1. Rise of Mussolini
• "Fascism is a
religion. The
twentieth century
will be known in
history as the
century of
Fascism."
Benito Mussolini ...
2. Rise of Mussolini
• Feeling of anxiety
and fear among the
middle class of post-
war Italy
• Shame and
humiliation at
Italy’s poor
treatment after
World War I
3. Rise of Mussolini
• Vets unemployed
• Inspired by the
revolution in
Russia
– Workers went on
strike or seized
factories.
• The rise of a
militant left
4. Rise of Mussolini
• Trade declined and
taxes rose
• Economic depression
– Fears about the
survival of capitalism.
5. Rise of Mussolini
• The government was
split into feuding
factions
– seemed powerless to
end the crisis.
6. Rise of Mussolini
• In 1920 the Italian
Socialist Party
organized militant
strikes northern
Italian industrial
cities.
• Economic chaos in
the north could
spread to the rest of
Italy!
7. Rise of Mussolini
• Hundreds of new
fascist groups
developed
throughout Italy in
response
• “Black Shirts”
violently attacked
the Socialists
8. Benito Mussolini (1883-1945)
• Originally a
Marxist
• National revolution
necessary
• Edited the Italian
Socialist Party
newspaper. Avanti!
[Forward!].
9. Benito Mussolini (1883-1945)
• Founded the
newspaper Il
Popolo d’Italia
[The People of
Italy] to
encourage
Italy to join the
war.
12. Mussolini Comes to Power
• October, 1922
• Mussolini threatened
a coup d’etat.
• “March on Rome”
25,000 Black Shirts
demonstrated
throughout the
capital.
13. Mussolini Forms a Government
• King Victor Emmanuel
III refused to sign a
law giving the Italian
military the ability to
quell the chaos
and arrest the Fascists.
14. Mussolini Forms a Government
• Invites Mussolini
to join a coalition
government
• 1925
• Mussolini seized
dictatorial powers
15. The Fascists Consolidate Power
(1925-1931)
• New laws passed to create the legal basis for
Italy’s official transformation into a single-
party state:
• Independent political parties & trade unions
were abolished.
• Freedom of the press was curbed.
16. The Fascists Consolidate Power
(1925-1931)
• New laws passed to create the legal basis for
Italy’s official transformation into a single-
party state:
• Special courts created to persecute any
political opposition.
• National police force created [with a secret
police component].
20. Education
Education
Textbooks
emphasized:
The glorious pat of the
ancient Romans.
The limitations
imposed upon the
present inhabitants by
geography and the
West.
The imperial destiny
that awaited Italy’s
future development.
22. Mussolini’s Italy
• By 1925, Mussolini had
assumed the title Il
Duce, “The Leader.”
• Italy became a
dictatorship upheld by
terror.
• The Fascists relied on
secret police and
propaganda.
POLITICAL STRUCTURE
3
24. Mussolini’s Italy
• Mussolini brought the
economy under state
control.
• Unlike socialists,
Mussolini preserved
capitalism.
• Workers received poor
wages and were forbidden
to strike
ECONOMIC POLICY
3
25. Mussolini’s Italy
• The individual was
unimportant except as a
member of the state.
• Men were urged to be
ruthless warriors.
• Women were called on to
produce more children.
• Fascist youth groups
toughened children and
taught them to obey strict
military discipline.
SOCIAL POLICIES
26. 1)What were some of the problems that Italy
faces after WWI?
2)Why did Italians feel betrayed by the Treaty
of Versailles?
3)What is fascism, and how did Mussolini gain
control of the Italian government?
Questions
27. Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism
50,000 Jews lived in Italy in the 1930s.
Mussolini did NOT implement an
extermination program in Italy.
75% of Italian Jews survived World War II.
8,000 died in German extermination camps.
28. Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism
1938 anti-Semitic laws passed
Manifesto degli Scienziati Razzisti [The
Manifesto of the Racist Scientists].
•Excluded foreign Jews [most of them were sent
to German death camps].
•Forbade all Jews from teaching.
•Excluded Jews from serving in the government
or in the military.
