Mussolini in an Hour (History) PDF

# History in an Hour: Mussolini ## Totalitarianism The next two years saw Mussolini dismantle the edifice of liberty and replace it with the beginnings of totalitarianism. Democracy for Mussolini was a "fallacy". It was time, he said, to bury the "putrid corpse of liberty." Everything, said Mussol...

# History in an Hour: Mussolini ## Totalitarianism The next two years saw Mussolini dismantle the edifice of liberty and replace it with the beginnings of totalitarianism. Democracy for Mussolini was a "fallacy". It was time, he said, to bury the "putrid corpse of liberty." Everything, said Mussolini in October 1925, was to be "within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state". Mussolini sought to change Italian society. Discipline, faith, hard work, firm government and the utter belief in the state would make Italians and therefore Italy stronger. Italians, he exclaimed, had to "believe, obey, fight". There was dissent, of course, but for many Italians, parliamentary democracy equalled bourgeois decadence and weakness, and political freedom was synonymous with feebleness. The country needed Mussolini's firm hand. Disillusioned socialists turned to fascism. Many of those who maintained their opposition found Italy too suffocating and emigrated. (In 1929, Mussolini imposed a ban on emigration, although he still encouraged Italian repatriation to Italy's African colonies.) Freedom of the press was heavily curtailed to the point that all forms of criticism were outlawed. Political opponents were hounded out of office, often imprisoned or exiled. Eventually, all opposition parties and trade unions were disbanded. Locally elected officials were replaced by those sanctioned by the party. On 24 December 1925, Mussolini pushed through the Law on the Power of the Head of Government. He was now no longer merely the representative of the government, whose power was subject to parliament, but answerable to no-one except the king. Fascist practices quickly permeated throughout Italian society. The fascist, or Roman, salute, first adopted by D’Annunzio, became compulsory in all educational and civil establishments. The handshake was considered bourgeois and by 1939 had been banned altogether. In 1938, shortly after Hitler’s visit to Italy, Mussolini introduced the goose step within his armed forces as a means of expressing “authentic military spirit” (although he strongly denied that he had been influenced by Hitler). ## Mussolini: A totalitarian state Officials in all walks of Italian life were obliged to take the fascist oath. Pope Pius XI responded by issuing an encyclical, a form of open letter, in which he advised Catholics to take the oath but with "mental reservation“. Mussolini even introduced an alternative calendar, the "Fascist Era", which began in 1922, the year he came to power. So, 1932, for example, was known as "Fascist Era Year 10". Much of Mussolini's dirty work in creating his totalitarian state was carried out by his party secretary, Roberto Farinacci. An ardent anti-Semite, Farinacci extolled fascism as "not a party but a religion", saying "If the broom is not enough, let us use the machine gun." Farinacci had co-ordinated much of the violence against opponents. But in 1925, with Mussolini wanting to tone down the party's unruly reputation in order to appeal to Italy's more affluent sections, he ordered Farinacci to purge the PNF of thousands of its more volatile members. In 1928, having banned all opposition parties, parliamentary elections were abolished. Instead, the Fascist Grand Council was to select its ministers. Hence, the election of 24 March 1929, the first in women were allowed to vote, was less an election than a plebiscite where the electorate was presented with a list of fascist party politicians to choose from. As a result, the Chamber of Deputies, all 535 seats, was now entirely fascist. The Ministry of Popular Culture controlled all aspects of Italian media, banning anything it considered overtly bourgeois, for example, American comics (with the exception of Mickey Mouse). Now, as citizens of a police state, Italians were monitored in their behaviour while spies mingled among the population, ready to report those who spoke negatively against the regime. School textbooks had to be approved and pro-left literature was banned. ## Italy's economy under Mussolini Italy's economy during the mid-1920s improved but this had less to do with fascism's intervention, limited as it was, and more to do with a global upturn. Mussolini, who was never much of an economist, initiated a number of so-called "battles" - the Battle for Land, the Battle for the Lire and the Battle for Grain - but the global Great Depression of 1929 undid his modest achievements. The fundamental fault lines within Italy remained: the north-south divide, deep-rooted corruption and rural poverty. Wages fell and prices increased. But for Mussolini, these were of secondary concern; from the 1930s, his ultimate objective was autarky, a basis by which Italy could develop into a self-sustaining, self-sufficient economy in preparation for conflict. Mussolini's foreign ventures, namely his invasions of Ethiopia and Albania, and the Spanish Civil War, proved costly in the extreme, further hampering Italy's economy. By the time war did come, autarky was far from realized. ## The attempt on Mussolini's life In 1926, Mussolini survived three assassination attempts. In one, the perpetrator, a 50-year-old Irish woman, shot him through the nose. The injuries were superficial but the ultra-vain Mussolini was obliged to wear a bandage on his nose for a while. "The bullets pass," he quipped, "Mussolini remains." His survival, each time, was seen as a sign of providence and greeted with much celebration. Fearing further assassination attempts, Mussolini took the opportunity to extend the powers of his secret police and violently stamped out all forms of opposition. In 1926, Mussolini reintroduced the death penalty which had been abolished in 1889. In practice, however, it was rarely used – only 27 people were executed between 1926 and Mussolini's downfall in 1943. But for all its totalitarianism, suppression and Mussolini's dictatorship, Italy of the inter-war years was not a nation in the grip of terror in the same bloodletting sense as Stalin's Soviet Union or Hitler's Germany. Those purged, arrested or exiled in Mussolini's Italy, although not an uncommon occurrence, did not face, as was so common in the Soviet Union, prolonged torture and execution and the liquidation of their friends and families. There were no concentration camps or gulags in Italy, nor did Mussolini establish extermination camps during the war. Mussolini's dictatorship was now firmly in place but he still needed to establish its respectability. For this he needed the approval of the Pope.