Real Dictators - Benito Mussolini Part 2: The March on Rome

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

Wounded at the Front, Mussolini’s war ends early. A playboy aristocrat forms his own private army, offering inspiration to Il Duce. As Italian workers go on strike, Mussolini’s goons crack skulls on the streets. And in a smoke-filled hall in Milan, he declares the birth of a new movement. His fascists will soon begin an audacious march on the capital… A Noiser production, written by Jeff Dawson. Many thanks to Giulia Albanese, Joshua Arthurs, John Foot, Nicholas O’Shaughnessy, Lisa Pine, Helen Roche. This is Part 2 of 7. Get every episode of Real Dictators a week early with Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to shows across the Noiser network. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TD Direct Investing offers live support, so whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. It's October the 30th, 1922. A Monday. We're in the Eternal City, Rome. On the concourse of the main train station, an excitable crowd has gathered. It spills out into the street. They're dressed in assorted paramilitary garb, but to a man, and they're all men, they wear a black shirt. It's the symbol of their allegiance to a new party, a new cult, fascism. Stiff right arms are raised into the crisp autumn air, the old Roman salute. They are here to hail their Caesar. At 10.55 a train pulls in, the overnight sleeper from Milan. It should have been here at 9.30. Not even its VIP passenger could make this one

run on time. It's been slowing at stations through the night, allowing the faithful to honor their hero for here flesh and blood is their savior the man who will put italy to rights the carriage door opens and benito mussolini alights a cry goes up a chant up. A chant. Duce, they yell. Duce, Duce, Duce. It will continue as Ilduce is swept outside. It will swell as he walks at their head towards the royal palace. Today's arrival marks the culmination of an event called the March on Rome. From all corners of Italy, the fascists have descended. There are 40,000 in the capital today, perhaps 100,000.

Some will claim a million. But the result is the same. Through a flexing of their muscles, the fascists have toppled the government, and the panicked king has summoned their boss. Il Duce is the only one now who can end the national crisis. Later the two men appear together on the royal balcony to even more hysteria. Mussolini can't stand the king. He refers to him as a dwarf. But the dwarf has made the godfather an offer he can't refuse.

He is the new head of the Italy family. From the Noiser Network, this is part two of the Mussolini story. And this is Real Dictators. Let's go back. Back to 1915. When we were last in the company of Mussolini, he was going off to fight in the First World War. Having campaigned for Italy's involvement, he's swift to volunteer. Ironically, at first, he's rebuffed, told to wait. He has a history of political extremism, as well as being a jailbird.

But in August 1915, his draft notice comes through. He is one of 1.2 million men rushed to the front. As a journalist of note, he's offered a desk job. He turns it down for the infantry. job. He turns it down for the infantry. Aged 32, Mussolini is old for combat, but he rejoins his former unit, the 11th Regiment of Bessalieri. Italy is a late entrant into the conflict. There were riots in the streets when it abandoned its stance of neutrality. Despite treaty obligations to Germany and Austria-Hungary, Italy has thrown in its lot with the Triple Entente, Britain, France and Russia. It was Mussolini, editor of Il Popolo newspaper, who had banged the war drums the loudest. This act of political heresy has seen him kicked out of his beloved socialist party.

Professor John Foote. So the big betrayal is 1915. He doesn't really have a movement behind him, but he's fated because the powers that be wanted the war, particularly the king and the industrialists and certain parts of minority nationalist movement. For the Allies, Italy's declaration of war on Austria-Hungary and later Germany is a strategic godsend. It can tie down the Austrians on their southern flank.

It's dubbed the White War, fought high along the Alpine frontier. It's dubbed the White War, fought high along the Alpine frontier. It will not capture the popular imagination, not in the same way as the Western Front. But the campaign is no less savage, a miserable frostbitten slog. Mussolini is a good soldier. He's thrown into the battles of Isonzo in what is present-day Slovenia. Commended for his bravery, he's promoted to corporal. But on February 22nd, 1917, he's in a trench observing the demonstration of a new mortar, when…

Jagged shrapnel rips through the air. Five men are killed. Corporal Mussolini survives, but his body is riddled with over forty bits of metal. He's stretched away. His war is over. Professor Nicholas of Shaughnessy Mussolini, like Hitler, though so many parallels was originally a draft dodger but some kind of mortar bomb explodes in his trench

He is invalided out so there's a long period of recuperation Mussolini is evacuated to a military hospital at Ronchi. Over the next month he will undergo a series of surgeries. He's visited by Margherita Sarfatti, the latest in a string of mistresses. Notwithstanding the fact that on Christmas Day 1915, while on leave, he formally married Rachele. He was so exhausted he could scarcely speak, writes Sarfatti. His lips scarcely moved.

