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Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini ( July 29, 1883 - April 28, 1945) ruled Italy as a dictator from 1922 to 1943. He created a fascist state through the use of state terror and propaganda. Using his charisma, total control of the media and intimidation of political rivals, he disassembled the existing democratic government system. His entry into World War II on the side of Nazi Germany made Italy a target for Allied attacks and ultimately led to his downfall and death.
Mussolini was born in Dova di Predappio , near Forlì , in Romagna. His father, Alessandro, was a blacksmithA blacksmith is an artisan specializing in the hand-wrought manufacture of metal objects, such as wrought iron gates, grills and railings, light fixtures and furniture, sculpture, weapons, decorative and religous items, cooking utensils and tools. Blacksm, and his mother, Rosa Maltoni, was a teacherIn education, teachers are those who teach students or pupils, often a course of study or a practical skill. There are many different ways to teach and help students learn. When deciding what teaching method to use, a teacher will need to consider student. He was named Benito after Mexican revolutionary Benito JuárezBenito Juarez ( March 21, 1806 July 18, 1872) was a Zapotec Indian who served two terms ( 1861- 1863 and 1867- 1872) as President of Mexico. Juarez is often regarded as Mexico's greatest and most beloved leader. Benito Pablo Juarez Garcia was born in the. Like his father, Benito became a socialist and later a Marxist. He was influenced by what he read of Friedrich NietzscheFriedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche ( October 15, 1844 August 25, 1900) was a highly influential German philosopher. His Life Nietzsche was born on October 15, 1844 in the small town of Rocken bei Lutzen, not too far from Leipzig, Saxony. He was born on the 49th, and another doctrine that was in the air was the " syndicalismSyndicalism is a political and economic ideology which advocates giving control of both industry and government to labor union federations. Syndicalisme is a French word meaning "trade unionism". This milder version of syndicalism was overshadowed by revo" espoused by the French writer Georges SorelGeorge Sorel (1847-1922) was a French philosopher and theorist of anarchosyndicalism. Sorel had been a Marxist in the 1890s. He tried to fill in what he saw as gaps in Marxist theory but ended up doing a thoroughgoing revision (some would say rejection) o (1847-1922). He qualified as an elementary schoolmaster in 1901. In 1902 he immigrated 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. At this time he wrote a novel, subsequently translated into English as The Cardinal's Mistress. Mussolini had a brother, Arnaldo, who would later become the editor of Il Popolo d'Italia, the official newspaper of Benito's regime.
The word " Fascio" has existed in Italian politics for some time. A section of revolutionary syndicalists broke with the Socialists over the issue of Italy's entry into the First World War. Mussolini agreed with them. These syndicalists formed a group called Fasci d'azione rivoluzionaria internazionalista in October 1914. Massimo Rocca and Tulio Masotti asked Mussolini to settle the contradiction of his support for interventionism and still being the editor of Avanti and an official party functionary in the Socialist Party. (1) Two weeks later, he joined the Milan fascio. In November, 1914, supported by his then mistress Margherita Sarfatti, he founded a new newspaper, Il Popolo d'Italia, (The Italian People) and the prewar group Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria. Mussolini was attracted to fasces the ancient Roman symbol, of the life-and-death power of the state, bundles of the lictors' rods of chastisement which, when bound together, were stronger than when they were apart — reflecting the intellectual debt that fascism owed to socialism and presaging the symbolism of the renewed Roman imperium Mussolini promised to bring about. Mussolini claimed that it would help strengthen a relatively new nation (which had been united only in the 1860s in the Risorgimento), although some would say that, like Lenin, he wished for a collapse of society that would bring him to power. Italy was a member of the Triple Alliance, thereby allied with Imperial Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It did not join the war in 1914 but did in 1915 — as Mussolini wished — on the side of Britain and France.
Called up for military service, Mussolini was wounded in grenade practice in 1917 and returned to edit his paper. Fascism became an organized political movement following a meeting in Milan on March 23, 1919 (Mussolini founded the Fasci di Combattimento on February 23, however). After failing in the 1919 elections, Mussolini at last entered parliament in 1921 as a right-wing member. The Fascisti formed armed squads of war veterans to terrorize socialists and communists. The government seldom interfered. In return for the support of a group of industrialists and agrarians, Mussolini gave his approval (often active) 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, and after Fascists had organised the demonstrative and threatening Marcia su Roma (" March on Rome") ( October 28th 1922), Mussolini was invited by Vittorio Emanuele III to form a new government. He became the youngest Premier in the history of Italy on October 31.
Mussolini's Fascist state, established nearly a decade before Adolf Hitler's rise to power, would provide a model for Hitler's later economic and political policies. Both a movement and a historical phenomenon, Italian Fascism was, in many respects, an adverse reaction to both the perceived failure of laissez-faire economics and fear of international Bolshevism (a short-lived Soviet was established in Bavaria just about this time), although trends in intellectual history, such as the breakdown of positivism and the general fatalism of postwar Europe were also factors. Fascism was a product of a general feeling of anxiety and fear among the middle-class of postwar Italy, arising out of a convergence of interrelated economic, political, and cultural pressures. Italy had no long-term tradition of parliamentary compromise, and public discourse took on an inflammatory tone on all sides.
Under the banner of this authoritarian and nationalist ideology, Mussolini was able to exploit fears regarding the survival of capitalism in an era in which postwar depression, the rise of a more militant left, and a feeling of national shame and humiliation stemming from its 'mutilated victory' at the hands of the World War I peace treaties seemed to converge. Italian influence in the Aegean and abroad seemed impotent and disregarded by the greater powers, and Italy lacked colonies. Such unfulfilled nationalistic aspirations tainted the reputation of liberalism and constitutionalism among many sectors of the Italian population. In addition, such democratic institutions had never grown to become firmly rooted in the young nation-state. And as the same postwar depression heightened the allure of Marxism among an urban proletariat even more disenfranchised than their continental counterparts, fear regarding the growing strength of trade unionism, communism, and socialism proliferated among the elite and the middle class .
Fascism emerged as a "third way" — as Italy's last hope to avoid imminent collapse of 'weak' Italian liberalism or communist revolution. While failing to outline a coherent program, it evolved into new political and economic system that combined corporatism, totalitarianism, nationalism, and anti-communism in a state designed to bind all classes together under a capitalist system, but a new capitalist system in which the state seized control of the organization of vital industries. The appeal of this movement, the promise of a more orderly capitalism during an era of interwar depression, however, was not isolated to Italy, or even Europe.
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