Fascism and Mussolini in Italy

• Political movement, Fascism, promotes extreme nationalism, denies individual rights, and establishes a dictatorial one-party rule.
• Fascism originated in southern Italy in the early 1920s.
• Fascists promised to revive the economy, punish those responsible for hard times, and restore order and national pride.
• Fascist regimes varied, but shared characteristics, including nationalism, racism, hatred of communists, despising liberal democracy.
• Fascists worshipped charismatic leaders and used mass movements, rallies, colored uniforms, special salutes, parades, and charismatic speeches.

Fascism in Italy

• Fascism became a formal party in 1921.
• People were upset with the Italian government for its performance at Versailles.
• The Constitutional monarchy was corrupt and the government didn’t help the economy, leading to unrest.
• Benito Mussolini was named after a Mexican Revolutionary leader and was once a school teacher.
• Blackshirts fought socialists and Mussolini gained support from the army and Victor Emmanuel’s court.
• Black Shirts marched to Rome, leading to Mussolini's appointment to the King’s cabinet.

Mussolini’s Rule

• Mussolini established a dictatorship with one-party rule, censorship, and a secret police.
• Mussolini was called II Duce (leader) and organized education, labor, the press, and leisure activities.
• Mussolini denounced democracy and established a corporative state where the government controls all industry.
• He gained Catholic support by uniting with the Pope (Lateran Accords 1929).

Stalin

• Democide is death by government, referring to genocides.
• Democides are the elimination of groups within a country that the government feels they need to be eradicated for political reasons and future threats
• Totalitarianism involves total, centralized, state control over every aspect of public and private life.
• Stalinism is the pursuit of communism through centralization, totalitarianism, and a totalitarian dictatorship.
• Stalin argued a strong government and leader are necessary to achieve communism.

Harsh Rule

• Collectivization involved large, government-owned collective farms.
• Kulaks were powerful peasants who organized large landholdings and resisted Stalin.
• Stalin had 1 million Kulaks killed in the first year of resistance and others sent to labor camps or exiled.
• The Great Terror/Purge (1937) was a campaign of terror aimed at eliminating anyone who threatened Stalin's power.
• Trials of Stalin’s accomplices were based on fabricated charges.
• By 1938, almost every Bolshevik was executed and Trotsky was killed in 1940.
• The military was purged beginning in 1937, removing 84% of armed forces strategic commanders and 94% of its ranking political officers.
• Gulags were labor camps, mostly in Siberia, with harsh conditions.
• Gulag prisoners included murderers, thieves, and political & religious prisoners.
• Prisoners constructed canals, railroad lines, hydraulic stations, built roads, lumbering, mining coal, copper, and gold.
• In 1939, it’s estimated that 1 million prisoners where executed and 2 million died in the camps, though several million survived.