The Inter-War Period (1920-1939)
Senior 6 · History
The Inter-War Period (1920-1939)
Lesson 4 of 5
25 min
Study the photograph below before you read anything else. It shows Benito Mussolini, head of the Italian government, bare-chested among the sheaves at a wheat harvest in the 1920s, during his "Battle for Grain". Ask three questions of it: who took it and for whom, what impression of the leader it was designed to create, and what it leaves out. Then read on to find out how a former socialist journalist came to rule Italy for twenty years, and why his regime invaded Ethiopia.
Definition
Fascism: an extreme nationalist and anti-democratic movement founded by Mussolini in 1919, which glorified the nation and the state, violence and war, rejected liberalism and communism, and demanded total obedience to a single leader. The name comes from the fasces, the bundle of rods carried before Roman magistrates.
Totalitarianism: a system in which the state tries to control every part of life, political, economic, cultural and private, through one party, propaganda and terror.
Squadristi: armed Fascist gangs (the "Blackshirts") who attacked socialists, trade unions and peasant leagues in 1920–22.
Corporate state: Mussolini's plan to organise the economy in "corporations" of employers and workers in each industry under state control, replacing free trade unions and strikes.
Duce ("leader"): Mussolini's title as head of the Fascist movement and state.
| Factor | Evidence |
|---|---|
| The "mutilated victory" | Italy lost about 600,000 soldiers, yet the peace treaties denied it Fiume and most of Dalmatia; nationalists felt cheated and blamed the liberal government |
| Economic crisis | Inflation, debt and unemployment among returning soldiers |
| Fear of revolution | The "two red years" (1919–20): strikes, factory occupations in the north and land seizures, inspired by the Russian Revolution, frightened industrialists, landowners and the middle classes |
| Weak liberal governments | Five prime ministers between 1919 and 1922; proportional representation produced unstable coalitions |
| Violence that was tolerated | The squadristi destroyed socialist offices and newspapers while police and army officers often looked away or helped |
| Support from the elites | Industrialists and landowners funded the movement; the king, the army and much of the Church preferred Mussolini to the left |
| Mussolini's skill | He combined street violence with parliamentary deals, dropping his early anti-clerical and republican ideas when they lost him support |
In October 1922 Fascist columns gathered to "march on Rome". Prime Minister Luigi Facta asked King Victor Emmanuel III to declare a state of siege so the army could stop them. The king refused and, on 30 October, invited Mussolini to form a government. Mussolini had come to power legally, by royal appointment, but under the threat of force: he had 35 deputies out of 535.
| Policy | Aim | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Battle for Grain (1925) | Make Italy self-sufficient in wheat | Wheat output rose, but at the cost of other crops and higher food prices |
| Battle for the Lira (1926–27) | A strong currency as a symbol of national strength | Exports became expensive and unemployment rose |
| Land reclamation | Drain marshes such as the Pontine Marshes and settle farmers | Some success, much publicised, but on a small scale |
| Corporate state | Replace class conflict with co-operation under state control | Strikes were banned; in practice employers kept their power and workers lost theirs |
| Youth and propaganda | Create a Fascist generation: youth movements, school textbooks, the cult of the Duce | Wide reach, but enthusiasm was often shallow |
| Racial laws (1938) | Follow Nazi Germany in persecuting Jews | Jews were expelled from schools, universities and many jobs |
Mussolini claimed that his state was totalitarian, but in practice the king, the army, the Church and big business kept much of their independence. It was the king who dismissed him in July 1943. Historians therefore debate how "total" Fascist rule was. Denis Mack Smith portrayed Mussolini as a showman more interested in propaganda than in governing; Renzo De Felice argued that the regime won broad consent in the early 1930s; R. J. B. Bosworth stresses how much ordinary Italians adapted to the regime without believing in it.
