Italian Fascism: Rise and Dictatorship After World War I

Italian Fascism in Post-War Italy

The end of the Great War left Italy with serious human and economic consequences: 700,000 men died, many industries were left unused, and high foreign debt had increased inflation. For many Italians, the cost of living was increasing while wages fell, and the number of unemployed never stopped growing. Also, the peace accords were a great disappointment as the Allies agreed to surrender to Italy Trentino, Trieste, and Istria, but not Fiume and Dalmatia, as had been agreed in the Treaty of London (1915). This started to spread the idea that Italy's participation had been a hoax, and that was gaining support for irredentism. This situation led to extreme political instability: the governments of the monarchy did not get a sufficient majority, and between 1919 and 1922, five different governments occurred. Across the economic crisis generated strong social tension. In northern Italy, a strike movement developed that presented revolutionary targets. Often, farmers occupied the lands of large landowners, and workers seized many factories. All these movements were repressed, but fear of the outbreak of a social revolution began to scare the more conservative classes.

The Rise of Fascism

In this situation of crisis appeared the figure of Benito Mussolini, who in 1919 created the *Fasci Italiani di Combattimento*, called the Blackshirts. These were paramilitary groups that pretended to curb the rise of the labor movement, based on violently attacking unionized workers and their leaders. In 1921, the *Fasci* became the National Fascist Party, which identified itself as the most effective action to stop the revolutionary movements in Italy. Its program was based on the construction of a strong state that would ensure private property and an expansionist foreign policy. The new party had the support of the petty bourgeoisie, the financing of agricultural and industrial landowners, and the tolerance of the Catholic Church and the monarch himself, Victor Emmanuel III. In the elections of 1922, the Fascist Party won only 22 Members of Parliament out of 500. But that same year, with 300,000 Blackshirts, they crushed the general strike of socialist and anarchist unions. Mussolini demanded the King hand over the government and, to demonstrate force, organized a march on Rome with his Blackshirts. In October, the monarch, pressured by conservative forces, appointed him head of government.

The Fascist Dictatorship

Between 1922 and 1925, Mussolini developed a process of restriction of freedoms and persecution of his opponents (Socialists, Communists, and Christian Democrats) but maintained the fiction of a parliamentary regime. After the 1924 elections, won by Mussolini's coalition through violence towards his opponents, he introduced an authoritarian system. The state and the Fascist Party were fully identified in a regime in which Mussolini had full powers and called himself *Duce*. Political parties were banned, their leaders persecuted and imprisoned, and the parliament replaced by a Chamber of Fasci. Strikes were banned, and unions were substituted by a corporate system for offices, consisting of representatives of workers, employers, and the state. The state exercised strong control through the party, which directed all aspects of social life and dominated the media (radio, press, cinema). It also controlled the economy and supported private companies with strong military orders and subsidies.