Mussolini developed the education system to bring it under state control and through education, school children were indoctrinated with Fascist ideas. He banned all textbooks unless they were the compulsory texts and made sure all subjects taught highlighted the greatness of the Italian state. They were told that "Mussolini is always right”. These youth movements had considerable influence over the future generation of Fascists and was one of Mussolini’s more successful ventures.
Mussolini saw leisure activities as a manner in which to promote his regime. One of the most significant pieces of social engineering by the Fascist regime was the Opera Nazionale Balilla (ONB). It was created in 1929 as a party organisation but was taken over by the ministry of education. It organised a mixture of sports, military drill, sports parades and propaganda lectures. Millions of school children were recruited into the Balilla, and all were required to sear an oath to the regime, swearing to carry out the orders of the Duce. Membership for all children between 8 and 16 was made compulsory. It was supposed to create the soldiers of the future through activities such as gymnastics, sport, art and music. In 1937 the Balilla was incorporated into a new part based organisation, GIL with a much greater emphasis placed on military training for boys. A large proportion of Italy’s youth responded enthusiastically to Fascism. However, membership was not universal, as a 40 per cent proportion of the age group between eight and eighteen did not join.
The censorship of mass media is one of the main factors contributing to the totalitarian nature of Fascist Italy. Initially, hostile newspapers were attacked by Fascist squads. In 1925 a law made prefects responsible for censorship. The Fascist party organised boycotts of some critical papers as well as magazines books. By 1926 the last opposition party papers has been suppressed, whilst others conformed, the majority through fear. The state controlled what the newspapers said, and also what they did not say. Reporting of most crime, disasters, unemployment and disorders was forbidden. Only journalists registered by the state and has joined a Fascist association were permitted to write in newspapers. By the mid-1930s the Press Office was able to exert effective control over what was published and what was not. The important decisions that could not be made by the Press Office were made by the prefects. On the whole, Mussolini’s censorship of jounalism was more successful than other elements of his totalitarian state. Mussolini paid increasing attention to other aspects of the media from 1924 onwards. The expanding radio network was placed under control of the state, with the content of the programmes controlled completely by the state. Radio was used to spread Fascist ideas with two hours a day of official broadcasts whipping up excitement and national pride.
Mussolini sought to increase the population of Italy, and went about this via the “Battle for Births”, where he attempted to promote a higher birth rate in order to increase the population greatly within only one generation. He saw a larger population as essential for the totalitarian regime, which he was in the process of creating. Incentives were offered to larger families of payment benefits for children, the imposition of extra taxation on single people and giving priority in employment to fathers. However, the “Battle for Births” was a great failure, and the birth rate even reduced following the introduction of the scheme, due to a number of reasons, in particular the use of men to fight in wars abroad.
There are also several factors which suggest Mussolini did not successfully convert Italy into a fully totalitarian state and establish complete control. Firstly, there is the matter of the monarchy. Although the King never had enormous prestige or popular support and was known to take a backseat on political issues, the Fascists were never able to remove him from his powerful role. The monarchy had been left intact, and became a rallying pint for the Italian army in 1943. The army swore their allegiance to the King, not Mussolini, and so the coup against Mussolini was back by Victor Emanuel himself. And throughout his regime, Mussolini could still at any point have been dismissed by the King and so compromises had to be met instead of removing the monarchy from a prominent position in the country. Mussolini has failed in making his army entirely loyal to him, and generals in his army were left to build up opposition against Mussolini. He could not even invest confidence in his intelligence service, due to its ineptitude in failing to anticipate the July coup.
Mussolini never succeeded in subordinating the Catholic church to the full control of the fascist state. In 1931 Catholic Action, a group for laymen, clashed with the government over the education that was being given to Italy’s youth.. Catholic Action agreed to confine its educational activities to a purely religious content and would not try to undermine Fascist ideology. However, by the end of the 1930s, Catholic Action had developed a number of youth organisations, which competed with Fascist youth organisations for membership and drew members away. The Church directly competed with Fascism, because of Mussolini’s failure to eradicate them from a threatening position in the country. It would be a very hard task to achieve, as Italy is the centre of World Catholicism and so this proved a major hindrance to his establishment of a totalitarian regime.
In the late 1930s, Mussolini began to take a racial view to non-’pure’ Italians and a Fascist racial doctrine was enacted. It claimed ‘there now exists a pure Italian race’ and that ‘Jews do not belong to the Italian race’. From then on, marriages between Jews and non-Jews were forbidden and Jews were removed from important positions in areas such as education and politics. As a policy, anti-semitism was neither popular nor accepted in Italy, being a deeply religious country and it increased resentment towards Mussolini. These racial laws applied by Mussolini were never legislated effectively, which adds to the incompleteness of Mussolini’s totalitarian fascist Italy.
Mafia groups in southern Italy were never suppressed. These had often been perceived as opponents of far away governments in Naples before unification and then in Rome after unification. Government officials who got too vigorous in trying to collect taxes might be open to attack or even assassination. In rural areas Mafia groups would have considerable influence, and if someone had a problem, they went to the local don instead of the police or any other official organisation. The Fascists were unable to change this in any considerable manner, and in many areas the Fascists made agreements with the Mafia not to infringe in each other’s realm.
Conclusively, I believe that Italy did not exert nearly enough control over aspects of Italian life in order to impose a full totalitarian state. Mussolini had achieved some success, but had not been successful enough in key areas. The Fascist regime was forced to compromise with non-Fascist interest groups such as the Church, the Monarchy and the Mafia. If the need emanated, and eventually it did, the King could dismiss Mussolini at will. The Church still had considerable influence in sectors such as education. Also, Fascism had little influence in the South, and despite Fascist propaganda the South remained under Church and powerful landowners’ influence.