Rise of Fascism in Italy

There are some things in history so cruel or disgusting that we'd just rather forget they occurred. Fascism, and
particularly the brand practiced in Germany and Italy in the first half of the 20th century, are a perfect example of one
of these phenomena. However, in order to guard against it happening again, we must do our best to understand how
it occurred in the first place. The rest of this lesson will examine the rise and events of Italy's fascist experiment.
Background
By the time of World War I, Italy had been a modern nation state for barely a half-century. The Kingdom of Italy was
not declared until 1861, by King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia, after the efforts of the great Italian statesman Camillo
Benso di Cavour and the military campaigns of Giuseppe Garibaldi. Even then, Venice and Rome were not part of the
Italian state until 1866 and 1870 respectively.
The young state of Italy faced many problems in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The fragmented nature of its
beginnings caused vast differences in terms of regional wealth, education, and infrastructure. For example, Northern
states such as Milan and Lombardy were relatively wealthy, while large parts of Southern Italy still relied on heavily
agricultural economies and were relatively poor. Literacy rates in Italy at this time were far lower than elsewhere in
Western Europe.
Mussolini and Fascist Party
The fragmented state of Italian society was reflected in its government, and very little was actually accomplished by
the Italian Parliament. For example, from 1919 to 1922 the Parliament formed five different governments under various
coalitions and parties. To make matters worse, Italy had not been given the same favorable settlement as the other
allied powers had received by the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I - a conflict which had strained the Italian
economy to its breaking point. It was in this chaotic scene that one of the largest figures of the 20th century emerged:
Benito Mussolini. Mussolini was born in Predappio in 1883, the son of a blacksmith. Originally a socialist who had
fled to Switzerland to avoid being drafted into the Italian military, Mussolini returned to Italy in 1904 and in 1919 he
formed Italy's Fascist Party. As unemployment soared and Italy descended into political anarchy, Mussolini's Fascist
Party slowly gained support by running on a vehemently nationalist platform, winning 35 seats in the 1921 elections.

In October of 1922, out of a fear of a communist takeover due to riots and strikes in Northern Italy, Mussolini gathered
his Fascist followers and party foot soldiers, nicknamed the 'Black Shirts,' and staged a march on Rome. Once there,
King Victor Emmanuel III asked Mussolini to form a government and restore order to the countryside. Over the next
three years, Mussolini dismantled the democracy Cavour had painstakingly cobbled together, and in 1925, he declared
himself dictator of Italy. He took the title Il Duce - literally, 'The Leader.'
Italy under Fascism
Fascist Italy under Mussolini was a heavily centralized and state-controlled country. Early in Mussolini's tenure as Il
Duce, he used the immense powers of the fascist state to marginally improve Italy - social welfare programs to help
the unemployed were instituted, railroads and public transportation systems were built or improved upon, and the
Italian economy stabilized.
However, what few improvements Mussolini's government made were greatly overshadowed by the means by which
he achieved them. Soon after declaring himself dictator, all other political parties were outlawed and strict press
censorship was instituted. Rumors abounded that socialist leaders, like Giacomo Matteotti and Giovanni Amendola,
were being arrested and beaten to death. Workers were stripped of the ability to strike, and although wages rose
initially under the Mussolini regime, by 1929 average pay had fallen below that of 1922.
In addition, the fascist government pervaded the everyday lives of Italians, force feeding them propaganda glorifying
Italy and comparing modern Italy to the Roman Empire. Much like in Nazi Germany, it was considered the duty of any
good Italian to be physically fit and have a large family that could be of service to the Italian state. Artwork that did not
represent the glory of Italy or Rome was outlawed. In order to propagate these feelings of Italian superiority and begin
exerting Italian influence elsewhere, Mussolini invaded Abyssinia (modern-day Ethiopia) in 1935, making it a province
of his new Italian Empire.
Naturally in such a nationalist state, xenophobia was rampant, and anti-Semitism was particularly strong in Italy as it
was in Germany. In 1938, Jews were barred from being government officials or serving in the military, and immigration
of any further Jews into Italy was prohibited. In 1939, Mussolini and Hitler signed The Pact of Steel, solidifying the
alliance between Germany and Italy.

