Benito Mussolini Essay, Research Paper
Benito Mussolini
Like his father, Benito became a burning socialist.
Mussolini had huge goals of running a political machine based on his own beliefs. Born in the poverty-stricken village of Romagna, Italy, he was wild, nomadic, and defiant as a young adult lived the life of a bum. Showing fierce aggression at such a young age, he was expelled from two schools for knife-assaults on other students. His father a village blacksmith and his mother a schoolmistress, he lived life in poverty that seemed inscapable. By moving from Italy to Austria he devoted himself to the battle for human and economic freedom. Mussolini had become an impassioned Socialist.
He had been appointed secretary to the Socialists of the Chamber of Labor in Trent, Austria. He also headed a weekly newspaper that was a major Socialist channel in Trent. Practicing journalism, in which he had always thought as his first passion. This gave Mussolini an opportuninty to establish a name in the Socialist Party and with the people in general. He wrote articles that would get the people’s blood racing on church issues. One thing Benito Mussolini was not afraid of was the rage of other men. For these articles he spent time in prison and was then deported back to Italy.
In Italy he persisted and gave public speeches, the people loved his ideas. He became one of Italy’s most intelligent and menacing young Socialist. In November 1914 he published, Il Popolo d’Italia, and the prowar group Fasci d’Azione Rivoluzionaria. Mussolini’s lifeblood went into Il Popolo d’Italia. Benito Mussolini became a national force; groups supporting intervention in the war sprang up everywhere. His expectations for the war, was the collapse of society that would bring him to power. His socialist comrades were enraged by his article committing Socialist support to Italy’s entry into the World War. Just years earlier he had been protesting Italy’s entry in war. Called up for military service, he was wounded and returned in 1917.
In 1919 he founded the facist di combattimento, which in 1921 became the Italian Facist party. With facist party backing and Mussolini’s own tactics he rose to power between 1919 and 1922. Mussolini entered parliament in 1921 as a right-wing member. The Fascisti formed armed squads to boss around Mussolini’s former Socialist colleagues. The Italian government rarely interfered. In return for the support of a group of industrialists, Mussolini gave his approval to strikebreaking, and he abandoned revolutionary disturbance. When the liberal governments of others had failed to stop the spread of anarchy, King Victor Emmanuel III invited Mussolini to form a coalition government in 1922. With the support of the Liberals in parliament, he introduced strict censorship and altered the methods of election so that in 1925-1926 he was able to assume dictatorial powers and end all other political parties. By 1926 the facist leader had transformed Italy into a single-party, tolalitarian regime. He was also head of the all-powerful Fascist party and the armed Fascist militia.
The regime was overcentralized, inefficient, and corrupt. His plans for the economy suffered from his exaggerated attempt to make Italy self-sufficient. In foreign policy, Mussolini moved from anti-imperialism to an extreme aggressive nationalist. He succeeded to set up puppet governments in Albania and Libya. It was his dream to make the Mediterranean Italy’s sea. He helped Austria create an anti-Hitler front in order to defend their independence. But without the support of the League of Nations, because their opposition of his war against Ethiopia, Mussolini was forced to seek an alliance with Nazi Germany. Mussolini followed the Nazis in adopting a racial policy that led to the oppression of the Jews.
His declaration of war on Britain and France exposed Italy’s military unpreparedness, and was followed by a series of defeats. Following the Allied invasion of Sicily, and with his supporters deserting him, he was overthown and arrested. Rescued from imprisionment by German paratroopers, he forced to make the Liberal Italy into the puppet Italian Social Republic for Hitler. This showed his defeat, he lost his good-natured reasons for even becoming a socialist. In 1945 he was captured by the Italian Resistance and shot.
After Mussolini’s dimise, the new Italian republic would repudiate everything he had stood for and redifine Italy’s interests drastically. Even his own people had come to hate him.
The era of Mussolini has had a profound effect on present views. It involves being a major part in the Holocaust, Taking over the Itailian Government to his Socialistic Views. The Holocaust involved the killing of millions of Jewish people, and the conquering of surrounding countries. It has played an important part of keeping harmful revolutionists from taking over, and has showed the affects of dictatorships.
He was driven by a sort of compulsion to free himself and others from the sort of oppression that he had endured in his own childhood, he had consecrated himself to the battle for human rights.