Misplaced Pages

#57942

174-484: In April 1925, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini agreed to the fascist unions' demands to set up the OND, with Mario Giani, a former director of Italian Westinghouse, at its head. The trade unions initially saw the provision of leisure facilities for workers as a way to compete with the socialists , who already had a network of cultural organizations. The OND originally had an apolitical and productivist image, helping it gain

348-552: A totalitarian state. In 1929, Mussolini signed the Lateran Treaty to establish Vatican City . Mussolini's foreign policy was based on the fascist doctrine of " Spazio vitale " ("living space"), which aimed to expand Italian possessions. In the 1920s, he ordered the Pacification of Libya , the bombing of Corfu over an incident with Greece , and annexed Fiume , after a treaty with Yugoslavia . In 1936, Ethiopia

522-476: A " mutilated victory ", demanded the annexation of Croatian-speaking territories in Dalmatia , and temporarily occupied the town of Fiume without royal assent. During the early 1920s, several short-serving prime ministers, including the well-respected Giolitti, serving an unprecedented fifth term as prime minister, could not unify the country in the face of the growing Italian fascist movement. Strengthened by

696-560: A September 1920 speech: When dealing with such a race as Slavic—inferior and barbarian—we must not pursue the carrot, but the stick policy ... We should not be afraid of new victims ... The Italian border should run across the Brenner Pass , Monte Nevoso and the Dinaric Alps  ... I would say we can easily sacrifice 500,000 barbaric Slavs for 50,000 Italians ... In the same way, Mussolini argued that Italy

870-483: A Socialist ) in the radical periodical La Voce . He also wrote several essays about German literature, some stories, and one novel: L'amante del Cardinale: Claudia Particella, romanzo storico ( The Cardinal's Mistress ). This novel he co-wrote with Santi Corvaja, and it was published as a serial book in the Trento newspaper Il Popolo from 20 January to 11 May 1910. The novel was bitterly anticlerical, and years later

1044-684: A choice of attire he considered very disrespectful. Victor Emmanuel was ultra-critical of the slow progress made by the American 5th Army and the British 8th Army as the Allies fought their way up the Italian peninsula , saying he wanted to return to Rome as soon as possible, and felt that all of the Allied soldiers fighting to liberate Italy were cowards. Likewise, Victor Emmanuel refused to renounce

1218-522: A classmate with a penknife and was severely punished. After joining a new non-religious school in Forlimpopoli , Mussolini achieved good grades, was appreciated by his teachers despite his violent character, and qualified as an elementary schoolmaster in July 1901. In July 1902, Mussolini emigrated to Switzerland, partly to avoid compulsory military service. He worked briefly as a stonemason but

1392-630: A condition for being pardoned was serving in the army, he joined the corps of the Bersaglieri in Forlì on 30 December 1904. After serving for two years in the military (from January 1905 until September 1906), he returned to teaching. In February 1909, Mussolini again left Italy, this time to take the job as the secretary of the labour party in the Italian-speaking city of Trento , then part of Austria-Hungary . He also did office work for

1566-513: A daughter, Edda, at Forlì in 1910. In 1915, he had a son with Ida Dalser , a woman born in Sopramonte, a village near Trento. He legally recognised this son on 11 January 1916. By the time he returned from service in the Allied forces of World War I, Mussolini was convinced that socialism as a doctrine had largely been a failure. In the autumn of 1917, he was recruited as a MI5 agent with

1740-454: A force of his Fascist supporters on a March on Rome . Prime Minister Luigi Facta and his cabinet drafted a decree of martial law . After some hesitation the King refused to sign it, citing doubts about the ability of the army to contain the uprising without setting off a civil war. Fascist violence had been growing in intensity throughout the summer and autumn of 1922, climaxing in rumours of

1914-594: A historical and political biography about the life and mission of the Czech ecclesiastic reformer Jan Hus and his militant followers, the Hussites . During this socialist period of his life, Mussolini sometimes used the pen name "Vero Eretico" ("sincere heretic"). Mussolini rejected egalitarianism , a core doctrine of socialism. He was influenced by Nietzsche's anti-Christian ideas and negation of God's existence . Mussolini felt that socialism had faltered, in view of

SECTION 10

#1732776442058

2088-405: A historical basis—belonged to Italy anyway. In Mussolini's thinking, demography was destiny; nations with rising populations were nations destined to conquer; and nations with falling populations were decaying powers that deserved to die. Hence, the importance of natalism to Mussolini, since only by increasing the birth rate could Italy ensure its future as a great power. By Mussolini's reckoning,

2262-480: A mere journalist". Grandi told Ciano that the king must be either "crazy" and/or "senile" as he was utterly passive, refusing to act against Mussolini. In late 1942, Italian Libya was lost. During Operation Anton on 9 November 1942, the unoccupied part of France was occupied by the Axis forces, which allowed Victor Emmanuel to proclaim in a speech at long last Corsica and Nice had been "liberated". Early in 1943,

2436-614: A message that was articulated by the Fascist newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia , which was now edited by Mussolini's brother, Arnaldo . To that end, Mussolini obtained from the legislature dictatorial powers for one year (legal under the Italian constitution of the time). He favoured the complete restoration of state authority, with the integration of the Italian Fasces of Combat into the armed forces (the foundation in January 1923 of

2610-429: A number of ideas that fascism promoted, such as rule by an elite promoting the state as the ultimate end, opposition to democracy, protecting the class system and promoting class collaboration, rejection of egalitarianism, promoting the militarisation of a nation by creating a class of warriors, demanding that citizens perform civic duties in the interest of the state, and utilising state intervention in education to promote

2784-661: A possible coup. On 24 October 1922, during the Fascist Congress in Naples, Mussolini announced that the Fascists would march on Rome to "take by the throat our miserable ruling class". General Pietro Badoglio told the King that the military would be able without difficulty to rout the rebels, who numbered no more than 10,000 men armed mostly with knives and clubs whereas the Regio Esercito had 30,000 soldiers in

2958-493: A premier with whom he found it so satisfactory to deal as with Signor Mussolini, and I know from private sources that recent events have not changed his opinion". The Matteotti affair did much to turn Italian public opinion against Fascism, and Graham reported to London that "Fascism is more unpopular by the day" while quoting a high Vatican official as saying to him that Fascism was a "spent force". The fact that Matteotti had been tortured by his killers for several hours before he

3132-430: A republic. By this time, plans were being discussed within the Italian elite for replacing Mussolini. Victor Emmanuel stated that he wanted to keep the Fascist system going after dismissing Mussolini, and he was seeking to correct merely some of "its deleterious aspects". The two replacements that were being mooted for Mussolini were Marshal Pietro Badoglio and his rival, Marshal Enrico Caviglia . As Marshal Caviglia

3306-425: A result of individual action and influence". Victor Emmanuel was tired of the recurring crises of parliamentary government and welcomed Mussolini as a "strong man" who imposed "order" on Italy. Mussolini was always very respectful and deferential when he met him in private, which was exactly the behaviour which the king expected of his prime ministers. Many Fascist gerarchi , most notably Italo Balbo , regarded as

3480-479: A royal prerogative that Victor Emmanuel rejected, and was finally settled by the compromise of giving Mussolini operational command powers. On 10 June 1940, ignoring advice that the country was unprepared, Mussolini made the fatal decision to have Italy enter World War II on the side of Nazi Germany . Almost from the beginning, disaster followed disaster. The first Italian offensive, an invasion of France launched on 17 June 1940, ended in complete failure, and only

3654-505: A secret meeting Victor Emmanuel told Badoglio that he would soon be sworn in as Italy's new prime minister and the king wanted no "ghosts" (i.e. liberal politicians from the pre-fascist era) in his cabinet. On the night of 25 July 1943, the Grand Council of Fascism voted to adopt an Ordine del Giorno (order of the day) proposed by Count Dino Grandi to ask Victor Emmanuel to resume his full constitutional powers under Article 5 of

SECTION 20

#1732776442058

3828-527: A special judicial tribunal to try political crimes with no possibility of a royal pardon. Even though the right of pardon was part of the royal prerogative, the king gave his assent to the law. However, the king did veto an attempt by Mussolini to change the Italian flag by adding the fasces symbol to stand beside the coat of arms of the House of Savoy on the Italian tricolour. The king considered this proposal to be disrespectful to his family, and refused to sign

