The movement was also able to grow due to the support from the rural and industrial elite. These groups also appreciated the weakness of the liberal government and the threat of socialism and so gave money to support the fascist movement – this further persuaded the group to move more to the right of the political spectrum.
However, in a modern western society, it is highly unfeasible that a simple movement of anti-socialists could come to power. Mussolini realised this, and so he formed the National Fascist Party in an effort to become more respectable, and to hold more official political weight. Furthermore, in September 1922 he announced his support for the monarchy which meant that he was popular not only with the people of Italy but that he gained political support from the King, particularly as the socialists were against the idea of a hereditary monarchy.
An important step in the growth of the Fascist Party, and therefore inevitably in why Mussolini was able to come to power, came from the Italian church. Even today Italy, and the Pope is an extremely significant centre of world religion and Mussolini realised that it would be to his advantage to gain the support of the church. This was achieved easily as the church was highly anti-socialist for the reason that socialism is centred on equality and is therefore against the idea of religion. In fact, such was the scale of anti-socialism within the church that the Pope told Catholics not to vote for the popular catholic party (the PPI), but to support the Fascist party instead in order to keep socialism out of government.
Now that Mussolini had such wide scale support he knew that he would be able to seize power. The Fascists planned the take-over of local governments and a March on Rome. However this was not necessary as on October 29th 1922 King Victor Emmanuel invited Mussolini to form a government. It is interesting to note that the lack of unity within the liberal government finally brought about their downfall, as one of the leading men in the government at the time, Solandra asked the King specifically to offer Mussolini the job as Prime Minister simply because he wanted to prevent one of his liberal colleagues, Giolitti, from becoming it.
In conclusion, Mussolini was able to come to power in 1922 primarily because of his ability to influence people, and if this failed, to intimidate them. He did this by winning support from key areas, such as the church, the monarchy and the economic elite and using this support to crush socialism. However, it is very difficult to instigate such dramatic change unless there is a dramatic need for it – and there was. The liberal governments inability to solve the major problems it faced, and maybe even its own mutilation of Italy’s victory in the war meant that Fascism via Mussolini was able to grow on the back of the failure of this government and of the hatred of socialism by highly significant groups of people.
Why from 1922, were Mussolini and the Fascists able to gain control over the Italian State?
On 29th October 1922 Mussolini was made Prime Minister of Italy. However, at this time, his party, the National Fascist Party occupied only 35 of 535 seats in the Italian Parliament – a result of the May 1921 election, and his first cabinet was a coalition containing only four fascists, the remainder being Liberals and Catholics. Why then, in a relatively short space of time, was he able to establish total power for himself, and become a fascist dictator?
Having been made Prime Minister Mussolini made it known to parliament that he saw his main task as stabilising the economy. Whether or not this was the whole truth is debatable; it did, however, win him the vote of confidence from Parliament. However, he soon abused this support, saying in November that he had 300,000 blackshirts that could abolish the constitution but that ‘at least for the present I do not wish to do so.’ This intimidated parliament, and he was able to get them to grant him emergency powers without having to disclose why he needed them. This obviously gave him, in relation to the size of his party, a disproportionate amount of power, and was the first step towards creating a fascist dictatorship.
Aware of the low number of Fascists in Parliament, Mussolini first merged his party with the Nationalist, giving him ten more seats. He also, by Spring 1923 had fired four cabinet ministers who were opposed to fascist brutality. Furthermore, he was able to tighten his grip over the Italian State by again intimidating politicians into passing the Acerbo Law – during the debate armed blackshirts roamed around the chamber. This dramatically decreased the democracy of the state, ruling that the party who gains most votes at an election should receive, by decree, two thirds of the seats in parliament, and the rest should be distributed in accordance with proportional representation. However, the fact that politicians were intimidated was not the only reason for the passing of the law. As we have already discussed, Mussolini’s first cabinet comprised of Fascists, Liberals and Catholics – there were no socialists. At this time Mussolini, although unpopular in Parliament was seen as less of a threat than socialism – possibly because of pre-1922 Fascist propaganda. Indeed some people believed that arrests and beatings was the right way to treat the socialists. Also, many politicians craved the end of weak coalition government in Italy. After the introduction of the law, he called an election, in April 1924, and winning 60% of the votes, went on to claim 374 of 535 seats. Whilst this was gained due to election rigging, violence and intimidation, 2.5 million people still voted against fascism, for theses reasons, in spite of the threat posed by doing this. Mussolini’s response to this was that he believed ‘50,000 guns are better than the support of 5 million voters.’ Even in consideration of this dislike for Fascism though, the Fascist success at the 1924 election, exacerbated by the Acerbo Law, proved to be a highly significant factor in the escalation of Fascist power.
