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Mussolini Speaks is a 1933 documentary film highlighting the first 10 years of Benito Mussolini’s rule as Prime Minister of Italy.
Apr 26, 2022 · Books. Mussolini Speaks, and Tells Us How Democracy Dies. A new novel about the rise of fascism, written from Il Duce’s perspective, has lessons for our fragile political system. By Anna...
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Jul 1, 2022 · 316. 17K views 1 year ago. Historical speech by the Duce, Benito Mussolini, leader of Fascist Italy, at the ‘Fiera del Levante’ in Bari, Puglia, 1934. ...more.
- 2 min
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- Lectiones Interbellum
- Overview
- How Mussolini founded Italian fascism
- Support for fascism grows
- Mussolini’s rise to power
- The March on Rome
- The fall of Mussolini—and fascism’s legacy
Although ultimately disgraced, the Italian dictator's memory still haunts the nation a century after toppling the government and ushering in an age of brutality.
Benito Mussolini makes a speech in Italy. Known for his charisma and persuasive rhetoric, the future fascist dictator rose to power amid growing discontent in the early 20th century.
In October 1922, a storm was gathering over Italy. Fascism—a political movement that harnessed discontent with a potent brew of nationalism, populism, and violence—would soon engulf the embattled nation and much of the world.
Benito Mussolini, the leader of the Italian movement, had amassed a strong following and began to call for the government to hand over power.
“We are at the point when either the arrow shoots forth or the tightly drawn bowstring breaks!” he said during a speech at a rally in Naples on October 24 of that year. “Our program is simple. We want to govern Italy.” He told supporters that if the government did not resign, they must march on Rome. Four days later, they did just that—leaving chaos in their wake as Mussolini seized control.
Left: Benito Mussolini’s profile featured on a propaganda poster for the book, Il primo libro del fascista, or “The first book of fascism.”
Fascism galvanized a growing nationalist movement in Europe born in the face of the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, in which Russian socialists overthrew the Russian Empire. (Learn more about the causes and effects of WWI.)
In Italy, Mussolini led the way to fascism. Born on July 29, 1883, in small-town southern Italy to a blacksmith father and a schoolteacher mother, he grew up on his socialist father’s stories of nationalism and political heroism. Shy and socially awkward, he ran into trouble at an early age due to his intransigence and violence against his classmates. As a young adult, he moved to Switzerland and became an avowed socialist. Eventually, he made his way back to Italy and established himself as a socialist journalist.
Mussolini drew massive crowds for his rallies and speeches. As the Associated Press wrote in 1922, his “career has been distinguished by his virile and forceful traits of character, his magnetism and eloquence.”
Andrea Jemolo / Bridgeman Images
When war broke out across Europe in 1914, Italy at first remained neutral. Mussolini wanted Italy to join the war—putting him at odds with the Italian Socialist Party, which expelled him due to his pro-war advocacy. In response, he formed his own political movement, the Fasces of Revolutionary Action, aimed at encouraging entry into the war. (Italy eventually joined the fray in 1915.)
In ancient Rome, the word fasces referred to a weapon consisting of a bundle of wooden rods, sometimes surrounding an ax. Used by Roman authorities to punish wrongdoers, the fasces came to represent state authority. In the 19th century, Italians had begun to use the word for political groups bound by common aims.
Mussolini was not alone: In the wake of the war, many Italians were chagrined by the Treaty of Versailles. They felt the treaty, which carved up the territory of the aggressor nations, disrespected Italy by awarding it far too little land. This “mutilated victory” would shape Italy’s future. (How the Treaty of Versailles ended WWI and started WWII.)
In 1919, Mussolini founded a paramilitary movement he called the Italian Fasces of Combat. A successor to the Fasces of Revolutionary Action, this combat-focused squad aimed to mobilize war-hardened veterans who could return glory to Italy.
Left: A World War II propaganda poster representing the alliance between Italy and Nazi Germany. The slogan at the bottom reads, “Due popoli una Guerra,” which roughly translates to “two peoples in war.”
SeM Studio/UIG / Bridgeman Images
Right: Mussolini greets a crowd after a meeting with German dictator Adolf Hitler in Munich, Germany, in September 1937.