4002-484: A speech that acknowledged the nation as an entity, a notion he had rejected prior to the war, saying: The nation has not disappeared. We used to believe that the concept was totally without substance. Instead we see the nation arise as a palpitating reality before us! ... Class cannot destroy the nation. Class reveals itself as a collection of interests—but the nation is a history of sentiments, traditions, language, culture, and race. Class can become an integral part of

4176-568: A surprise to many observers inside and outside Italy. Unfavourable comparisons were drawn with King George VI and Queen Elizabeth , who refused to leave London during the Blitz , and of Pope Pius XII , who mixed with Rome's crowds and prayed with them after Rome's working-class neighbourhood of Quartiere San Lorenzo had been destroyed by bombing. Despite the German occupation, Victor Emmanuel kept refusing to declare war on Germany, saying he needed

4350-625: A threat to the "white race". Mussolini believed that the United States was doomed as the American blacks had a higher birthrate than whites, making it inevitable that the blacks would take over the United States to drag it down to their level. The fact that Italy was suffering from overpopulation was seen as proving the cultural and spiritual vitality of the Italians, who were thus justified in seeking to colonise lands that Mussolini argued—on

4524-474: A unified region that had belonged to Italy from the times of the ancient Roman province of Italia , and was claimed as Italy's exclusive sphere of influence. The right to colonise the neighbouring Slovene ethnic areas and the Mediterranean, being inhabited by what were alleged to be less developed peoples, was justified on the grounds that Italy was allegedly suffering from overpopulation. Borrowing

4698-562: A villa owned by the Pirzio Biroli family at Brazzacco in order to be close to the front. In May 1941, Victor Emmanuel gave permission to his unpopular cousin, Prince Aimone , to become King of Croatia under the title Tomislav II, in an attempt to get him out of Rome, but Aimone frustrated this ambition by never going to Croatia to receive his crown . During a tour of the new provinces that were annexed to Italy from Yugoslavia, Victor Emmanuel commented that Fascist policies towards

4872-690: A vote by Parliament first, though that had not stopped him from signing declarations of war on Ethiopia, Albania, Great Britain, France, Greece, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and the United States, none of which had been sanctioned by Parliament. Under strong pressure from the Allied Control Commission, the king finally declared war on Germany on 8 October 1943. Ultimately, the Badoglio government in Southern Italy raised

5046-595: A £100 weekly wage by Sir Samuel Hoare , the agency's representative in Rome , in return for which he promised not only to keep up pro-war propaganda in Il Popolo but also to send army veterans in to break up any pro-peace strikes in Milan factories . In early 1918 he called for the emergence of a man "ruthless and energetic enough to make a clean sweep" to revive the Italian nation. On 23 March 1919 Mussolini re-formed

5220-527: Is estimated that by 1936 the OND had organized 80% of salaried workers. Nearly 40% of the industrial workforce had been recruited into the Dopolavoro by 1939 and the sports activities proved popular with large numbers of workers. The OND had the largest membership of any of the mass Fascist organizations in Italy. The Dopolavoro had little trouble attracting members; according to historian Tobias Asbe, while

5394-640: The Statuto Albertino , or constitution, granted the king considerable residual powers. For instance, he had the right to appoint the prime minister even if the individual in question did not command majority support in the Chamber of Deputies . A shy and somewhat withdrawn individual, the King hated the day-to-day stresses of Italian politics, though the country's chronic political instability forced him to intervene on no fewer than ten occasions between 1900 and 1922 to solve parliamentary crises. When

Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro - Misplaced Pages Continue

5568-819: The First World War began, Italy at first remained neutral, despite being part of the Triple Alliance (albeit it was signed on defensive terms and Italy objected that the Sarajevo assassination did not qualify as aggression). In April 1915, Italy signed the secret Treaty of London committing itself to enter the war on the side of the Triple Entente . Most of the politicians opposed the war, and Italy's Chamber of Deputies forced Prime Minister Antonio Salandra to resign. At this juncture, Victor Emmanuel declined Salandra's resignation and personally made

5742-468: The Habsburg Empire and the annexation of the Italian-speaking provinces of Trento and Trieste and the southern part of German-speaking Tirol (Sued-Tirol). For this reason, Victor Emmanuel was labelled the "King of Victory". In practice, the peace treaties failed to give Italy all the territories promised in the 1915 Treaty of London . Italian nationalists protested against what they defined as

5916-717: The Italian Co-Belligerent Army ( Esercito Cobelligerante del Sud ), the Italian Co-Belligerent Air Force ( Aviazione Cobelligerante Italiana ), and the Italian Co-Belligerent Navy ( Marina Cobelligerante del Sud ). All three forces were loyal to the King. Relations with the Allied Control Commission were very strained as the king remained obsessed with protocol, screaming with fury when General Noel Mason-Macfarlane met him wearing shirt sleeves and shorts,

6090-652: The Italian Social Republic , which served as a collaborationist regime of the Germans. With Allied victory imminent, Mussolini and mistress Clara Petacci attempted to flee to Switzerland, but were captured by communist partisans and executed on 28 April 1945. Mussolini was born on 29 July 1883 in Dovia di Predappio , a small town in the province of Forlì in Romagna . During the Fascist era, Predappio

6264-458: The March on Rome , Mussolini was appointed prime minister by King Victor Emmanuel III . After removing opposition through his secret police and outlawing labour strikes , Mussolini and his followers consolidated power through laws that transformed the nation into a one-party dictatorship . Within five years, Mussolini established dictatorial authority by legal and illegal means and aspired to create

6438-808: The Mediterranean Sea was not in any real sense Italy's Mare Nostrum . While the Air Force generally did better than the Army or the Navy, it was chronically short of modern aircraft. As Italy's fortunes worsened, the popularity of the King suffered. One coffee-house ditty went as follows: Quando Vittorio era soltanto re Si bevea del buon caffè. Poi divenne Imperatore Se ne sentì solo l'odore. Oggi che è anche Re d'Albania Anche l'odore l' han portato via. E se avremo un'altra vittoria Ci mancherà anche la cicoria. When our Victor

6612-608: The National Fascist Party at a congress in Rome. In 1921 , Mussolini won election to the Chamber of Deputies for the first time. In the meantime, from about 1911 until 1938, Mussolini had various affairs with the Jewish author and academic Margherita Sarfatti , called the "Jewish Mother of Fascism" at the time. In the night between 27 and 28 October 1922, about 30,000 Fascist blackshirts gathered in Rome to demand

6786-467: The Peschiera conference , where he defended Italy's strategic decisions. The economic depression which followed World War I gave rise to much extremism among Italy's sorely tried working classes. This caused the country as a whole to become politically unstable. Benito Mussolini , soon to be Italy's Fascist dictator, took advantage of this instability for his rise to power. In 1922, Mussolini led

6960-588: The Regio Esercito , Regina Marina and the Regia Aeronautica all took their oaths of loyalty to the king, not Mussolini. The vast majority of the Italian officers in all three services saw Victor Emmanuel as opposed to Mussolini as the principal locus of their loyalty, allowing the king to check decisions by Mussolini that he disapproved of. Italy declared neutrality in September 1939, but Mussolini always made it clear that he wanted to intervene on

7134-608: The Statuto. In effect, this was a motion of no confidence in Mussolini. The following afternoon, Mussolini asked for an audience with the king at Villa Savoia . When Mussolini tried to tell Victor Emmanuel about the Grand Council's vote, Victor Emmanuel abruptly cut him off and dismissed him in favour of Badoglio. He then ordered Mussolini's arrest. Publicly, Victor Emmanuel and Badoglio claimed that Italy would continue

Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro - Misplaced Pages Continue

7308-521: The University of Lausanne 's Department of Social Science on 7 May 1904, attending the lectures of Vilfredo Pareto. In 1937, when he was prime minister of Italy, the University of Lausanne awarded Mussolini an honorary doctorate . In December 1904, Mussolini returned to Italy to take advantage of an amnesty for desertion from the military. He had been convicted for this in absentia . Since

7482-563: The Voluntary Militia for National Security ) and the progressive identification of the party with the state. In political and social economy, he passed legislation that favoured the wealthy industrial and agrarian classes (privatisations, liberalisations of rent laws and dismantlement of the unions). In 1923, Mussolini sent Italian forces to invade Corfu during the Corfu incident . The League of Nations proved powerless, and Greece

