Difference between revisions 147107851 and 147107852 on dewiki

{{Infobox Former Country
|native_name = ''Regno d'Italia''
|conventional_long_name = Kingdom of Italy
|common_name = Italy
|continent = Europe
|region    = Italy
|country   = Italy
|year_start  = 1861
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In 1914, [[Benito Mussolini]] was forced out of the [[Italian Socialist Party]] after calling for Italian intervention against Austria. Prior to World War I, Mussolini had opposed military conscription, protested Italy's occupation of Libya, and was the editor of the Socialist Party's official newspaper, ''[[Avanti! (Italian newspaper)|Avanti!]]''. Over time, he simply called for revolution, without mentioning class struggle.<ref
 name="Smith">Smith (1997), p284</ref> Mussolini's nationalism enabled him to raise funds from [[Italian Ansaldo company|Ansaldo]] (an armaments firm) and other companies to create his own newspaper ''[[Il Popolo d'Italia]]'' to convince socialists and revolutionaries to support the war.<ref>Smith (1997), p284</ref name="Smith"/> France, Britain, and Russia, wanting to draw Italy to the Entente, helped finance the newspaper.<ref>Clark, Martin. ''Modern Italy:1871-1982''. London and New York: Longman Group UK Limited. p.183</ref> This newspaper became Fascist Italy's officially-supported newspaper years later. During the war, Mussolini served in the Italian army and was wounded once during the war. The wound is widely believed to be the result of an accident in grenade practice, although he claimed to have been wounded in battle.<ref>Smith (1997), p284</ref name="Smith"/>
[[Image:Mussd.jpg|thumb|left|250px|[[Benito Mussolini]] (the man wearing the sash) and [[Italian Fascism|Fascist]] [[Blackshirts]] during the [[March on Rome]].]]

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 [[pacifism|pacifist]] nature of the Italian Socialist Party. The Fascists initially had a platform far more inclined to the left, promising social revolution, proportional representation, women's suffrage, and dividing private property held by estates.<ref>Smith (1997), pp284–286)</ref> 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!'' Recognizing the failures of the Fascists' initial revolutionary and left-leaning policy, Mussolini moved the organization away from the left and turned the revolutionary movement into an electoral movement in 1921 named the ''Partito Nazionale Fascista'' ([[National Fascist Party]]). The party copied the nationalist themes of D'Annunzio and rejected parliamentary democracy while still operating within to destroy it. Mussolini changed his original revolutionary policies, such as moving away from anti-clericalism to supporting the Catholic Church and abandoned his public opposition to the monarchy.<ref name="Smith_2">Smith (1997), p298</ref> Fascist support and violence began to grow in 1921 and Fascist-supporting army officers began taking arms and vehicles from the army to use in counterrevolutionary attacks on socialists.<ref>Smith (1997), p302</ref>

In 1920, Giolitti had come back as Prime Minister in an attempt to solve Italy's deadlock. One year later, Giolitti's government had already 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.<ref>Smith (1997), p298</ref name="Smith_2"/> In the elections, the Fascists did not make large gains, but Giolitti's government failed to gather a large enough coalition to govern and offered the Fascists placements in his government. The Fascists rejected Giolitti's offers and joined with socialists in bringing down his government.<ref>Bosworth (2005), p112</ref> A number of descendants of those who had served Garibaldi's revolutionaries during unification were won over to Mussolini's nationalist revolutionary ide(contracted; show full)

The Fascist regime established propaganda in newsreels, radio broadcasting, and a few feature films deliberately endorsing Fascism. In 1926, laws were passed to require that propaganda newsreels be shown prior to all feature films in cinemas.<ref
 name="Pauley">Pauley, p109</ref> These newsreels were more effective in influencing the Italian public than propaganda films or radio, as few Italians had radio receivers at the time.<ref>Pauley, p109</ref name="Pauley"/> Fascist propaganda was widely present in posters and state-sponsored art of the time. Art and literature in Fascist Italy were not strictly controlled, and were only censored if they were blatantly against the state.

