The overarching narrative of Mussolini’s Italy is a continuous struggle by Mussolini to achieve his foreign and domestic policy goals in the face of opposition and structural impediments. Mussolini is an opportunist and his plans progress piecemeal or stall depending on the strength of domestic and foreign opposition, but his goals remain consistent. Only the ways of reaching those goals change.
What does Mussolini want?
We already understand fascism, but Mussolini has a specific dream of what a ‘fascist society’ looks like in Italy. Fundamentally, Mussolini wants Italy to be a great country – on par with Britain and France – and for the Italians to be a great people.
Mussolini’s ultimate goal is to fundamentally transform the nature of the Italians, creating a ‘novus homus’ based on fascist values of militarism, discipline, and sacrifice and capable of dominating others. He wants to turn Italians into Romans.
This plays into Mussolini’s idea of what the ideal person looks like and what values they have. To Mussolini, the greatest virtue is to be strong and to use that strength. The weak should fear the strong, and Italians should be strong. The main obstacle to this plan is the Italians themselves. In Mussolini’s eyes, Italians are lovers, not fighters. Mussolini will try a number of different things, including shoving Italy into multiple wars, to create a new type of Italian national character.
What does a fascist foreign policy look like?
Italian expansionist ambitions are driven by Mussolini’s belief that strong powers should necessarily expand as weaker states are pushed aside. Thus, young virile Italy should initiate and win conflict against old feeble France and Britain and conquer or dominate weaker states in Africa, the Middle East, and the Balkans. Italian expansionism is both meant to reflect the strong and virile nature of the new fascist Italians AND mold that new fascist culture and outlook through war, conquest, and domination.
Mussolini dreamed of a Mediterranean and African empire modeled on the Roman Empire. This demands Italian expansion into the ‘fourth shore’ at the expense of France and Britain, reclaiming the Mediterranean as Mare Nostrum. Italy also needs to expand beyond the confines of the Mediterranean, controlling either Suez or Gibraltar, so that Italy can be a ‘great power’ on the oceans.
What does a fascist Italy look like?
A fascist Italy is, firstly, populated by fascists. The overriding domestic policy goal is creating the conditions to foster a culture of fascism. To Mussolini, a fascist culture is revolutionary and requires the destruction of all old institutions and their replacement by fascist ones. This means that the monarchy and aristocracy must be abolished, the economy has to be nationalized and run through corporatism, and the Church has to be edged out of education. Mussolini is still anticommunist, anticapitalist, antimonarchist, and anticlerical; his actual beliefs haven’t changed since 1919, he only hushed them up to gain political power. These beliefs about what a fascist society looks like mean that Mussolini faces pushback from the monarchy, the aristocracy, bourgeois, and the Church.
Mussolini and his ‘allies’ after 1922
When Mussolini assumed the position of PM in 1922, he was still accountable to parliament and the King. This means he has to depend on the support of his parliamentary allies, the Catholics, the liberals, and the rightists. Even though he forced the King to appoint him by threatening civil war, they also did so because they thought he could be tamed as PM. He couldn’t just do whatever he wants without getting thrown out -- i.e., his policies had to be viewed as less threatening than civil war.
Since the fascists and the socialists are enemies, Mussolini’s government depends on the support of three prominent groups in Italy, in increasing order of importance:
- The Catholic Church
- The Bourgeois (liberals & rightists)
- The Monarchy (rightists)
Mussolini dislikes the Church for those same Christian values, which he believes weaken the Italian national character. Italy is overwhelmingly Catholic and very devout. Most Italians will pay more attention to the Pope than any Italian leader, including Mussolini, and being condemned by the Church would ruin his popularity.
The major business interests of Italy, especially northern industrialists and southern landlords, want to maintain their economic interests. They have supported Mussolini because the fascists were most able to crush socialism. Mussolini, being anticapitalism, had plans that attacked the core interests of the bourgeois. He wanted to nationalize industry and regulate labor issues through corporatism. He also wanted to expropriate large estates and distribute the land to the rural poor to create a class of independent smallholding peasants.