7656-632: The general strike , and the use of neo-Machiavellian appeals to emotion, impressed Mussolini deeply. Mussolini became active in the Italian socialist movement in Switzerland, working for the paper L'Avvenire del Lavoratore , organising meetings, giving speeches to workers, and serving as secretary of the Italian workers' union in Lausanne . Angelica Balabanov reportedly introduced him to Vladimir Lenin , who later criticised Italian socialists for having lost Mussolini from their cause. In 1903, he

7830-526: The squadristi used violence to prevent opposition MPs from entering Parliament and in November 1926, Mussolini arbitrarily declared that all of the opposition MPs had forfeited their seats, which he handed out to Fascists. Despite this blatant violation of the Statuto Albertino , the king remained passive and silent as usual. In 1926, Mussolini had violated the Statuto Albertino by creating

8004-606: The 18-year-old Albanian patriot Vasil Laçi . Later, this attempt was cited by Communist Albania as a sign of the general discontent among the oppressed Albanian population. A second attempt by Dimitri Mikhaliov in Albania gave the Italians an excuse to affirm a possible connection with Greece as a result of the monarch's assent to the Greco-Italian War . Under the terms of the Pact of Steel signed on 22 May 1939, which

8178-549: The 1930s newsreel images of King Victor Emmanuel and Queen Elena evoked applause, sometimes cheering, when played in cinemas, in contrast to the hostile silence shown toward images of Fascist leaders. On 30 March 1938, the Italian Parliament established the rank of First Marshal of the Empire for Victor Emmanuel and Mussolini. This new rank was the highest rank in the Italian military. His equivalence with Mussolini

8352-595: The American people; because Britain was "rotten to the core" and would soon cease to be a great power; and because everything he kept hearing about the massive losses sustained by the Red Army convinced him that Germany would win on the Eastern Front at least. Another excuse used by Victor Emmanuel was that Mussolini was allegedly still popular with the Italian people and that it would offend public opinion if he dismissed Mussolini. The Vatican favoured Italy exiting

8526-582: The Balkans. Mack Smith wrote that these demands were "unrealistic" and caused much time to be wasted in the Lisbon peace talks as the Allies were willing to concede that Victor Emmanuel could keep his throne and rejected all of his other demands. In the meantime, German forces continued to be rushed into Italy. On 8 September 1943, Victor Emmanuel publicly announced an armistice with the Allies . Confusion reigned as Italian forces were left without orders, and

8700-674: The Blackshirts marched past the Quirinal Palace and he lit votive lamps at public ceremonies to honour the Fascist "martyrs" killed fighting against the Socialists and Communists. At the same time, the Crown became so closely identified with Fascism that by the time Victor Emmanuel was able to shake himself loose from it, it was too late to save the monarchy. In what proved to be a prescient speech, Senator Luigi Albertini called

8874-466: The Croats and Slovenes were driving them towards rebellion, but chose not to intervene to change the said policies. On 22 June 1941, Germany launched Operation Barbarossa , the invasion of the Soviet Union. Mussolini had the king issue a declaration of war, and sent an Italian expeditionary force to the Eastern Front , through Victor Emmanuel was later to claim that he wanted only a "token" force to go to

SECTION 50

#1732776442058

9048-453: The Fascist regime was becoming very unpopular, but he had decided to keep Mussolini on as a prime minister because there was no replacement for him. Because the king had supported Fascism, he feared that to overthrow the Fascist system would mean the end of the monarchy as the anti-Fascist parties were all republican. During the invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Victor Emmanuel moved to

9222-404: The Fascist regime. In the summer of 1941, the carabinieri generals told the king that they were prepared to have the carabinieri serve as a strike force for a coup against Mussolini, saying if the war continued, it was bound to cause a revolution that would sweep away both the Fascist regime and the monarchy. Victor Emmanuel rejected this offer, and in September 1941, when Count Ciano told him

9396-651: The Fascist system was destroyed; when the king rejected that course under the grounds that the Fascist Grand Council would never vote against Mussolini, Grandi assured him that it would, saying the majority of the gerarchi were now against Mussolini. Using the Vatican as an intermediary, Victor Emmanuel contacted the British and American governments in June 1943 to ask if they, the Allies, were willing to see

9570-471: The First World War that resulted in his ousting from the Italian Socialist Party: Professor Benito Mussolini, ... 38, revolutionary socialist, has a police record; elementary school teacher qualified to teach in secondary schools; former first secretary of the Chambers in Cesena, Forlì, and Ravenna; after 1912 editor of the newspaper Avanti! to which he gave a violent suggestive and intransigent orientation. In October 1914, finding himself in opposition to

9744-409: The German government suggested that Hitler was intent on seeing the Danzig crisis escalate into war that year. Between 11 and 13 August 1939, the Italian Foreign Minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano , visited Hitler at the Berghof, and learned for the first time that Germany was definitely going to invade Poland later that same summer. Mussolini at first was prepared to follow Germany into war in 1939, but

9918-562: The Germans established the Italian Social Republic as a puppet state in Northern Italy . Having signed the armistice with the Allies he then declared war on Germany in October. He clashed constantly with Allied command. Under pressure from the Allies, Victor Emmanuel transferred most of his powers to his son in June 1944, effectively ending his involvement in the war and in the government of Italy. Victor Emmanuel officially abdicated his throne in 1946 in favour of his son, who became King Umberto II . Victor Emmanuel hoped to strengthen support for

10092-562: The Germans, who had been expecting this move for some time, quickly disarmed and interned Italian troops and took control in the occupied Balkans, France and the Dodecanese , as well as in Italy itself. Many of the units that did not surrender joined forces with the Allies against the Germans. Fearing a German advance on Rome, Victor Emmanuel and his government fled south to Brindisi . This choice may have been necessary to protect his safety; indeed, Hitler had planned to arrest him shortly after Mussolini's overthrow. Nonetheless, it still came as

10266-558: The Grand Council as a precondition for giving his consent to declaring war. On 31 March 1940, Mussolini submitted to Victor Emmanuel a long memorandum arguing that Italy to achieve its long-sought spazio vitale had to enter the war on the Axis side sometime that year. However, the king remained resolutely opposed to Italy entering the war until late May 1940, much to Mussolini's intense frustration. At one point, Mussolini complained to Ciano that there were two men, namely Victor Emmanuel and Pope Pius XII , who were preventing him from doing

10440-415: The House of Savoy continue after the war. On 19 July 1943, Rome was bombed for the first time in the war, further cementing the Italian people's disillusionment with their once-popular King. When the King visited the bombed areas of Rome, he was loudly booed by his subjects who blamed him for the war, which caused Victor Emmanuel to become worried about the possibility of a revolution which might bring in

10614-419: The Italian Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti , French Socialist Gustave Hervé , Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta , and German philosophers Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx , the founders of Marxism . Mussolini had taught himself French and German and translated excerpts from Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Kant . During this time, he published Il Trentino veduto da un Socialista ( Trentino as viewed by

SECTION 60

#1732776442058

10788-609: The Italian Socialist Party and its support of orthodox socialism, he claimed that his failure as a member of the party to revitalise and transform it to recognise the contemporary reality revealed the hopelessness of orthodox socialism as outdated and a failure. This perception of the failure of orthodox socialism in the light of the outbreak of World War I was not solely held by Mussolini; other pro-interventionist Italian socialists such as Filippo Corridoni and Sergio Panunzio had also denounced classical Marxism in favour of intervention. These basic political views and principles formed

10962-444: The Italian elite was his way of trying to avoid making a decision. Moreover, Victor Emmanuel had considerable respect for Mussolini, who he saw as his most able prime minister, and appeared to dread taking on a man whose intelligence was greater than his own. In a conversation with the papal nuncio, the king explained that he could not sign an armistice because he hated the United States as a democracy whose leaders were accountable to

11136-488: The Italian invasions of Ethiopia and Albania. During his reign of nearly 46 years, which began after the assassination of his father Umberto I , the Kingdom of Italy became involved in two world wars . His reign also encompassed the birth, rise, and fall of the Fascist regime in Italy . The first fourteen years of Victor Emmanuel's reign were dominated by prime minister Giovanni Giolitti , who focused on industrialization and passed several democratic reforms, such as

