Vittorio Emanuele Orlando (19 May 1860 – 1 December 1952) was Prime Minister of Italy from 30 October 1917 to 23 June 1919, succeeding Paolo Boselli and preceding Francesco Saverio Nitti. He was a member of the Liberal Union of Italy during his premiership.
Biography[]
Vittorio Emanuele Orlando was born in Palermo, Sicily, Two Sicilies in 1860, and he became an expert in public law and administration. He accepted professorships at Modena in 1885, Messina in 1886, Palermo in 1889, and Rome from 1901 to 1931. He participated in various governments as Minister of Education from 1903 to 1905, of Justice from 1907 to 1909 and from 1915 to 1916, and of the Interior from 1916 to 1917. On account of his good standing among those sections of the population which were opposed to Italy's participation in World War I (Catholics, socialists, and some liberals), he formed a government at the height of the disastrous Battle of Caporetto. He led his country to victory in the war, but failed to realize Italian territorial claims at the Paris Peace Conference, such as over the port of Fiume. As a consequence he resigned n June 1919. In 1922, he tried twice to form a stable coalition government, but his failure to do so persuaded him to accept Benito Mussolini's coming to power following the March on Rome. Disappointed by the growing radicalism of Italian fascism, he openly broke with the movement in 1925 and resigned from the Chamber of Deputies. To avoid swearing an oath of allegiance to the Duce, he resigned his chair at the University of Rome in 1931. One of Victor Emmanuel III of Italy's advisers in the coup that ousted Mussolini after a meeting of the Grand Council of Fascism, he became President of the Chamber of Deputies in 1944 and in 1946 became a member of the Constituent Assembly. In 1948, he was made a senator for life, and he died in 1952.