Mussolini, Benito

B

Birth of Fascism

When the war ended in November 1918, Mussolini was at a loose end politically. His sympathies lay with the nation’s hundreds of thousands of war veterans, many unemployed and, most of all, disaffected with the liberal Italian state. While Italy was making the difficult transition from war to peace, and negotiations over the Treaty of Versailles were not going well for Italy, Mussolini published an appeal in Il Popolo d’Italia for the formation of a new political movement: the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian Combat Leagues). The founding meeting took place in Milan on March 23, 1919: 119 war veterans, nationalists, revolutionary syndicalists, and Futurists responded to the appeal, and 53 of them signed a programme of irredentist demands, claiming Fiume (now known as Rijeka) and Dalmatia—Italian-speaking areas but not part of Italy—and making socialist-inspired calls for an eight-hour working day, a minimum wage, ownership of businesses and public services by syndicates, and a reduction in the age of retirement. The anti-clerical and anti-monarchist tone came close to Mussolini’s initial ideas.

The programme in fact displeased Mussolini, who only published it in June, having sweetened it somewhat so as not to alarm the industrialists, who were financing the movement in the hope that it would combat the communists. At first Mussolini’s strategy was without success: by December 31 the Fascists numbered only 870, present in 31 cities. Mussolini suffered from competition with other nationalist groups, most notably that of the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio, whose supporters seized Fiume in September 1919. Mussolini, who had no role in this affair, lacked the prestige of the man of letters D’Annunzio. At the same time, the Fascist programme was still too radical, so much so that Giovanni Agnelli, director of FIAT, withdrew Mussolini’s subsidy. Mussolini’s name was on a list of candidates in Milan in the October 1919 legislative elections. However, he won only 5,000 votes and was not elected.

While events allowed the Fascist movement to survive—D’Annunzio’s Fiume campaign failed to gather momentum, and a wave of revolutionary strikes broke out in the summer of 1920. Mussolini was able to capture the nationalist constituency, supporting the workers’ strikes while criticizing the socialists, who became the targets of Fascist violence in the streets. At first Mussolini organized young Fascists, known as Black Shirts because of their distinctive uniform, into armed squads in order to defend Fascist rallies. Soon, however, these squads were to attack and disrupt the rallies of rival political factions, especially the socialists. Mussolini thus introduced wartime tactics into peacetime politics. In speeches and rallies Mussolini denounced inept politicians and incited nationalist fervour, hoping to seize the initiative from traditional opposition parties, notably the socialists. However, when Mussolini ran for parliament later that year—promising to replace the parliamentary monarchy with a republic, tax war profits, divide up the large estates for landless farmers, and grant women the vote—he failed miserably.

IV

Rise to Power

In 1920 and 1921 widespread labour strikes, riots over high food prices, and peasant land occupations and tax revolts swept the nation. Taking advantage of the chaos, Mussolini offered eager industrialists and landlords the services of his armed squads of Black Shirts as strikebreakers. Acting sometimes with the complicity of the government, the Fascist gangs also set about destroying left-wing and Catholic trade unions and socialist groups.

Over the course of 1921 Mussolini skilfully played a duplicitous political game. On one hand, he operated within parliamentary channels, transforming his movement into the Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF; National Fascist Party) and keeping under wraps or eliminating the more radical Fascist aims in order to attract support from the influential nationalist movement and business interests. On the other hand, he openly threatened to overthrow the parliamentary government if it sought to suppress Fascist groups. Far from condemning him, the weakening liberal government sought to enlist Mussolini’s support. In preparation for the 1921 elections, the government took the Fascist Party into an electoral coalition, and 35 Fascists, including Mussolini, were elected to parliament in May’s vote. The Italian government believed Mussolini would abandon his violent tactics once he entered parliament, and that, in the meantime, his gangs were useful in cracking down on socialist activity.

However, Mussolini’s overriding ambition was to seize power, and the opportunity came in the form of the Italian political crises of 1922. Over the course of the year several successive parliamentary governments collapsed, while Mussolini’s Fascist rallies grew more popular and vocal. In October, as another Cabinet fell apart, Mussolini threatened to order his tens of thousands of armed Black Shirts to occupy Rome if he were not asked to form the new government. Bands of Fascists began moving towards the capital in what would become known as the March on Rome. The king, Victor Emmanuel III, at first leaned towards declaring a state of emergency and sending the army to confront the Fascists, but powerful interest groups, state officials, and army leaders convinced him that Mussolini should be given the chance to end what they considered the growing disorder of parliamentary rule. Consequently, at the end of October the king formally invited Mussolini to create a new governing coalition as prime minister. Mussolini thus began his rule as the legal head of government even though the Fascist Party had never obtained more than 15 per cent of the national vote.

