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Rise of Fascism in Italy - Coggle Diagram
Rise of Fascism in Italy
Post War Discontent
When Italy was unified in 1870, they were weak both politically and economically.
They signed the Triple Alliance with Austria and Germany. However, they quickly realised that supporting these countries would mean they would never achieve their dreams of a united Italy because some of their land was owned by Austria. This is why they remained neutral when the WWI broke out.
The Allied Powers promised Italy that if Italy joins the war on their side, it will be given its terriroties of Trent, Trieste, parts of Dalmatia, and even influence in Asiatic Turkey. These were offered in the Secret Treaty of London in 1915 and hence Italy took the side of the Allies in WWI
After the end of the war, the Allied powers did not fulfill their promises in the Paris Peace Conference. This led to the development of a sense of discontent in the Italian people. The Italian leadership had been discredited.
There were five different governments between 1919 and 1922 and these had been incapable of taking decisive action because of the different opinions of the coalition parties.
In this situation, Benito Mussolini founded the Italian Fascist Party in 1919. In the 1921 election, they captured 35 seats and they soon began rising to power. They became a huge threat to the Leftist forces.
The last constitutional Premier - Facta - resigned on October 27, 1922 and Mussolini began his march on Rome with his followers. He reached Rome on October 30th nearly without any resistance. The King, Victor Emmanuel named him Prime Minister and Mussolini formed a govt.
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Rule of Mussolini
Economic policies
Balanced the budget, stabilised the currency, adjusted labour and capital, encouraged economic sufficiency.
Battle of Wheat - slogan of agricultural field. Trained farmers, manufactured fertilisers. Agriculture credit banks were set up and farmers were encouraged to join agricultural cooperatives. Hydroelectric power plants were built.
Italy got a lead role as a manufacturer of cars. They also began constructing war vessels for other countries.
Italy could not become self sufficient and still had to depend on the import of oil coal cotton iron etc.
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Eventually, he got 404 Parliament seats and began leading Italy the Fascist way
all opposition was murdered or exiled, he made changes in the constitution to make him the supreme authority, PM would be responsible to king and not to parliament, parliament became obsolete, no. of voters was reduced from 10 million to 3 million.
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strict censorship - anti fascist newspapers were banned, their editors were replaced by fascists. they controlled all mass media including TV and Radio.
He began to control and supervise education. Strict vigilance was introduced at schools and universities. Teachers and professors had to pledge their allegiance to the Fascist govt. Textbooks were rewritten to glorify the Fascist regime and teachers were forced to wear uniform.
Papacy
Papacy was hostile to Italian govt since 1870 when all the papal territory became owned by the Italian state. Papacy had sympathy for Mussolini but could not support his ideas of totalitarianism. The papacy had a fear of communism and acting on it and Mussolini was able to win the papacy over in this way.
One of the most outstanding achievements was their ability to settle the dispute with the papacy. They signed the Lateran Treaty of 1929. By virtue of this, the pope recognised the Kingdom of Italy with Rome as its capital and the Fascist govt recognised the Vatican City as a sovereign state, paid the pope a large sum of money as compensation for their temporal loss of territory, accepted catholicism as the official state religion, and made religious instruction compulsory at school.