Mussolini in war and postwar , who titled himself
Duce and
ruled the country from 1922 to 1943 In 1914,
Benito Mussolini was forced out of the
Italian Socialist Party after calling for Italian intervention in the war against
Austria-Hungary. Before World War I, Mussolini had opposed military conscription, protested against Italy's occupation of Libya and was the editor of the Socialist Party's official newspaper,
Avanti!, but over time he simply called for revolution without mentioning class struggle. In 1914, Mussolini's nationalism enabled him to raise funds from
Ansaldo (an armaments firm) and other companies to create his newspaper, ''
Il Popolo d'Italia'', which at first attempted to convince socialists and revolutionaries to support the war. The
Allied Powers, eager to draw Italy to the war, helped finance the newspaper. Later, after the war, this publication would become the official newspaper of the Fascist movement. During the war, Mussolini served in the Army and was wounded once. Following the end of the war and the
Treaty of Versailles in 1919, Mussolini created the
Fasci di Combattimento or Combat League. It was originally dominated by patriotic socialist and
syndicalist veterans who opposed the pacifist policies of the Italian Socialist Party. This early Fascist movement had a platform more inclined to the left, promising social revolution, proportional representation in elections, women's suffrage (partly realized in 1925) and dividing rural private property held by estates. They also differed from later Fascism by opposing
censorship,
militarism and
dictatorship. Mussolini claimed that "we are libertarians above all, loving liberty for everyone, even for our enemies" and said that freedom of thought and speech were among the "highest expressions of human civilization." On 15 April 1919, the Fascists made their debut in political violence when a group of members from the
Fasci di Combattimento attacked the offices of
Avanti!. '' At the same time, the so-called
Biennio Rosso (red biennium) took place in the two years following the
first world war in a context of economic crisis, high unemployment and political instability. The 1919–20 period was characterized by mass strikes, worker manifestations as well as self-management experiments through land and factory occupations. In
Turin and
Milan,
workers councils were formed and many
factory occupations took place under the leadership of
anarcho-syndicalists. The agitations also extended to the agricultural areas of the
Padan plain and were accompanied by peasant strikes, rural unrests and guerilla conflicts between left-wing and right-wing militias. (second from left) and his Fascist
Blackshirts in 1920 On 15 April 1919, the Fascists made their debut in political violence when a group of members from the
Fasci di Combattimento attacked the offices of
Avanti!. But they found little public support, and in the
elections of November 1919, the Fascists suffered a heavy defeat, accompanied by a rapid loss of membership. Support for the Fascists began to grow in 1921, and pro-Fascist army officers began taking arms and vehicles from the army to use in counter-revolutionary attacks on socialists. In 1920, Giolitti came back as prime minister in an attempt to solve the deadlock. One year later, Giolitti's government had become unstable, and a growing socialist opposition further endangered his government. Giolitti believed that the Fascists could be toned down and used to protect the state from the socialists. He decided to include Fascists on his electoral list for the 1921 elections. Many descendants of those who had served Garibaldi's revolutionaries during unification were won over to Mussolini's nationalist revolutionary ideals. His advocacy of
corporatism and
futurism had attracted advocates of the "third way",
March on Rome and the Fascist government during the
March on Rome in 1922 In October 1922, Mussolini took advantage of a general strike by workers and announced his demands to the government to give the Fascist Party political power or face a coup. With no immediate response, a small number of Fascists began a long trek across Italy to Rome, which was known as the "
March on Rome", claiming to Italians that Fascists intended to restore law and order. Mussolini himself did not participate until the very end of the march, with D'Annunzio being hailed as the leader of the march until it was learned that he had been pushed out of a window and severely wounded in a failed
assassination attempt, depriving him of the possibility of leading an actual coup d'état orchestrated by an organization founded by himself. Under the leadership of Mussolini, the Fascists demanded Prime Minister
Luigi Facta's resignation and that Mussolini be named prime minister. Although the Italian Army was far better armed than the Fascist paramilitaries, the Italian government under King
Vittorio Emmanuele III faced a political crisis. The King was forced to decide which of the two rival movements in Italy would form the new government: Mussolini's Fascists or the anti-royalist
Italian Socialist Party, ultimately deciding to endorse the Fascists. was murdered a few days after he openly denounced Fascist violence during the 1924 elections Upon taking power, Mussolini formed a coalition with nationalists and liberals. In 1923, Mussolini's coalition passed the electoral
Acerbo Law, which assigned two thirds of the seats to the party that achieved at least 25% of the vote. The Fascist Party used violence and intimidation to achieve the threshold in the
1924 election, thus obtaining control of Parliament. Socialist deputy
Giacomo Matteotti was assassinated after calling for a nullification of the vote because of the irregularities. The parliament opposition, mainly comprising the
Italian Socialist Party,
Italian Liberal Party,
Italian People's Party and
Italian Communist Party, responded to Matteotti's assassination with the
Aventine Secession, or with the withdrawal of parliamentarians from the
Chamber of Deputies in 1924–25. The secession was named after the
Aventine Secession in ancient Rome. This act of protest heralded the assumption of total power by
Benito Mussolini and his
National Fascist Party and the establishment of a
one-party dictatorship in Italy. It was unsuccessful in opposing the National Fascist Party, and after two years the Chamber of Deputies ruled that the 123 Aventine deputies had forfeited their positions. In the following years, many of the "Aventinian" deputies were forced into exile or imprisoned. Over the next four years, Mussolini eliminated nearly all checks and balances on his power. On 24 December 1925, he passed a law that declared he was responsible to the king alone, making him the sole person able to determine Parliament's agenda. Local governments were dissolved, and appointed officials (called "Podestà") replaced elected mayors and councils. In 1928, all political parties were banned, and parliamentary elections were replaced by plebiscites in which the Grand Council of Fascism nominated a single list of 400 candidates.