11310-550: The Italian population had to reach 60 million to enable Italy to fight a major war—hence his relentless demands for Italian women to have more children. Mussolini and the fascists managed to be simultaneously revolutionary and traditionalist ; because this was vastly different from anything else in the political climate of the time, it is sometimes described as "The Third Way". The Fascisti, led by one of Mussolini's close confidants, Dino Grandi , formed armed squads of war veterans called blackshirts (or squadristi ) with

11484-412: The Italian state as illegitimate and that a treaty with the Vatican was necessary. However, when Orlando attempted to open negotiations with the Vatican in 1919, he was blocked by the king who was furious at the way in which the Catholic Church had maintained pro-Austrian neutrality during World War I. Aside from championing the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin , which belonged to the House of Savoy,

11658-424: The Low Countries and France , and as the Wehrmacht continued to advance into France, the king's opposition to Italy entering the war started to weaken by the second half of May 1940. Mussolini argued all through May 1940 that since it was evident that Germany was going to win the war that here was an unparalleled chance for Italy to make major gains at the expense of France and Britain that would allow Italy to become

11832-404: The Milan fascio as the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian Combat Squad), consisting of 200 members. The ideological basis for fascism came from a number of sources. Mussolini drew from the works of Plato , Georges Sorel , Nietzsche , and the economic ideas of Vilfredo Pareto . Mussolini admired Plato's The Republic , which he often read for inspiration. The Republic expounded

12006-429: The Rome area armed with heavy weapons, armoured cars, and machine guns. During the "March on Rome", the Fascist squadristi were halted by 400 lightly armed policemen, as the squadristi had no desire to take on the Italian state. The troops were loyal to the King; even Cesare Maria De Vecchi , commander of the Blackshirts , and one of the organisers of the March on Rome, told Mussolini that he would not act against

12180-415: The Socialist Party, as they were two " revisionists " who had supported the war. In 1912, he became a member of the National Directorate of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). He was rewarded with the editorship of the Socialist Party newspaper Avanti! Under his leadership, its circulation soon rose from 20,000 to 100,000. John Gunther in 1940 called him "one of the best journalists alive"; Mussolini

12354-435: The Soviet Union, rather than the 10 divisions that Mussolini actually sent. In late 1941, Italian East Africa was lost. The loss of Italian East Africa together with the defeats in North Africa and the Balkans caused an immense loss of confidence in Mussolini's ability to lead, and many Fascist gerarchi such as Emilio De Bono and Dino Grandi were hoping by the spring of 1941 that the king might sack him in order to save

12528-418: The United States was a harmless move. The king was pleased by the news of Japan entering the war, believing that with Britain's Asian colonies in danger that this would force the British to redeploy their forces to Asia and might finally allow for the Axis conquest of Egypt. Marshal Enrico Caviglia wrote in his diary that it was "criminal" the way that Victor Emmanuel refused to act against Mussolini despite

12702-582: The Vatican to end the "Roman Question". In 1929, Mussolini, on behalf of the King, signed the Lateran Treaty . The treaty was one of the three agreements made that year between the Kingdom of Italy and the Holy See . On 7 June 1929, the Lateran Treaty was ratified and the " Roman Question " was settled. The Italian monarchy enjoyed popular support for decades. Foreigners noted how even as late as

12876-409: The abuses of the squadristi , of which the murder of Matteotti was only the most notorious example, and were hoping that he would dismiss Mussolini, saying that one word from the king would be enough to bring down his unpopular prime minister. The newspaper Corriere della Sera in an editorial stated the abuses of the Fascist government such as the murder of Matteotti had now reached such a point that

13050-506: The activities sponsored by the OND were popular with the working class, these activities "did not turn workers into ideologically convinced supporters of the Fascist regime." As Adrian Lyttelton wrote, "attempts to use the Dopolavoro as a medium for direct political indoctrination or cultural uplift were usually defeated by the failure of these cadres to use a language which their audience could understand." The organization never achieved

13224-542: The alternative: socialism and anarchism . Both the spectre of the Russian Revolution and the tragedies of World War I played a large part in these political decisions. Victor Emmanuel always saw the Italian Socialists and Communists as his principal enemies, and felt that Mussolini's dictatorship had saved the existing status quo in Italy. Victor Emmanuel always returned the fascist salute when

13398-464: The anti-interventionist orthodox socialists resulted in violence between the Fascists and socialists. These early hostilities between the Fascists and the revolutionary socialists shaped Mussolini's conception of the nature of Fascism in its support of political violence. Mussolini became an ally with the irredentist politician and journalist Cesare Battisti . When World War I started, Mussolini, like many Italian nationalists, volunteered to fight. He

13572-419: The arch-conservative Antonio Salandra as well as General Armando Diaz , that it would be better to do a deal with Mussolini. On 1 November 1922, the king reviewed the squadristi as they marched past the Quirinal Palace giving the fascist salute. Victor Emmanuel took no responsibility for appointing Mussolini prime minister, saying he learned from studying history that events were "much more automatic than

13746-474: The basis of Mussolini's newly formed political movement, the Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria in 1914, who called themselves Fascisti (Fascists). At this time, the Fascists did not have an integrated set of policies and the movement was small, ineffective in its attempts to hold mass meetings, and was regularly harassed by government authorities and orthodox socialists. Antagonism between the interventionists versus

13920-465: The common people of Italy to be participating members in what would be Italy's first national war. Thus he claimed that the vast social changes that the war could offer meant that it should be supported as a revolutionary war. As Mussolini's support for the intervention solidified, he came into conflict with socialists who opposed the war. He attacked the opponents of the war and claimed that those proletarians who supported pacifism were out of step with

14094-551: The continuation of the struggle in which he was engaged ... But assuming these modifications did take place ... he always wanted to give the appearance of still being a socialist, and he fooled himself into thinking that this was the case. After being ousted by the Italian Socialist Party, Mussolini made a radical transformation, ending his support for class conflict and joining in support of revolutionary nationalism transcending class lines. He formed

14268-647: The crown as Emperor of Ethiopia . His decision to do this was not universally accepted. Victor Emmanuel was only able to assume the crown after the Italian Army invaded Ethiopia (Abyssinia) and overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie during the Second Italo-Abyssinian War . Ethiopia was annexed to the Italian Empire . The League of Nations condemned Italy's participation in this war and the Italian claim by right of conquest to Ethiopia

14442-490: The danger of a totalitarian evolution. As Prime Minister, the first years of Mussolini's rule were characterised by a right-wing coalition government of Fascists, nationalists, liberals, and two Catholic clerics from the People's Party . The Fascists made up a small minority in his original governments. Mussolini's domestic goal was the eventual establishment of a totalitarian state with himself as supreme leader ( Il Duce ),

14616-545: The decision for Italy to enter the war. The king possessed the right to do so under the Statuto, which stipulated that ultimate authority for declaring war rested with the crown. Demonstrations in favour of the war were staged in Rome, with 200,000 gathering on 16 May 1915, in the Piazza del Popolo. The corrupt and disorganised war effort, the stunning loss of life suffered by the Royal Italian Army , especially at

14790-593: The democratic powers as tensions grew in the League of Nations , which he left in 1937. Now hostile to France and Britain, Italy formed the Axis alliance with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan . The wars of the 1930s cost Italy enormous resources, leaving it unprepared for the Second World War; Mussolini initially declared Italy's non-belligerence. However, in June 1940, believing Allied defeat imminent, he joined

14964-553: The development of warriors and future rulers of the state. The idea behind Mussolini's foreign policy was that of spazio vitale (vital space), a concept in Italian Fascism that was analogous to Lebensraum in German National Socialism. The concept of spazio vitale was first announced in 1919, when the entire Mediterranean , especially so-called Julian March , was redefined to make it appear

15138-723: The directorate of the Italian Socialist party because he advocated a kind of active neutrality on the part of Italy in the War of the Nations against the party's tendency of absolute neutrality, he withdrew on the twentieth of that month from the directorate of Avanti! Then on the fifteenth of November [1914], thereafter, he initiated publication of the newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia , in which he supported—in sharp contrast to Avanti! and amid bitter polemics against that newspaper and its chief backers—the thesis of Italian intervention in