The monarchy and aristocracy are nationalists and terrified of socialism, so they support Mussolini as the most capable foe of Communism. Mussolini is fundamentally opposed to aristocracy because it creates a hierarchy not based on ability. He is also disdainful of the foppish culture of the Italian aristocracy. Moreover, the King is also an alternative power base and Mussolini cannot abide rivals to his predominant position in Italy. Because the King appoints the PM, they are the factor with the most direct control over Mussolini. The army is also personally loyal to King Victor Emmanuel III, not the government, and staffed with royalist officers.
Mussolini is in a bad position to pursue any of his reforms, as his allies are united only by opposition to socialism and oppose basically everything Mussolini wants to pursue domestically.
The Italian economy
Mussolini’s most important move for the economy was a massive increase in public spending, taking Italy out of recession and driving down unemployment. He built infrastructure, reclaimed marshland, and increased the size of the Italian military. This soaked up unemployed labor and got people working and money circulating, while also improving conditions for business and encouraging future growth.
Mussolini dreamed of abolishing capitalism and replacing it a corporatist planned economy, but this was not politically feasible until the 1930s. What Mussolini was able to institute was a corporatist model of labor relations. In 1924, Mussolini created a corporate system of labor relations, by which both labor and capital were organized into cartels, divided by economic sector, and disputes were arbitrated by the state.
The Matteotti Crisis
Mussolini was unhappy with his contemporary position, hemmed in by King and parliament, both of which he despised as institutions. So, he set out to build his own powerbase outside of the rightists in parliament. At this point, he planned to use the PNF to subvert the state and organized the Blackshirts into an armed militia loyal to him. The idea is to have his own military force to eventually replace the royalist army.
Mussolini was also annoyed by having to listen to socialists and deal with liberals, rightists, and Catholics. So, he called new elections for April 1924, which the fascists win handily thanks to widespread intimidation and violence. When the new fascist-dominated parliament convened, Social Democratic deputy Giacomo Matteotti spoke up in the new parliament and denounced fascist violence. Fascist thugs murdered him the next month on 10 June 1924. The murder of Matteotti sparked a political crisis, as the socialists, liberals, Catholics, and republican parties all boycotted parliament (Aventine secession) in an attempt to force the King to dismiss Mussolini.
The King, however, refused to dismiss Mussolini because he was still dedicated to controlling fascism and preventing civil war. Nor did the Church call for his removal, to the chagrin of many Catholic MPs who participated in the Aventine secession, arguing that Mussolini was a preferable alternative to socialism. However, the King’s condition for Mussolini remaining in power was that the fascist militia be placed under the control of the army and Mussolini’s government be expanded to include a number of royalist generals.
Mussolini learned two things from the King’s support of him during the Matteotti crisis: the Right would support him in whatever he did so long as he didn’t directly challenge their own power, and they would not accept further empowerment of the PNF.
A consequence of the subordination of the fascist militia to the Army was Mussolini’s abandonment of his plans for the PNF as a new center of power, with Mussolini consigning himself to ruling through the state. After this point, Mussolini largely abandoned the PNF as a way to exercise power, only using it to organize cultural and educational activities. Accordingly, he opened up the party (which had 640k members in 1926) to mass membership, in excess of 20 million by the 1930s. Mussolini also marginalized the PNF from decision-making because he was a jealous bitch who couldn’t stand having rivals for authority within the Party. Working through the state allowed Mussolini to pursue his goals without depending on a fascist party that often disliked, criticized, or disobeyed his policies, and thus would have challenged his absolute dictatorship.
The failure of the Aventine secession to oust Mussolini proved to him that the rightist parties did not care about liberal values or democracy and would support him no matter what, so he responded by establishing his dictatorship. He censored the press (1925), created his own fascist labor unions on the model of syndicalism (1925), created a fascist youth organization (1926), outlawed all other parties (1926), established special courts for political enemies (1926), and created a secret police [OVRA] (1927). The special courts established for ‘enemies of the state’ that were established in 1926 functioned without habeas corpus and outside ordinary Italian law. However, they processed very few people; until 1943, only 15k people were tried under these tribunals. All of these dictatorial elements strengthened Mussolini and turned Italy from a democracy into a dictatorship, but they also served the purposes of rightists. Even openly fascist policies, like the fascist unions or youth organizations, didn’t directly challenge rightist power.
