BenitoMussolini was the leader of italian fascism and he ruled Italy dictatorially between 1922 and 1943. Mussolini is considered the great responsible for the rise of fascism in Europe. He managed to take power in 1922 during an event called the March on Rome. Italy's defeat in Second war caused Mussolini to be captured and executed by partisans, in 1945.
Accessalso: Lateran Treaty: agreement that determined the creation of the Vatican State
Benito Mussolini's early years
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini born on July 29, 1883, in the city of Predappio, central Italy. His parents were called Alessandro Mussolini and Rosa Mussolini, having been the couple's first child. Mussolini had two younger brothers named Arnaldo Mussolini and Edvige Mussolini.
Benito Mussolini's family had a simple condition, since his father was a blacksmith who eventually did odd jobs as a journalist, and his mother was a children's teacher. Already in childhood, Mussolini proved to be a difficult child and was known for being disobedient and aggressive, being marked by two school expulsions for hitting schoolmates with a knife.
After completing his regular studies, Mussolini got a title for work as a primary school teacher.
Mussolini as socialist
In 1902, Mussolini moved to Switzerland looking for work, but also to escape Italian military service. In Switzerland, Mussolini began to devote himself to reading many authorsanarchistand socialist, like Georges Sorel and Karl Kautsky. He had a number of jobs and even worked in unions.
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Mussolini's socialist youth, one of the great names of fascism in the world, is paradoxical, but it has, in a way, great family influence, as Mussolini's father was a committed socialist. Mussolini he was an active member of socialist groups in Switzerland, working in unions, delivering speeches and notable for his rhetorical ability. He served as a journalist, produced advertisements and had radical views on how socialists should take power.
In 1904, Mussolini returned to Italy to fulfill the military duties from which he had fled and was enlisted in the Italian army until mid-1906, when he then left the army and went to work as a teacher.
From 1909, Mussolini spent a short season in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and there he worked in a union, but also as editor of a newspaper aimed at local workers. When he returned to Italy the following year, he continued to work as a newspaper editor, first for the Lotta of Class (Class Fight) and a few years later became the editor of Italy's leading journalist, O Avanti!
At that time, Mussolini advocated the ideas that the rise of workers should happen through the use of force and through the revolutionary way and became one of the great names that defended the anti-nationalism and anti-militarism of Italy. These views of Mussolini were significant in pre-war Italy (1912-1914), as the military climate and nationalism were in great evidence in Europe as a whole. At that time, Mussolini had a role of prominent among Italian socialists.
First World War
On July 28, 1914, the First World Waras a consequence of the murder of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand along with his wife, the Archduchess Sofia. From there, in a domino effect, several European nations were declaring war, each other.
Italy, however, remained neutral and this neutrality was announced by the Italian government on August 3rd. Mussolini, like socialists in general, remained against Italy's joining the war, but Mussolini's opinion soon changed. The future Italian dictator used his position as editor of the Go ahead! to publish an article claiming to be against Italian neutrality.
The posture of the Italian socialists was based on the motto “neither support nor sabotage the war”, and their view asserted that the war was the work of capitalist greed. Mussolini's article was not well received within the Italian Socialist Party, which generated his expulsion from the party very shortly after publication.
In May 1915, Italy joined the war and entered the side of Tripleunderstand. The Italians declared war on Austria-Hungary, and historian Donald Sassoon suggests that the entry of Italians on the Entente side was the result of bargaining. The Italians joined the Entente because they were promised a series of territories, in addition to loans on favorable terms.|1|.
At the end of August 1915, Mussolini appeared in the army and was enlisted in the 11th Regiment of Bersaglieri, an infantry corps of the Italian army. In war, Mussolini contracted paratyphoid fever and was injured when a mortar exploded in the trench in which he was located. He was sent to the hospital with more than 40 pieces of metal from his body and was discharged from the army in August 1917.