15312-444: The dominant power in the Mediterranean. On 1 June 1940, Victor Emmanuel finally gave Mussolini his permission for Italy to enter the war, though the king retained the supreme command while only giving Mussolini power over political and military questions. The delay between the king's permission to enter the war and the declaration of war was caused by Mussolini's demand that he have the powers of supreme command, an attempt to take away

15486-536: The economic downturn facing the country, the National Fascist Party led the March on Rome , and he appointed Benito Mussolini as prime minister. Victor Emmanuel remained silent on the domestic political abuses of Fascist Italy , and he accepted the additional crowns of the Emperor of Ethiopia in 1936 and the King of Albania in 1939 as a result of Italian imperialism under fascism . When World War II broke out in 1939, Victor Emmanuel advised Mussolini against entering

15660-630: The establishment of the Italian Fasces of Combat in 1919, until his summary execution in 1945 . As a dictator and founder of fascism , Mussolini inspired the international spread of fascist movements during the interwar period . Mussolini was originally a socialist politician and journalist at the Avanti! newspaper . In 1912, he became a member of the National Directorate of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), but

15834-892: The fact that France signed an armistice with Germany on 22 June, followed by another armistice with Italy on 24 June allowed Mussolini to present it as a victory. Victor Emmanuel sharply criticized the terms of the Franco-Italian Armistice , saying he wanted Italy to occupy Tunisia , Corsica , and Nice , though the fact the armistice allowed him to proclaim a victory over France was a source of much pleasure to him. In 1940 and 1941, Italian armies in North Africa and in Greece suffered humiliating defeats. Unlike his opposition over going to war with major powers like France and Britain (who might actually defeat Italy), Victor Emmanuel blessed Mussolini's plans to invade Greece in

16008-458: The fact that he was clearly mismanaging the war. One Italian journalist remembered that by the fall of 1941 he did not know anyone who felt anything other than "contempt" for the king who was unwilling to disassociate himself from Fascism. The British historian Denis Mack Smith wrote that Victor Emmanuel tended to procrastinate when faced with very difficult choices, and his unwillingness to dismiss Mussolini despite mounting pressure from within

16182-505: The failures of Marxist determinism and social democratic reformism , and believed that Nietzsche's ideas would strengthen socialism. Mussolini's writings came to reflect an abandonment of Marxism and egalitarianism in favour of Nietzsche's übermensch concept and anti-egalitarianism. When World War I began in August 1914, many socialist parties worldwide followed the rising nationalist current and supported their country's intervention in

16356-464: The fall of 1940, saying he expected the Greeks to collapse as soon as Italy invaded. Through the carabinieri (para-military police), Victor Emmanuel was kept well informed of the state of public opinion and from the autumn of 1940 onward received reports that the war together with the Fascist regime were becoming extremely unpopular with the Italian people. When Mussolini made Marshal Pietro Badoglio

16530-502: The fall of Hohenzollern and Habsburg monarchies and the repression of "reactionary" Turkey would create conditions beneficial for the working class, and that the mobilisation required for the war would undermine Russia's reactionary authoritarianism and bring Russia to social revolution. He said that for Italy the war would complete the process of Risorgimento by uniting the Italians in Austria-Hungary into Italy and by allowing

16704-472: The goal of restoring order to the streets of Italy with a strong hand. The blackshirts clashed with communists, socialists, and anarchists at parades and demonstrations; all of these factions were also involved in clashes against each other. The Italian government rarely interfered with the blackshirts' actions, owing in part to a looming threat and widespread fear of a communist revolution. The Fascisti grew rapidly; within two years they transformed themselves into

16878-405: The great defeat of Caporetto , and the post–World War I recession turned the King against what he perceived as an inefficient political bourgeoisie . Nevertheless, the King visited the various areas of Northern Italy suffering repeated strikes and mortar hits from elements of the fighting there, and demonstrated considerable courage and concern in personally visiting many people, while his wife,

17052-468: The idea first developed by Enrico Corradini before 1914 of the natural conflict between " plutocratic " nations like Britain and "proletarian" nations like Italy, Mussolini claimed that Italy's principal problem was that "plutocratic" countries like Britain were blocking Italy from achieving the necessary spazio vitale that would let the Italian economy grow. Mussolini equated a nation's potential for economic growth with territorial size, thus in his view

17226-566: The interventionist newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia and the Fascio Rivoluzionario d'Azione Internazionalista ("Revolutionary Fasces of International Action") in October 1914. His nationalist support of intervention enabled him to raise funds from Ansaldo (an armaments firm) and other companies to create Il Popolo d'Italia to convince socialists and revolutionaries to support the war. Further funding for Il Popolo during

17400-530: The introduction of universal male suffrage . In foreign policy, Giolitti's Italy distanced itself from the fellow members of the Triple Alliance (the German Empire and Austria-Hungary ) and colonized Libya following the Italo-Turkish War . Giolitti was succeeded by Antonio Salandra , Paolo Boselli , and Vittorio Emanuele Orlando . The First World War brought about Italian victory over

17574-521: The king a "traitor" to Italy by supporting the Fascist regime and warned that the king would one day regret what he had done. Victor Emmanuel was disgusted by what he regarded as the superficiality and frivolity of what he called the "so-called elegant society" of Rome, and as such, the king preferred to spend his time out in the countryside where he went hunting, fishing and reading military history books outside. A taciturn man who felt deeply uncomfortable expressing himself in conversation, Victor Emmanuel

17748-461: The king had both a legal and moral duty to dismiss Mussolini at once and restore the rule of law. During the Matteotti affair, even pro-Fascist politicians like Salandra started to express some doubts about Mussolini after he took responsibility for all the Fascist violence, saying he did not order Matteotti's murder, but he did authorise the violence of the squadristi , making him responsible for

17922-468: The king had little interest in religion. In private Victor Emmanuel regarded the Catholic Church with a jaundiced eye, making remarks about senior clerics as being greedy, cynical and oversexed hypocrites who took advantage of the devout faith of ordinary Italians. In 1926, the king allowed Mussolini to do what he prevented Orlando from doing in 1919, giving permission to open negotiations with

18096-531: The law when Mussolini submitted it to him. By 1928, practically the only check on Mussolini's power was the King's prerogative of dismissing him from office. Even then, this prerogative could only be exercised on the advice of the Fascist Grand Council , a body that only Mussolini could convene. Whatever the circumstances, Victor Emmanuel showed weakness from a position of strength, with dire future consequences for Italy and fatal consequences for

18270-547: The local Socialist Party, and edited its newspaper L'Avvenire del Lavoratore ( The Future of the Worker ). Returning to Italy, he spent a brief time in Milan , and in 1910 he returned to his hometown of Forlì, where he edited the weekly Lotta di classe ( The Class Struggle ). Mussolini thought of himself as an intellectual and was considered to be well-read. He read avidly; his favourites in European philosophy included Sorel,

18444-482: The military authoritarianism of Garibaldi, and the nationalism of Mazzini. In 1902, at the anniversary of Garibaldi's death, Mussolini made a public speech in praise of the republican nationalist. Mussolini was sent to a boarding school in Faenza run by Salesians . Despite being shy, he often clashed with teachers and fellow boarders due to his proud, grumpy, and violent behaviour. During an argument, he injured

18618-551: The monarchy against an ultimately successful referendum to abolish it. After the 1946 Italian institutional referendum established the Republic, Victor Emmanuel went into exile to Alexandria , where he died and was buried the following year in St. Catherine's Cathedral, Alexandria . In 2017, his remains were returned to rest in Italy following an agreement between presidents Sergio Mattarella and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi . Victor Emmanuel

18792-411: The monarchy itself. Fascism was a force of opposition to left-wing radicalism. This appealed to many people in Italy at the time, and certainly to the King. In many ways, the events from 1922 to 1943 demonstrated that the monarchy and the moneyed class, for different reasons, felt Mussolini and his regime offered an option that, after years of political chaos, was more appealing than what they perceived as

18966-679: The murder of Matteotti. The king affirmed that "the Chamber and the Senate were his eyes and ears", desiring a parliamentary initiative, according to the Statuto Albertino. The knowledge that the king and the Parliament would not dismiss the prime minister led to the Mussolini government winning a vote of no confidence in November 1924 in the chamber of deputies by 314 votes to 6 and in the Senate by 206 votes to 54. The deputies and

