[1922 – 1945] Fascist Italy and World War II
The year is 1922. Italy is a kingdom in chaos, a nation spiritually and economically shattered by the Great War. The streets of Milan, Turin, and Rome hum with a nervous energy, a volatile mix of hope and fear. Workers strike, factories are occupied, and the spectre of a Bolshevik-style revolution terrifies the landowners, the industrialists, and the middle class. Into this power vacuum strides a figure of raw, magnetic ambition: Benito Mussolini. A former socialist journalist, he is now the leader of a new, aggressive movement. His followers, clad in black-collared shirts, are the 'Squadristi'. They are thugs and war veterans, armed with clubs and castor oil, who roam the streets, breaking strikes and brawling with their political opponents. They offer a brutal, simple solution to a complex national malaise: order, restored through violence, and a return to national glory.
In October, Mussolini makes his decisive move. While he waits nervously in Milan, thousands of his Blackshirts converge on the capital in what would be known as the March on Rome. It is more of a theatrical bluff than a military coup. The army could have easily dispersed the poorly armed militias, but King Victor Emmanuel III, fearing civil war and swayed by conservative advisors, loses his nerve. He refuses to sign the order for martial law. Instead, he summons Mussolini to Rome and, on October 29th, 1922, hands him the government. The Fascists have seized power without firing a single shot in the capital, a testament to intimidation and the establishment's fear.
Over the next few years, the illusion of a multi-party system is systematically dismantled. Mussolini, now styling himself 'Il Duce'—The Leader—is a master of propaganda. His powerful jaw is jutted forward on posters that plaster every wall. Newsreels in the cinemas show him shirtless, harvesting grain with peasants, or as a dynamic aviator, projecting an image of virility and tireless action. The 1924 election is marred by widespread violence and fraud, securing a Fascist majority. When the brave socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti publicly denounces the corruption, he is kidnapped in broad daylight and murdered. The crime sends a chill through the country, but the opposition is too fractured to act. By 1926, all other political parties are outlawed, freedom of the press is abolished, and a secret police force, the OVRA, is established. Italy has become a one-party state.
Life under Fascism is a life of conformity. From the age of six, children are enrolled in state youth groups—the 'Balilla' for boys, the 'Piccole Italiane' for girls. They march in uniform, chant slogans ('Believe, Obey, Fight'), and are taught that Mussolini is always right. The regime attempts to re-engineer Italian society. It launches grand public works, draining the Pontine Marshes near Rome and building imposing, neo-classical structures that seek to evoke the power of the ancient Roman Empire. The state pushes for economic self-sufficiency with its 'Battle for Grain,' which increases wheat production but at the expense of other, more valuable crops. Women are relegated to the domestic sphere, celebrated in the 'Battle for Births,' which awards medals to those who produce the most children for the fatherland.
Foreign policy becomes the stage for Il Duce's imperial ambitions. In 1935, seeking to avenge a humiliating 19th-century defeat and acquire an empire, he orders the invasion of Ethiopia. The Italian military, with its modern tanks and air power—including the illegal use of mustard gas—crushes the poorly equipped Ethiopian forces. From his balcony at Palazzo Venezia in Rome, Mussolini proclaims the rebirth of the Roman Empire to a roaring crowd. But the conquest brings international condemnation and sanctions from the League of Nations. Isolated, Mussolini finds a new, more powerful ally in another dictator: Adolf Hitler. Though initially wary of the German Führer, Mussolini is flattered by his admiration. The alliance, formalized in the 'Pact of Steel,' is a fateful one. Under Nazi influence, Italy tragically abandons its historically tolerant stance and enacts the Racial Laws of 1938, stripping its 45,000 Jewish citizens of their rights, jobs, and place in society.
When Hitler invades Poland in September 1939, Mussolini hesitates. He knows Italy's military is a hollow shell, its equipment largely obsolete from the First World War and its generals unprepared. He famously declares a state of 'non-belligerence.' But as German Panzers blitz across France in the spring of 1940, Mussolini's vanity and fear of being left out of the spoils of victory overcome his caution. On June 10, 1940, declaring that a 'few thousand dead' are needed to sit at the peace table, he joins the war. It is a catastrophic miscalculation. The Italian army is routed in North Africa, its disastrous invasion of Greece must be bailed out by the Germans, and tens of thousands of soldiers freeze to death on the Russian front. The propaganda of a new Roman Empire crumbles against the grim reality of defeat. At home, food is severely rationed, Allied bombing raids reduce cities to rubble, and the Italian people, once enthralled by Il Duce, are now profoundly disillusioned.
The end comes swiftly. On July 10, 1943, Allied forces land in Sicily and encounter feeble resistance. The Italian people greet them as liberators. The war is lost, and even Mussolini's closest associates know it. On the night of July 24th, the Fascist Grand Council, the very body that was the instrument of his power, meets for the first time in years. In a dramatic, tense session, they vote to strip him of his authority. The next day, Mussolini goes to his regular meeting with the King, expecting to manage the crisis. Instead, the monarch informs him he is dismissed. As a dazed Mussolini leaves the villa, he is arrested and bundled into an ambulance. After twenty-one years, the reign of Il Duce is over.
But Italy's agony is not. In the power vacuum, German forces pour across the Alps, occupying the northern and central parts of the country. German commandos stage a daring raid to rescue Mussolini, installing him as the puppet leader of a new Fascist state, the Italian Social Republic. What follows is one of the darkest periods in Italian history: a brutal civil war. In the mountains and cities of the north, a fierce partisan resistance rises, fighting the German occupiers and their Italian Fascist allies. It is a war of assassinations, sabotage, and terrible reprisals, such as the massacre of 335 civilians in the Ardeatine Caves outside Rome. For nearly two years, Italy bleeds. Finally, in the spring of 1945, as Allied armies advance up the peninsula, the German front collapses. On April 28, trying to flee to Switzerland with his mistress, Clara Petacci, Benito Mussolini is captured by partisans. They are executed, and their bodies are taken to Milan and hung upside down from a petrol station girder—a gruesome, public spectacle that marked the definitive, ignominious end of Italy's Fascist dream.