V

Mussolini’s Rule

In power but not yet dictator, Mussolini continued to exploit conservative fears that he was the only alternative to political chaos or, even worse, a socialist revolution. He pushed through a new electoral law that virtually guaranteed the Fascists a two-thirds majority in parliament following the 1924 elections. When opponents protested, they were intimidated with violence. After a high-placed gang of Black Shirts kidnapped and murdered outspoken socialist member of parliament Giacomo Matteotti in June 1924, widespread outrage almost toppled Mussolini from power. However, the opposition was in disarray and the king was unwilling to remove him. Faced with the choice between standing behind his Black Shirts or losing their loyalty, Mussolini acted decisively. Speaking before parliament in January 1925, he took full, personal responsibility for the actions of the Black Shirts—including all violence and murders committed in the name of Fascism—and affirmed that he alone could bring order to Italy. Over the next two years he disbanded parliament, dissolved all political parties except for his PNF, stiffened police measures against dissenters, set up the Special Tribunal for the Defence of the State to try political opponents, established complete censorship of the press, and otherwise curtailed civil liberties. Mussolini, Il Duce, was now the dictator of Italy.

From 1925 to 1940 Mussolini’s major ambition was to re-establish Italy as a great European power. He stabilized the Lira, the national currency, revamped government services such as the railways, passed social legislation, and launched campaigns for economic self-sufficiency to reduce Italy’s dependency on imports. He established national corporations or councils representing employers and workers to arbitrate on labour disputes, ostensibly in the national interest, but mainly favouring business. He also made Italy a decisive player in international diplomacy. All of this was possible, Mussolini claimed, because he had overcome the class conflicts and ideological schisms of the liberal era, and had unified the Italian people behind him.

There is some truth to this. Most landowners, industrialists, and middle-class people saw Mussolini as Italy’s saviour because he brought social order and enacted pro-business policies. However, the majority of working-class Italians saw their standard of living drop after the Fascist government gave free rein to businesses, and many remained hostile. So did many Catholics when Mussolini banned many of their organizations. The peasant population, numerous in this still rural country, was divided: landowners favoured Mussolini, while the landless remained indifferent, if not hostile to him, especially after his government halted land reform measures in 1923.

A

Social Policies

Mussolini wooed mass support with fresh social policies and political propaganda. Under the slogan “Make Way for Youth”, the dictatorship established an all-encompassing mass organization for schoolchildren, young workers, and university students. In 1927 he drew up a labour charter that promised workers new rights as well as new responsibilities to the state. Though the Fascist state outlawed strikes, it recognized the right of its official trade unions to bargain collectively and it barred employer lockouts. It also set up a vast system of clubs for working people, called the dopolavoro, which organized leisure-time activities. Slowly, the dictatorship moved towards the goal of establishing what it called the “corporatist system of representation”. In this system, all of the different interests of society, from big business to workers and shopkeepers and artisans, would negotiate their differences in view of the paramount interests of the state. Over the course of his rule, however, Mussolini allowed no debate about his strong support for free enterprise and disregard for workers’ rights.

Reaching out to the Catholic Church, in February 1929 Mussolini concluded the Lateran Treaty with Pope Pius XI. Under the treaty, Italy recognized the independent sovereignty of the Vatican, paid reparations for the loss of autonomy the Vatican suffered in the 19th century, and made Roman Catholicism the official state religion. The once-anticlerical dictator thereby broke with the western liberal tendency to separate church and state. In turn, the Catholic Church supported Mussolini’s regime more or less officially. The Catholic hierarchy was especially enthusiastic about Mussolini’s attempts to raise Italian birthrates and his anti-feminist acts, including laws that made abortion a heavily punishable crime against the state and regulations discouraging women from working.

B

Cult of Il Duce

The glue that held the Fascist regime together was Mussolini’s cult of personality. Fascism never developed into a coherent doctrine, recognizing itself best by what it was against: Fascism meant anti-liberalism, anti-socialism, anti-feminism, and, after 1938, anti-Semitism. For the general public, Fascism acquired real meaning in the larger-than-life figure of Il Duce. A vast propaganda machine directed by the Ministry of Popular Culture churned out newsreels, radio broadcasts, and newspaper stories glorifying Mussolini. The Fascist Party choreographed huge rallies at Mussolini’s Roman headquarters at Piazza Venezia, where Mussolini harangued the crowds with rousing speeches. A common propaganda axiom held that “Il Duce is always right”, and that youth should learn to “Believe, obey, fight”. Mussolini’s posturing lent itself to a kaleidoscope of propagandist images: Il Duce as family man, photographed with his five children; Renaissance talent playing the violin; hero of the peasants, harvesting grain bare-chested; brave commander-in-chief flying a fighter plane. Mussolini reached the peak of his personal popularity when he led Italy to victory over the Ethiopian empire in May 1936 (see Italo-Ethiopian War).

Starting in the mid-1930s, Mussolini became increasingly absorbed with the goal of establishing a new Roman Empire that would reinstate Italian civilization around the Mediterranean Sea. To that end, the Italian army invaded Ethiopia in October 1935. Although the League of Nations condemned this egregious violation of international law and imposed economic sanctions to stop it, the Italians waged a vicious, if brief, war. Driving out Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, Mussolini incorporated Ethiopia into the Italian Empire in May 1936.