Christopher Duggan, using private diaries and letters, and secret police files, argues that Mussolini enjoyed a strong, wide base of popular support among ordinary people across Italy. Mussolini elicited emotional responses unique in modern Italian history, and kept his popularity despite the military reverses after 1940. Duggan argues that his regime exploited Mussolini's appeal and forged a cult of personality that served as the model that was emulated by dictators of other fascist regimes of the 1930s. In summary, historian
Stanley G. Payne says that Fascism in Italy was: :A primarily political dictatorship. The Fascist Party itself had become almost completely bureaucratized and subservient to, not dominant over, the state itself. Big business, industry, and finance retained extensive autonomy, particularly in the early years. The armed forces also enjoyed considerable autonomy. ... The Fascist militia was placed under military control. The judicial system was left largely intact and relatively autonomous as well. The police continued to be directed by state officials and were not taken over by party leaders, nor was a major new police elite created. There was never any question of bringing the Church under overall subservience. Sizable sectors of Italian cultural life retained extensive autonomy, and no major state propaganda-and-culture ministry existed. The Mussolini regime was neither especially sanguinary nor particularly repressive.
Italianization of the non-Italian population before 1939 according to Clemente Merlo and Carlo Tagliavini. The solid black line is the pre-war political border (1939) '' In the
Julian March there was a forced policy of
Italianization of the Slav population in the 1920s and 1930s. In addition, there were acts of fascist violence not hampered by the authorities, such as the torching of the
Narodni dom (National House) in Pola and Trieste carried out at night by Fascists with the connivance of the police (13 July 1920). The situation deteriorated further after
Benito Mussolini came to power (1922). In March 1923 the prefect of the Julian March prohibited the use of Croatian and Slovene in the administration, whilst their use in law courts was forbidden by Royal decree on 15 October 1925. The activities of Croatian and Slovenian societies and associations (Sokol, reading rooms, etc.) had already been forbidden during the occupation, but specifically so later with the Law on Associations (1925), the Law on Public Demonstrations (1926) and the Law on Public Order (1926). All Slovenian and Croatian societies and sporting and cultural associations had to cease every activity in line with a decision of provincial fascist secretaries dated 12 June 1927. On a specific order from the prefect of Trieste on 19 November 1928 the Edinost political society was also dissolved. Croatian and Slovenian co-operatives in Istria, which at first were absorbed by the Pula or Trieste Savings Banks, were gradually liquidated. At the same time, the Kingdom of Jugoslavia attempted a policy of forced
Croatisation against the
Italian minority in Dalmatia. The majority of the Italian Dalmatian minority decided to transfer in the Kingdom of Italy. During the
Italian annexation of Dalmatia in World War II, it was caught in the ethnic violence towards non-Italians during fascist repression. What remained of the Italian community in Dalmatia fled the area after World War II during the
Istrian–Dalmatian exodus: from 1947, after the war, Dalmatian Italians were subject by Yugoslav authorities to forms of intimidation, such as nationalization, expropriation, and discriminatory taxation, which gave them little option other than emigration. In 1919, at the time of its annexation,
South Tyrol was inhabited by almost 90%
German speakers. In October 1923, the use of the Italian language became mandatory (although not exclusive) on all levels of federal, provincial and local government. Regulations by the fascist authorities required that all kinds of signs and public notices be in Italian only. Maps, postcards and other graphic material had to show Italian place names. and the
Italian parliament ratified them on 7 June 1929. The treaty recognized
Vatican City as an
independent state under the sovereignty of the Holy See. The Italian government also agreed to give the
Roman Catholic Church financial compensation for the loss of the
Papal States. In 1948, the Lateran Treaty was recognized in the
Constitution of Italy as regulating the relations between the state and the Catholic Church. The treaty was significantly revised in 1984, ending the status of Catholicism as the sole state religion. During the
unification of Italy in the mid-19th century, the
Papal States resisted incorporation into the new nation, even as all the other Italian countries, except for
San Marino, joined it;
Camillo Cavour's dream of proclaiming the Kingdom of Italy from the steps of
St. Peter's Basilica did not come to pass. The nascent Kingdom of Italy invaded and occupied
Romagna (the eastern portion of the Papal States) in 1860, leaving only
Latium in the pope's domains. Latium, including Rome itself, was
occupied and annexed in 1870. For the following sixty years, relations between the Papacy and the Italian government were hostile, and the status of the pope became known as the "
Roman Question".
