Benito Mussolini Part II

 

Economic

policy

Mussolini launched several public construction programs and government initiatives throughout Italy to combat economic setbacks or unemployment levels. His earliest (and one of the best known) was the Battle for Wheat, by which 5,000 new farms were established and five new agricultural towns (among them Littoria and Sabaudia) on land reclaimed by draining the Pontine Marshes. In Sardinia, a model agricultural town was founded and named Mussolinia (it has long since been renamed Arborea). This town was the first of what Mussolini hoped would be thousands of new agricultural settlements across the country. The Battle for Wheat diverted valuable resources to wheat production from other more economically viable crops. Landowners grew wheat on unsuitable soil using all the advances of modern science, and although the wheat harvest increased, prices rose, consumption fell and high tariffs were imposed. The tariffs promoted widespread inefficiencies and the government subsidies given to farmers pushed the country further into debt.

Mussolini also initiated the "Battle for Land", a policy based on land reclamation outlined in 1928. The initiative had a mixed success; while projects such as the draining of the Pontine Marsh in 1935 for agriculture were good for propaganda purposes, provided work for the unemployed and allowed for great land owners to control subsidies; other areas in the Battle for Land were not very successful. This program was inconsistent with the Battle for Wheat (small plots of land were inappropriately allocated for large-scale wheat production), and the Pontine Marsh was lost during World War II. Fewer than 10,000 peasants resettled on the redistributed land, and peasant poverty remained high. The Battle for Land initiative was abandoned in 1940.

In 1930, in "The Doctrine of Fascism" he wrote, "The so-called crisis can only be settled by State action and within the orbit of the State." He tried to combat economic recession by introducing a "Gold for the Fatherland" initiative, encouraging the public to voluntarily donate gold jewelry to government officials in exchange for steel wristbands bearing the words "Gold for the Fatherland". The collected gold was melted down and turned into gold bars, which were then distributed to the national banks.

Government control of business was part of Mussolini's policy planning. By 1935, he claimed that three-quarters of Italian businesses were under state control. Later that year, Mussolini issued several edicts to further control the economy, e.g. forcing banks, businesses, and private citizens to surrender all foreign-issued stock and bond holdings to the Bank of Italy. In 1936, he imposed price controls. He also attempted to turn Italy into a self-sufficient autarky, instituting high barriers on trade with most countries except Germany.

In 1943, Mussolini proposed the theory of economic socialization.

Railways

Mussolini was keen to take the credit for major public works in Italy, particularly the railway system. His reported overhauling of the railway network led to the popular saying, "Say what you like about Mussolini, he made the trains run on time." Kenneth Roberts, journalist and novelist, wrote in 1924:

The difference between the Italian railway service in 1919, 1920 and 1921 and that which obtained during the first year of the Mussolini regime was almost beyond belief. The cars were clean, the employees were snappy and courteous, and trains arrived at and left the stations on time — not fifteen minutes late, and not five minutes late; but on the minute.

In fact, the improvement in Italy's dire post-war railway system had begun before Mussolini took power. The improvement was also more apparent than real. Bergen Evans wrote in 1954:

The author was employed as a courier by the Franco-Belgique Tours Company in the summer of 1930, the height of Mussolini's heyday, when a fascist guard rode on every train, and is willing to make an affidavit to the effect that most Italian trains on which he traveled were not on schedule—or near it. There must be thousands who can support this attestation. It's a trifle, but it's worth nailing down.

George Seldes wrote in 1936 that although the express trains carrying tourists generally—though not always—ran on schedule, the same was not true for the smaller lines, where delays were frequent, while Ruth Ben-Ghiat has said that "they improved the lines that had a political meaning to them".

Propaganda and cult of personality

Mussolini's foremost priority was the subjugation of the minds of the Italian people through the use of propaganda. The regime promoted a lavish cult of personality centered on the figure of Mussolini. He pretended to incarnate the new fascist Übermensch, promoting an aesthetic of exasperated Machismo that attributed to him quasi-divine capacities. At various times after 1922, Mussolini personally took over the ministries of the interior, foreign affairs, colonies, corporations, defence, and public works. Sometimes he held as many as seven departments simultaneously, as well as the premiership. He was also head of the all-powerful Fascist Party and the armed local fascist militia, the MVSN or "Blackshirts", who terrorized incipient resistance in the cities and provinces. He would later form the OVRA, an institutionalized secret police that carried official state support. In this way he succeeded in keeping power in his own hands and preventing the emergence of any rival.

