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, he intimidated them 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 National Fascist Party, stiffened police measures against dissenters, set up the Special Tribunal for the Defense 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 reestablish Italy as a great European power. He stabilized the national currency, revamped government services such as the railroads, 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 labor disputes, ostensibly in the national interest, but mainly favoring 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 savior 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, very numerous in this still rural country, was divided: Landowners favored Mussolini, while the landless were 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 labor 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 toward the goal of establishing what it called the corporatist system of representation. In this system, all of the different interests of the 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 antifeminist acts, including laws that made abortion a heavily punished 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 antiliberalism, antisocialism, antifeminism, 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.

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.

C.

Alliance with Germany and World War II

Although popular at home, Mussolini felt increasingly isolated by international opinion, especially by the disapproval of Italy’s former allies France and Britain. In reaction, starting in 1936 he moved towards an alliance with Nazi Germany, under the leadership of dictator Adolf Hitler, who greatly admired Mussolini. Emboldened, Mussolini intervened in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) on the side of General Francisco Franco and his right-wing revolutionaries. Italian troops performed poorly in Spain, however, while Nazi Germany gave critical support that helped Franco win the civil war. This event showed Italy’s growing dependence on the superior power and unflinching purpose of Hitler’s Germany.

Race-consciousness in Italy had heightened with the conquest of Ethiopia in 1936, leading to the passage of laws preventing interracial marriages. Now allied with the Nazis, Mussolini in 1938 adopted anti-Jewish laws similar to those in Germany. Though the laws in Italy were less strictly observed than those in Germany, Italian Jews were fired from employment, deprived of property, and excluded from public schools. Worse, Fascist lists of “non-Aryan” people eventually became available to the Gestapo, the German secret police. After Italy fell under German occupation in September 1943, the Gestapo used these lists to round up thousands of Italian Jews for execution in concentration camps.

Eventually, Mussolini’s war making proved his undoing and his country’s as well. After the Fascists launched a costly campaign in April 1939 to conquer Albania, Italy was depleted of war material. Italians faced rationing of food and other supplies. In May Italy entered into an alliance with Germany, in what was called the Pact of Steel, but it was unprepared to fulfill the pact’s military obligations. When Hitler unexpectedly invaded Poland in September 1939, Italy stayed neutral. Only after France surrendered to German invaders in June 1940 (and Mussolini thought the German-Italian conquest of Europe would soon be over) did Il Duce bring Italy into World War II. Thereafter, Italy had to pay dearly for German supplies. The army, its morale low and its leadership weak, performed badly. With rising hardships at home and the Italian army suffering defeats in Greece, North Africa, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Mussolini’s popularity plummeted. However, living in an egocentric solitude with no checks on his despotic politics, he was utterly blind to public and Fascist Party opinion.

Allied forces landed in Sicily on July 10, 1943, provoking rebellion in the Fascist ranks. On July 25 the Fascist Party’s governing body voted to hand executive power over to King Victor Emmanuel III, and the king had Mussolini arrested. As the Italian government surrendered to the Allies in early September, the German army began occupying the Italian peninsula. Hitler ordered the rescue of his old ally, and on September 12, in a daring aerial raid, German commandos successfully plucked Mussolini from his mountain prison at Gran Sasso, high in the Apennines. In the northern territories occupied by German forces, the Germans installed Mussolini as the leader of a new government called the Italian Social Republic, headquartered at Salò. From there, he boasted of reinvigorating Fascism and returning it to its rightful position in power in Italy. In reality, however, the Italian Social Republic was a mere puppet of the Nazis. In April 1945 as the ranks of Italian partisans, or resistance fighters, swelled and the Allied armies advanced north, Mussolini fled toward Switzerland hidden in a retreating German army convoy. Near Lake Como, partisans captured him. The next day, April 28, 1945, at Giulino di Mezzegra, Mussolini was executed with his mistress, Clara Petacci.