Donald Sassoon - Mussolini and the Rise of Fascism

DONALD SASSOON

Mussolini and the Rise of Fascism

Cover

Title Page DONALD SASSOON Mussolini and the Rise of Fascism

ONE The Conjuncture

TWO A Divisive War – a Lost Victory

THREE The Parliamentary Crisis

FOUR The Advance of Fascism

FIVE ‘We Need a Strong Government’

Notes

Bibliography Of Works Cited

Index

About the Author

By The Same Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

On the morning of 30 October 1922 Benito Mussolini arrived in Rome, not on horseback, as he may have originally fantasised, but on the overnight wagon–lit from Milan, aware that King Victor Emmanuel III was to appoint him Prime Minister and entrust him with the formation of a coalition government.

While the future Duce was discussing strategy with his fellow travellers and meditating in his sleeping compartment, his supporters were converging towards the capital, some by car, others walking, but mostly by special trains, chartered with the help of the government. It was the so–called ‘March on Rome’ which had started on 28 October.

Ten years later, in a diary written with more hindsight than is usually the case, Italo Balbo, one of the more violent followers of the Duce, wrote that, from the beginning, fascism possessed the certitude that its destiny was the conquest of power through a violent insurrectionary act that would mark a caesura between old Italy and a new emerging country. 1

It is often the case that those who proceed illegally try to find some legal reasons why they acted as they did. Sometimes revolutionaries insist on the legality of their actions, ignoring the short cuts they had to take. In Mussolini’s case it was almost the reverse. He preferred to pretend that he had taken power by force, and that power had been given to him because he had already won it on the battlefield. But Mussolini’s advent to power was – strictly speaking – quite legal. As the great liberal politician and former Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti explained to his constituents on 16 March 1924, Mussolini had been appointed constitutionally, had sworn allegiance to the King and the constitution, and had presented his programme to Parliament, from which he had asked and obtained full powers. 2

Yet the language used by the fascists at the time and in the following years depicted an uprising and celebrated revolutionary violence – one of several influences of the Bolshevik Revolution on the fascists. On 29 October 1922, Mussolini’s newspaper, Il Popolo d’Italia, announced that ‘The whole of central Italy, Tuscany, Umbria, Marche, and northern Latium is occupied by the Blackshirts,’ conjuring up an image of armed occupation. 3 To a reporter of the Milan daily Corriere delta sera Mussolini declared: ‘Tell the truth. We have made a revolution unparalleled in the whole world … We have made a revolution while public services continued to function, without stopping trade, and with employees remaining at their desks, workers in their factories, and peasants peacefully tilling their fields. It is a new style of revolution.’ 4

This image of turmoil and radical change was reinforced with the passing of time. The philosopher Giovanni Gentile, writing in 1924, claimed that the March had been a reaction ‘against all the ideologies of the previous century: democracy, socialism, positivism, and rationalism; it was the vindication of idealist philosophy’. 5 The preface to a collection of Mussolini’s main speeches published in 1928 enthused thus:

In 1922 He marches on Rome. He is Italy on the move. The Revolution continues. After half a century of lethargy the nation creates its own regime. The State of the Italians arises. Their power emerges. Their virtues appear. Their empire is in the making. This great renaissance … shall have His name. Throughout the world an Italian century is opening up: the century of Mussolini. 6

And when Mussolini addressed the Senate on 5 July 1924 he boasted that fascism obtained power by an ‘unquestionably revolutionary act’, by force of arms, marching on Rome ‘armata manu’. 7

Twenty years later, in 1944, as the Duce faced defeat, more sober thoughts surfaced. Having escaped from the prison where he had been confined by the same monarch who had originally appointed him, Mussolini, now a pathetic Nazi puppet, recognised that fascism had not come to power by revolution. A true revolution, he wrote, would have required a fundamental change in the institutional framework of the state, but this had been left untouched by the events of October 1922: ‘There was a monarchy before and there was a monarchy afterwards.’ 8 He forgot to add that the King would not have turned against him had not the Grand Fascist Council forced him to resign. The great dictator had come to power legally, and was removed legally, not just by an old institution, the monarchy, but also by one, the Grand Fascist Council, which he had himself created.

Mussolini had given up on the ‘revolution’ well before his train approached Rome on that fateful late–October morning. The seductive appeal of power had made itself felt some time before, when he had become aware that he could get what he wanted more easily and speedily by compromising with the monarchy – one of the gestures that decisively propelled much of the political establishment into granting him full powers. Mussolini had realised there was no point in launching a major enterprise to grab power if power was his for the taking. His more naive followers had not grasped this strategic point. As they marched under incessant rain they assumed they were making history, but the Duce arrived in Rome before them in his wagon–lit to be driven to the palace, where he declared himself to be His Majesty’s ‘loyal servant’. 9

This was no act of renunciation. Mussolini claimed that he had wanted to avoid a civil war, but in reality he could not have taken power any other way. His ‘army’ of fascists was not strong enough. They could have been easily thwarted, and Mussolini himself could have been arrested without difficulty in Civitavecchia–halfway between Pisa and Rome – where the army had blocked the line so as to be able to prevent the camice nere (Blackshirts) converging on Rome if necessary. Mussolini could have been stopped at any time.

Rome was well defended. General Emanuele Pugliese was given the job of organising the defence of the capital; not an arduous task, since the columns of marching fascists were slow–moving. The army occupied public buildings, set up barbed wire, coordinated troop movements. Pugliese assured the Prime Minister, Luigi Facta, that he would have had no problems in restoring order. In Milan it was no better for the fascists. They had entered into the barracks of the Alpini only to face an irate colonel who told them that if they did not leave immediately they would be arrested. They left sheepishly. 10

General Pugliese, loyal to the crown, had more than 10,000 troops under his command. 11 A further 28,000 troops controlled the roads to the capital. Pugliese ordered the railway lines to Rome to be cut fifty kilometres north of the city, and four hundred policemen would have been sufficient to bring the so–called March on Rome to a complete halt. 12 Thus, as clearly established by army documents, the army was in complete control of the ‘marchers’. 13 Had it been instructed to stop the fascists, the march would have been halted. 14