Social welfare '' (OND) visiting
Littoria in 1933 A major success in social policy in Fascist Italy was the creation of the
Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro (OND) or "National After-work Program" in 1925. The OND was the state's largest recreational organizations for adults. The
Dopolavoro was so popular that by the 1930s all towns in Italy had a
Dopolavoro clubhouse and the
Dopolavoro was responsible for establishing and maintaining 11,000 sports grounds, over 6,400 libraries, 800 movie houses, 1,200 theaters and over 2,000 orchestras. Nearly 40% of the industrial workforce had been recruited into the
Dopolavoro by 1939 and the sports activities proved popular with large numbers of workers. The OND had the largest membership of any of the mass Fascist organizations in Italy. The enormous success of the
Dopolavoro in Fascist Italy prompted Nazi Germany to create its own version of the
Dopolavoro, the
Kraft durch Freude (KdF) or "Strength through Joy" program, which was even more successful than the
Dopolavoro. Another organization the Opera Nazionale Balilla (ONB) was widely popular and provided young people with access to clubs, dances, sports facilities, radios, concerts, plays, circuses and outdoor hikes at little or no cost. It sponsored tournaments and sports festivals. Between 1928 and 1930 the government introduced
pensions,
sick pay and
paid holidays. In 1933, the government established
unemployment benefits. In 1935, the
40-hour working week was introduced and workers were expected to spend Saturday afternoons engaged in sporting, paramilitary and political activities. This was called
Sabato fascista ("Fascist Saturday") and was aimed mainly at the young; exceptions were granted in special cases but not for those under 21. To combat
Italian organized crime, notably the
Cosa Nostra in
Sicilia and the
'Ndrangheta in Calabria, the Fascist government gave special powers in 1925 to
Cesare Mori, the prefect of
Palermo. These powers gave him the ability to prosecute
the Mafia, forcing many Mafiosi to flee abroad (many to the United States) or risk being jailed. However, Mori was fired when he began to investigate Mafia links within the Fascist regime and was removed from his position in 1929, when the Fascist regime declared that the threat of the Mafia had been eliminated. Mori's actions weakened the Mafia, but did not destroy them. From 1929 to 1943 the Fascist regime completely abandoned its previously aggressive measures against the Mafia, and the Mafiosi were left relatively undisturbed.
Foreign politics in the 1930s: • Green:
Nice,
Ticino and
Dalmatia • Red:
Malta • Violet:
Corsica •
Savoy and
Corfu were later claimed Lee identifies three major themes in Mussolini's foreign-policy. The first was a continuation of the foreign-policy objectives of the preceding Liberal regime. Liberal Italy had allied itself with Germany and Austria, and had great ambitions in the Balkans and North Africa. Ever since it had been badly defeated in Ethiopia in 1896, there was a strong demand for seizing that country. Second was a profound disillusionment after the heavy losses of the First World War. The small territorial gains from Austria were not enough to compensate for the war's terrible costs; other countries especially Poland and Yugoslavia received much more and Italy felt cheated. Third was Mussolini's promise to restore the pride and glory of the old
Roman Empire. Italian Fascism is based upon Italian nationalism and in particular seeks to complete what it considers as the incomplete project of
Risorgimento by incorporating
Italia Irredenta (unredeemed Italy) into the state of 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, similarly to
Istria, via the Roman Empire and the
Republic of Venice. To the south of Italy, the Fascists claimed
Malta, which belonged to the United Kingdom, and
Corfu, which instead belonged to Greece, to the north claimed
Italian Switzerland, while to the west claimed
Corsica,
Nice and
Savoy, which belonged to France. The Fascist regime produced literature on Corsica that presented evidence of the island's
italianità. The Fascist regime produced literature on Nice that justified that Nice was an Italian land based on historic, ethnic and linguistic grounds. Relations with France were mixed. The Fascist regime planned to regain Italian-populated areas of France. With the rise of Nazism, it became more concerned of the potential threat of Germany to Italy. Due to concerns of German expansionism, Italy joined the
Stresa Front with France and the United Kingdom, which existed from 1935 to 1936. The Fascist regime held negative relations with Yugoslavia, as it continued to claim Dalmatia. During the
Spanish Civil War between the socialist
Republicans and
Nationalists led by
Francisco Franco, Italy sent arms and over 60,000 troops to aid the Nationalist faction. This secured Italy's naval access to Spanish ports and increased Italian influence in the Mediterranean. The
Italian Navy committed 91 warships and submarines and sank 72,800 tons of Republican and neutral shipping. In addition, the Nationalist
Spanish Navy sank 48 Republican and 44 foreign merchant ships, for a total of 240,000 tons, and captured 202 Republican and 23 foreign merchant ships, for a total of 330,000 tons. During all the 1930s, Italy strongly pursued a policy of naval rearmament; by 1940, the
Regia Marina was the fourth largest navy in the world. ,
Daladier,
Hitler, Mussolini, and Italian Foreign Minister Count Ciano, as they prepared to sign the Munich Agreement|From left to right, Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini and Italian Foreign Minister
Count Ciano at the signing of
Munich Agreement. Mussolini and
Adolf Hitler first met in June 1934, as the issue of Austrian independence was in crisis. Mussolini sought to ensure that Nazi Germany would not become hegemonic in Europe. To do this, he opposed German plans to annex Austria after the assassination of Austrian Chancellor