(contracted; show full) in positions in churches, Mussolini claimed that "no" votes were of those "...few ill-advised anti-clericals who refuse to accept the Lateran Pacts".<ref>Pollard, p49</ref> In the French newspaper ''[[Le Monde]]'', [[Guido Miglioni]] spoke of the attitude of the Fascist regime and what he saw was the nature of the Lateran pact: "These two years have witnessed the gradual but inexorable submission of the Pope to the demands of the Regime"<ref
 name="Pollard">Pollard, p55</ref> Despite opposition to the nature of the negotiations, many Italians feared that a "no" vote would incite Fascist reprisals and attacks on the individuals who opposed the concordat. When the plebiscite was held, 8.63 million Italians or 90 per cent of the registered electorate voted.<ref>Pollard, p61</ref> Of this number, only 135,761 voted "no".<ref>Pollard, p55</ref name="Pollard"/> The Lateran Treaty was signed and the Vatican's sovereignty was recognized. Despite earlier troubles, relations between the Church and the regime and moreover Italy itself, improved significantly. The Lateran Treaty remains in place to this day.
<!-- Image with inadequate rationale removed: [[Image:ItaloFlight.jpg|thumb|left|200px|Poster for [[Italo Balbo]]'s transatlantic flight to the [[Century of Progress]] in [[Chicago, Illinois|Chicago]].]] -->

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The Fascist government endorsed a stringent education policy in Italy aiming at eliminating illiteracy which was a serious problem in Italy at the time and improving loyalty of Italians to the state.<ref>Pauley, pp. 117.</ref> To reduce drop-outs, the government changed the minimum age of leaving school from twelve to fourteen and strictly enforced attendance.<ref
 name="Pauley_2">Pauley, pp. 117</ref> The Fascist government's first minister of education from 1922 to 1924, [[Giovanni Gentile]] recommended that education policy should focus on indoctrination of students into Fascism, and to educate youth to respect and be obedient to authority.<ref>Pauley, pp. 117</ref name="Pauley_2"/> In 1929, education policy took a major step towards being completely taken over by the agenda of indoctrination.<ref>Pauley, pp. 117</ref name="Pauley_2"/> In that year, the Fascist government took control of the authorization of all textbooks, all secondary school teachers were required to take an oath of loyalty to Fascism, and children began to be taught that they owed the same loyalty to Fascism as they did to God.<ref>Pauley, pp. 117</ref name="Pauley_2"/> In 1933, all university teachers were required to be members of the National Fascist Party.<ref>Pauley, pp. 117</ref name="Pauley_2"/> From 1930s to 1940s, Italy's education focused on the history of Italy displaying Italy as a force of civilization during the [[Ancient Rome|Roman]] era, displaying the rebirth of Italian nationalism and the struggle for Italian independence and unity during the ''[[Risorgimento]]''.<ref>Pauley, Pp. 117</ref> In late 1930s, the Fascist government copied [[Nazi Germany]]'s education system on the issue of physical fitness, and began an agenda that demanded that Italians become physically healthy.<ref>Pauley, pp. 117</ref name="Pauley_2"/>

Intellectual talent in Italy was rewarded and promoted by the Fascist government through the [[Royal Academy of Italy]] which was created in 1926 to promote and coordinate Italy's intellectual activity.<ref>Cannistraro, Philip V. (1982) Historical Dictionary of Fascist Italy, Westport, Conn.; London : Greenwood Press, ISBN 0-313-21317-8. Pp. 474</ref>

=== Social welfare ===
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.<ref name="Pauley_3">Pauley, p113</ref> 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 theatres, and over 2,000 orchestras.<ref>Pauley, p113</ref name="Pauley_3"/> Membership in the ''Dopolavoro'' was voluntary but had high participation because of its nonpolitical nature.<ref>Pauley, p113</ref name="Pauley_3"/> In the 1930s under the direction of [[Achille Starace]] the OND became primarily recreational, concentrating on sports and other outings. It is estimated that by 1936 the OND had organized 80% of salaried workers.<ref> de Grazia, Victoria. ''The Culture of Consent: Mass Organizations of Leisure in Fascist Italy.'' Cambridge, 1981. </ref> Nearly 40% of the industrial workforce had been recruited into the Dopolavoro by 1939 and the sports activities proved popular with lar(contracted; show full)

After the Great Depression hit the world economy in 1929, the Fascist regime followed other nations in enacting protectionist tariffs and attempted to set direction for the economy. In the 1930s, the government increased wheat production, and made Italy self-sufficient for wheat, ending imports of wheat from [[Canada]] and the [[United States]].<ref
 name="Pauley_4">Pauley, p86</ref> However the transfer of agricultural land to wheat production reduced the production of vegetables and fruit.<ref>Pauley, p86</ref name="Pauley_4"/> Despite improving production for wheat, the situation for peasants themselves did not improve. 0.5% of the Italian population (usually wealthy), owned 42 percent of all agricultural land in Italy,<ref name="Pauley_5">Pauley, p87</ref> and income for peasants did not increase while taxes did increase.<ref>Pauley, p87</ref name="Pauley_5"/> The Depression caused unemployment to rise from 300,000 to 1 million in 1933.<ref name="Pauley_6">Pauley, p88</ref> It also caused a 10 percent drop in real income and a fall in exports. Italy fared better than most western nations during the Depression: its welfare services did reduce the impact of the Depression<ref>Pauley, p88</ref name="Pauley_6"/>. Its industrial growth from 1913 to 1938 was even greater than that of Germany for the same time period. Only the [[United Kingdom]] and the [[Scandinavia]]n nations had a higher industrial growth during that period.<ref>Pauley, p88</ref name="Pauley_6"/>