All teachers in schools and universities had to swear an oath to defend the fascist regime. Newspaper editors were all personally chosen by Mussolini, and only those in possession of a certificate of approval from the Fascist Party could practice journalism. These certificates were issued in secret; Mussolini thus skillfully created the illusion of a "free press". The trade unions were also deprived of any independence and were integrated into what was called the "corporative" system. The aim was to place all Italians in various professional organisations or corporations, all under clandestine governmental control.

Large sums of money were spent on highly visible public works and on international prestige projects. These included as the Blue Riband ocean liner SS Rex; setting aeronautical records with the world's fastest seaplane, the Macchi M.C.72; and the transatlantic flying boat cruise of Italo Balbo, which was greeted with much fanfare in the United States when it landed in Chicago in 1933.

The principles of the doctrine of Fascism were laid down in an article by eminent philosopher Giovanni Gentile and Mussolini himself that appeared in 1932 in the Enciclopedia Italiana. Mussolini always portrayed himself as an intellectual, and some historians agree. Gunther called him "easily the best educated and most sophisticated of the dictators", and the only national leader of 1940 who was an intellectual. German historian Ernst Nolte said that "His command of contemporary philosophy and political literature was at least as great as that of any other contemporary European political leader."

Culture

Nationalists in the years after World War I thought of themselves as combating the liberal and domineering institutions created by cabinets—such as those of Giovanni Giolitti, including traditional schooling. Futurism, a revolutionary cultural movement which would serve as a catalyst for Fascism, argued for "a school for physical courage and patriotism", as expressed by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1919. Marinetti expressed his disdain for "the by now prehistoric and troglodyte Ancient Greek and Latin courses", arguing for their replacement with exercise modelled on those of the Arditi soldiers. It was in those years that the first Fascist youth wings were formed: Avanguardia Giovanile Fascista (Fascist Youth Vanguards) in 1919 and Gruppi Universitari Fascisti (Fascist University Groups) in 1922.

After the March on Rome that brought Mussolini to power, the Fascists started considering ways to politicize Italian society, with an accent on education. Mussolini assigned former ardito and deputy-secretary for Education Renato Ricci the task of "reorganizing the youth from a moral and physical point of view". The Opera Nazionale Balilla was created through Mussolini's decree of 3 April 1926, and was led by Ricci for the following eleven years. It included children between the ages of 8 and 18, grouped as the Balilla and the Avanguardisti.

According to Mussolini: "Fascist education is moral, physical, social, and military: it aims to create a complete and harmoniously developed human, a fascist one according to our views". The "educational value set through action and example" was to replace the established approaches. Fascism opposed its version of idealism to prevalent rationalism, and used the Opera Nazionale Balilla to circumvent educational tradition by imposing the collective and hierarchy, as well as Mussolini's own personality cult.

Another important constituent of the Fascist cultural policy was Catholicism. In 1929, a concordat with the Vatican was signed, ending decades of struggle between the Italian state and the papacy that dated back to the 1870 takeover of the Papal States by the House of Savoy during the unification of Italy. The Lateran Treaty, by which the Italian state was at last recognised by the Catholic Church, and the independence of Vatican City was recognised by the Italian state, were so much appreciated by the ecclesiastic hierarchy that Pope Pius XI acclaimed Mussolini as "the Man of Providence".

The 1929 treaty included a legal provision whereby the Italian government would protect the honour and dignity of the Pope by prosecuting offenders. Mussolini had had his children baptized in 1923 and himself re-baptized by a Catholic priest in 1927. After 1929, Mussolini, with his anti-communist doctrines, convinced many Catholics to actively support him.

Foreign policy

In foreign policy, Mussolini was pragmatic and opportunistic. His vision centered on forging a new Roman Empire in Africa and the Balkans, vindicating the so-called "mutilated victory" of 1918 imposed by Britain and France, which betrayed the Treaty of London and denied Italy its "natural right" to supremacy in the Mediterranean. However, in the 1920s, given Germany's weakness, post-war reconstruction, and reparations issues, Europe's situation was unfavorable for openly revising the Treaty of Versailles. Italy's foreign policy focused on maintaining an "equidistant" stance from major powers to exercise "determinant weight," using alignment with one power to secure support for Italian ambitions in Europe and Africa. Mussolini believed that Italy's population, then at 40 million, was insufficient for a major war, and sought to increase it to at least 60 million through relentless natalist policies, including making advocacy of contraception a criminal offense in 1924.