Engelbert Dollfuss, and promised the Austrians military support if Germany were to interfere. Public appearances and propaganda constantly portrayed the closeness of Mussolini and Hitler and the similarities between Italian Fascism and German
National Socialism. While both ideologies had significant similarities, the two factions were suspicious of each other, and both leaders were in competition for world influence. In 1935 Mussolini decided to invade
Ethiopia; 2,313 Italians and 275,000 Ethiopians died. The
Second Italo-Ethiopian War resulted in the international isolation of Italy, as France and Britain quickly abandoned their trust of Mussolini. The only nation to back Italy's aggression was Nazi Germany. After being condemned by the
League of Nations, Italy decided to leave the League on 11 December 1937 and Mussolini denounced the League as a mere "tottering temple". At this point, Mussolini had little choice but to join Hitler in international politics, thus he reluctantly abandoned its support of Austrian independence. Hitler proceeded with the
Anschluss, the annexation of Austria, in 1938. Mussolini later supported German claims on
Sudetenland, a province of
Czechoslovakia inhabited mostly by
Germans, at the
Munich Conference. In 1938, under influence of Hitler, Mussolini supported the adoption of anti-semitic
racial laws in Italy. After Germany annexed
Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Mussolini decided to occupy
Albania to because he feared being seen as a second-rate member of the Axis. On 7 April 1939,
Italy invaded Albania and made it an
Italian protectorate. As war approached in 1939, the Fascist regime stepped up an aggressive press campaign against France claiming that Italian people were suffering in France. This was important to the alliance as both regimes mutually had claims on France, Germany on German-populated
Alsace-Lorraine and Italy on the mixed Italian and French populated
Nice and
Corsica. In May 1939, a formal alliance with Germany was signed, known as the
Pact of Steel. Mussolini felt obliged to sign the pact in spite of his own concerns that Italy could not fight a war in the near future. This obligation grew from his promises to Italians that he would build an empire for them and from his personal desire to not allow Hitler to become the dominant leader in Europe. Mussolini was repulsed by the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreement where Germany and the
Soviet Union agreed to partition the
Second Polish Republic into German and Soviet zones for an impending invasion. The Fascist government saw this as a betrayal of the
Anti-Comintern Pact, but decided to remain officially silent.
Racial Laws on 11 November 1938: "Le leggi per la difesa della razza approvate dal Consiglio dei ministri''" (). The
Italian racial laws, otherwise referred to as the Racial Laws, were a series of laws which were promulgated by the
Council of Ministers in
Fascist Italy (1922–1943) from 1938 to 1943 in order to enforce
racial discrimination and
segregation in the Kingdom of Italy. The main victims of the Racial Laws were
Italian Jews and the
native African inhabitants of the
Italian colonial empire (1923–1947). In the aftermath of
Mussolini's fall from power, the
Badoglio government suppressed the Racial Laws in the Kingdom of Italy. They remained enforced and were made more severe in the territories ruled by the
Italian Social Republic (1943–1945) until the
end of the Second World War. The "Manifesto of Race", published in July 1938, declared the
Italians to be descendants of the
Aryan race. The final decision about the Racial Laws was made during the meeting of the
Gran Consiglio del Fascismo, which took place on the night between 6 and 7 of October 1938 in
Rome,
Palazzo Venezia. Not all Italian Fascists supported discrimination: while the pro-German, anti-Jewish
Roberto Farinacci and
Giovanni Preziosi strongly pushed for them,
Italo Balbo strongly opposed the Racial Laws. The Racial Laws prohibited Jews from most professional positions as well as prohibited sexual relations and marriages between Italians, Jews, and Africans. While some scholars argue that this was an attempt by Mussolini to curry favour with
Adolf Hitler, who increasingly became an ally of Mussolini in the late 1930s and is speculated to have pressured him to increase the racial discrimination and persecution of Jews in the Kingdom of Italy, others have argued that it reflected sentiments long entrenched not just in Fascist political philosophy but also in the teachings of the
post-Tridentine Catholic Church, which remained a powerful cultural force in Mussolini's Fascist regime, representing a uniquely Italian flavour of
antisemitism in which Jews were seen as an obstacle to the Fascist transformation of Italian society due to being bound to what Mussolini saw as decadent
liberal democracies. Leading members of the
National Fascist Party (PNF), such as
Dino Grandi and
Italo Balbo, reportedly opposed the Racial Laws, and the laws were unpopular with most Italian citizens. Balbo, in particular, regarded antisemitism as having nothing to do with fascism and staunchly opposed the antisemitic laws. The
Jews were a small minority in Italy and had integrated deeply into Italian society and culture over the course of several centuries. Most Jews in Italy were either descendants of the ancient
Italian Jews that practiced the
Italian rite and had been living in the Italian Peninsula since
Ancient Roman times;
Western Sephardic Jews who had migrated to Italy from the Iberian Peninsula after the
Reconquista and promulgation of the
Alhambra Decree in the 1490s; and a smaller portion of
Ashkenazi Jewish communities that settled in Northern Italy during the
Middle Ages, which had largely assimilated into the established Italian-rite Jewish and Sephardic communities.
