoglio signed an armistice with the Allies.
Released by German paratroopers (September 12, 1943), yet Mussolini created a fascist republic controlled by Germany in northern Italy (the Republic of Salo, named after the city in which the government was headquartered) territories. In trials of Verona, Mussolini did convicting and executing those members of the Grand Council of Fascism that had promoted his dismissal, including his own son, Galeazzo Ciano. But the allied advance forced him to flee to Switzerland. He tried to cross the border disguised as a German officer, but was discovered in Dongo by members of the Resistance (27 April 1945), and the next day he was shot with his partner Clara Petacci; their bodies were exposed to public ridicule in the Loreto square of Milan.
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