Lateran Treaty
Even though he now has a dictatorship and the leftists and liberals are either dead or arrested, Mussolini still has to share power with the rightists and banning the Popular Party didn’t actually end the Church’s influence on Italian politics and it remains sharply critical of fascism’s ‘paganism’.
Mussolini decides to get the Pope to shut up by finally resolving the outstanding issue of the Catholic Church not recognizing the existence of Italy, with negotiations beginning in 1926 and culminating in the 1929 Lateran Treaty. Mussolini agreed to give the Pope control over the Vatican and to grant the Church extensive privileges within Italy, in return the Pope recognizes the existence of Italy and agrees to not agitate against fascism or war (upon threat of I’ll invade you).
Despite not agitating regarding war, the Church did make its voice heard in opposition to other issues, such as repression of Catholic political groups and the 1938 racial laws. It remained one of the most influential challenges to Mussolini.
The Great Depression in Italy
The Great Depression, beginning in 1929 and intensifying in Europe in 1931, gave Mussolini a great chance to strike against the bourgeois.
Although Italy, by virtue of Mussolini’s previous stimulus spending and protectionist tariffs, was better shielded from the Great Depression that most other countries, it was still affected, as Italian banks and industries faced the sudden loss of foreign loans and stared down bankruptcy. Many large industrial interests in northern Italy and banks were swamped with debt and liable to collapse in the early 1930s. Facing bankruptcy, the bourgeois agreed to Mussolini’s plan to nationalize all failing businesses and banks.
The Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale (IRI) was founded in 1933 to take over and nationalize failing banks, resulting in the state controlling the majority share of all Italian capital and being the majority owner of the majority of Italian industry. By the mid-1930s, Italy had a public sector rivaled in size only by the USSR, mainly run through the IRI, and the bourgeois were spent as both a political and economic force. Having destroyed the bourgeois and landlords and mollified the Church, Mussolini’s only remaining rival in government was the Monarchy.
Why did the Great Depression cause foreign loans to dry up? One of the major consequences of a financial crisis is that banks are unwilling to lend out money, both to safeguard against runs and because businesses are likely to fail during recessions.
Italy’s international position
Like in domestic politics, Mussolini’s foreign policy goals are frustrated by circumstance. The essential problem for his main goal of having Italy become a ‘great power’ is that Italy lacks all of the qualities that normally make a country into a ‘great power’.
Any Italian expansion into the eastern Mediterranean or North Africa would bring Italy into conflict with France or Britain. This raises a number of problems for Italy. Italy is a poor and weak country whose plans necessitate confrontation with two of the most powerful countries in the world. Italy fighting France or Britain in the 1920s would have been nearly suicidal.
Italy was poor and backward in the 1920s, with around 30% illiteracy (nearly 80% in the South). Italy had the GDP per capita of contemporary Afghanistan (c. 2020). Italy had outdated equipment, especially in terms of tanks and artillery. The Italian military in Africa was hopelessly weak and undersupplied (rifle ammo for 10 days, artillery ammo for 6 days). Mussolini was well aware of Italy’s military weakness and wanted to delay a general war until at least 1942 or 1943. Italian was also heavily indebted as a result of WW1 and largely dependent on loans from Britain and the USA, loans that would have been cut off had Italy challenged British or French colonial interests.
During WWI, Italy largely lost control of its colony in Libya to a rebel group of Sanusi tribesmen. When he came to power in 1922, Mussolini inherited a difficult guerrilla war against the Sanusi that lasted until 1932, pinning down Italian military and financial resources. Italy has to wait to solve this before acting on its designs for the Middle East and Africa.
Because of these obstacles, Italy achieved only the barest minimum of its foreign policy goals prior to the 1930s. Instead, it focused on influencing the new states of the Balkans and the former Austrian Empire.