Early years of World War II When Germany
invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 beginning
World War II, Mussolini publicly declared on 24 September 1939 that Italy had the choice of entering the war or to remain neutral which would cause the country to lose its national dignity. Nevertheless, despite his aggressive posture, Mussolini kept Italy out of the conflict for several months. Mussolini told his son-in-law Count Ciano that he was personally jealous of
Hitler's accomplishments and hoped that Hitler's prowess would be slowed down by the Allied counterattack. Mussolini went so far as to lessen Germany's successes in Europe by giving advanced notice to
Belgium and the
Netherlands of an imminent German invasion, of which Germany had informed Italy. Mussolini and the Fascist regime took the advice to a degree and waited as Germany invaded France before getting involved. As France collapsed under the German
Blitzkrieg, Italy declared war on France and Britain on 10 June 1940, fulfilling its obligations of the Pact of Steel. Italy hoped to conquer
Savoy,
Nice,
Corsica, and the African colonies of
Tunisia and
Algeria from the French, but this was quickly stopped when Germany signed an armistice with the French commander
Philippe Petain who established
Vichy France which retained control over these territories. This decision by Nazi Germany angered Mussolini's Fascist regime. This initial zone of occupation annexed officially to the
Kingdom of Italy The largest town contained within the initial Italian zone of occupation was
Menton. The main city inside the "demilitarized zone" of from the former border with the Italian
Alpine Wall was
Nice. In November 1942, in conjunction with
Case Anton, the German occupation of most of
Vichy France, the
Royal Italian Army (
Regio Esercito) expanded its occupation zone. Italian forces took control of
Toulon and all of
Provence up to the river
Rhône, with the island of
Corsica (claimed by the
Italian irredentists). Nice and Corsica were to be annexed to Italy (as had happened in 1940 with Menton), in order to fulfil the aspirations of Italian irredentists (including local groups such as the
Nicard Italians and the
Corsican Italians). But this was not completed because of the
Italian armistice in September 1943 when the Germans took over the Italian occupation zones. '' The one Italian strength that concerned the Allies was the Italian Royal Navy (
Regia Marina), the fourth-largest navy in the world at the time. In November 1940, the British
Royal Navy launched a surprise air attack on the Italian fleet at
Taranto, which crippled Italy's major warships. Although the Italian fleet did not inflict serious damage as was feared, it did keep significant
British Commonwealth naval forces in the
Mediterranean Sea. This fleet needed to fight the Italian fleet to keep British Commonwealth forces in Egypt and the Middle East from being cut off from Britain. In 1941 on the Italian-controlled island of
Kastelorizo, off of the coast of
Turkey, Italian forces succeeded in repelling British and Australian forces attempting to occupy the island during
Operation Abstention. In December 1941, a covert attack by Italian forces took place in
Alexandria,
Egypt, in which Italian divers attached explosives to British warships resulting in two British battleships being severely damaged. This was known as the
Raid on Alexandria. In 1942, the Italian navy inflicted a serious blow to a British convoy fleet attempting to reach
Malta during
Operation Harpoon, sinking multiple British vessels. Over time, the Allied navies inflicted serious damage on the Italian fleet and ruined Italy's advantage over Germany. . . The Italian zone was taken over by the Germans in September 1943. Continuing indications of Italy's subordinate nature to Germany arose during the
Greco-Italian War; the British air force prevented the Italian invasion and allowed the Greeks to push the Italians back to Albania. Mussolini had intended the war with Greece to prove to Germany that Italy was no minor power in the alliance but a capable empire which could hold its weight. Mussolini boasted to his government that he would even resign from being Italian if anyone found fighting the Greeks to be difficult. Hitler and the German government were frustrated with Italy's failing campaigns, but so was Mussolini. Mussolini, in private, angrily accused Italians on the battlefield of becoming "overcome with a crisis of artistic sentimentalism and throwing in the towel".