Initially, Mussolini operated as a pragmatic statesman, seeking advantages without risking war with Britain and France. An exception was the 1923 Corfu incident, where Mussolini was prepared for war with Britain over the assassination of Italian military personnel, but was persuaded to accept a diplomatic solution by the Italian Navy's leadership. In 1925, Mussolini secretly told Italian military leaders that Italy needed to win spazio vitale ('living space'), aiming to unite the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean under Italian control, though he acknowledged that Italy lacked sufficient manpower for war until the mid-1930s. Mussolini participated in the Locarno Treaties of 1925, which guaranteed Germany's western borders. In 1929, he began planning for aggression against France and Yugoslavia, and by 1932 sought an anti-French alliance with Germany. A planned attack on France and Yugoslavia in 1933 was aborted when Mussolini learned that French intelligence had broken Italian military codes. After Adolf Hitler rose to power, threatening Italian interests in Austria and the Danube basin, Mussolini proposed the Four Power Pact with Britain, France, and Germany in 1933. Italy also signed the Italo-Soviet Pact which was partly intended as a warning to Germany. When Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss was assassinated in 1934 by Austrian Nazis during a coup, Mussolini threatened Hitler with war in the event of a German invasion of Austria, and opposed any German attempt at Anschluss, promoting the Stresa Front against Germany in 1935.

Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I had to flee due to Mussolini's invasion. Selassie met Mussolini in 1924 when he had visited Rome as Regent.

Despite earlier opposition to the Italo-Turkish War, after the Abyssinia Crisis of 1935–1936, Mussolini invaded Ethiopia following border incidents between Ethiopia and Italian Somaliland. Historians are divided on the reasons for the invasion. Some argue it was a distraction from the Great Depression, while others see it as part of a broader expansionist program. Italy’s forces quickly overwhelmed Ethiopia, leading to the proclamation of an Italian Empire in May 1936. Confident of French support due to his opposition to Hitler, Mussolini dismissed the League of Nations' sanctions imposed over the Ethiopian invasion. He viewed the sanctions as hypocritical attempts by older imperial powers to block Italy’s expansion. Italy was criticized for its use of mustard gas and brutal tactics against Ethiopian guerrillas. Mussolini ordered systematic terror against Ethiopian rebels, targeting both combatants and civilians. Mussolini ordered the execution of the entire adult male population in a town and in one district ordered that "the prisoners, their accomplices and the uncertain will have to be executed" as part of the "gradual liquidation" of the population. Mussolini favoured a policy of brutality partly because he believed the Ethiopians were not a nation because black people were too stupid to have a sense of nationality. The other reason was because Mussolini was planning on bringing millions of Italians into Ethiopia and wanted to kill off much of the population to make room.

Sanctions against Italy pushed Mussolini towards an alliance with Germany. In 1936, he told the German Ambassador that Italy had no objections to Austria becoming a German satellite, removing a key obstacle to Italo-German relations. After the sanctions ended, France and Britain tried to revive the Stresa Front, seeking to retain Italy as an ally. However, in 1936, Mussolini agreed to the Rome-Berlin Axis with Germany, and in 1939 signed the Pact of Steel, binding Italy and Germany in a full military alliance.

The conquest of Ethiopia cost 12,000 Italian lives and placed a severe financial burden on Italy. Mussolini had underestimated the cost of the invasion, which proved far higher than expected, and the ongoing occupation further strained Italy’s economy. The Ethiopian and Spanish wars consumed funds intended for military modernization, weakening Italy's military power. From 1936 to 1939, Mussolini provided substantial military support to Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War, further distancing Italy from France and Britain. This intervention and the worsening relationship with the Western powers led Mussolini to accept the German annexation of Austria and the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. At the Munich Conference in 1938, Mussolini posed as a peacemaker while supporting Germany’s annexation of the Sudetenland.

In 1938, TIGR, a Slovene partisan group, plotted to assassinate Mussolini in Kobarid, but their attempt was unsuccessful.

World War II

Gathering storm

By the late 1930s, Mussolini concluded that Britain and France were declining powers, and that Germany and Italy, due to their demographic strength, were destined to rule Europe. He believed that the declining birth rates in France were "absolutely horrifying" and that the British Empire was doomed because one-quarter of the British population was over 50. Mussolini preferred an alliance with Germany over Britain and France, viewing it as better to be allied with the strong instead of the weak. He saw international relations as a Social Darwinian struggle between "virile" nations with high birth rates destined to destroy "effete" nations with low birth rates. Mussolini had no interest in an alliance with France, which he considered a "weak and old" nation due to its declining birthrate.

