Rise of Mussolini• "Fascism is a

religion. The twentieth century will be known in history as the century of Fascism."

Benito Mussolini ...

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

Rise of Mussolini• Vets unemployed• Inspired by the

revolution in Russia– Workers went on

strike or seized factories.

• The rise of a militant left

Rise of Mussolini• Trade declined and

taxes rose• Economic

depression– Fears about the

survival of capitalism.

Rise of Mussolini• The government

was split into feuding factions– seemed powerless

to end the crisis.

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!

Rise of Mussolini• Hundreds of new

fascist groups developed throughout Italy in response

• “Black Shirts” violently attacked the Socialists

Benito Mussolini (1883-1945)• Originally a

Marxist• National

revolution necessary

• Edited the Italian Socialist Party newspaper. Avanti! [Forward!].

Benito Mussolini (1883-1945)

• Founded the newspaper Il Popolo d’Italia [The People of Italy] to encourage Italy to join the war.

Benito Mussolini (1883-1945)• This new elite

would transform Italian politics and society!

Mussolini Comes to Power• 1921 election • Fascists win 35

seats

Mussolini Comes to Power• October, 1922• Mussolini

threatened a coup d’etat.

• “March on Rome” 25,000 Black Shirts demonstrated throughout the capital.

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.

Mussolini Forms a Government• Invites Mussolini

to join a coalition government

• 1925 • Mussolini seized

dictatorial powers

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.

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].

Italian Fascist PropagandaItalian Fascist Propaganda

The Fascist FamilyThe Fascist FamilyEncouraged the development of large families.

EducationEducationThe first sentence pronounced by children at school was Let us salute the flag in the Roman fashion; hail to Italy; hail to Mussolini.

EducationEducationTextbooks 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.

Emphasis on Physical FitnessEmphasis on Physical Fitness

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

Black Shirts

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

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

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

Anti-SemitismAnti-Semitism50,000 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.

Anti-SemitismAnti-Semitism1938 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.

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.

Mussolini Was Hitler’s Role Mussolini Was Hitler’s Role ModelModel

Children were required to use

these notebooks with colored Fascist

cartoons and quotations from Mussolini on the front and back.

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.

Detailed knitting instructions. With the approach of

another winter of war, Italian women are urged to knit and sew for their men at the front.

An anthology of readings for the fifth grade. Nearly every story glorifies the Fascist regime and its activities.

http://specialcollections.library.wisc.edu/exhibits/Fascism/Youth.html

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBMPe_tS-hE• http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=tTXhez2mNmM• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGiQ2-oIRpw&feature=related

• 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 reactionarydemocracies 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 thatItaly 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 themand 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!

http://sitemaker.umich.edu/fascistpersonalitycult/deconstructing_personality_cult_theory