Adolf Hitler decided that the increased British intervention in the conflict represented a threat to Germany's rear, while German build-up in the Balkans accelerated after
Bulgaria joined the Axis on 1 March 1941. British ground forces began arriving in Greece the next day. This caused Hitler to come to the aid of his Axis ally. On 6 April, the Germans invaded northern Greece ("
Operation Marita"). The Greeks had deployed the vast majority of their men into a mutually costly stalemate with the Italians on the Albanian front, leaving the fortified
Metaxas Line with only a third of its authorized strength. Greek and British forces in northern Greece were overwhelmed and the Germans advanced rapidly west and south. In Albania, the Greek army made a belated withdrawal to avoid being cut off by the Germans but was followed up slowly by the Italians. Greece surrendered to German troops on 20 April 1941 and to the Italians on 23 April 1941. Greece was
subsequently occupied by Bulgarian, German and Italian troops. . To gain background in Greece, Germany reluctantly began a
Balkans Campaign alongside Italy, which also resulted in the destruction of the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1941 and the ceding of
Dalmatia to Italy, establishing the
Governorate of Dalmatia. Mussolini and Hitler compensated Croatian nationalists by endorsing the creation of the
Independent State of Croatia under the extreme nationalist
Ustaše. To receive the support of Italy, the Ustaše agreed to concede the main central portion of Dalmatia and various Adriatic Sea islands to Italy, as Dalmatia held a significant number of Italians. The Independent State of Croatia considered the ceding of the Adriatic Sea islands to be a minimal loss, as in exchange for those cessions, they were allowed to annex all of modern-day
Bosnia and Herzegovina, which led to the
persecution of the Serb population there. Officially, the Independent State of Croatia was a kingdom and an Italian protectorate, ruled by Italian
House of Savoy member
Tomislav II of Croatia, but he never personally set foot on Croatian soil and the government was run by
Ante Pavelić, the leader of the Ustaše. However, Italy did hold
military control across all of Croatia's coast, which, combined with Italian control of Albania and Montenegro, gave Italy complete control of the Adriatic Sea, thus completing a key part of the
Mare Nostrum policy of the Fascists. The Ustaše movement proved valuable to Italy and Germany as a means to counter
Royalist Chetnik guerrillas (although they did work with them because they did not like the Ustaše movement, whom they left up to the Germans) and the communist
Yugoslav Partisans under
Josip Broz Tito who opposed the
occupation of Yugoslavia. Under Italian army commander
Mario Roatta's watch, the violence against the
Slovene civil population in the
Province of Ljubljana easily matched that of the Germans with
summary executions, hostage-taking and hostage killing, reprisals, internments to
Rab and
Gonars concentration camps and the burning of houses and whole villages. Roatta issued additional special instructions stating that the repression orders must be "carried out most energetically and without any false compassion". According to historians
James Walston and Carlo Spartaco Capogeco, the annual mortality rate in the
Italian concentration camps was higher than the average mortality rate in Nazi concentration camp
Buchenwald (which was 15%), at least 18%. On 5 August 1943, Monsignor Joze Srebnic, Bishop of
Veglia (
Krk island), reported to Pope
Pius XII that "witnesses, who took part in the burials, state unequivocally that the number of the dead totals at least 3,500". The repression of memory led to
historical revisionism in Italy about the country's actions during the war. In 1963, the anthology "Notte sul'Europa", a photograph of an internee from
Rab concentration camp, was included while claiming to be a photograph of an internee from a German Nazi camp when in fact, the internee was a
Slovene Janez Mihelčič, born 1885 in Babna Gorica and died at Rab in 1943. fought on the
Eastern Front. In July 1941, some 62,000 Italian troops of the
Italian Expeditionary Corps in Russia (, CSIR) left for the
Eastern Front to aid in the German invasion of the
Soviet Union (
Operation Barbarossa). In July 1942, the Italian Royal Army () expanded the CSIR to a full army of about 200,000 men named the
Italian Army in Russia (, ARMIR). ARMIR was also known as the 8th Army. From August 1942 to February 1943, the 8th Army took part in the
Battle of Stalingrad and suffered many losses (some 20,000 dead and 64,000 captured) when the
Soviets isolated the German forces in Stalingrad by attacking the over-stretched Hungarian, Romanian and Italian forces protecting the Germans' flanks. By the summer of 1943, Rome had withdrawn the remnants of the 8th Army to Italy. Many of the Italian
POWs captured in the Soviet Union died in captivity due to harsh conditions in Soviet prison camps. armored car in Egypt In 1940, Italy invaded
Egypt and was soon driven far back into
Libya by British Commonwealth forces. The German army sent a detachment to join the Italian army in Libya to defend the colony from the British advance. German-Italian army units in the
Panzerarmee Afrika under General
Erwin Rommel push the British out of Libya and into central Egypt from 1941 to 1942.It is also noteworthy that Rommel was officially under Italian command since the campaign was controlled by the Italians. For a time in 1942, Italy, from an official standpoint, controlled large amounts of territory along the Mediterranean Sea. With the collapse of Vichy France, Italy gained control of
Corsica, Nizza, Savoia and other portions of southwestern France. Italy also oversaw a military occupation over significant sections of southern France. Still, despite the official territorial achievements, the so-called "Italian Empire" was a
paper tiger by 1942: it was faltering as its economy failed to adapt to the conditions of war and the Allies bombing Italian cities. Also, despite Rommel's advances in 1941 and early 1942, the campaign in Northern Africa began to collapse in late 1942. The collapse came in 1943 when German and Italian forces fled Northern Africa to
