Benito Mussolini :: essays research papers

Benito MussoliniBenito Mussolini was the founder of Italian Fascism and premier ofItaly ruling as a dictator from about 1925 until his paper bag in 1943.Mussolini was born to a socialist blacksmith. As a child he was unruly andundisciplined. He shared his fathers views picking up other ideas from authorsof the time. Mussolini became a schoolteacher and journalist. He spent severalyears in Switzerland and took Rachele Guidi as is wife, they had five children.In 1913 Mussolini became editor of the Milan Socialist newspaper AvantiWhen World War 1 began in 1914 he first opposed Italys involvement, until hechanged his mind, saying that Italy should take a stand with the Allies. Thisgot him expelled from the socialist party. He short founded his own paper, Ilpopolo ditalia, which became the moxie of his Fascist movement. He thenserved in the Army until he was wounded in 1917.In 1919 Mussolini and some other war veterans founded a nationalistic extremist group called the Fasci di Combat timento. His movement turned intopowerful radicalism, obtaining support from landowners in the Po valley,industrialists, and many army officers. Fascist blackshirt squads carried oncivil war with Socialists, Communists, Catholics, and Liberals.In October 1922 Mussolini secured license from King Victor Emmanuellll to form a coalition government. In 1925-26, after a lengthy crisis with theparliament following the killing of the Socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti, heimposed a Totalarian Dictatorship. His Corperative State came to terms withItalian Capitalism but abolished the free trade unions. In 1929 he endedconflict with the church by the Lateran Treaty of 1929.In the 1930s Mussolini turned to an aggressive foreign policy,conquering Ethiopia(1935-36) and helping General Francisco Franco in the SpanishCivil War. In 1936 he joined with Hitlers Germany and soon formed a militaryalliance(1939). In 1939 Mussolini ordered his armies to occupy Albania. Howeverhe kept out of World War ll u ntil 1940, when the fall of France was imminent andthe Germans seemed to be winning the war.After a series of Italian military disasters in Greece and NorthAfrica, the leaders of his party abandoned him. The king dismissed him on July25,1943 and had him arrested. On September 12 the Germans rescued him, makinghim puppet head of a government in northern Italy. In April 1945 Mussolini and