What does Italy want in the Balkans?
As elsewhere, Italy wants to be considered a ‘great power’ and for weaker states to submit to its influence. It also has a number of border disputes with Yugoslavia that motivate its choice of alliances. As the states of the Balkans are allied to France and to each other in the Cordon Sanitaire, Italy seeks allies to assist in its aggression in the Balkans, specifically against Yugoslavia.
Hungary, whose lands used to encompass half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was massively reduced in size after WWI through the Treaty of Trianon. Hungarians, and especially the 300k refugees from the ‘lost territories’, wanted those lands back. Throughout the 1920s, Hungary sought allies to help it overturn the Treaty of Trianon and defeat the guarantors of that order, the Little Entente of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Romania. Both Italy and Hungary hate Yugoslavia, and Italy wants influence to prove that it is a ‘great power’, so, from 1927, Italy provides Hungary with illegal arms shipments and pledges its support to help overturn the Treaty of Trianon.
Bulgaria was also on the losing side of WWI and lost significant amounts of territory to Greece, Yugoslavia, and Romania in the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine. This set it against the Little Entente powers, including Yugoslavia.
Italy and Albania
Albania, like Fiume, is a sore spot for Italian nationalists, as it was occupied by Italy during the WWI and Italy only withdrew from the country in 1920 in the face of an anti-Italian insurgency. Italian nationalists thought Italy deserved special rights, or outright control, of the country.
Fortunately for Italy, President Ahmed Zogu, having been placed in power by Yugoslav armies in 1924, was seeking Italian protection against pressure by Yugoslavia for territorial concessions. In return for Italian support against Yugoslavia and Greece, Albania gave Italy a number of economic concessions, including: a monopoly on freight and passenger shipping, concessions for Italian mining companies in Albania, and Italian control of the Albanian National Bank.
In 1926, Italy asked Albania to recognize Italy’s special position in the country (becoming a protectorate). President Zogu wanted to resist, but ended up conceding because he needed Italian money and arms to put down a local tribal rebellion. Zogu agreed to the First Tirane Treaty in 1926, which made Albania promise to not conduct international agreements without consulting Italy, recognized Albania as an Italian protectorate, and had Italian officers train the Albanian army and police. Albania signed another Tirane Treaty in 1927, which concluded a defensive alliance between Italy and Albania. Under the treaty, Italy trained and armed the Albanian army and gave the Italian navy access to the port of Vlore.
In 1931, Ahmed Zogu (now King Zog) refused to renew the First Tirane Treaty, trying to instead seek out allies against Italy in Yugoslavia and Greece. This angered Italy to no end and marked out Albania as a site of future aggression. Italy didn’t invade at that moment only because the government of PM Mehdi Frasheri managed to negotiate a deal in 1935 whereby Italians were allowed to settle in Albania and take positions in its civil service. Albania will remain closely within the Italian economic orbit and thought of as Italy’s foothold in the Balkans, ultimately making it a staging point for Mussolini’s aggressive campaign in the Balkans.
Italy and Austria
As part of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which ended the First World War with Austria, South Tyrol was given to Italy. The province had a German majority, part of which was hostile to Italian rule. Italy understood that the Tyroleans were broadly opposed to Italian rule and wanted to join a larger German state, something for which contemporary groups in Germany were also agitating. Italy feared that German nationalism, very popular in both Germany and Austria, would result in a union between Germany and Austria, which would in turn result in unrest among the German population in South Tyrol and possibly encourage a German invasion of Italy. To avoid this nightmare scenario of a German invasion to annex South Tyrol, Mussolini sought to preserve Austria as a weak buffer state between Germany and Italy.
Italy’s desire to preserve Austrian independence, also upheld by prohibitions in both the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Saint Germain against union between Germany and Austria, put it in conflict with Germany, as both the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany sought union with Austria. Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 only increased tensions over the issue of Austria, as his Pan-German nationalism was well known and his appointment emboldened the Austrian Nazis.
— Eunice Noh, July 2020
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