Sicily. By 1943, Italy was failing on every front; by January of the year, half of the Italian forces serving on the Eastern Front had been destroyed, the African campaign had collapsed, the Balkans remained unstable and demoralised as Yugoslavian and Greek Partisan activities increased. Italians wanted an end to the war. King Victor Emmanuel III urged Count Ciano to overstep Mussolini to try to begin talks with the Allies. ,
Benito Mussolini, with a soldier in 1944 Italy then signed an
armistice in Cassibile, ending its war with the Allies. However, Mussolini's reign in Italy was not over as a German commando unit, led by
Otto Skorzeny,
rescued Mussolini from the mountain hotel where he was being held under arrest. Hitler instructed Mussolini to establish the
Italian Social Republic (RSI), a German
puppet state in the portion of northern and central Italy held by the Wehrmacht. As a result, the country descended into
civil war; the new
Royalist government of Victor Emmanuel III and Marshal Badoglio raised an
Italian Co-belligerent Army,
Navy and
Air Force, which fought alongside the Allies for the rest of the war. In contrast, other Italian troops, loyal to Mussolini and his new Fascist state, continued to fight alongside the Germans in the
National Republican Army. Also, a large anti-fascist
Italian resistance movement fought a guerrilla war against the German and RSI forces, while clashes between the RSI Army and the Italian Co-Belligerent Army were rare. in
Ossola, 1944 Although other European countries such as
Norway, the
Netherlands, and
France also had partisan movements and
collaborationist governments with
Nazi Germany, armed confrontation between compatriots was most intense in Italy, making the Italian case unique. In 1965, the definition of "civil war" was used for the first time by fascist politician and historian
Giorgio Pisanò in his books, while
Claudio Pavone's book
Una guerra civile. Saggio storico sulla moralità della Resistenza (
A Civil War. Historical Essay On the Morality Of the Resistance), published in 1991, led to the term "
Italian Civil War" being used more frequently by Italian and international historiography. troops inspected by
Kurt Mälzer The RSI armed forces were a combination of Mussolini loyalist Fascists and German armed forces, although Mussolini had little power. The fascists claimed their armed forces numbered 780,000 men and women, but sources indicate that there were 558,000. Recruiting military forces was difficult for the RSI, as most of the Italian army had been interned by German forces in 1943, many Italians had been
conscripted into forced labour in Germany and few wanted to fight on Nazi Germany's side after 8 September 1943; the RSI granted convicts freedom if they would join the army and the sentence of death was imposed on anyone who opposed being conscripted. Autonomous military forces in the RSI also fought against the Allies including the
Decima Flottiglia MAS under command of Prince
Junio Valerio Borghese. Borghese held no allegiance to Mussolini and even suggested that he would take him prisoner if he could. In addition to regular units of the Republican Army and the
Black Brigades, various special units of fascists were organized, at first spontaneously and afterward from regular units that were part of Salò's armed forces, also including criminals. in Milan during the
liberation of Italy, April 1945 Hitler and the German armed forces led the campaign against the Allies. They had little interest in preserving Italy as more than a buffer zone against an Allied invasion of Germany. The Badoglio government attempted to establish a non-partisan administration, and many political parties were allowed to exist again after years of being banned under Fascism. These ranged from liberal to communist parties, which all were part of the government. Italians celebrated the fall of Mussolini, and as the Allies took more Italian territory, the Allies were welcomed as liberators by Italians who opposed the German occupation. Life for Italians under German occupation was hard, especially in Rome. Rome's citizens, by 1943, had grown tired of the war. Upon Italy signing an armistice with the Allies on 8 September 1943, Rome's citizens took to the streets chanting "
Viva la pace!" ("Long live the peace!), but within hours German forces raided the city and attacked anti-Fascists, royalists and Jews. Roman citizens were harassed by German soldiers to provide them food and fuel, German authorities arrested opposition, and many were sent into forced labor. Rome's citizens, upon being liberated, reported that during the first week of the German occupation of Rome, crimes against Italian citizens took place as German soldiers looted stores and robbed Roman citizens at gunpoint. German authorities began arresting able-bodied Roman men to be conscripted into forced labour. On 4 June 1944, the German occupation of Rome ended as German forces retreated as the Allies advanced. On 25 April 1945 the
National Liberation Committee for Northern Italy proclaimed a general insurrection in all the territories still occupied by the Nazi-fascists, indicating to all the partisan forces active in Northern Italy that were part of the Volunteer Corps of Freedom to attack the fascist and German garrisons by imposing the surrender, days before the arrival of the Allied troops; at the same time, the National Liberation Committee for Northern Italy personally issued legislative decrees, assuming power "in the name of the Italian people and as a delegate of the Italian Government", establishing among other things the death sentence for all fascist hierarchs, "Surrender or die!" was the rallying call of the partisans that day and those immediately following. Today the event is commemorated in
Italy every 25 April by the
Liberation Day,
National Day introduced on 22 April 1946, which celebrates the liberation of the country from
fascism. of
Benito Mussolini,
Claretta Petacci and other executed fascists on display in Milan on 29 April 1945. Mussolini was captured on 27 April 1945 by
Communist Italian partisans near the
Swiss border as he tried to escape Italy. On the next day,
he was executed for high treason as sentenced in absentia by a tribunal of the
National Liberation Committee. Afterwards, the bodies of Mussolini, his mistress and about fifteen other Fascists were taken to
Milan, where they were displayed to the public.