19140-421: The nation, but the one cannot eclipse the other. The class struggle is a vain formula, without effect and consequence wherever one finds a people that has not integrated itself into its proper linguistic and racial confines—where the national problem has not been definitely resolved. In such circumstances the class movement finds itself impaired by an inauspicious historic climate. Mussolini continued to promote

19314-467: The need of a revolutionary vanguard elite to lead society. He no longer advocated a proletarian vanguard, but instead a vanguard led by dynamic and revolutionary people of any social class. Though he denounced orthodox socialism and class conflict, he maintained at the time that he was a nationalist socialist and a supporter of the legacy of nationalist socialists in Italy's history, such as Giuseppe Garibaldi , Giuseppe Mazzini , and Carlo Pisacane . As for

19488-498: The number two-man in Fascism, remained republicans, and the king greatly appreciated Mussolini's conversion to monarchism. In private, Mussolini detested Victor Emmanuel as a tedious and tiresomely boring man, whose only interests were military history and his collections of stamps and coins, a man whom Mussolini sneered was "too diminutive for an Italy destined to greatness" (a reference to the king's height). However, Mussolini told

19662-522: The old Liberals and others, won 64% of the vote. Victor Emmanuel III Victor Emmanuel III (11 November 1869 – 28 December 1947), born Vittorio Emanuele Ferdinando Maria Gennaro di Savoia , was King of Italy from 29 July 1900 until his abdication on 9 May 1946. A member of the House of Savoy , he also reigned as Emperor of Ethiopia (1936–41) and King of the Albanians (1939–43) following

19836-452: The other gerarchi that he needed the king's support and that one day, another fascist revolution would take place "without contraceptives". The King failed to move against the Mussolini regime's abuses of power (including, as early as 1924, the assassination of Giacomo Matteotti and other opposition MPs). During the Matteotti affair of 1924, Sir Ronald Graham, the British ambassador, reported: "His Majesty once told me that he had never had

20010-622: The press, and declared the Fascist Party to be the only legal party in Italy. In December 1925, Mussolini passed a law declaring that he was responsible to the King, not Parliament. Under the Statuto Albertino Italian governments were legally answerable to Parliament, but politically answerable to the monarch. However, it had been a strong constitutional convention since at least the 1860s that they were legally and politically answerable to Parliament. In January 1926,

20184-519: The problem of poverty in Italy could only be solved by winning the necessary spazio vitale . Though biological racism was less prominent in Italian Fascism than in National Socialism , right from the start the spazio vitale concept had a strong racist undercurrent. Mussolini asserted there was a "natural law" for stronger peoples to subject and dominate "inferior" peoples such as the "barbaric" Slavic peoples of Yugoslavia. He stated in

20358-605: The proletarians who had joined the rising interventionist vanguard that was preparing Italy for a revolutionary war. He began to criticise the Italian Socialist Party and socialism itself for having failed to recognise the national problems that had led to the outbreak of the war. He was expelled from the party for his support of intervention. A police report prepared by the Inspector-General of Public Security in Milan, G. Gasti, describes his background and his position on

20532-445: The queen, took turns with nurses in caring for Italy's wounded. It was at this time, the period of World War I, that the King enjoyed the genuine affection of the majority of his people. Still, during the war he received about 400 threatening letters from people of every social background, mostly members of the working class . On 8 November 1917, he met with the prime ministers of Britain ( Lloyd George ) and France ( Paul Painlevé ) at

20706-487: The resignation of liberal Prime Minister Luigi Facta and the appointment of a new Fascist government. On the morning of 28 October, King Victor Emmanuel III , who according to the Albertine Statute held the supreme military power, refused the government request to declare martial law , which led to Facta's resignation. The King then handed over power to Mussolini (who stayed in his headquarters in Milan during

20880-520: The scapegoat for the failure of the invasion of Greece and sacked him as Chief of the General Staff in December 1940, Badoglio appealed to the king for help. Victor Emmanuel refused to help Badoglio, saying that Mussolini would manage the situation just always as he had in the past. In January 1941, the king admitted to his aide-de-camp, General Paolo Puntoni , that war was not going well and

21054-543: The scope or scale of Nazi movements, like the " Strength through Joy " organization. Another organisation, the Opera Nazionale Balilla (ONB), was widely popular and provided young people with access to clubs, dances, sports facilities, radios, concerts, plays, circuses and outdoor hikes at little or no cost. It sponsored tournaments and sports festivals. Special Commissioner for the OND: The OND

21228-444: The senators were unwilling to risk their lives by voting for a no-confidence motion as the king had made it clear that he would not dismiss Mussolini even if the motion did carry the votes of the majority. Victor Emmanuel remained silent during the winter of 1925–26 when Mussolini dropped all pretence of democracy. During this time, the king signed without protest laws that eliminated freedom of speech and assembly, abolished freedom of

21402-604: The side of Germany provided that this would not strain Italy's resources too much (the costs of the wars in Ethiopia and Spain had pushed Italy to the verge of bankruptcy by 1939). On 18 March 1940, Mussolini met Hitler at a summit at the Brenner Pass and promised him that Italy would soon enter the war. Victor Emmanuel had powerful doubts about the wisdom of going to war, and at one point in March 1940 hinted to Ciano that he

21576-506: The side of the Allies and utilised the Società Dante Alighieri to promote Italian nationalism. Italian socialists were divided on whether to support the war. Prior to Mussolini taking a position on the war, a number of revolutionary syndicalists had announced their support of intervention, including Alceste De Ambris , Filippo Corridoni , and Angelo Oliviero Olivetti . The Italian Socialist Party decided to oppose

21750-545: The summer of 1943. Besides rejecting unconditional surrender as "truly monstrous", Victor Emmanuel wanted from the Allies a guarantee that he would keep his throne; a promise that Italian colonial empire in Libya and the Horn of Africa would be restored; that Italy would keep the part of Yugoslavia that had been annexed by Mussolini; and finally the Allies should promise not to invade the Italian mainland, and instead invade France and

21924-487: The support of employers. There was nothing "inherently fascist" about the OND and it had been modelled on institutions like the YMCA . In April 1927, Augusto Turati , the National Fascist Party secretary, dismissed Giani and became OND leader, turning the OND into an auxiliary of the party. In the 1930s under the direction of Achille Starace the OND became primarily recreational, concentrating on sports and other outings. It

22098-422: The talks) by asking him to form a new government. The King's controversial decision has been explained by historians as a combination of delusions and fears; Mussolini enjoyed wide support in the military and among the industrial and agrarian elites, while the King and the conservative establishment were afraid of a possible civil war and thought they could use Mussolini to restore law and order, but failed to foresee

22272-626: The ten divisions of the " Italian Army in Russia " ( Armata Italiana in Russia , or Armir) were crushed in a side-action in the Battle of Stalingrad . By the middle of 1943, the last Italian forces in Tunisia had surrendered and Sicily had been taken by the Allies . Hampered by lack of fuel as well as several serious defeats, the Italian Navy spent most of the war confined to port. As a result,

22446-401: The things that he wanted to do, leading to state he wanted to "blow" the Crown and Catholic Church "up to the skies". Victor Emmanuel was a cautious man, and he always consulted all of the available advisors before making a decision, in this case, the senior officers of the armed forces who informed him of Italy's military deficiencies. On 10 May 1940, Germany launched a major offensive into

22620-564: The titles of Emperor of Ethiopia and King of Albania, recognizing the previous holders of those titles as legitimate. The crown of the King of the Albanians had been assumed by Victor Emmanuel in 1939 when Italian forces invaded the nearly defenceless monarchy across the Adriatic Sea and caused King Zog I to flee. In 1941, while in Tirana , the King escaped an assassination attempt by

22794-454: The war after anti-militarist protestors had been killed, resulting in a general strike called Red Week . Mussolini initially held official support for the party's decision and, in an August 1914 article, Mussolini wrote "Down with the War. We remain neutral." He saw the war as an opportunity, both for his own ambitions as well as those of socialists and Italians. He was influenced by anti-Austrian Italian nationalist sentiments, believing that

22968-600: The war against the militarism of the Central Empires. For this reason he was accused of moral and political unworthiness and the party thereupon decided to expel him ... Thereafter he ... undertook a very active campaign in behalf of Italian intervention, participating in demonstrations in the piazzas and writing quite violent articles in Popolo d'Italia ... In his summary, the Inspector also noted: He

