Quick questions on Italy under Mussolini 1919-1939 (VCE Modern History Unit 1)

Victorious but disappointed power. Population $36$ million; military casualties $651\,000$ dead and wounded. The peace settlement awarded Italy less than expected (especially Fiume), creating the "mutilated victory" (vittoria mutilata) grievance.

Factory occupations in Turin and Milan; peasant land seizures in southern Italy; Socialist Party electoral surge. Middle-class and industrial fear of communist revolution.

Mussolini, ex-socialist and war veteran, gathered war veterans and nationalists. Initial programme was an eclectic mix of radical and nationalist demands.

Blackshirt paramilitary squads attacked socialist offices, trade unions, peasant leagues. By 1922, large parts of northern Italy effectively under squadrista control.

Rigged the electoral system: the largest party (with $25$%+) would receive two-thirds of parliamentary seats. Passed under squadristi pressure on parliament.

Fascist coalition won $65$% of the vote (after intimidation, fraud and Blackshirt violence).

Socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti, who had exposed Fascist electoral fraud, was abducted and murdered by Fascist thugs. The crisis nearly toppled Mussolini, but the opposition's Aventine secession (withdrawing from parliament) failed to bring down the government.

Banned opposition parties and free press, abolished local elections, established OVRA secret police. By 1926, Italy was a single-party state.

Initially cooperative with Britain and France; Locarno (1925); Stresa Front (April 1935).

Italy invaded the independent African empire of Ethiopia. The League of Nations imposed weak sanctions but did not include oil; the Hoare-Laval Pact (December 1935, leaked and disowned) showed Britain and France willing to deal. Italy's victory (Mussolini proclaimed Empire in May 1936) collapsed the Stresa Front and pushed Italy toward Germany.

Mussolini's term. Pact of Steel (May 1939). Italy and Germany aligned, with Mussolini increasingly the junior partner.