Winston Churchill had long regarded southern Europe as the military weak spot of the continent (in World War I he had advocated the
Dardanelles campaign, and during World War II he favoured the Balkans as an area of operations, for example in Greece in 1940). Calling Italy the "soft underbelly" of the Axis, Churchill had therefore advocated this invasion instead of a cross-channel invasion of occupied France. But Italy itself proved anything but a soft target: the mountainous terrain gave Axis forces excellent defensive positions, and it also partly negated the Allied advantage in
motorized and mechanized units. The final Allied victory over the Axis in Italy did not come until the
spring offensive of 1945, after Allied troops had breached the
Gothic Line, leading to the surrender of German and RSI forces in Italy on 2 May shortly before Germany finally surrendered ending World War II in Europe on 8 May. The government of Badoglio remained in being for some nine months. On 9 June 1944, he was replaced as prime minister by the 70-year-old anti-fascist leader
Ivanoe Bonomi. In June 1945, Bonomi was in turn replaced by
Ferruccio Parri, who in turn gave way to
Alcide de Gasperi on 4 December 1945. De Gasperi supervised the transition to a republic following the abdication of Vittorio Emanuele III on 9 May 1946. He briefly became acting head of state and prime minister on 18 June 1946 but ceded the former role to Provisional President
Enrico De Nicola ten days later.
Anti-fascism against Mussolini's regime , an axe cutting a fasces. Arditi del Popolo'' was a militant
anti-fascist group founded in 1921 In Italy, Mussolini's
Fascist regime used the term
anti-fascist to describe its opponents. Mussolini's
secret police was officially known as the
Organization for Vigilance and Repression of Anti-Fascism. During the 1920s in the
Kingdom of Italy, anti-fascists, many of them from the
labor movement, fought against the violent
Blackshirts and against the rise of the fascist leader Benito Mussolini. After the
Italian Socialist Party (PSI) signed a
pacification pact with Mussolini and his
Fasces of Combat on 3 August 1921, and trade unions adopted a legalist and pacified strategy, members of the workers' movement who disagreed with this strategy formed
Arditi del Popolo. The
Italian General Confederation of Labour (CGL) and the PSI refused to officially recognize the anti-fascist militia and maintained a non-violent, legalist strategy, while the
Communist Party of Italy (PCd'I) ordered its members to quit the organization. The PCd'I organized some militant groups, but their actions were relatively minor. The Italian anarchist
Severino Di Giovanni, who exiled himself to Argentina following the 1922
March on Rome, organized several bombings against the Italian fascist community. The Italian liberal anti-fascist
Benedetto Croce wrote his
Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals, which was published in 1925. Other notable Italian liberal anti-fascists around that time were
Piero Gobetti and
Carlo Rosselli.
Concentrazione Antifascista Italiana (), officially known as Concentrazione d'Azione Antifascista (Anti-Fascist Action Concentration), was an Italian coalition of Anti-Fascist groups which existed from 1927 to 1934. Founded in
Nérac, France, by expatriate Italians, the CAI was an alliance of non-communist anti-fascist forces (republican, socialist, nationalist) trying to promote and to coordinate expatriate actions to fight fascism in Italy; they published a propaganda paper entitled
La Libertà. , anti-fascist movement active from 1929 to 1945
Giustizia e Libertà () was an Italian
anti-fascist resistance movement, active from 1929 to 1945. The movement was cofounded by
Carlo Rosselli, The movement's members held various political beliefs but shared a belief in active, effective opposition to fascism, compared to the older Italian anti-fascist parties.
Giustizia e Libertà also made the international community aware of the realities of fascism in Italy, thanks to the work of
Gaetano Salvemini. Many Italian anti-fascists participated in the
Spanish Civil War with the hope of setting an example of armed resistance to
Franco's dictatorship against Mussolini's regime; hence their motto: "Today in Spain, tomorrow in Italy". Between 1920 and 1943, several anti-fascist movements were active among the
Slovenes and
Croats in the territories annexed to Italy after
World War I, known as the
Julian March. The most influential was the militant insurgent organization
TIGR, which carried out numerous sabotages, as well as attacks on representatives of the Fascist Party and the military. Most of the underground structure of the organization was discovered and dismantled by the
Organization for Vigilance and Repression of Anti-Fascism (OVRA) in 1940 and 1941, and after June 1941 most of its former activists joined the
Slovene Partisans. During
World War II, many members of the
Italian resistance left their homes and went to live in the mountains, fighting against Italian fascists and
German Nazi soldiers during the
Italian Civil War. Many cities in Italy, including
Turin,
Naples and
Milan, were freed by anti-fascist uprisings. == End of the Kingdom of Italy (1946) ==