His exceptional talents and intense nature as a youth was an advantage for a party that accomplished so little over the past years. When Italy entered the World War I, Mussolini was against it but he changed his attitude with the alleged reason of making Italy a great power and regain Austro-Hungarian territory.
His father taught him to defy authority and never be weak, this was one of the reasons he was so passionate about what he did and pushed so hard to get power. His major drive for power started after he quit the paper and joined the italian army in 1915, he thought if he could climb the ranks he would gain more power and after the war was over could be placed as a moyjo figure in the government. He was discharged that same year for being wounded. After being discharged he started several right wing groups known as the Blackshirts who terrorized political opponents and criticized the government. When Italy slipped into political chaos in 1922 Mussolini said he could restore order and was given authority.
Benito Mussolini was born on July 29, 1883 in Italy. Benito had come to power by first creating a Fascist Party of unemployed war veterans who later were known as the Black Shirts. The Black Shirts terrorized political opponents and marched all over Rome leading the King to give his power to Mussolini the legal way. Mussolini then became the dictator of Italy and got the title of El Duce meaning the leader. Italy had joined the axis powers on June 10, 1940 when the defeat of France by Germany had become apparent leading Italy into World War 2.
A.Identification and Evaluation of Sources What was the most significant reason for Mussolini’s rise to power? This paper will analyze the reasons for Benito Mussolini’s rise to power. Although, there is an abundance of sources for this topic the most beneficial of the resources is the book is a secondary source called IL Duce The Rise & Fall of Benito Mussolini by Richard B. Lyttle.
Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany were similar in that both were dictatorships. Both Mussolini and Hitler came to power through legal means and believed that people were divided into either inferior or superior races. For example, Hitler was obsessed with the Aryan race and called for the genocide of Jews during WWII. In addition, both Mussolini and Hitler favored the wealthy, believed that an individual was meaningless and must submit to the decisions of their leaders, and aimed at self-sufficiency so that each could survive entirely without international trade. Furthermore, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy “had aimed for prestige and power for their countries, and brought instead humiliation and destruction” (Tarr, R.,
Communism believed in a classless society, while Fascism followed a dictatorship, but maintaining a dictatorship required the suppression of the people. Fascist ideology believed that “war alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it,” which requires constant violence to prove power (Lualdi 236). By 1924, Mussolini was able to gain 65% of the vote for fascism, but in 1933, the Nazi party only gained 44% of the vote, and even with a minority ruling party was able to gain control of the government. Both Mussolini and Hitler came into power through legal means, but Mussolini was named Prime Minister in the hopes of avoiding war but after gaining control. Yet after their legal rise into power, they used coercion and violence to further their fascist rulings.
Mussolini attempted to rule Italy with a combination of love and fear, but was not successful. When he tried to show love to his people but the groups who were inspired by him showed fear to the nation. Mussolini was hated by the people but was able to gain their support after the fall of Italy. Italy also did not have a lot of natural resources for trade that meant the nation was poor. He went back on all his promises and allied himself with Adolf Hitler.
Many Italians, especially among the middle class, welcomed his authority. While Mussolini understood that peace was important to Italy’s well being, that a war might be horrible, and that he must not “march blindly, with the Germans,” he was troubled by concerns that the Germans “might do good business cheaply” and that by not intervening on their side in the war he would lose his “part of the booty.” From the beginning the war went badly for Italy, and Mussolini's opportunistic hopes for a quick victory soon dissolved. France surrendered before there was any way that Italy would win, and Mussolini left for a meeting with Hitler, sadly aware, as Ciano put it, that his opinion had “ Only a consultative
In 1919, Benito Mussolini described fascism as “A movement that would strike against the backwardness of the right and the destructiveness of the left.” That “Fascism sitting on the right, could also have sat on the mountain of the center… These words in any case do not have a fixed and unchanged: they do have a variable subject to location, time and spirit. We don’t give a damn about these empty terminologies and we despise those who are terrorized by these words.” Fascism came into prominence in the early 20th-century Europe. It originated in Italy during World War I.
This eventually led to the March on Rome. The March on Rome was, however, merely a bluff, as the aproximately 30 000 marchers would have easily been overpowered by the military. The King of Italy at the time, Victor Emmanuel, did, however, fear civil war as a result of the March on Rome, due to the fact that the military had previously shown to be sympathetic towards the Fascist movement’s causes. This unrest led politicians close to the King advising him to appoint Mussolini as Prime Minister, as they believed that Mussolini could be subjugated and that the Fascists could be induced to moderate their programme and behaviour. This highlights the fact that it was the result of an unstable government and military, rather than force, that led to Mussolini being established as Prime Minister.
From this upheaval, came Mussolini and his supporters, the Black Shirts, to end the problems that were currently facing Italy. Soon there were over 10,000 followers fought against the king and the rule of the country. After the March on Rome, Mussolini was named prime minister, he successfully turned Italy into a Fascist country. Different people have different opinions on Fascism, but at this moment, there were thousands of Italians wanting a change and Mussolini brought that change to them. He got the support from the people showing them what he was like as a leader.
Benito Mussolini was an Italian politician and journalist known for his involvement in World War II and dictatorship over Italy. Forming the Fascist party in 1919, Mussolini became Italy’s prime minister in 1922, and continued to serve as Italy’s leader until 1943. Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was born on June 29, 1883 in Dovia di Predappio, Forlì, Italy. Often spending most of his time on politics, his father, Alessandro, worked as a blacksmith and was a passionate socialist.
Walter L. Adamson is the SC Dobbs Professor in the Department of History at Emory College of Arts and Sciences (Department of History). He received his PhD from Brandeis University and his area of interest is modern European intellectual and cultural history, particularly focused on modern Italian history; this background gives him authority to write on this topic. Adamson’s thesis is that the voiciani’s modernism was a source of influence for the fascist movement, and Mussolini took much of his cultural politics from them. Additionally, he argues that Mussolini’s politics might be “characterized… as the politicization of Italian modernism” (360).
376) This description of Fascism indicates a government that is involved in the lives of its citizens to an extreme degree. By illustrating the government as a “powerful form of personality”, Mussolini alludes to the Fascist characteristic of organicism, where the state is seen as an organic whole being. Mussolini continues his
Giovanni Gentile, the father of Italian fascism, suggest that the totalitarian state looks to "total representation of the nation and total guidance of national goals" (Appelrouth and Edles, 2012). He indicates that while this control is most obvious and pronounced under a dictatorship, it is not entirely absent in democratic