The rise of Stalin in the USSR.

Often times in history, one person in particular becomes remembered as the icon of a movement or an event. For
example, most people think of George Washington first when they think of the American Revolution, or Rosa Parks or
Martin Luther King when they think of the mid-20th century civil rights movement. When it comes to the 20th century's
Soviet Union, the person most people think of is Joseph Stalin, the brutal dictator who ruled over the early Soviet Union
for nearly three decades.
Revolution
Stalin was born in 1878 in what is today Georgia, but was then part of the Russian Empire. Though originally a student at
the local seminary for the Georgian Orthodox Church, Stalin was expelled in 1899 and soon after became active in the
Marxist underground in Russia. For this activity Stalin was imprisoned multiple times in the first decade of the 20th
century, even spending a period in exile in Siberia. Undeterred by this experience, Stalin continued to rise through the
ranks of the fledgling Bolshevik Party, becoming a key figure in the Russian government after the October 1917 Bolshevik
Revolution.
Stalin was a key aide to Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Party. When the Soviet Union was instituted in 1922,
Stalin was installed as Secretary General to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. After Lenin's death in 1924,
Soviet and communist leadership was in limbo. Through complex and often backroom political maneuvering, Stalin won
out against his rivals within the party by 1928, many of whom he soon imprisoned and/or exiled.
Stalin in Power
Soon after assuming full control of the Soviet government, Stalin set out to build Russia into an economic and industrial
giant. He considered Russia 50 years behind the rest of the world in terms of industry and technology, and he resolved to
close this gap through a forced and rapid modernization process.

However, in order to force such a wholesale transformation of the economy, Stalin needed total control of the Soviet
economy. Fortunately, the Marxist principles Stalin's Communist Party expounded called for precisely the command
economy Stalin needed. Under Stalin, the Soviet government assumed control of what few industrial complexes it didn't
already own, but the most violent upheaval to the Soviet economy was Stalin's forced collectivization of agriculture.
At the time of Stalin's rise to power, the Soviet Union was still a predominantly farming-based society. In order to create
a labor pool for Russian industry and have direct control over the Soviet food supply, Stalin seized ownership of millions
of farms. Those farmers who resisted were forced into exile or summarily executed.
This brutal treatment was not restricted to uncooperative farmers; Stalin maintained a firm grip on power through
terrorizing millions of Soviets and even Communist Party members. A secret police force roamed the Soviet countryside
and cities rooting out 'enemies of the revolution' who were exiled or imprisoned for the smallest action or offhand
comment that could be construed as anti-Soviet or anti-communist.

In the late 1930s, for example, Stalin instituted the Great Purge, which he claimed was to rid the Communist Party of
subversive and foreign agents, but in reality targeted thousands of Stalin's political enemies and rivals. Correspondingly,
the fabled Soviet Gulag prison camp system expanded enormously in the 1930s, where those imprisoned were often
worked to death or simply executed.
With totalitarian control over the Soviet economy and people, Stalin's regime began its modernization projects through
instituting a series of Five Year Plans. The Five Year Plans set relatively outrageous goals for everything - from total goals
for each sector of the economy to individual expected outputs from each factory. Most of these goals were impossible
to meet, and factory and government officials often fudged the numbers to meet their quotas. Conditions in these
factories were terrible for the workers, who were often paid in food rations and were worked to the bone.

