Mussolini

Question 1

Mussolini Rise to Power

Answer 1

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

Question 2

Opposition Mussolini faced (RTP)

Answer 2

• 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

Question 3

Economic challenges Mussolini faced (RTP)

Answer 3

• 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

Question 4

Mussolini’s problems with the Church (RTP)

Answer 4

• 1929 Latera Accords:
  1. Papacy gets Vatican City
  2. Catholisicism is sole Italian religion
  3. Papacy accepts Italian soverignty

Question 5

What was Mussolini’s main aim (RTP)?

Answer 5

Return Italy to the “glory days of Rome”

Question 6

What were Mussolini’s 2 aims with his domestic policy?

Answer 6

• Economy
• Propaganda (maintaining his ‘personal dictatorship’)

Question 7

Mussolini’s economic domestic policies

Answer 7

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

Question 8

Mussolini’s propaganda-based domestic policies

Answer 8

• “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

Question 9

Mussolini’s social and ideological domestic policies

Answer 9

• Replace “bourgeois mentality”
• Increase birthrate, and increase soldiers

Question 10

Mussolini’s domestic policies on women

Answer 10

• 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!)

Question 11

Mussolini’s domestic policies on youth

Answer 11

• 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

Question 12

Mussolini’s aims with foreign policy

Answer 12

1. Create a modern Roman Empire
2. Distract from domestic problems
3. Reverse ToV
4. Make Fasicsm the national glory

Question 13

Foreign policy in the 1920s

Answer 13

• 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

Question 14

Foreign policy in the 1930s

Answer 14

• 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

Question 15

Foreign policy in the 1940s

Answer 15

• WW2, heavy defeats in Africa
• 1943 forced resignation
• April 27 1945 captured
• April 28 1945 hanged

Question 16

PSQs

Answer 16

“War alone drives men to make their greatest efforts”
“Only maniacs never change”
“kinder, kuche, kiche”
“war is to men what maternity is to women”