What was the major turning point in Italy becoming a Fascist country in the first half of the Twentieth Century?

by RichardMunday
JFVarlet

I wouldn't say there's any particular point; Italy was a fractured and weak society with many important unaddressed problems that the conservative institutions failed to deal with, and this made crisis and extremism inevitable. Why the form of extremism that won was fascism is a slightly different question.

Bear in mind that Italy was a new country: it had only been formed in 1861, and only been fully unified in 1871. The process of unification raises several problems:
i. Unification was not achieved by popular demand. It was achieved by the desire of elites from Piedmont to expand Piedmontese power across Italy.

ii. Southern Italy was not initially supposed to be part of the new united Italy, as it was much less wealthy and industrial. When it does get incorporated in the end, this leaves a significant North-South divide within Italian economy, politics and society.

iii. The incorporation of Rome and what had been the Papal States into the new Italy alienates the Catholic Church from the new state. For decades afterwards, the Pope tells Italian Catholics to boycott elections and even when this is lifted, Church disapproval remains. As most Italians are Catholics, this creates a sense of divided loyalties.

Late 19th Century Italian politics was characterised by corruption and lack of principle. There was a lack of development towards the kind of concrete political parties seen in the US or Britain; instead there was just ever-changing factions of interest. This is partly due to the fact that compared to most European countries, Italy had a rather thin electoral franchise. Unlike Britain, France and Germany, Italy was without an empire and so seemed weak.

At the start of the 20th Century, there's a couple of important developments:

  • The expansion of the electoral franchise to all adult men. The electorate suddenly goes from less than 3 million to over 8 million. The old liberal and conservative parties are ill-prepared for this, while newer groups, notably the Socialist Party, are ready to take advantage.
  • The First World War, which Italy joins in 1915, largely in the hope of spoils which it doesn't get in the subsequent peace treaties. This angers Italian nationalists, Mussolini among them.

The economic devastation brought by the war, as well as the example set by the Russian Revolution, and Italy's new mass politics, brings on a huge left-wing uprising known as the Biennio Rosso (Two Red Years). There are huge numbers of strikes and factory occupations, often violent, and in the 1919 general election, the Socialist Party takes 32% of the vote and becomes the largest party in Italy.

The left, however, do not attempt to overthrow the government. This proves to be a bad decision on their part, because the conservative establishment continue to be frightened of them even though their actual capacity to threaten dies down.

In many places, the socialist uprisings are put down by far-right paramilitary groups called the Fasci di Combattimento, who form alliances with local elites. In 1921 they form a party called the National Fascist Party (PNF). The PNF is not that popular electorally, but conservative politicians continue to make concessions to and alliances with them, seeing them as a bulwark against the left. The fascists also win support from the People's Party, the Vatican-backed Catholic party, which continues to oppose what it regards as the anti-Catholic Italian establishment. This culminates in the appointment of Mussolini as Prime Minister in 1922, and his subsequent consolidation of power into dictatorship through the 1920s.

In conclusion, fascism takes power in Italy because:

  • Italy has huge ingrained problems that the conservative establishment utterly fail to solve.
  • The socialists do not take power after WW1, leaving them vulnerable to the fascists.

Hope that answers your question! Any more, just ask!