Nazcism
The Holocaust was the persecution and mass murder of as many as 11 million people by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis
between 1933 and 1945. Learn about the people they targeted, the progression of events leading up to the Final Solution
and the end of the genocide in this lesson.
Targets of the Holocaust
The term Holocaust typically refers to the persecution and mass murder of as many as 11 million people by the Nazis, or
German fascists, between 1933 and 1945. Though history cannot hold just one person responsible for all of the atrocities
carried out, the Holocaust corresponds with the political rise of one man: Adolf Hitler. He became Chancellor of Germany
on January 30, 1933. By the middle of the next year, he was dictator with the title of Fuhrer.
Hitler had started cleansing, what he called, 'the master race' almost as soon as he took office. In addition to the nearly
six million Jews he targeted, there were more than five million non-Jewish victims as well. The Nazi regime tried to
eliminate anyone who might pose a political threat, including communists, journalists and various Christians who
opposed Hitler, those who would 'dilute' the Aryan gene pool, such as Romani, Jews, blacks and the handicapped, and
criminals and others who drained the economic system, in addition to people they just didn't like, such as homosexuals.
Depending on the offense, victims might find themselves subject to heavy labor, forced abortions and sterilization. They
were very likely to have their assets stolen and then be imprisoned in a concentration camp anywhere in the Third
German Empire, or Reich, where they were often executed or worked to death. The exact number of camps varies,
depending on the definition, but there were dozens of main camps, with many sub-units, serving different functions.
Current estimates total about 20,000 camps.

Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany

But since at least the end of WWI, Hitler had specifically blamed Jews for his nation's problems. Anti-Semitism wasn't a
new phenomenon in Europe, but the Nazis ramped up the prejudice to a murderous level. First, Jews were identified by
voluntary registration, and then other research, like census and immigration records and synagogue membership rolls,
and through informants who were paid bounties. Then, beginning in 1933, a series of increasingly strict laws stripped
away Jewish rights, including land ownership. They were barred from many professions like law, medicine, journalism
and the military. By 1935, they had lost their citizenship, and even more personal, business and property restrictions and
regulations were enacted in the coming years.
But the Night of Broken Glass, or Kristallnacht, in November 1938 marked a turning point in Jewish persecution. As
retribution for the murder of a German embassy employee in Paris by a German-born Jewish student, more than 9,000
Jewish-owned businesses, homes and synagogues were destroyed or vandalized. As many as 91 Jewish men were
murdered, and upwards of 30,000 were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Within days, the German government
eliminated Jews from the economy, most remaining Jewish-owned property was seized and Jewish children were
expelled from public schools. To add insult to injury, the Jewish community as a whole was fined one billion marks to pay
for the damage of Kristallnacht.
Nazi Persecution Extends Beyond Germany
After invading Poland in 1939, Hitler started separating the 'undesirable' citizens from the rest of the population.
Hundreds of thousands of Jews were relocated into ghettos near railroad lines. Within months, Polish Jews became
slaves and had to wear a white Star of David on their arms. Eventually, Jews throughout the Reich were required to wear
the recognizable yellow Star of David on their chests.

But as the Nazis conquered more and more territory, they encountered more and more of what they called 'subhumans,' including Allied POWs who fit their description. Germany began deporting Jews to concentration camps.
Those who were allowed to remain at home for the time being became slave labor in the war industries. In newlyoccupied lands, the easiest solution for the Nazis was to simply kill as many Jews as possible on the spot, or pay locals
to do it for them, but many others were also sent to camps. Meanwhile, Hitler's allies started their own cleansing
programs.
Auschwitz and Other Death Camps
By the summer of 1941, the Fuhrer ordered the systematic extermination of all Jewish people in Europe. Called the
Final Solution, this genocide program began at Auschwitz, but ultimately included six death camps, all in Poland,
specially equipped for mass murder. European Jews, plus some other 'undesirables,' were typically deported by freight
and cattle cars, packed shoulder to shoulder for days without room to sit, without protection from weather and
without food, water or bathroom facilities. Those who survived the train ride were separated upon arrival.

Useful prisoners were tattooed with a number, stripped of their clothes and belongings, shaved and hosed down. They
were often allowed to live as long as they were productive workers for the German war machine. Those who weren't
useful enough were killed immediately, including almost all children and the elderly. A number of execution methods
were tested, but by January of 1942, Zyklon-B gas became the preferred method. The earliest victims were buried in
mass graves, but cremation soon became the only sustainable option.
There are very few known cases of resistance or rebellion in the camps or even the ghettos, and the Nazis suppressed
all uprisings successfully. However, a few individuals did manage to escape to safety.