Dislike for fascism was not the only source of extra-parliamentary opposition faced by Mussolini. Tension also came from Ras, leaders of Fascist squads who wanted Mussolini to form a dictatorship, and fast. They were however, Fascists, and so Mussolini, rather than showing brutality, appeased them by creating the Grand Fascist Council. Mussolini was the head of this and it consisted of a further twenty Fascist Ras. While this went on Fascist squads were disbanded and converted into the MVSN – the National Security Voluntary Militia and they swore an allegiance not to the State or the King or even the Fascist Party, but to Benito Mussolini. This meant that he had localised forces believing Fascist ideals, and thus heightened his power of intimidation.
The single most significant factor in the establishment of Fascist dictatorship came, surprisingly, as a direct spin-off from what came very close to being the end of his government. Soon after the election a socialist, Matteotti, produced in Parliament, evidence of violence and terror during the election campaign. Days after, he was kidnapped, in broad daylight, and later stabbed to death. This brutal murder did not only shock Mussolini’s political enemies, but turned many undecided Liberals against him, believing him to have finally gone too far. Due to this, opposition deputies, predominantly socialist and communist dissidents walked out of parliament in protest saying they were ‘true representatives of the people.’ Mussolini responded by banning them from Parliament and using the militia to prevent their return. Sadly they did this in the belief that the King would support them in setting up their own assembly, and dismiss Mussolini. This was incredibly naïve as the King was a great supporter of Mussolini – it had been him that made him Prime Minister. Furthermore the King knew that socialism was against the idea of hereditary monarchy, and feared that making such a decision would only strengthen the revolutionary Left, and, with Fascist willingness to resort to violence, had the potential to lead to civil war. Because of this, the Matteotti crisis, although leaving Mussolini somewhat weakened, it left him facing a severely depleted opposition, and gave rise to yet more Fascist dominance of the Italian State, particularly as many Liberals continued to support Mussolini, seeing the crisis as an opportunity to exert their own beliefs on a weakened Prime Minister. If the ‘Aventine Succession’ had never happened, the Matteotti crisis may well have brought about the downfall of Mussolini. In reality, it was this that led to the establishment of a dictatorship.
While Mussolini still enjoyed support from the Italian King, and significantly less political opposition the controversy surrounding the death of Matteotti refused to settle. As a result of this, in July 1924 Mussolini moved to introduce press censorship and banned meetings of all other political parties – trademarks of the establishment of dictatorships. This created opposition from two key areas. Firstly, Liberals who had previously supported him disliked having censorship of the press, and, more importantly, in December 1924 leading Fascists, frustrated by Mussolini’s lack of radicalism in creating a dictatorship presented him with an ultimatum. Their support would be withdrawn unless he ended the Matteotti affair and took decisive steps towards total power. Bowing to their demands he told Parliament on January 3rd 1925, ‘I assume full responsibility for what has happened. . . Italians want peace and quiet, and to get on with its work. I shall give it all these, if possible in love, but if necessary by force.’
Mussolini signalled here that he would now take the measures necessary to give himself more complete personal power. With a clear majority in parliament, and a King that supported him, Mussolini finally created dictatorial control. What opposition there was in the chamber carried little weight, as it was deeply divided, lacked in leadership and politically wounded by its earlier support for Fascism.
Due to the fact that Mussolini faced no major opposition he was ble to fully encapsulate control of the state. In December 1925 he banned opposition and political parties and free trade unions. Furthermore in early 1926, Mussolini’s self-proclaimed ‘Napoleonic year’ he was granted the right to issue decrees carrying the full force of the law, giving him the power to step over parliament altogether. He also took the right to select the Prime Minister away from the King in 1928, giving him only a shortlist created by the Grand Fascist Council from which he could select.
In conclusion, the primary long term cause for Mussolini’s ability to establish dictatorship is that Fascism was always seen as less of an enemy than socialism, particularly by key sectional groups – the monarchy, and also the church. More significant short term causes were the use of intimidation, seen at the 1924 election and the passing of the Acerbo Law. Also, Mussolini once said that ‘all you need to govern are policemen and bands playing in the streets.’ Mussolini’s organised leisure activities for both adults and children gained him support, particularly from an indoctrinated younger generation. The above, however, is only one side of the coin. Fascist strength became ever stronger directly because of the weakness of the opposition. The Aventine Succession could be said to have been the self-destruction of the Italian State. As with his rise to power, the inability of the opposition to unite against him proved to be their biggest downfall, with the largest opposition group, the Liberals, dividing into Fascist and Socialist supporters. In spite of this though, the death of Mattotti is perhaps an acceptable argument as to why the opposition were right to fear him. This case goes a long way to prove that all the strength of the opposition could never have been strong enough to overthrow him, particularly without support from the monarchy. In fact, one could argue that their failure to stand up to him made his period in office less brutal and totalitarian than if they had challenged him.
