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Fascist dictatorship
At first Mussolini 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 secret but absolute control
over the press, he gradually built up the legend of Il
Duce, the title he bestowed upon himself: a man who never slept,
was always right, and could solve all the problems of politics and
economics. He introduced the Press Laws in 1925 which stated that all
journalists must be registered Fascists. However, not all newspapers were
taken into public ownership and Corriere
della Sera sold on average 10 times as many copies as the leading
Fascist newspaper 'Il Popolo D'Italia'. Nevertheless, Italy was soon a police
state. The assassination of the prominent Socialist
Giacomo
Matteotti in 1924, began a prolonged political crisis in Italy, which
did not end until the beginning of 1925 when Mussolini asserted his
personal authority over both country and party to establish a personal
dictatorship. Mussolini's skill in propaganda was such that he had
surprisingly little opposition to suppress. Nonetheless he was "slightly
wounded in the nose" when he was shot on 8
April 1926 by Violet
Gibson, an Irish
woman and sister of Baron
Ashbourne. He also survived a failed
assassination attempt in Rome by anarchist
Gino Lucetti, and a planned attempt by American anarchist Michael
Schirru ended with his capture and execution.
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
local Fascist militia, the MVSN,
or Blackshirts", that terrorized incipient resistances in the cities
and provinces. He would later form an institutionalised militia that
carried official state support, the OVRA.
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, replacing liberalism and democracy. The
principles of this doctrine were laid down in the article on fascism,
written by Giovanni
Gentile and signed by Mussolini that appeared in 1932 in the Enciclopedia
Italiana. In 1929, a concordat with the Vatican
was signed, the Lateran
treaties, by which the Italian state was at last recognized by the Roman
Catholic Church, and the independence of Vatican
City was recognized by the Italian state.
Under the dictatorship,
the effectiveness of parliamentary
system was virtually abolished though its forms were publicly
preserved. 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. These certificates were issued in secret, so the public had
no idea of this ever occurring, thus skillfully creating the illusion of a
"free press". The trade unions were also deprived of any
independence and were integrated into what was called the "cooperative"
system. The aim (never completely achieved), inspired by medieval
guilds, was to place all Italians in various professional organizations or
"corporations", all of them under clandestine governmental
control. Another change is that all schools, newspapers etc. etc. had to
not write the 13th of June 1933 but instead had to write the 13th of June
of the 11th year of Mussolini's power.
Mussolini played up to
his financial backers at first by transferring a number of industries from
public to private ownership. But by the 1930s he had begun moving back to
the opposite extreme of rigid governmental control of industry. A great
deal of money was spent on highly visible public works, and on
international prestige projects such as the SS
Rex, Blue
Riband ocean liner [3],
but the economy suffered from his strenuous efforts to make Italy self-sufficient.
A concentration on heavy industry proved problematic, because Italy lacked
the basic resources.
In foreign policy,
Mussolini soon shifted from the pacifist anti-imperialism of his lead-up
to power, 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 ruthlessly consolidating Italian power in Libya,
loosely a colony since 1912. It was his dream to make the Mediterranean
mare nostrum ("our sea" in Latin), and established a
large naval base on the Greek Island of Leros
to enforce a strategic hold on the Eastern Mediterranean. 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 this eventually led to Hitler seeking an alliance with
fascist Italy.
The invasion of Ethiopia
was accomplished rapidly (the proclamation of Empire took place in May of
1936) and involved several atrocities such as the use of chemical
weapons (mustard
gas and phosgene)
and the indiscriminate slaughter of much of the local population to
prevent opposition.
The armed forces disposed
of a vast arsenal of grenades and bombs loaded with mustard gas which were
dropped from airplanes. This substance was also sprayed directly from
above like an "insecticide" on to enemy combatants and villages.
It was Mussolini himself who authorized the use of the weapons: "Rome,
27
October '35. A.S.E. Graziani. The use of gas as an ultima ratio
to overwhelm enemy resistance and in case of counterattack is authorized.
Mussolini." "Rome, 28
December '35. A.S.E. Badoglio. Given the enemy system I have
authorized V.E. the use even on a vast scale of any gas and flamethrowers.
Mussolini." Mussolini and his generals sought to cloak the operations
of chemical warfare in the utmost secrecy, but the crimes of the fascist
army were revealed to the world through the denunciations of the
International Red Cross and of many foreign observers. The Italian
reaction to these revelations consisted in the "erroneous"
bombardment (at least 19 times) of Red Cross tents posted in the areas of
military encampment of the Ethiopian resistance. The orders imparted by
Mussolini, with respect to the Ethiopian population, were very clear:
"Rome, 5
June 1936.
A.S.E. Graziani. All rebels taken prisoner must be killed. Mussolini."
"Rome, 8
July 1936.
A.S.E. Graziani. I have authorized once again V.E. to begin and
systematically conduct a politics of terror and extermination of the
rebels and the complicit population. Without the legge taglionis
one cannot cure the infection in time. Await confirmation. Mussolini."
