Fascist Italy was the period from 1922 to 1943 when the Kingdom of Italy was ruled by Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party. Under Mussolini, Italy became a stronger country, conquering Abyssinia and Albania in 1936 and 1939, respectively. It was one of the Axis Powers after signing the Tripartite Pact with Nazi Germany and Japan in 1940, and it fought in World War II against the Allied Powers; in September 1943 it signed an armistice with the Allies and deposed Mussolini following the Allied invasion of Sicily. Italy returned to being a monarchy for two more years until the end of the war.
History[]
The National Fascist Party took power in Italy in 1922 with the March on Rome by Benito Mussolini's fascist Blackshirts. Luigi Facta resigned as Prime Minister and gave way to Mussolini, who became a dictator, having more power than King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy himself. In 1924, the assassination of socialist politician Giacomo Matteotti led to the Italian Socialist Party leaving the government, and the NFP gained more power, transforming Italy from a monarchy into a totalitarian state led by Mussolini and his party.
Under Mussolini, Italy tried to revive the Roman Empire's culture and power, and a senate became the governing body of the new government. Mussolini became a friend of the Papacy, and in 1929 he gave the Vatican City independence as the Pope's residence in the Lateran Treaty. Italy embraced nationalism and imperialism, and they pacified Libya as well as conquering Abyssinia in 1936 in the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. From 1935 to 1939, Italy gave ground support to Nationalist Spain during the Spanish Civil War, once more showing its military power and its dedication to the rise of fascism in Europe. Mussolini went on to form an alliance with the fellow fascist dictator Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany, but the alliance became one-sided as Hitler forced Mussolini to adopt anti-Semitism as one of his beliefs, and he began persecuting Jews (although many fascists were Jewish). In 1939, after Nazi Germany annexed Albania, Mussolini decided to follow in his footsteps and annexed the Kingdom of Albania as a new province.
Italian troops in World War II
Mussolini then tried to solve social issues, crushing the Sicilian Mafia by granting more power to the Prefect of Palermo, while he also tried to eliminate illiteracy and poverty with special programs. He increased the centralization of the government and formed OVRA in 1927, making his own secret police that was similar to the Gestapo of Germany. Italy followed the German example in many ways, but many fascists opposed the government's alliance with the Nazis. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was an insult to Mussolini, as it betrayed the anti-Comintern alliance, and Mussolini attempted to strike out on his own. He tried to conquer Greece, but his forces were defeated badly, and he asked for German assistance in taking over Greece in April 1941. Germany defeated Greece in a month while Italy had previously struggled for five months in the war, and Italy was again thwarted.
In North Africa, World War II was a disaster for Italy. The United Kingdom occupied Italian Somaliland and Italian Ethiopia in East Africa and occupied much of Italian Libya, also requiring German aid. The Germans took command of Italian forces, who wielded out-of-date weapons and were poorly-trained and poorly-led. Italian troops had token involvement in North Africa and in the invasion of the Soviet Union, and most of the forces defending Sicily from the July 1943 Allied Powers invasion were German or German-led. After the Allies conquered Sicily and prepared to advance to the mainland, Pietro Badoglio signed an armistice with the Allies to prevent Italy from being destroyed, and the parliament decided to remove Mussolini from power and imprison him. The Salo Republic was formed in German-occupied Italy after Mussolini was rescued by German paratroopers, but Italy was not ever fully fascist again.
Gallery[]
