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Benito Mussolini: Power
built 636 days ago
As the 1930s opened, Mussolini, seated safely in power and enjoying wide support from the middle classes, undertook to shape his regime and fix its image. Italy, he announced, had commenced the epoch of the "Third Rome." The "Fascist Revolution," after the French original, would itself date civilized progress anew: 1922 became "Year I of the New Era"; 1932, Year X. The regime called itself the "Corporate State" and offered Italy a bewildering brood of institutions, all splendidly titled but sparsely endowed. For if the rhetoric impressed, the reality denied.
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Over the next two years, Mussolini progressively dismantled all constitutional and conventional restraints on his power, thereby building a police state. A law passed on Christmas Eve 1925 changed Mussolini's title from "president of the Council of Ministers" (prime minister) to "head of the government." He was no longer responsible to Parliament and could only be removed by the king. Only Mussolini could determine the body's agenda. Local autonomy was abolished, and podestas appointed by the Italian Senate replaced elected mayors and councils.
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Once in power, Mussolini took steps to remain there. He set general elections, but they were fixed to always provide him with an absolute majority in Parliament. The assassination of the Socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti, a noted opponent, by Fascist followers reversed his fortunes and nearly brought him down. Mussolini... recovered. He suspended civil liberties, destroyed all opposition, and imposed open dictatorship (absolute rule). In 1929 his Concordat with the Vatican settled the historic differences between the Italian state and the Roman Catholic Church.
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Contrary to a common misconception, Mussolini did not become prime minister because of the March on Rome. King Victor Emmanuel III knew that if he did not choose a government under either the Fascist or Socialist party, Italy would soon be involved in a civil war. Accordingly, he asked Mussolini to become Prime Minister, obviating the need for the March on Rome. However, because fascists were already arriving from all around Italy, he decided to continue. In effect, the threatened seizure of power became nothing more than a victory parade.
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In foreign policy, Mussolini soon shifted from the pacifist anti-imperialism of his lead-up to power to an extreme form of aggressive nationalism. An early example was his bombardment of Corfu in 1923. Soon after he succeeded in setting up a puppet regime in Albania and in ruthlessly consolidating Italian power in Libya, which had been loosely a colony since 1912. It was his dream to make the Mediterranean mare nostrum ("our sea" in Latin), and he established a large naval base on the Greek island of Leros to enforce a strategic hold on the eastern Mediterranean.
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Benito aspired to re-create the Roman Empire, and began by invading the very places that made Rome a super power: Ethiopia and Albania. The campaign in Ethiopia was relatively easy, but he was accused of hax by Ethiopian emperor Hallie Sellassie.
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