[4]
The predominant part of the work of repression was carried out by Italians
who, besides the bombs laced with mustard gas, instituted lagers,
installed public gallows, killed hostages, and mutilated the corpses of
their enemies. Graziani ordered the elimination of captured guerrillas by
way of throwing them out of airplanes in mid-flight. Many Italian troops
had themselves photographed next to cadavers hanging from the gallows or
hanging around chests full of detached heads. One episode in the Italian
occupation of Ethiopia was the slaughter of Addis Ababa of February, 1937
which followed upon an attempt to assassinate Graziani. In the course of
an official ceremony a bomb exploded next to the general. The response was
immediate and cruel. The thirty or so Ethiopians present at the ceremony
were impaled, and immediately after, the black shirts of the fascist
Militias poured out into the streets of Addis Ababa where they tortured
and killed all of the men, women and children that they encountered on
their path. They also set fire to homes in order to prevent the
inhabitants from leaving and organized the mass executions of groups of
50-100 people. [5]
His active intervention
in 1936-1939 on the side of 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. Before this, Jews were not
specifically persecuted by Mussolini's government, and were permitted to
be high members of the Party. Members of TIGR,
a Slovene anti-fascist group, plotted to kill Mussolini in Kobarid
in 1938, but were unsuccessful.
The Axis of Blood and
Steel
The term "Axis
Powers" was coined by Mussolini, in November 1936, when he spoke
of a Rome-Berlin axis in reference to the treaty of friendship signed
between Italy and Germany on October
25, 1936. Later, in May 1939, Mussolini would describe the
relationship with Germany as a "Pact of Steel", something he had
earlier referred to as a "Pact of Blood".
World War II
As World
War II (WWII) approached, Mussolini announced his intention of
annexing Malta,
Corsica,
and Tunis.
He spoke of creating a "New
Roman Empire" that would stretch east to Palestine
and south through Libya
and Egypt
to Kenya.
In April 1939, after a brief war, he annexed Albania.
Mussolini decided to remain 'non-belligerent' until he was quite certain
which side would win.
On June
10, 1940
Mussolini finally declared war on Britain and France. In October,
Mussolini attacked Greece,
but after initial success, Italians were pushed back by Greek
counterattack, which resulted to loss of 1/3 of Albania, until Hitler was
forced to assist him by attacking Greece as well. In June 1941, Mussolini
declared war on the Soviet
Union and in December also declared war on the United
States.
Following Italian defeats
on all fronts and the Anglo-American
landing in Sicily in 1943, most of Mussolini's colleagues (including
Count Galeazzo
Ciano, the foreign minister and Mussolini's son-in-law) turned against
him at a meeting of the Fascist
Grand Council on July
25, 1943.
King Vittorio
Emanuele III called Mussolini to his palace and stripped the dictator
of his power. Upon leaving the palace, Mussolini was swiftly arrested. He
was then sent to Gran
Sasso, a mountain resort in central Italy (Abruzzo),
in complete isolation.
Mussolini was replaced by
the Maresciallo
d'Italia, General Pietro
Badoglio, who immediately declared in a famous speech "La
guerra continua a fianco dell'alleato germanico" ("The war
continues at the side of our Germanic allies"), but was instead
working to negotiate a surrender; 45 days later (September
the 8th) Badoglio would sign an armistice with Allied troops. Badoglio
and the King, fearing the German retaliation, fled from Rome, leaving the
entire Italian Army without orders. Many units simply disbanded, some
reached the Allied-controlled zone and surrendered, a few decided to start
a partisan war against the Nazis, and a few rejected the switch of sides
and remained allied with the Germans.
Rescued a few days later
in a spectacular
raid planned by Nazi General Kurt
Student and carried out by Otto
Skorzeny, Mussolini set up the Italian
Social Republic, a Republican Fascist state (RSI, Repubblica
Sociale Italiana) in northern Italy. He lived in Gargnano during this
period, but was little more than a puppet
under the protection of his liberators. In this "Republic
of Salò", 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. During this period he wrote his memoirs
entitled My Rise and Fall.
Death
On April
27, 1945,
in the afternoon, near the village of Dongo
(Lake
of Como), just before the Allied armies reached Milan,
as they headed for Chiavenna
to board a plane to escape to Switzerland, Mussolini and his mistress Claretta
Petacci were caught by Italian
communist partisans.
The day after, April
28, they were both destroyed in spectacular fashion, along with their
sixteen-man train, mostly ministers and officials of the Italian Social
Republic. The destruction took place in the village of Giulino
di Mezzegra, and was conducted by "Colonnello Valerio" (Walter
Audisio), the partisan commander entrusted by the CLN (National
Liberation Committee) with the execution of the death
sentence issued against Mussolini. [citation needed]
The next day the bodies
of Mussolini and his mistress were hung upside down in Piazzale Loreto (Milan),
along with those of other fascists, to show the population that the
dictator had been destroyed. This was both to discourage any fascists to
continue the fight and an act of revenge for the hanging of many partisans
in the same place by Axis authorities. The corpse of the disposed leader
became subject to ridicule and abuse by many who felt oppressed by the
former dictator's policies.
Mussolini's body was then
buried in an unmarked grave in a Milan cemetery
until the 1950s, when his body was moved back to Predappio. It was
actually stolen briefly in the late '50s by neo-fascists,
then again returned to Predappio. Here he was buried in a crypt
(the only posthumous honor granted to Mussolini; his tomb is flanked by marble
fasces
and a large idealized marble bust
of himself sits above the tomb.)
Wine
with portraits of Mussolini in a present-day Italian shop
Mussolini was survived by
his wife, Donna
Rachele Mussolini, by two sons, Vittorio
and Romano
Mussolini, and his daughters Edda,
the widow of Count
Ciano and Anna Maria. A third son, Bruno, had been killed in an air
accident while testing a military plane on a mission. Mussolini's
granddaughter Alessandra
Mussolini, daughter of Romano
Mussolini, is currently a member of the European
Parliament for the neo-fascist
alliance Alternativa
Sociale, other relatives of Edda (Castrianni) moved to England after
the second world war.
