Italian Fascism was rooted in
Italian nationalism and
Georges Sorel's
revolutionary syndicalism that eventually evolved into
national syndicalism in Italy. Most Italian revolutionary syndicalist leaders were not only "founders of the Fascist movement", but later held key positions in Mussolini's administration. They sought to restore and expand
Italian territories, which Italian Fascists deemed necessary for a nation to assert its superiority and strength and to avoid succumbing to decay. Italian Fascists claimed that modern Italy is the heir to
ancient Rome and its legacy and historically supported the creation of an
Italian Empire to provide
spazio vitale ("living space") for
colonisation by Italian settlers and to establish control over the
Mediterranean Sea. The National Fascist Party founded in 1921 declared that the party was to serve as "a revolutionary militia placed at the service of the nation. It follows a policy based on three principles: order, discipline, hierarchy". Italian Fascism has directly promoted
imperialism, such as within the
Doctrine of Fascism (1932)
ghostwritten by Giovanni Gentile on behalf of Mussolini, declared: which fell to British and colonial forces in
a campaign in January–November 1941 Fascism emphasised the need for the restoration of the
Mazzinian Risorgimento tradition that pursued the unification of Italy, that the Fascists claimed had been left incomplete and abandoned in the
Giolittian-era Italy. Fascism sought the incorporation of claimed "unredeemed" territories to Italy. To the east of Italy, the Fascists claimed that
Dalmatia was a land of Italian culture whose Italians, including those of Italianized
South Slavic descent, had been driven out of Dalmatia and into exile in Italy and supported the return of Italians of Dalmatian heritage. Mussolini identified Dalmatia as having strong Italian cultural roots for centuries via the Roman Empire and the
Republic of Venice. The Fascists especially focused their claims based on the Venetian cultural heritage of Dalmatia, claiming that Venetian rule had been beneficial for all Dalmatians and had been accepted by the Dalmatian population. resulting in a quarter of Slovene ethnic territory and approximately 327,000 out of total population of 1.3 million Slovenes being subjected to forced
Italianization. The Fascist regime supported annexation of
Albania, claimed that
Albanians were ethnically linked to Italians through links with the prehistoric
Italiotes,
Illyrian and
Roman populations and that the major influence exerted by the Roman and Venetian empires over Albania justified Italy's right to possess it. The Fascist regime also justified the annexation of Albania on the basis that — because several hundred thousand people of Albanian descent had been absorbed into society in Southern Italy already — the incorporation of Albania was a reasonable measure that would unite people of Albanian descent into one state. The Fascist regime endorsed Albanian irredentism, directed against the predominantly Albanian-populated
Kosovo and
Epirus – particularly in
Chameria inhabited by a substantial number of Albanians. After Italy annexed Albania in 1939, the Fascist regime endorsed assimilating Albanians into Italians and colonising Albania with Italian settlers from the
Italian Peninsula to gradually transform it into an Italian land. The Fascist regime claimed the
Ionian Islands as Italian territory on the basis that the islands had
belonged to the Venetian Republic from the mid-14th until the 18th century. To the west of Italy, the Fascists claimed that the territories of
Corsica, Nice and
Savoy held by France were Italian lands. During the period of Italian unification in 1860 to 1861, Prime Minister of
Piedmont-Sardinia,
Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, who was leading the unification effort, faced opposition from
French Emperor Napoleon III who indicated that France would oppose Italian unification unless France was given Nice and Savoy that were held by Piedmont Sardinia, as France did not want a powerful state having control of all the passages of the Alps. As a result, Piedmont-Sardinia was pressured to concede Nice and Savoy to France in exchange for France accepting the unification of Italy. The Fascist regime produced literature on Corsica that presented evidence of the
italianità of the island. The Fascist regime produced literature on Nice that justified that Nice was an Italian land based on historic, ethnic and linguistic grounds. To the north of Italy, the Fascist regime in the 1930s had designs on the largely Italian-populated region of
Ticino and the
Romansch-populated region of
Graubünden in Switzerland (the Romansch are a people with a Latin-based language). In November 1938, Mussolini declared to the Grand Fascist Council: "We shall bring our border to the
Gotthard Pass". The Fascist regime accused the Swiss government of oppressing the Romansch people in Graubünden. Ticino was also claimed because the region had belonged to the
Duchy of Milan from the mid-fourteenth century until 1515. Claim was also raised on the basis that areas now part of Graubünden in the
Mesolcina valley and
Hinterrhein were held by the Milanese
Trivulzio family, who ruled from the
Mesocco Castle in the late 15th century. Also during the summer of 1940,
Galeazzo Ciano met with
Adolf Hitler and
Joachim von Ribbentrop and proposed to them the dissection of Switzerland along the central chain of the
Western Alps, which would have left Italy also with the canton of
Valais in addition to the claims raised earlier. To the south, the regime claimed the archipelago of
Malta, which had been held by the British since 1800. Mussolini claimed that the
Maltese language was a dialect of Italian, and theories about Malta being the cradle of the Latin civilisation were promoted. Italian had been widely used in Malta in the literary, scientific and legal fields and it was one of Malta's official languages until 1937, when its status was abolished by the British as a response to Italy's invasion of Ethiopia. Italian irredentists had claimed that territories on the coast of
North Africa were Italy's
Fourth Shore and used the historical Roman rule in North Africa as a precedent to justify the incorporation of such territories to Italian jurisdiction as being a "return" of Italy to North Africa. In January 1939, Italy annexed territories in
Libya that it considered within Italy's Fourth Shore, with Libya's four coastal provinces of Tripoli, Misurata, Benghazi and Derna becoming an integral part of metropolitan Italy. At the same time, indigenous Libyans were given the ability to apply for "Special Italian Citizenship" which required such people to be literate in the Italian language and confined this type of citizenship to be valid in Libya only. Upon entering World War II, Italy declared its intention to seize Tunisia as well as the province of
Constantine of
Algeria from France. To the south, the Fascist regime held interest in expanding Italy's African colonial possessions. In the 1920s, Italy regarded Portugal as a weak country that was unbecoming of a colonial power due to its weak hold on its colonies and mismanagement of them and as such Italy desired to annexe Portugal's colonies. Italy's relations with Portugal were influenced by the rise to power of the authoritarian conservative nationalist regime of
António de Oliveira Salazar, which borrowed fascist methods, though Salazar upheld
Portugal's traditional alliance with Britain. However, since World War II, historians have noted that in Italy's colonies Italian Fascism displayed extreme levels of violence. One-tenth of the population of the Italian colony of Libya died during the Fascist era, including from the use of gassings,
concentration camps, starvation and disease; in Ethiopia during and after the
Second Italo-Ethiopian War, a quarter of a million Ethiopians died.
