Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Why Did Mussolini Come into Power?
- DISILLUSIONMENT AND FRUSTRATION IN POST-WAR ITALY
- Treaty of Versailles did not give them what they had been promised.
- Fiume was taken over by Gabriele
D'Annunizio
- Lands not given: Dalmatia, Adalia, some Aegan islands and a protectorate over Albania
- Terrible economic effects of the war
- Value of Lira has decreased from 5 to the
dollar in 1914 to 28 to the dollar in 1921
- therefore cost of living also went up x5
- Hatred for the parliamentary system
- 5 different cabinets with shaky
majorities came and went
- Nine different parties in
May 1921
- Indecisive government
- WAVE OF STRIKES 1919-20
- Unification of socialist parties and
trade unions thanks to industrialization
- Italian Communist Party formed in Jan 1921
- However the revolution had already fizzed out thanks to this
- MUSSOLINI ATTRACTED WIDESPREAD SUPPORT
- Went from extreme left to extreme right
- Dropped the republican part of his program, made conciliatory speeches for
the Church, and spoke in favour of big-businesses.
- LACK OF EFFECTIVE OPPOSITION
- Socialists and Nationalists
had not united to eradicate
Fascism.
- Giovanni Giolitti resigned
- Socialists called strike in summer of 1922
- Strike failed, Mussolini emerged as the 'saviour of nation from communism"
- King Victor Emmanuel III did not declare state of emergency, invited Mussolini to power
- He did this because:-
- Lack of confidence in Luigi Facta (the PM)
- doubts as to whether army could be relied on to obey orders
- fear of a civil war