23142-470: The war as a member of the Axis . Privately, they both began negotiating with the Allies for an armistice. The king was advised by his generals to sign an immediate armistice, since German troops in Italy were still outnumbered by Italian troops. But Victor Emmanuel was unwilling to accept the Allied demand for unconditional surrender, and as a result, the secret armistice talks in Lisbon were dragged out over

23316-401: The war by 1943, but papal diplomats told their American counterparts that the king was "weak, indecisive and excessively devoted to Mussolini". In the summer of 1942, Grandi had a private audience with Victor Emmanuel, where he asked him to dismiss Mussolini and sign an armistice with the Allies before the Fascist regime was destroyed only to be told to "trust your king" and "stop speaking like

23490-494: The war came from French sources, beginning in May 1915, in part from French socialists who wanted Italian intervention on France's side. Britain, and possibly Russia and the United States, also subsidized the paper. On 5 December 1914, Mussolini denounced orthodox socialism for failing to recognise that the war had made national identity and loyalty more significant than class distinction. He fully demonstrated his transformation in

23664-896: The war offered Italians in Austria-Hungary the chance to liberate themselves from rule of the Habsburgs . He eventually decided to declare support for the war by appealing to the need for socialists to overthrow the Hohenzollern and Habsburg monarchies in Germany and Austria-Hungary who he said had consistently repressed socialism. Mussolini further justified his position by denouncing the Central Powers for being reactionary powers; for pursuing imperialist designs against Belgium and Serbia as well as historically against Denmark, France, and against Italians, since hundreds of thousands of Italians were under Habsburg rule. He argued that

23838-561: The war on Germany's side, to share the spoils. After the tide turned, and the Allied invasion of Sicily , King Victor Emmanuel III dismissed Mussolini as head of government and placed him in custody in July 1943. After the king agreed to an armistice with the Allies, in September 1943, Mussolini was rescued in the Gran Sasso raid by Germany. Hitler made Mussolini the figurehead of a puppet state in German-occupied north Italy,

24012-504: The war was lost, blasted him for his "defeatism", saying he still believed in Mussolini. On 11 December 1941, Victor Emmanuel rather glibly agreed to Mussolini's request to declare war on the United States . Failing to anticipate the American "Europe First" strategy, the king believed that the Americans would follow an "Asia First" strategy of focusing all their efforts against Japan in revenge for Pearl Harbor, and that declaring war on

24186-445: The war would soon turn around for the Axis powers because it had to. Even Victor Emmanuel was forced to concede that Mussolini had taken a turn "for the worse", which he blamed on "that woman" as he called Mussolini's mistress, Clara Petacci . On 15 May 1943, the king sent Mussolini a letter saying Italy should sign an armistice and exit the war. On 4 June 1943, Grandi saw the king and told him that he had to dismiss Mussolini before

24360-447: The war. In Italy, the outbreak of the war created a surge of Italian nationalism and intervention was supported by a variety of political factions. One of the most prominent and popular Italian nationalist supporters of the war was Gabriele d'Annunzio who promoted Italian irredentism and helped sway the Italian public to support intervention. The Italian Liberal Party under the leadership of Paolo Boselli promoted intervention on

24534-408: The war. In June 1940, he relented and granted Mussolini sweeping powers to enter and conduct the war. Amidst the Allied invasion of Italy in 1943, Victor Emmanuel discharged Mussolini from the office of Prime Minister and signed the armistice of Cassibile with the Allies in September 1943. In the face of the coming German reprisal ( Operation Achse ), he and the government fled to Brindisi while

24708-427: The wishes of the monarch. De Vecchi went to the Quirinal Palace to meet the king and assured him that the Fascists would never fight against the king. It was at this point that the Fascist leader considered leaving Italy altogether. But then, minutes before midnight, he received a telegram from the King inviting him to Rome. Facta had the decree for martial law prepared after the cabinet had unanimously endorsed it, and

24882-480: Was "Remember: to be a king, all you need to know is how to sign your name, read a newspaper, and mount a horse." His early years showed evidence that, by the standards of the Savoy monarchy, he was a man committed to constitutional government. Even though his father was killed by an anarchist , the new king showed a commitment to constitutional freedoms. Although parliamentary rule had been firmly established in Italy,

25056-606: Was a working reporter while preparing for the March on Rome, and wrote for the Hearst News Service until 1935. Mussolini was so familiar with Marxist literature that in his writings he would not only quote from well-known Marxist works but also from the relatively obscure works. During this period Mussolini considered himself an "authoritarian communist " and a Marxist and he described Karl Marx as "the greatest of all theorists of socialism." In 1913, he published Giovanni Hus, il veridico ( Jan Hus, true prophet ),

25230-538: Was also called Sciaboletta ("little saber") by some Italians. Victor Emmanuel III was born in Naples in the Kingdom of Italy to King Umberto I and Margherita of Savoy , the Queen consort . He was named after his grandfather, Victor Emmanuel II , King of Sardinia and later King of Italy . Unlike his paternal first cousin's son, the 1.98 m (6 ft 6 in) tall Amedeo, 3rd Duke of Aosta , Victor Emmanuel

25404-579: Was an offensive and defensive alliance with Germany, Italy would have been obliged to follow Germany into war in 1939. As the Pact of Steel was signed, the German Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop , told Mussolini that there would be no war until 1942 or 1943, but the Italian ambassador in Berlin, Baron Bernardo Attolico , warned Rome that the information he was hearing from sources in

25578-424: Was an opportunist who was well known for his sycophancy towards those in power, which led the king to choose him as Mussolini's successor as he knew that Badoglio would do anything to have power whereas Caviglia had a reputation as a man of principle and honour. The king felt that Badoglio as prime minister would obey any royal orders whereas he was not so certain that Caviglia would do the same. On 15 July 1943, in

25752-658: Was arrested by Bernese police because of his advocacy of a violent general strike, spent two weeks in jail, and was handed over to Italian police in Chiasso . After he was released in Italy, he returned to Switzerland. He was arrested again in Geneva, in April 1904, for falsifying his passport expiration date, and was expelled from the canton of Geneva . He was released in Bellinzona following protests from Genevan socialists. Mussolini then returned to Lausanne, where he entered

25926-400: Was blocked by Victor Emmanuel. At a meeting with Count Ciano on 24 August 1939, the king stated that "we are absolutely in no condition to wage war"; the state of the Regio Esercito was "pitiful"; and since Italy was not ready for war, it should stay out of the coming conflict, at least until it was clear who was winning. More importantly, Victor Emmanuel stated that as the king of Italy he

26100-454: Was compromising with his personal and political honesty by making use of every means—no matter where they came from or wherever he might obtain them—to pay for his newspaper, his program and his line of action. This was his initial line. It is difficult to say to what extent his socialist convictions (which he never either openly or privately abjure) may have been sacrificed in the course of the indispensable financial deals which were necessary for

26274-665: Was conquered following the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and merged into Italian East Africa (AOI) with Eritrea and Somalia . In 1939, Italian forces annexed Albania . Between 1936 and 1939, Mussolini ordered an intervention in Spain in favour of Francisco Franco , during the Spanish Civil War . Mussolini took part in the Treaty of Lausanne , Four-Power Pact and Stresa Front . However, he alienated

26448-500: Was considering dismissing Mussolini as Ciano wrote in his diary: "the King feels that it may become necessary for him to intervene at any moment to give things a different direction; he is prepared to do this and to do it quickly". Victor Emmanuel hoped that a vote against Italy entering the war would be registered in the Fascist Grand Council, as he knew that the gerarchi Cesare Maria De Vecchi , Italo Balbo and Emilio De Bono were all anti-war, but he refused to insist upon calling

26622-448: Was content to let Mussolini rule Italy as he regarded Il Duce as a "strong man" who saved him the trouble from meeting various politicians as he had done before 1922. Victor Emmanuel was anti-clerical, being greatly embittered by the refusal of the Catholic Church to recognize Rome as the capital of Italy, but he realized that as long as the Catholic Church remained opposed to the Italian state, that many Italians would continue to regard