29. Gli Ebrei in Italia (1937)
Provided the intellectual
premise for the 1938 racial
laws.
Attacked Jews for:
Their alleged Zionist
sympathies.
Their championing of
degenerate avante-garde
cultural expressions.
For their doubtful loyalty
to the Fascist regime and
its imperial claims.
31. Children were required
to use these notebooks
with colored Fascist
cartoons and
quotations from
Mussolini on the front
and back.
32. Published four months after Italy's entry into the war on the side
of Germany, this photographic documentary with captions in
several languages glorifies the martial spirit and physical
prowess of Italian youth. Note the line of young men waiting
calmly in turn to leap over the wall of fixed bayonets.
39. • Mussolini: Speech of the 10 June 1940, Declaration of War on France and England
• Delivered 6:00 PM from his balcony in the Palazzo Venezia in Rome
• Soldiers, sailors, and aviators! Black shirts of the revolution and of the [Fascist] legions! Men and women of Italy, of the Empire, and of the kingdom of
Albania! Pay heed!
An hour appointed by destiny has struck in the heavens of our fatherland. (Very lively cheers).
• The declaration of war has already been delivered (cheers, very loud cries of “War! War!”) to the ambassadors of Great Britain and France. We go to
battle against the plutocratic and reactionary
democracies of the west who, at every moment have hindered the advance and have often endangered the very existence of the Italian people.
Recent historical events can be summarized in the following phrases: promises, threats, blackmail, and finally to crown the edifice, the ignoble seige by
the fifty-two states of the League of Nations. Our consience is absolutely tranquil. (Applause). With you the entire world is witness that Fascist Italy has
done all that is humanly possible to avoit the torment which is throwing Europe into turmoil; but all was in vain. It would have suffieced to revise the
treaties to bring them up to date with the changing needs of the life of nations and not consider them untouchable for eternity; it would have sufficed
not to have begun the stupid policy of guarantees, which has shown itself particularly lethal for those who accepted them; it would have sufficed not to
reject the proposal [for peace] that the Fuhrer made on 6 October of last year after having finished the campaign in Poland.
• But now all of that belongs to the past. If now today we have decided to face the risks and the sacrifices of a war, it is because the honor, the interests,
the future impose and iron necessity, since a great people is truly such if it considers sacred its own duties and noes not evade the supreme trials which
deternin the course of history.
• We take up arms to resolve, after having resolved the problem of our land frontier, the problem of our maritime frontiers; we want to break the
territorial chains which suffocate us in our own sea; since a people of forty-five million sould is not truly free if it does not have free access to the ocean.
• This gigantic struggle is nothing other than a phase in the logical development of our revolution; it is the struggle of peoples that are poor but rich in
workers against the exploiters who hold on ferociously to the monopoly off all the riches and all the gold of the earth; it is the struggle of the fertile and
young people against the sterile people moving to the sunset; it is the struggle between two centuries and two ideas.
Now that the die are cast and our will has burned ourships at aour backs, I solomnly declare that
Italy does not intend to drag into the conflict other peoples bordering her on land or on sea. Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Egypt take note
of these my words and it depends on them
and only on them whether or not they will be rigorously confirmed.
• Italians!
• In a memorable meeting, that which took place in Berlin, I said that according to the laws of Fascist morality, when one has a friend, one marches with
him to the end. (“Duce! Duce! Duce!”). This we have done with Gernamy, with its people, with its marvelous armed forces. On this eve of an event of
century wide scope, we direct our thought to the majesty of the King and Emperor (the multitudes break out in great cheers for the House of Savoy)
which as always has understood the soul of the fatherland. And we salute with our voices the Fuhrer, the head of great ally Germany (The people cheer
Hitler at length). Proletarian and Fascist Italy stands up a third time, strong, proud, and united as never before. (The crowd cries with one single voice:
“Yes!”) The single order of the day is categorical and obligatory for all. It already spreads and fires hearts from the Alps to the Indian Ocean; Victory!
(The people break out into raucous cheers). And we will win, in order finally to give a long period of peace with justice to Italy, to Europe, and to the
world.
• People of Italy!
• Rush to arms and show your tenacity, your courage, your valor!