Mussolini wanted Italy to be respected as a great power and to build a new Roman empire around the Mediterranean and in Africa. He bombarded Corfu (1923), annexed Fiume (1924), signed the Locarno treaties (1925), and in April 1935 joined Britain and France in the Stresa Front against German rearmament. In Africa Italy already held Eritrea, Italian Somaliland and Libya. Ethiopia was the last great independent African state, a member of the League since 1923, and the country that had defeated an Italian army at Adwa in 1896.
Important
Source analysis: a promise and a verdict
"The High Contracting Parties solemnly declare in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another."
Source A. Article I of the Pact of Paris (the Kellogg–Briand Pact), 27 August 1928. Italy was one of the original signatories.
"Italy's invading armies have seized an enormous territory from a fellow-member of the League; they have bombarded and destroyed some of Ethiopia's largest towns; they have killed tens of thousands of Ethiopian soldiers, and many thousands of defenseless civilians—besides committing the unspeakable atrocity of using poison gas against them […]. And yet no practical assistance of any kind has been forthcoming under the terms of the Covenant of the League which had been devised to cover precisely such a situation. […] For it seems certain that if the path of the aggressor had been successfully blocked in Manchuria and in Abyssinia, the challenge of a remilitarized Germany could have been much more easily met."
Source B. Cornelius Van H. Engert, United States Minister Resident in Ethiopia, report to the Secretary of State, Addis Ababa, 5 May 1936, published in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1936, volume III.
Source A shows the promise: eight years before the invasion, Italy had renounced war as an instrument of policy. Source B was written in Addis Ababa on the day Italian troops entered the city, by a diplomat of a country that was not in the League and had not applied sanctions itself, so he could criticise the League freely. His final sentence makes the argument that historians still make: the League's failures in Manchuria and Ethiopia taught Hitler that aggression would go unpunished. Notice that the United States, too, had signed Source A and did nothing.
For Africans and people of African descent, the invasion was not a distant European affair. Ethiopia was a symbol of African independence, the land of Adwa. In London, the International African Friends of Abyssinia, whose members included the Trinidadian writer C. L. R. James and Amy Ashwood Garvey, organised protests in 1935; there were demonstrations in West Africa, the Caribbean and the United States. Ethiopian patriots, the Arbegnoch, fought on in the countryside throughout the occupation, and in February 1937, after an attempt on the life of the Italian viceroy, Rodolfo Graziani, Italian forces killed thousands of people in Addis Ababa in reprisal. The League's abandonment of a black African member convinced many future nationalist leaders that the European powers would never apply their principles to Africa. Ethiopia was liberated in 1941, with British, Commonwealth, Belgian Congolese and Ethiopian forces (next unit).
Warning
Keep Fascist Italy in proportion. Don't describe Fascist Italy as identical to Nazi Germany. Mussolini's regime was brutal (the murder of Matteotti, internal exile for opponents, the war crimes in Libya and Ethiopia, the racial laws of 1938), but it did not set out to murder Europe's Jews, and its control of society was less complete. Use precise evidence for each judgement.
Tip
"Why did Mussolini come to power?" Distinguish between the conditions (mutilated victory, economic crisis, fear of the left, weak governments) and the decisive factor: the decisions of the elites, above all the king's refusal on 28 October 1922 to let the army stop the march. The best answers argue that Mussolini did not seize power; he was given it.
Important
Discuss. Britain and France feared that oil sanctions or closing the Suez Canal would drive Mussolini into Hitler's arms, so they held back. Italy joined Hitler anyway in 1936. Was it ever possible to stand up for Ethiopia without risking a European war? Whose interests should the League have put first?
"Rise of Fascism and Mussolini's March on Rome" (Between 2 Wars, 1922, part 1 of 2), TimeGhost History. A documentary episode with original photographs and footage. Watch for the post-war crisis, the squadristi and the king's decision, and compare its account with the table of factors in this lesson.
Practice
Sources and credits
Written by Ganzaa: the analysis, the tables, the definitions and the exercises.
