Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini was born in Forli, Italy, in 1883. After working briefly as a schoolteacher, Mussolini fled to Switzerland in 1902 in an effort to evade military service.
Mussolini returned to Italy in 1904 and over the next ten years worked as a journalist and eventually became editor of Avanti. Mussolini was active in the socialist movement but moved to right in 1914 when the Italian government failed to support the Triple Alliance. In 1915 Mussolini resigned from the Socialist Party when it advocated support for the Allies in the First World War.
When Italy entered the war Mussolini served in the Italian Army and eventually reached the rank of corporal. After being wounded he returned to Milan to edit the right-wing Il Popolo d'Italia. The journal demanded that the Allies fully supported Italy's demands at the Paris Peace Conference.
After the war Mussolini attacked Vittorio Orlando for failing to achieve Italy's objectives at the Versailles Peace Treaty and helped to organize the various right-wing groups in Italy into the Fascist Party. After a series of riots in 1922 King Victor Emmanuel III appointed Mussolini in an attempt to prevent a communist revolution in Italy.
Mussolini headed a coalition of fascists and nationalists and parliamentary government continued until the murder of the socialist leader, Giacomo Matteotti in 1924. Left-wing parties were suppressed and in 1929 Italy became a one-party state. Mussolini also carried out an extensive public-works programme and the fall in unemployment made him a popular figure in Italy.
Italy controlled Eritrea and Somalia in Africa but had failed several times to colonize neighbouring Ethiopia. When Mussolini came to power he was determined to show the strength of his regime by occupying the country. In October 1935 Mussolini sent in General Pietro Badoglio and the Italian Army into Ethiopia.
The League of Nations condemned Italy's aggression and in November imposed sanctions. This included an attempt to ban countries from selling arms, rubber and some metals to Italy. Some political leaders in France and Britain opposed sanctions arguing that it might persuade Mussolini to form an alliance with Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany.
Primary Sources
(1) Benito Mussolini, speech (1929)
In the creation of a new State which is authoritarian but not absolutist, hierarchical and organic - namely, open to the people in all its classes, categories and interests - lies the great revolutionary originality of Fascism, and a teaching perhaps for the whole modern world oscillating between the authority of the State and that of the individual, between the State and the anti-State. Like all other revolutions, the Fascist revolution has had a dramatic development but this in itself would not suffice to distinguish it. The reign of terror is not a revolution: it is only a necessary instrument in a determined phase of the revolution.
The ignoble phenomenon of a dictatorship is a shameful blot on European civilization. Reactionary minds, which are indignant at red dictatorships, have only sympathy with 'white' dictatorships, which are equally, if not more bloodthirsty, no less brutal and unjustified by any ideal, even a false one.
The Fascist government abolished in Italy every safeguard of the individual and every liberty. No free man can live in Italy, and an immoral law prevents Italians from going to a foreign country on pain of punishment. Italy is a prison where life has become intolerable. Everything is artificial - artificial finance - artificial exchange - artificial public economy - artificial order - artificial calm.
Without a free parliament, a free press, a free opinion and a true democracy, there will never be peace.
(3) George Seldes wrote about Benito Mussolini in his book You Can't Print That! (1929)
He began coldly, in a voice northern and unimpassioned. I had never heard an Italian orator so restrained. Then he changed, became soft and warm, added gestures, and flames in his eyes. The audience moved with him. He held them. Suddenly he lowered his voice to a heavy whisper and the silence among the listeners became more intense. The whisper sank lower and the listeners strained breathlessly to hear. Then Mussolini exploded with thunder and fire, and the mob - for it was no more than a mob now - rose to its feet and shouted. Immediately Mussolini became cold and nordic and restrained again and swept his mob into its seats exhausted. An actor. Actor extraordinary, with a country for a stage, a great powerful histrionic ego, swaying an audience of millions, confounding the world by his theatrical cleverness.
(4) Benito Mussolini, message to the British Ambassador to Italy (7th July, 1939)
Tell Chamberlain that if England is ready to fight in defence of Poland, Italy will take up arms with her ally, Germany.
(5) Benito Mussolini, letter to Adolf Hitler (August, 1939)
If Germany attacks Poland and the conflict is localised, Italy will give Germany every form of political and economic aid which may be required.
If Germany attacks Poland and the allies of the latter counter-attack Germany, I must emphasize to you that I cannot assume the initiative of warlike operations, given the actual conditions of Italian military preparations which have been repeatedly and in timely fashion pointed out to you.