Throughout the entire period of the war, Mussolini remained favorable to the Italian presence in the conflict, and surveys conducted by historian Peter Martland indicate that Mussolini received weekly British intelligence amount of £100 (a small fortune at the time) for him to publish propaganda in defense of the Italian stay in the war.
Rise of Fascism
![Italian fascism was marred by the black-shirted militias that persecuted and attacked their opponents.[1]](/f/93fc95a4189155e0caf0524423918d33.jpg)
After the war, Mussolini became increasingly conservative and reactionary and he turned sharply against the group he had been a part of for years: the socialists. Donald Sassoon considers that Mussolini's political platform, until 1919, was not openly right-wing yet, as he still preached a series of values that were common to the left, such as women's suffrage and salary Minimum|2|.
At that time, Mussolini was writing only for a small-circulation newspaper, the Il Popolo d'Italy (The People of Italy). Using this newspaper and its good rhetoric, Mussolini explored the feelings of dissatisfaction that afflicted Italians in the post-war period. The Italians were frustrated with the outcome of the war (Italy didn't have its claims met), the country's economy was slipping and the socialists were growing.
O nationalism became a major political force in Italy and Mussolini, taking advantage of this wave, started to defend the implantation of a strong government under the leadership of a dictator. So he founded a group that shared his ideas, the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, officially founded in 1919. This was the precursor to fascism.
The members of this group adopted a militarized characterization, wearing black clothes, and small militias were formed and called “squadrist” (known in Portuguese as shirtsblack women). Mussolini then became the big name of conservatism throughout Italy and started to encourage the squadrist to act violently against opponents of their ideals, especially against socialists. Its turn to the right was consolidated in the 1920s.
If you want to go deeper into the debate about what fascism is, we suggest reading the following text: What is fascism?
March on Rome
Between 1919 and 1922, the activity of the fascists grew considerably in Italy. O rise of fascists it was a direct result of the strengthening of the socialists after World War I. Groups such as liberals and royalists came to covertly support the violent action of the fascists against the socialists.
This is because, in addition to political growth, the direct action of socialists and workers' unions in the interior of Italy was exponential. Socialists had a good number of seats in the Italian parliament and carried out factory raids and strikes across the country. Unrest in the countryside among socialist peasants was also evident and bothered both liberals and conservatives.
The result of this was that, in 1921, the Fasci di Combattimento officially became a party called National Fascist Party and already had 80,000 members that year and more than 300,000 the following year.|3|. Soon, the fascists came to occupy power in Italian cities, like Milan, by force.
In October 1922, a large demonstration by Italian fascists was held to force the Italian monarchy to name Mussolini as Prime Minister from the country. On October 28, more than 30,000 fascists settled in the outskirts of Rome as a way of demanding that King Victor Emmanuel III nominate Mussolini for the aforementioned post.
The pressure performed during the March on Rome it worked, and on October 30, 1922, Benito Mussolini was sworn in as Italian Prime Minister. THE appointment from him to office took place within the constitutional legality of Italy.
readalso: Ustasha: Fascist-oriented party that emerged in Croatia, neighboring Italy
Mussolini as dictator
After assuming power in Italy in 1922, Mussolini began to identify himself as Il Duce, translated as “the leader”. Mussolini's actions were aimed at building a police state and for this the opposition, in general, was violently persecuted and all political parties – with the exception of the fascist one – were closed.
With the death of democracy italian, the fascist state started to use a secret police to monitor the population of the country. In the economy, he implemented a series of public works to employ the unemployed and concentrated his efforts in education with the aim of indoctrinating the new Italian generation, transforming them into fascists assumed. Regarding education, Mussolini himself said that:
Fascist education is moral, physical, social and military: it aims to create a complete and harmonious developed human, a fascist according to our vision|4|.
Mussolini imposed a planned economic agenda, since the fascist state – a strong state – took control of much of the private initiatives in Italy. The results in the economy were not as positive as expected and, therefore, the fascist state invested massively in political advertising. Along with the propaganda that highlighted the achievements of the State, fascism also carried out the personality cult of Mussolini.
