[1922 – 1946] Fascist Italy and World War II

The year is 1922. The Great War has left Italy a victor on paper, but a broken nation in spirit. The air hangs thick with a cocktail of wounded pride and economic despair. Over 650,000 of its young men are dead, and the promises made by the Allies feel like ash in the mouths of the veterans who limp home to find unemployment and chaos. The government is a revolving door of weak, indecisive coalitions. In this vacuum of power, a new kind of man steps onto the stage. His name is Benito Mussolini. He is not a traditional politician. A former journalist and socialist, he is a master of spectacle, a man with a booming voice and a jutting jaw who understands the deep-seated fears and desires of the Italian people. He promises what they crave most: order, national glory, and a return to the grandeur of the Roman Empire. He is the leader of the Fascist party, and his followers, clad in black-shirted uniforms, are his instrument. They are the *squadristi*, street brawlers who break up strikes and intimidate political opponents with clubs and castor oil, a brutal but effective method of public humiliation. In October 1922, Mussolini makes his move. He stages the "March on Rome," where tens of thousands of his Blackshirts converge on the capital. It is less a military conquest and more a masterful piece of political theatre. Fearing a civil war, King Victor Emmanuel III, a diminutive and cautious monarch, refuses to sign the order for the army to disperse them. Instead, he hands the keys of the kingdom to Mussolini, appointing him Prime Minister. There is no coup, no single shot fired to take power; there is only a surrender to the threat of force. And so, the Fascist era begins. For a time, the promise of order seems to be kept. The trains, as the famous saying goes, do run on time. The state, now a one-party dictatorship, flexes its muscles. Mussolini, now styling himself *Il Duce*—The Leader—is everywhere. His stern, imposing face stares out from posters in every piazza. His voice crackles from the new wonder of the radio, delivering bombastic speeches from the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia in Rome. A pervasive cult of personality takes hold. The state's motto becomes "Believe, Obey, Fight." Life for the average Italian is transformed. Society is reorganized with military precision. Children are enrolled from a young age into Fascist youth groups like the *Opera Nazionale Balilla*. They march in crisp black uniforms, practice with mock rifles, and chant slogans praising *Il Duce*. For boys, the goal is to become a hardened soldier of the new Italian empire. For girls, the ideal is the *sposa e madre esemplare*—the exemplary wife and mother, tasked with producing more children for the nation. Large families are rewarded with medals and tax breaks. Modernity and tradition are fused in a strange new way. The regime champions technological progress, building new highways, or *autostrade*, and draining marshlands to create new towns. A new architectural style, Rationalism, emerges—all clean lines, stark white facades, and imposing geometric shapes, designed to project an image of efficiency and power. You can still see it today in Rome’s EUR district or in public buildings across the country. Yet, beneath this veneer of progress, there is a suffocating absence of freedom. Political opponents are imprisoned or exiled. A secret police force, the OVRA, spreads a web of spies and informants. The press is muzzled, every word a reflection of the regime's propaganda. In a shrewd political move in 1929, Mussolini signs the Lateran Treaty with the Papacy, creating the Vatican City State and ending decades of hostility between the Italian government and the Catholic Church. It wins him immense goodwill from millions of religious Italians, further cementing his power. But *Il Duce's* ambition cannot be contained within Italy's borders. He dreams of a new Roman Empire, a vast dominion over the Mediterranean. In 1935, he invades Ethiopia, using modern bombers and poison gas against a largely pre-industrial army. The world condemns him, but in Italy, it is hailed as a glorious victory. It is this act of aggression that pushes him closer to the one European leader who admires his methods: Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany. The alliance is formalized in the "Pact of Steel," a name that proves tragically ironic. While Germany is a genuine industrial and military titan, Italy is a house of cards built on bravado. Its military is equipped with outdated tanks and a navy that lacks a single aircraft carrier. Its industry cannot sustain a prolonged, modern war. When Hitler invades Poland in 1939, Mussolini hesitates. But the stunning speed of the German victories in France in 1940 convinces him that the war is all but won. Fearing he will be left out of the spoils, he declares war on France and Britain. It is a catastrophic miscalculation. Italian forces are humiliated in a disastrous invasion of Greece, requiring a German bailout. They suffer massive defeats against the British in North Africa. The propaganda of invincibility shatters against the harsh reality of the battlefield. On the home front, life becomes a daily struggle. Rationing means gnawing hunger. The constant drone of Allied bombers becomes a terrifying new soundtrack to city life. The public’s enthusiasm, once whipped into a frenzy by choreographed rallies, curdles into quiet resentment and fear. The beginning of the end comes in July 1943. Allied forces land in Sicily, and the Italian army offers little resistance. The Italian people greet the American and British soldiers more as liberators than invaders. Seeing the disaster, the Fascist Grand Council, the very body Mussolini created, votes to strip him of his power. The King, finally summoning a sliver of courage, has him arrested. For a moment, it seems over. But the drama is not finished. Two months later, German commandos stage a daring raid and rescue Mussolini from his mountain prison. Hitler installs him as the puppet leader of a new "Italian Social Republic" in the north of the country, which is now occupied by the German army. Italy is torn in two. In the south, the King's government sides with the Allies. In the north, a brutal civil war erupts. Italian partisans—communists, socialists, and patriots—wage a savage guerrilla war against the remaining Fascists and their German masters. It is a period of summary executions, reprisals, and unimaginable cruelty, a bloody reckoning between Italians themselves. Mussolini, a ghost of his former self, is finally captured by partisans in April 1945 as he tries to flee to Switzerland. The final, ignominious chapter is written in a Milan piazza, where his body and that of his mistress are hung upside down for public display. When the war finally ends, Italy is in ruins, but it is free. In June 1946, the Italian people are asked to make a choice. In a referendum, they vote to abolish the monarchy that had enabled Fascism's rise. By a narrow margin—12.7 million to 10.7 million—they choose to become a republic, laying the foundation for the Italy we know today, a nation born from the ashes of dictatorship and war.