26796-604: Was dubbed "Duce's town" and Forlì was called "Duce's city", with pilgrims going to Predappio and Forlì to see the birthplace of Mussolini. Benito Mussolini's father, Alessandro Mussolini , was a blacksmith and a socialist, while his mother, Rosa (née Maltoni), was a devout Catholic schoolteacher. Given his father's political leanings, Mussolini was named Benito after liberal Mexican president Benito Juárez , while his middle names, Andrea and Amilcare, were for Italian socialists Andrea Costa and Amilcare Cipriani . In return his mother required that he be baptised at birth. Benito

26970-495: Was expelled for advocating military intervention in World War I . In 1914, Mussolini founded a newspaper, Il Popolo d'Italia , and served in the Royal Italian Army until he was wounded and discharged in 1917. Mussolini eventually denounced the PSI, his views now centering on Italian nationalism , and founded the fascist movement which opposed egalitarianism and class conflict , instead advocating " revolutionary nationalism " transcending class lines . In October 1922, following

27144-462: Was followed by his siblings Arnaldo and Edvige . As a young boy, Mussolini helped his father in his smithy. Mussolini's early political views were strongly influenced by his father, who idolised 19th-century Italian nationalist figures with humanist tendencies such as Carlo Pisacane , Giuseppe Mazzini , and Giuseppe Garibaldi . His father's political outlook combined views of anarchist figures such as Carlo Cafiero and Mikhail Bakunin ,

27318-409: Was forced to comply with Italian demands. In June 1923, the government passed the Acerbo Law , which transformed Italy into a single national constituency. It also granted a two-thirds majority of the seats in Parliament to the party or group of parties that received at least 25% of the votes. This law applied in the elections of 6 April 1924 . The national alliance , consisting of Fascists, most of

27492-405: Was killed especially shocked Italian public opinion, who were much offended by the gratuitous cruelty of the squadristi killers. Given the widespread public revulsion against Mussolini generated by the murder of Matteotti, the king could have dismissed Mussolini in 1924 with a minimum of trouble and broad public support. Orlando told the king that the majority of the Italian people were tired of

27666-451: Was one of the few officers of the Regio Esercito who kept his distance from the Fascist regime, he was unacceptable to Victor Emmanuel who wanted an officer who was committed to upholding Fascism, which led him to choose Badoglio who had loyally served Mussolini and committed all sorts of atrocities in Ethiopia, but who had a grudge against Il Duce for making him the scapegoat for the failed invasion of Greece in 1940. In addition, Badoglio

27840-510: Was plain King, Coffee was a common thing. When an Emperor he was made, Coffee's odour it did fade. Since he got Albania's throne, Even the odour has flown. And if we have another victory We're also going to lose our chicory . By early 1943, Mussolini was so psychologically shattered by the successive Italian defeats that he was so depressed and drugged out as to be almost catatonic at times, staring blankly into space for hours while high on various drugs and mumbling incoherently that

28014-574: Was promoted to the rank of corporal "for merit in war". The promotion was recommended because of his exemplary conduct and fighting quality, his mental calmness and lack of concern for discomfort, his zeal and regularity in carrying out his assignments, where he was always first in every task involving labor and fortitude. Mussolini's military experience is told in his work Diario di guerra . He totalled about nine months of active, front-line trench warfare. During this time, he contracted paratyphoid fever . His military exploits ended in February 1917 when he

28188-417: Was rejected by some major powers, such as the United States and the Soviet Union , but was accepted by Great Britain and France in 1938. In 1943, Italy's possession of Ethiopia came to an end. The term of the last acting Viceroy of Italian East Africa , including Eritrea and Italian Somaliland , ended on 27 November 1941 with surrender to the allies. In November 1943 Victor Emmanuel renounced his claims to

28362-427: Was right to follow an imperialist policy in Africa because he saw all black people as "inferior" to whites. Mussolini claimed that the world was divided into a hierarchy of races (though this was justified more on cultural than on biological grounds), and that history was nothing more than a Darwinian struggle for power and territory between various "racial masses". Mussolini saw high birthrates in Africa and Asia as

28536-586: Was seen by the king as offensive and a clear sign that the ultimate goal of the fascist was to get rid of him. As popular as Victor Emmanuel was, several of his decisions proved fatal to the monarchy. Among these decisions was his assumption of the crowns of Ethiopia and Albania and his public silence when Mussolini's Fascist government issued German-style racial purity laws . Prior to his government's invasion of Ethiopia, Victor Emmanuel travelled in 1934 to Italian Somaliland , where he celebrated his 65th birthday on 11 November. In 1936, Victor Emmanuel assumed

28710-420: Was short of stature even by 19th-century standards, to the point that today he would appear diminutive. From birth until his accession, Victor Emmanuel was known as " The Prince of Naples ". On 24 October 1896, he married Princess Elena of Montenegro . On 29 July 1900, at the age of 30, Victor Emmanuel acceded to the throne upon his father's assassination. The only advice that his father Umberto ever gave his heir

28884-514: Was the ideal editor of Avanti! for the Socialists. In that line of work he was greatly esteemed and beloved. Some of his former comrades and admirers still confess that there was no one who understood better how to interpret the spirit of the proletariat and there was no one who did not observe his apostasy with sorrow. This came about not for reasons of self-interest or money. He was a sincere and passionate advocate, first of vigilant and armed neutrality, and later of war; and he did not believe that he

29058-517: Was the supreme commander-in-chief, and he wanted to be involved in any "supreme decisions", which in effect was claiming a right to veto any decision Mussolini might make about going to war. On 25 August, Ciano wrote in his diary that he informed a "furiously warlike" Mussolini that the king was against Italy going to war in 1939, forcing Il Duce to concede that Italy would have to declare neutrality. Unlike in Germany where officers from 1934 onward took an oath of personal loyalty to Hitler, officers of

29232-502: Was then changed into the ENAL ( Ente nazionale assistenza lavoratori ) which was ultimately abolished in 1978. Benito Mussolini Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (in Switzerland known as Benedetto Mussolini ; 29 July 1883 – 28 April 1945) was an Italian dictator who founded and led the National Fascist Party (PNF). He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922, until his deposition in 1943, as well as Duce of Italian fascism from

29406-427: Was turned down because of his radical Socialism and told to wait for his reserve call up. He was called up on 31 August and reported for duty with his old unit, the Bersaglieri . After a two-week refresher course he was sent to Isonzo front where he took part in the Second Battle of the Isonzo, September 1915. His unit also took part in the Third Battle of the Isonzo, October 1915. The Inspector General continued: He

29580-410: Was unable to find a permanent job. During this time he studied the ideas of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche , the sociologist Vilfredo Pareto , and the syndicalist Georges Sorel . Mussolini also later credited Charles Péguy and Hubert Lagardelle as influences. Sorel's emphasis on the need for overthrowing decadent liberal democracy and capitalism by the use of violence, direct action ,

29754-439: Was very surprised when he learned about 9 am on 28 October that the king had refused to sign it. When Facta protested that the king was overruling the entire cabinet, he was told that this was the royal prerogative and the king did not wish to use force against the Fascists. The only politician Victor Emmanuel consulted during the crisis was Antonio Salandra , who advised him to appoint Mussolini prime minister and stated he

29928-455: Was willing to serve in a cabinet headed by Mussolini. By midday on 30 October, Mussolini had been appointed President of the Council of Ministers (Prime Minister), at the age of 39, with no previous experience of office, and with only 32 Fascist deputies in the Chamber . Though the King claimed in his memoirs that it was the fear of a civil war that motivated his actions, it would seem that he received some 'alternative' advice, possibly from

30102-424: Was withdrawn from circulation after Mussolini made a truce with the Vatican. He had become one of Italy's most prominent socialists. In September 1911, Mussolini participated in a riot, led by socialists, against the Italian war in Libya . He bitterly denounced Italy's "imperialist war," an action that earned him a five-month jail term. After his release, he helped expel Ivanoe Bonomi and Leonida Bissolati from

30276-410: Was wounded accidentally by the explosion of a mortar bomb in his trench. He was left with at least 40 shards of metal in his body and had to be evacuated from the front. He was discharged from the hospital in August 1917 and resumed his editor-in-chief position at his new paper, Il Popolo d'Italia . On 25 December 1915, in Treviglio , he married his compatriot Rachele Guidi, who had already borne him

#57942