Mussolini's transformation into a dictator officially took place in 1925, when he became self-declared dictator of Italy. the rise of Nazis in Germany, in the 1930s, it brought Italy and Germany closer together. This loyal relationship between Germans and Italians continued until 1945.
The Germans supported the Italians when Mussolini ordered Ethiopian invasion, in 1936. This event was part of the Italian fascists' interests in the expansion of their country's colonies on the African continent. With the growing tensions in Europe, the two countries signed the Steel Pact, in 1939. This pact stipulated a friendship agreement between Germany and Italy and sealed military cooperation between the two nations in case of war.
Read too: Totalitarianism - political regime on which fascism was based
Second World War
![From the 1930s onwards, Hitler and Mussolini became great allies.[2]](/f/3b1b815ea58819861dfb3db0961c93c8.jpg)
Italy's involvement in Spanish Civil War and the invasion of Ethiopia were extremely harmful to the Italian economy and this increased the country's dependence on Germany. In 1939, the Second World War broke out when the germans invaded poland, and in the following year, 1940, the Italians entered the conflict by declare war on French and British in June.
The Italians attacked the British in North Africa, helped the Germans in battles in Western Europe and launched against the Greeks. In hardship in greece, the Germans had to go to the aid of the Italians and, therefore, they ended up invading Yugoslavia, in 1941. Italy's involvement, in every possible way, was a disaster.
World War II paved the way for Mussolini's downfall, as the country accumulated defeats in the conflict. The situation for Mussolini became complicated from 1942 and 1943, as German involvement in fighting the Soviets weakened other Axis positions in the war.
With the expulsion from the North African Hub, Allied troops organized to invade Italy. In July 1943, the first Allied troops began to be landed in Sicily, southern Italian territory. In August, Axis troops were leaving Sicily in another defeat of the Italians in war.
Dissatisfied with the constant defeats of the Italians in the war, the council of fascists that was part of the Italian government decided to remove Mussolini from power. Even before they were defeated in Sicily, this council met and decided to topple Mussolini of power. On July 25, 1943, he was stuckand stripped of command of Italy.
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Mussolini's death
A few weeks after being arrested, Mussolini was rescued by a German expedition designed to free him and reintroduce him to the power of Italy. As part of an agreement with Hitler, the Italian Social Republic, a puppet state that acted in defense of German interests. This republic controlled only the central and northern regions of the country, as the south was in the hands of the Allies.
The collapse of the Germans in the war represented the collapse of the puppet state ruled by Mussolini. The efforts of the Allied forces added to the efforts of the partisans Italians, guerrillas who fought against Nazism, caused fascism to be overthrown in Italy. No way out, Mussolini decided to run away to Switzerland, from where he would take a flight to Spain.
Halfway through, he was recognized by partisans and stuck on April 27, 1945 with his mistress, named Claretta Petacci. Two days later, he and his mistress went through a trial that sentenced them both to death. Mussolini and Petacci were shot per partisans – the author of the shot is still unknown.
Then his body was taken to Milan, where it was vilified (desecrated) by the Milanese population. Mussolini's body was kicked, shot, spat out, etc. by the population infuriated by the destruction brought by the fascists to their country. Then the bodies of Mussolini and his mistress were hung upside down from a metal beam at a gas station.
Grades
|1| SASSOON, Donald. Mussolini and the rise of fascism. Rio de Janeiro: Acting, 2009, p. 38.
|2| Idem, p. 63-64.
|3| Idem, p. 19.
|4| IODICE, Emilio F. Lessons from History: The Startling Rise to Power of Benito Mussolini. To access, click on here [in English]. Term has been adapted into a free translation.
Image credits
[1] photofilmVAN/Shutterstock
[2] Everett Historical/Shutterstock
By Daniel Neves Silva
History teacher
