Essay on Mussolini
BENITO MUSSOLINI, (1883-1945),
Fascist dictator of Italy from 1922 to 1943. He centralized all power in
himself as the leader (il duce) of the Fascist party and attempted to
create an Italian empire, ultimately in alliance with Germany. The defeat of
Italy brought an end to his imperial dream and led to his downfall.
Mussolini was born in Predappio,
near Forli, in Romagna, on July 29, 1883. His father, Alessandro, was a
blacksmith, and his mother, Rosa, was a schoolteacher. Like his father,
Benito became a fervent socialist. He qualified as an elementary
schoolmaster in 1901. In 1902 he emigrated to Switzerland. Unable to find a
permanent job there and arrested for vagrancy, he was expelled and returned
to Italy to do his military service. After further trouble with the police,
he joined the staff of a newspaper in the Austrian town of Trento in 1908.
When World War I broke out in 1914,
Mussolini agreed with the other Socialists that Italy should not join it.
Only a class war was acceptable to him, and he threatened to lead a
proletarian revolution if the government decided to fight. But several
months later he unexpectedly changed his position on the war, leaving the
Socialist party and his editorial chair.
Birth of Fascism
In November 1914 he founded a new
paper, Il Popolo d'Italia, and the prowar group Fasci d'Azione
Rivoluzionaria. He evidently hoped the war might lead to a collapse of
society that would bring him to power. Called up for military service, he
was wounded in grenade practice in 1917 and returned to edit his paper.
Fascism became an organized
political movement in March 1919 when Mussolini founded the Fasci de
Combattimento. After failing in the 1919 elections, Mussolini at last
entered parliament in 1921 as a right-wing member. The Fascisti formed armed
squads to terrorize Mussolini's former Socialist colleagues. The government
seldom interfered. In return for the support of a group of industrialists
and agrarians, Mussolini gave his approval to strikebreaking, and he
abandoned revolutionary agitation. When the liberal governments of Giovanni
Giolitti, Ivanoe Bonomi, and Luigi Facta failed to stop the spread of
anarchy, Mussolini was invited by the king in October 1922 to form a
government.
Fascist Dictatorship
At first he was supported by the
Liberals in parliament. With their help he introduced strict censorship and
altered the methods of election so that in 1925-1926 he was able to assume
dictatorial powers and dissolve all other political parties. Skillfully
using his absolute control over the press, he gradually built up the legend
of the "Duce, a man who was always right and could solve all the
problems of politics and economics. Italy was soon a police state.
With those who tried to resist him,
for example the Socialist Giacomo Matteotti, he showed himself utterly
ruthless. But Mussolini's skill in propaganda was such that he had
surprisingly little opposition.
At various times after 1922,
Mussolini personally took over the ministries of the interior, of foreign
affairs, of the colonies, of the corporations, of the army and the other
armed services, and of public works. Sometimes he held as many as seven
departments simultaneously, as well as the premiership. He was also head of
the all-powerful Fascist party (formed in 1921) and the armed Fascist
militia. In this way he succeeded in keeping power in his own hands and
preventing the emergence of any rival. But it was at the price of creating a
regime that was overcentralized, inefficient, and corrupt.
Most of his time was spent on
propaganda, whether at home or abroad, and here his training as a journalist
was invaluable. Press, radio, education, films--all were carefully
supervised to manufacture the illusion that fascism was "the doctrine
of the 20th century that was replacing liberalism and democracy. The
principles of this doctrine were laid down in the article on fascism,
reputedly written by himself, that appeared in 1932 in the Enciclopedia
Italiana. In 1929 a concordat with the Vatican was signed, by which the
Italian state was at last recognized by the Roman Catholic Church.
Under the dictatorship the
parliamentary system was virtually abolished. The law codes were rewritten.
All teachers in schools and universities had to swear an oath to defend the
Fascist regime. Newspaper editors were all personally chosen by Mussolini
himself, and no one could practice journalism who did not possess a
certificate of approval from the Fascist party. The trade unions were also
deprived of any independence and were integrated into what was called the
"corporative system. The aim (never completely achieved) was to place
all Italians in various professional organizations or "corporations,
all of them under governmental control.
Mussolini played up to his
financial backers at first by transferring a number of industries from
public to private ownership. But by the 1930's he had begun moving back to
the opposite extreme of rigid governmental control of industry. A great deal
of money was spent on public works. But the economy suffered from his
exaggerated attempt to make Italy self-sufficient. There was too much
concentration on heavy industry, for which Italy lacked the resources.
Military Aggression
In foreign policy, Mussolini soon
shifted from pacifist anti-imperialism to an extreme form of aggressive
nationalism. An early example of this was his bombardment of Corfu in 1923.
Soon after this he succeeded in setting up a puppet regime in Albania and in
reconquering Libya. It was his dream to make the Mediterranean "mare
nostrum ("our sea). In 1935, at the Stresa Conference, he helped create
an anti-Hitler front in order to defend the independence of Austria. But his
successful war against Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1935-1936 was opposed by the
League of Nations, and he was forced to seek an alliance with Nazi Germany,
which had withdrawn from the League in 1933. His active intervention in
1936-1939 on the side of Gen. Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War
ended any possibility of reconciliation with France and Britain. As a
result, he had to accept the German annexation of Austria in 1938 and the
dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in 1939. At the Munich Conference in
September 1938 he posed as a moderate working for European peace. But his
"axis with Germany was confirmed when he made the Pact of Steel with
Hitler in May 1939. Clearly the subordinate partner, Mussolini followed the
Nazis in adopting a racial policy that led to persecution of the Jews and
the creation of apartheid in the Italian empire.
As World War II approached,
Mussolini announced his intention of annexing Malta, Corsica, and Tunis. In
April 1939, after a brief war, he occupied Albania. Failing to realize that
he had more to gain by trying to hold the balance of power in Europe, he
preferred to rely on a policy of bluff and bluster to induce the Western
democracies to give way to his increasing territorial demands.
Although he had preached for 15
years about the virtues of war and the military readiness of Italy to fight,
his armed forces were completely unprepared when Hitler's invasion of Poland
led to World War II. He decided to remain "nonbelligerent until he was
quite certain which side would win. Only after the fall of France did he
declare war in June 1940, hoping that the war had only a few weeks more to
run. His attack on Greece in October revealed to everyone that he had done
nothing to prepare an effective military machine. He had no option but to
follow Hitler in declaring war on Russia in June 1941 and on the United
States in December 1941.
Following Italian defeats on all
fronts and the Anglo-American landing in Sicily in 1943, most of Mussolini's
colleagues turned against him at a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council on
July 25, 1943. This enabled the king to dismiss and arrest him.
Rescued by the Germans several
months later, Mussolini set up a Republican Fascist state in northern Italy.
But he was little more than a puppet under the protection of the German
Army. In this "Republic of Salo, Mussolini returned to his earlier
ideas of socialism and collectivization. He also executed some of the
Fascist leaders who had abandoned him, including his son-in-law, Galeazzo
Ciano. Increasingly he tried to shift the blame for defeat onto the Italian
people, who had not been great enough to appreciate his imperial dream. In
April 1945, just before the Allied armies reached Milan, Mussolini, along
with his mistress Clara Petacci, was caught by Italian partisans as he tried
to take refuge in Switzerland. He was summarily executed.
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