Mussolini's belief in Italy's destino to rule the Mediterranean led him to neglect serious planning for a war with the Western powers. He was held back from full alignment with Berlin by Italy's economic and military unpreparedness and his desire to use the Easter Accords of April 1938 to split Britain from France. A military alliance with Germany, rather than the looser political alliance under the Anti-Comintern Pact, would end any chance of Britain implementing the Easter Accords. The Easter Accords were intended by Mussolini to allow Italy to take on France alone, with the hope that improved Anglo-Italian relations would keep Britain neutral in a Franco-Italian war (Mussolini had designs on Tunisia and some support in that country). Britain, in turn, hoped the Easter Accords would win Italy away from Germany.

Count Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini's son-in-law and foreign minister, summed up the dictator's objectives regarding France in his diary on 8 November 1938: Djibouti would be ruled jointly with France; Tunisia with a similar regime; and Corsica under Italian control Mussolini showed no interest in Savoy, considering it neither "historically nor geographically Italian." On 30 November 1938, Mussolini provoked the French by orchestrating demonstrations where deputies demanded France turn over Tunisia, Savoy, and Corsica to Italy. This led to heightened tensions, with France and Italy on the verge of war through the winter of 1938–39.

In January 1939, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain visited Rome. Mussolini learned that while Britain wanted better relations with Italy, it would not sever ties with France. This realization led Mussolini to grow more interested in the German offer of a military alliance, first made in May 1938. In February 1939, Mussolini declared that a state's power is "proportional to its maritime position," asserting that Italy was a "prisoner in the Mediterranean," surrounded by British-controlled territories.

Italian Empire in 1939

The new pro-German course was controversial. On 21 March 1939, during a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council, Italo Balbo accused Mussolini of "licking Hitler's boots" and criticized the pro-German policy as leading Italy to disaster. Despite some internal opposition, Mussolini's control of foreign policy ensured that dissenting voices had little impact. In April 1939, Mussolini ordered the Italian invasion of Albania, quickly occupying the country and forcing King Zog I to flee. In May 1939, Mussolini signed the Pact of Steel, a full military alliance with Germany, after securing a promise from Hitler that there would be no war for three years.

Despite the pact, Mussolini was cautious. When Hitler expressed his intent to invade Poland, Ciano warned that this would likely lead to war with the Allies. Hitler dismissed the warning, suggesting Italy should invade Yugoslavia. Although tempted, Mussolini knew that Italy was unprepared for a global conflict, particularly given King Victor Emmanuel III's demand for neutrality. Thus, when World War II began with Germany’s invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, Italy remained uninvolved. However, when the Germans arrested 183 professors from Jagiellonian University in Kraków in November 1939, Mussolini intervened personally, resulting in the release of 101 Poles.

War declared

As World War II began, Ciano and Viscount Halifax were holding secret phone conversations. The British wanted Italy on their side against Germany as it had been in World War I. French government opinion was more geared towards action against Italy, as they were eager to attack Italy in Libya. In September 1939, France swung to the opposite extreme, offering to discuss issues with Italy, but as the French were unwilling to discuss Corsica, Nice and Savoy, Mussolini did not answer. Mussolini's Under-Secretary for War Production, Carlo Favagrossa, had estimated that Italy could not be prepared for major military operations until 1942 due to its relatively weak industrial sector compared to Western Europe. In late November 1939, Adolf Hitler declared: "So long as the Duce lives, one can rest assured that Italy will seize every opportunity to achieve its imperialistic aims."

Convinced that the war would soon be over, with a German victory looking likely at that point, Mussolini decided to enter the war on the Axis side. Accordingly, Italy declared war on Britain and France on 10 June 1940. Mussolini regarded the war against Britain and France as a life-or-death struggle between opposing ideologies—fascism and the "plutocratic and reactionary democracies of the west"—describing the war as "the struggle of the fertile and young people against the sterile people moving to the sunset; it is the struggle between two centuries and two ideas".