Corporatist economics Italian Fascism promotes a
corporatist economic system. The economy involves employer and employee
syndicates being linked together in corporative associations to collectively represent the nation's economic producers and work alongside the state to set national economic policy.
Age and gender roles The Italian Fascists' political anthem was called
Giovinezza ("The Youth"). Fascism identifies the physical age period of youth as a critical time for the moral development of people that will affect society. Italian Fascism pursued what it called "moral hygiene" of youth, particularly regarding
sexuality. Fascist Italy promoted what it considered normal sexual behaviour in youth while denouncing what it considered abnormal sexual behaviour. Fascist Italy regarded the promotion of male sexual excitation before
puberty as the cause of criminality amongst male youth. In an effort to increase birthrates, the Italian Fascist government gave financial incentives to women who raised large families and initiated policies designed to reduce the number of women employed. Italian Fascism called for women to be honoured as "reproducers of the nation" and the Italian Fascist government held ritual ceremonies to honour women's role within the Italian nation. In 1934, Mussolini declared that employment of women was a "major aspect of the thorny problem of unemployment" and that for women working was "incompatible with childbearing". Mussolini went on to say that the solution to unemployment for men was the "exodus of women from the work force".
Tradition Italian Fascism believed that the success of Italian nationalism required a clear sense of a shared past amongst the Italian people, along with a commitment to a modernised Italy. In a famous speech in 1926, Mussolini called for Fascist art that was "traditionalist and at the same time modern, that looks to the past and at the same time to the future". in
Rome Traditional symbols of Roman civilisation were used by the Fascists, particularly the
fasces that symbolised unity, authority and the exercise of power. Other traditional symbols of ancient Rome used by the Fascists included the
she-wolf of Rome. In that year, the Fascist government attempted to have the Italian national flag redesigned to incorporate the fasces. Years later, after Mussolini was deposed by the King and rescued by German forces in 1943, the
Italian Social Republic founded by Mussolini and the Fascists did incorporate the fasces on the state's war flag, which was a variant of the Italian tricolour national flag. The issue of the rule of monarchy or republic in Italy was an issue that changed several times through the development of Italian Fascism. Initially Italian Fascism was
republican and denounced the Savoy monarchy. However, Mussolini tactically abandoned republicanism in 1922 and recognised that the acceptance of the monarchy was a necessary compromise to gain the support of the establishment to challenge the liberal constitutional order that also supported the monarchy. However, this compromise with the monarchy did not yield a cordial relationship between the King and Mussolini. The King initially held complete nominal legal authority over the military through the
Statuto Albertino. That ended during the Fascist regime when Mussolini created the position of
First Marshal of the Empire in 1938. This was a two-person position of control over the military held by both the King and the head of government. It had the effect of eliminating the King's previously exclusive legal authority over the military by giving Mussolini equal legal authority. In the 1930s, Mussolini became aggravated by the monarchy's continued existence due to envy of the fact that his counterpart in Germany
Adolf Hitler was both head of state and head of government of a republic; and Mussolini in private denounced the monarchy and indicated that he had plans to dismantle the monarchy and create a republic with himself as head of state of Italy upon an Italian success in the then-anticipated major war about to erupt in Europe. On 18 September 1943, Mussolini made his first public address to the Italian people since his rescue from arrest by German forces. He commended the loyalty of Hitler as an ally while condemning Victor Emmanuel III for betraying Italian Fascism. The relationship between Italian Fascism and the Catholic Church was mixed, as originally it was highly anti-clerical and hostile to Catholicism. From the middle to late 1920s, anti-clericalism lost ground in the movement as Mussolini in power sought accord with the Church. In 1929, the Italian government signed the
Lateran Treaty with the
Holy See, a
concordat between Italy and the Catholic Church that created the
Vatican City enclave, a sovereign state governed by the
papacy. This ended years of tension between the Church and the Italian government after Italy annexed the
Papal States in 1870. Italian Fascism justified its adoption of antisemitic laws in 1938 by claiming that Italy was fulfilling the Christian religious mandate of the Catholic Church that had been initiated by
Pope Innocent III in the
Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. At that time, the Pope issued oppressive laws for Jews in Christian lands, including requiring distinctive clothing. ==Influence outside Italy==