Mussolini Flashcards
Mussolini Rise to Power
Appointed PM by ing Emanuel after the March on Rome in Oct 1922, Nov he was given emergency powers, and on Jan 3 1923 he seized dictatorial powers
Opposition Mussolini faced (RTP)
- Matteotti (Socialist) alleges fraud in May 1924, 11 days later he was kidnapped and killed.
- 1925-31 news laws to create a single-party state
- 1926 dissolves all opposing parties and unions, strict censorship, Amendola (socialist) killed to promote a message
Economic challenges Mussolini faced (RTP)
- Creates ‘corporate states’, economic, social and political groups joined to create coordinated development
- 22 ‘corporate states’ created, bad for worker’s rights, such as striking
- 1924, wages drop below 1922 levels
Mussolini’s problems with the Church (RTP)
- 1929 Latera Accords:
1. Papacy gets Vatican City
2. Catholisicism is sole Italian religion
3. Papacy accepts Italian soverignty
What was Mussolini’s main aim (RTP)?
Return Italy to the “glory days of Rome”
What were Mussolini’s 2 aims with his domestic policy?
- Economy
- Propaganda (maintaining his ‘personal dictatorship’)
Mussolini’s economic domestic policies
2 aims: Autarky and National Greatness
- Due to the Battle for Grain, imports rose 75% between 1925-35
- Land was more suited for citrus, olives and grapes rather than grain
- Corporate states are dominated by Fascists
Mussolini’s propaganda-based domestic policies
- “il duce” built up a sense of “overawe”, portray him as Italy’s saviour
- “wonderful man working for the greatness of his country” Chamberlin
- “Mussolini is always right” Newspapers
- “Often I would like to be wrong, but so far it has never happened, events have turned out just as I forsee”
- Created anti-semitic laws in 1937-38
Mussolini’s social and ideological domestic policies
- Replace “bourgeois mentality”
- Increase birthrate, and increase soldiers
Mussolini’s domestic policies on women
- Aims to increase population from 40m by 5% to 60m by 1950, 12 children was ideal
- 1933 aims to reduce number of working women to 10% through the battle of the births
- Birthrate declined until 1936, population by 1950 was 47.5m
- Workforce is 33% female (feminism!)
Mussolini’s domestic policies on youth
- 1926 ONB created youth clubs to transform “body and soul” of kids.
- Mandatory attendance starting at the age of 8 many left at 11
- 40% never joined
Mussolini’s aims with foreign policy
- Create a modern Roman Empire
- Distract from domestic problems
- Reverse ToV
- Make Fasicsm the national glory
Foreign policy in the 1920s
- 1923 Corfu incident
- 1924 Pact of Rome (It and Yugo), Italy gains Fiume
- 1925 Locarno Treaty
- 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact
- 1925 Italy took over Albanian economy
- Treaties of Tirana /w Alabania (1926 and 7), eventually invades in April 1939
Foreign policy in the 1930s
- July 25 1934 Englebert Doflus assassinated
- 1935 April Stressa Pact, aimed for Austrian independence, “would continue to inspire their common policy”, Stressa fell apart in June 1935
- Hitler aims to invade Austria, Mussolini marches 75K men to the border
- Oct 1935-36 Invades Abyssinia, only 2% of trade goes through there
- 1936 Rome - Berlin Axis, sends support to Franco
- 1938 Munich conference
- 1939 Pact of Steel
Foreign policy in the 1940s
- WW2, heavy defeats in Africa
- 1943 forced resignation
- April 27 1945 captured
- April 28 1945 hanged