Italy joined the Germans in the Battle of France, by launching the Italian invasion of France just beyond the border. Just eleven days later, France and Germany signed an armistice and on 24 June, Italy and France signed the Franco-Italian Armistice. Included in Italian-controlled France were most of Nice and other southeastern counties. Mussolini planned to concentrate Italian forces on a major offensive against the British Empire in Africa and the Middle East, known as the "parallel war", while expecting the collapse of the UK in the European theatre. The Italians invaded Egypt, bombed Mandatory Palestine, and attacked the British in their Sudan, Kenya and British Somaliland colonies (in what would become known as the East African Campaign); British Somaliland was conquered and became part of Italian East Africa on 3 August 1940, and there were Italian advances in the Sudan and Kenya with initial success. The British government refused to accept proposals for a peace that would involve accepting Axis victories in Europe; plans for an invasion of the UK did not proceed and the war continued.

Path to defeat

In September 1940, the Italian Tenth Army was commanded by Marshal Rodolfo Graziani and crossed from Italian Libya into Egypt, where British forces were located; this would become the Western Desert Campaign. Advances were successful, but the Italians stopped at Sidi Barrani waiting for logistic supplies to catch up. On 24 October 1940, Mussolini sent the Italian Air Corps to Belgium, where it took part in the Blitz until January 1941. In October, Mussolini also sent Italian forces into Greece, starting the Greco-Italian War. The Royal Air Force prevented the Italian invasion and allowed the Greeks to push the Italians back to Albania, but the Greek counter-offensive in Italian Albania ended in a stalemate.

Events in Africa had changed by early 1941 as Operation Compass had forced the Italians back into Libya, causing high losses in the Italian Army. Also in the East African Campaign, an attack was mounted against Italian forces. Despite putting up some stiff resistance, they were overwhelmed at the Battle of Keren, and the Italian defence started to crumble with a final defeat in the Battle of Gondar. When addressing the Italian public on the events, Mussolini was open about the situation, saying "We call bread bread and wine wine, and when the enemy wins a battle it is useless and ridiculous to seek, as the English do in their incomparable hypocrisy, to deny or diminish it." With the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece, Italy annexed Ljubljana, Dalmatia and Montenegro, and established the puppet states of Croatia and the Hellenic State.

General Mario Robotti, Commander of the Italian XI Corps in Slovenia and Croatia, issued an order in line with a directive received from Mussolini in June 1942: "I would not be opposed to all (sic) Slovenes being imprisoned and replaced by Italians. In other words, we should take steps to ensure that political and ethnic frontiers coincide".

Mussolini first learned of Operation Barbarossa after the invasion of the Soviet Union had begun on 22 June 1941, and was not asked by Hitler to involve himself. On 25 June 1941, he inspected the first units at Verona, which served as his launching pad to Russia. Mussolini told the Council of Ministers of 5 July that his only worry was that Germany might defeat the Soviet Union before the Italians arrived. At a meeting with Hitler in August, Mussolini offered and Hitler accepted the commitment of further Italian troops to fight the Soviet Union. The heavy losses suffered by the Italians on the Eastern Front, where service was extremely unpopular owing to the widespread view that this was not Italy's fight, did much to damage Mussolini's prestige with the Italian people. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he declared war on the United States on 11 December 1941. A piece of evidence regarding Mussolini's response to the attack on Pearl Harbor comes from the diary of his Foreign Minister Ciano:

A night telephone call from Ribbentrop. He is overjoyed about the Japanese attack on America. He is so happy about it that I am happy with him, though I am not too sure about the final advantages of what has happened. One thing is now certain, that America will enter the conflict and that the conflict will be so long that she will be able to realize all her potential forces. This morning I told this to the King who had been pleased about the event. He ended by admitting that, in the long run, I may be right. Mussolini was happy, too. For a long time he has favored a definite clarification of relations between America and the Axis.

Italian forces had also achieved some victories suppressing partisan activities in Yugoslavia, Greece, and Albania and in Montenegro. In North Africa, together with German forces. Italian forces would drive the British forces out of Libya during the Battle of Gazala and pushed towards to Egypt with the aim of capturing Alexandria and the Suez Canal, but the offensive was halted at El Alamein in summer of 1942. On October 1942, the Second Battle of El Alamein began. Italian forces was severely defeated by the British and Commonwealth forces and got driven out of Egypt, the British and Commonwealth forces would drive the Italians until January 1943 when the capital of the Italian Libya, Tripoli fell into the Allies. Following Vichy France's collapse and the Case Anton on November 1942, Italy occupied the French territories of Corsica and Tunisia. Italian forces would use Tunisia as a base of military operations for the Tunisian campaign.

Although Mussolini was aware that Italy, whose resources were reduced by the campaigns of the 1930s, was not ready for a long war, he opted to remain in the conflict to not abandon the occupied territories and the fascist imperial ambitions.