Stefano Bianchetti / Bridgeman Images
Though in reality Mussolini only controlled a fraction of the militia members, their tough image helped build his reputation as a powerful, authoritative leader capable of backing up his words with violent and decisive action. Known as Il Duce, (the Duke), he exercised a powerful influence over Italians, seducing them with his personal charm and persuasive rhetoric.
Left: Berta Feldman, born in Odessa in 1913, was one of Mussolini’s many victims. A German Jew, she was interned in the Lanciano concentration camp in central Italy in 1940.
Right: Another victim of Mussolini’s brutality was Marko Bucić, born in 1914, and sent to Città Sant’Angelo in Abruzzo, Italy, in 1942.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MATTIA CROCETTI, COURTESY ARCHIVIO CENTRALE DELLO STATO. MINISTERO DELL'INTERNO, DIREZIONE GENERALE AFFARI GENERALI E RISERVATI, ARCHIVIO GENERALE, UFFICIO INTERNATI, A4 BIS INTERNATI STRANIERI E SPIONAGGIO, ENVELOP 111, FILE FELDMAN BERTA; MINISTERO DELL'INTERNO, DIREZIONE GENERALE PER GLI AFFARI GENERALI E LA RISERVATEZZA, ARCHIVIO GENERALE, UFFICIO INTERNAMENTO, A4 BIS INTERNATI STRANIERI E SPIONAGGIO, ENVELOP 59, FILE BUCIĆ MARKO
Left: Beniacar Santo, born in Smirne in 1901—a Jew who was originally from Turkey—was interned as a stateless person at a camp in Agnone, Italy. Beniacar managed a fur store in Brescia, Italy.
Right: Luisa Mahler, born in Vienna in 1900, was a German Jew and in 1940 was interned in Vinchiaturo, a commune near Campobasso, Italy.
On October 25, 1922, a day after his rally in Naples, Mussolini appointed four party leaders to lead members into the nation’s capital. Poorly trained and outfitted, these men would likely have lost a battle with Italy’s army. But Mussolini intended to intimidate the government into submission.
Left: An office room in the Villa Carpena, also known as Villa Mussolini, once the residence of Benito Mussolini and his family. Located in San Martino, the Villa is now a museum.
Right: A modern fascist supporter salutes near the crypt of the Mussolini family in the Monumental Cemetery of San Cassiano in Pennino.
Photographs by Filippo Venturi
Fascist battalions were to congregate outside of Rome. If the prime minister did not give the fascists power—and King Victor Emmanuel III did not subsequently recognize his authority—his waiting men would march into the capital and seize control.
While Mussolini lingered in Milan, his supporters gathered. They left chaos in their wake, taking over government buildings in towns they passed through en route to Rome. Though the party consistently overstated their numbers, historian Katy Hull notes, fewer than 30,000 men joined the march.
The king, exhausted by the world war and a state of near civil war in Italy, had assumed Mussolini would impose order. But within three years, the strongman would be an outright dictator—and Victor Emmanuel let him do as he pleased.
Over the years, Mussolini increased his own power while chipping away at the population’s civil rights and forming a propagandistic police state. His agenda also went beyond domestic affairs. Mussolini’s imperial ambitions led Italy to occupy the Greek island of Corfu, invade Ethiopia, and ally itself with Nazi Germany, eventually resulting in the murder of 8,500 Italians in the Holocaust.
Mussolini’s ambition would be his downfall. Though he led Italy into World War II as an Axis power aligned with the seemingly unstoppable Adolf Hitler, he presided over the destruction of much of his country. Victor Emmanuel III convinced Mussolini’s closest allies to turn against him and, on July 25, 1943, they finally succeeded in removing him from power and placing him under arrest. (Subscriber exclusive: Hear stories from the last voices of World War II.)
After a dramatic prison break, Mussolini fled to German-occupied Italy, where, under pressure from Hitler, he formed a weak and short-lived puppet state. On April 28, 1945, as an Allied victory neared, Mussolini attempted to flee the country. He was intercepted by communist partisans, who shot him and dumped his body in a public square in Milan.
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- Erin Blakemore
If. this country ever needed a Mussolini, it needs one now,” said Senator David A. Reed of Pennsylvania, during a 1932 address to the U.S. Congress.1 Yet what did Reed mean when he emphasized the need for “a Mussolini,” and what, in 1932, did “now” mean?