Italy's colonial expansion into Ethiopia in 1936, proved to have a negative impact on Italy's economy. The budget of the colony of [[Italian East Africa]] in the 1936-37 fiscal year requested from Italy 19.136 billion lire to be used create the necessary infrastructure for the colony.<ref>Cannistraro, Philip V. 1982. ''Historical Dictionary of Fascist Italy.'' Westport, Connecticut; London, England: Greenwood Press. Pp. 5</ref> At the time Italy's entire (contracted; show full) policy sought to destroy native culture. In February 1937, [[Rodolfo Graziani]] ordered Italian soldiers to pillage native settlements in [[Addis Ababa]], which resulted in hundreds of [[Ethiopians]] being killed and their homes being burned to the ground.<ref>Sarti, p191.</ref> After the occupation of [[Ethiopia]], the Fascist regime endorsed [[racial segregation]] to reduce the number of mixed offspring in Italian colonies which they claimed would "pollute" the Italian race.<ref
 name="Sarti">Sarti, p190.</ref> Marital and sexual relationships between Italians and Africans in its colonies were made a criminal offense when the Fascist regime implemented decree-law No. 880 of [[April 19]], [[1937]] which gave sentences of one to five years imprisonment to Italians caught in such relationships.<ref>Sarti, p190.</ref name="Sarti"/>  The law did not give any sentences to native Africans, as the Fascist government claimed that only those Italians were to blame for damaging the prestige of their race.<ref>Sarti, p190.</ref name="Sarti"/> Despite racist language used in some propaganda, the Fascist regime accepted recruitment of native Africans who wanted to join Italy's colonial armed forces and native African colonial recruits were displayed in propaganda.[http://www.germaniainternational.com/images/bookgijuinit13.jpg][http://www.germaniainternational.com/images/bookgijuinit14.jpg] In [[Italian Libya]], Mussolini downplayed racist policies as he attempted to earn the trust of Arab leaders there. Individual freedom, inviolability of home and property, right to join the military or civil administrations, and the right to freely pursue a career or employment were guaranteed to [[Libyans]] by December 1934.<ref>Sarti, p190.</ref name="Sarti"/> In famous trip to Libya in 1937, a propaganda event was created when on [[March 18]] Mussolini posed with [[Arab]] dignitaries who gave him an honourary "[[Sword of Islam]]" (that had actually been made in [[Florence]]) which was to symbolize Mussolini as a protector of the [[Muslim]] Arab peoples there.<ref>Sarti, p194.</ref> In 1939, laws were passed that allowed Muslims to be permitted to join the [[National Fascist Party]] and in particular the [[Muslim Association of the Lict(contracted; show full) which helped Italy's stand against Greek sovereignty. Corfu was important to Italian imperialism and nationalism due to its presence in the former [[Republic of Venice]] which left behind significant Italian cultural monuments and influence, though the Greek population there, especially youth, heavily protested the Italian occupation. Relations with France were mixed, the Fascist regime consistently had the intention to eventually wage war on France to regain Italian-populated areas of France,<ref
 name="Smith_3">Smith. 1983. p172</ref> but with the rise of Hitler, the Fascists immediately became more concerned of Austria's independence and the potential threat of Germany to Italy, if it demanded the German-populated areas of [[Tyrol]]. Due to concerns of German expansionism, Italy joined the [[Stresa Front]] with France and the United Kingdom against Germany which existed from 1935 to 1936. The Fascist regime held negative relations with Yugoslavia, as they long wanted the implosion of Yugoslavia in order to territorially expand and increase Italy's power. Italy pursued [[espionage]] in Yugoslavia, as Yugoslav authorities on multiple occasions discovered spy rings in the Italian Embassy in Yugoslavia  such as in 1930.<ref>Smith. 1983. p172</ref name="Smith_3"/> In 1929, the Fascist government accepted Croatian extreme nationalist [[Ante Pavelić]] as a political exile to Italy from Yugoslavia. The Fascists gave Pavelić financial assistance and a training ground in Italy to develop and train his newly formed fascist militia and terrorist group, the [[Ustaše]]. This organization later became the ruling force of the [[Independent State of Croatia]], and murdered hundreds of thousands of [[Serbs]], [[Jews]] and other minorities during [[World War II]].<ref>G(contracted; show full)nterest in Hitler's movement and regarded Hitler to be somewhat crazy.<ref>Smith, 1983. p172</ref> Mussolini did attempt to read ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' to find out what Hitler's [[Nazism|National Socialist movement]] was but was immediately disappointed, saying that ''Mein Kampf'' was "a boring [[tome]] that I have never been able to read" and remarked that Hitler's beliefs were "little more than commonplace clichés."<ref
>Smith. 1983. p172</ref name="Smith_3"/> While Mussolini like Hitler believed in the cultural and moral superiority of whites over coloured peoples,<ref>Sarti, p190.</ref name="Sarti"/> he opposed Hitler's [[anti-Semitic]] beliefs. A number of Fascists were Jewish, including Mussolini's mistress [[Margherita Sarfatti]], the director of Fascist art and propaganda and there was little support amongst Italians for anti-Semitism. Mussolini also did not evaluate race as being a precursor of superiority, but rather culture.

Hitler and the Nazis continued to try to woo Mussolini to their cause, and eventually Mussolini gave financial assistance to the Nazi party and allowed Nazi paramilitaries to train in Italy in the belief that despite differences, a fascist regime in Germany could be beneficial to Italy.<ref>Smith. 1983. p172</ref name="Smith_3"/> Suspicion of the Nazis increased after 1933, Mussolini sought to insure that Nazi Germany would not become the dominant fascist state in Europe. To do this, Mussolini opposed German efforts to annex Austria after the assassination of fascist Austrian President [[Engelbert Dollfuss]] in 1934, and promised the Austrians military support if Germany were to interfere. This promise helped save Austria from annexation in 1934.
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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,<ref
 name="Smith_4">Smith, 1997. p412</ref>, the African campaign had collapsed, the Balkans remained unstable, and Italians wanted an end to the war.<ref>Smith, 1997. p412-413</ref> King Victor Emmanuel III urged Count Ciano to overstep Mussolini to try to begin talks with the Allies.<ref>Smith, 1997. p412</ref name="Smith_4"/> In mid 1943, the [[Allies of World War II|Allies]] commenced an [[Allied invasion of Sicily|invasion of Sicily]] in an effort to knock Italy out of the war and establish a foothold in [[Europe]]. Allied troops landed in Sicily with little initial opposition from Italian forces. The situation changed as the Allies ran into German forces, who held out for some time before Sicily was taken over by the Allies. The invasion made Mussolini dependent on the German Armed Forces (''[[Wehrmacht]]'(contracted; show full)#x27;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.<ref>Wallace, Robert. 1979. ''World War II: The Italian Campaign.'' New York: Time-Life Books. Pp. 36</ref> Roman citizens were harassed by German soldiers to provide them food and fuel and German authorities would arrest all opposition and many were sent into forced labour.<ref
 name="Wallace">Wallace, 1979. Pp. 36</ref> Rome's citizens upon being liberated reported that during the first week of German occupation of Rome, crimes against Italian citizens took place, as German soldiers looted stores and robbed Roman citizens at gunpoint.<ref>Wallace, 1979. Pp. 36</ref name="Wallace"/> Martial law was imposed on Rome by German authorities requiring all citizens to obey a curfew forbidding people to be out on the street after 9 p.m.<ref>Wallace, 1979. Pp. 36</ref name="Wallace"/> During winter of 1943, Rome's citizens were denied access to sufficient food, firewood and coal which were taken by German authorities to be given to German soldiers housed in occupied hotels.<ref>Wallace, 1979. Pp. 36</ref name="Wallace"/> These actions left Rome's citizens to live in the harsh cold and were on the verge of starvation.<ref>Wallace, 1979. Pp. 41-42</ref> German authorities began arresting able-bodied Roman men to be conscripted into forced labour.<ref>Wallace, 1979. Pp. 45</ref> On June 4, 1944, the German occupation of Rome came to an end as German forces retreated as the Allies advanced.

(contracted; show full)[[pt:Reino de Itália]]
[[ro:Regatul Italiei (1861-1946)]]
[[ru:Королевство Италия (1861—1946)]]
[[sl:Kraljevina Italija]]
[[fi:Italian kuningaskunta (1861–1946)]]
[[th:ราชอาณาจักรอิตาลี]]
[[vec:Reino d'Itałia (1861-1946)]]
[[zh:意大利王国]]