One could see how horribly he had suffered. Sarfatti is an intellectual, an art critic, journalist, a fallen socialite. Later to become Mussolini's official biographer. She's also a Jew. Such things are of no consequence in Italy at the present. It will one day be a different story. Mussolini will use his convalescence to read and to think. He will later milk his wartime experiences, writing that he's proud, quote, to have reddened the road to Trieste with my own blood. My suffering was indescribable.

I had 27 operations in one month. All except two were without anesthetics. Stories will circulate later as to whether he was ever wounded at all. Stories will circulate later as to whether he was ever wounded at all. Did he have syphilis? There's a lot of reinvention in his diaries. He's very good at narrating something which perhaps didn't happen. The myth of Mussolini is, a lot of it is invented by him and spread by him. He has his own daily newspaper, which, you know, he builds up his own myth. It's already being created

very cleverly in that period. In August 1917, Mussolini is honourably discharged. He returns to Milan, hobbling on crutches, not that he needs them anymore, into the offices of Il Popolo. He resumes his post as editor-in-chief of the newspaper. Italy throughout the war is plagued with inexperienced troops, poor command and outdated equipment. A German surge in October 1917 will result in a catastrophic defeat for the Royal Italian Army at the Battle of Caporetto. In Rome, the government collapses.

The country is on the brink. But reinforced by British, French and now American units, Italy mounts a final push. Austria, the historic foe, is beaten. Austria, the historic foe, is beaten. Italy has emerged on the winning side, but at a tremendous cost. Nearly three quarters of a million Italians have perished. There are a million men wounded. Men like Benito Mussolini.

Mussolini would still describe himself as a revolutionary, even a socialist. But his war experiences have infused it with a sense of patriotism, of nationalism. It will soon be fueled by something else, a sense of grievance. It's June the 28th, 1919, five years to the day after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. We're in the Grand Palace of Versailles, just west of Paris. In the spectacular Hall of Mirrors, delegations of the victorious powers assemble. Their leaders are here to sign the document that will formally end hostilities, drawing a line under Armageddon, and while they're at it, redrawing the map of Europe.

Italy is a victorious power. It stands alongside Britain, France, and New Kid on the Block, the United States. No Russia. It is engulfed in revolution. But, posing with Georges Clemenceau, David Lloyd George, and Woodrow Wilson, Prime Minister Francesco Saverio Nitti can only smile through gritted teeth. Throughout the peace talks, it quickly became evident that these new friends regarded Italy as a junior partner. The Treaty of London, which brought Italy into the war, is not worth the paper it was written on. Germany's colonies have already been divvied up between Britain and France. Nitti's predecessor, Vittorio Orlando, had stormed out of the conference

chamber. In Europe, too, Italy feels shortchanged. There remains a huge bone of contention. The Dalmatian coast. For four hundred years, the Adriatic seaboard had been part of the Republic of Venice. It remains studded with Italian communities. The deal was that it would get them back. Italy has been granted some territory in the Alps, South Tyrol, Trentino, and it has acquired Trieste, previously the domain of Austria. But it has not been awarded the port of Fiume, modern-day Rijeka in Croatia. It lies just down the coast. Fiume, despite its 90% Italian population, has been placed under an international peacekeeping

force, and it is soon to be transferred to a brand new country. 90% Italian population has been placed under an international peacekeeping force. And it is soon to be transferred to a brand new country, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. To the Italians, things are not how they were advertised. All in all, Italy has had a terrible war. It's September 1919, on the shores of the Adriatic. We are standing on the ancient walls of Fiume. Through time they've seen off the Franks, the Ottomans, the French, the British. We're in the company of a man named Gabriele D'Annunzio.

He is a snappy dresser, shaven-headed and with a trim, goaty beard. A maverick aristocrat who cuts a striking figure, or so he likes to think. As a giant of Italian literature, a playwright and a poet, not to mention a playboy, he is the most famous writer in the land. And as for his sex life, Caligula would have blushed. D'Annunzio is a pioneer of aviation, well known for flying with the Wright brothers. He's earned celebrity status as an ace fighter pilot. This makes people sit up and listen when he pledges himself an irredentist, one who believes Italy will not be fully whole till it

reclaims its ethnic exclaves. With poetic flourish, he's coined the phrase, the Treaty of Versailles represents vittoria mutilata, the mutilated victory. His solution? He has formed his own private army from demobbed Arditi, Italy's crack troops. D'Annunzio gets this ragbag group of Minissia and this pre-ends the March on Rome in 1922. Fiume was contested territory. the March on Rome in 1922, Fiume was contested territory. It becomes a symbol of being sold out, the mutilated victory,

which is D'Annunzio's phrase. And he marches on Fiume, occupies it, and sets up this kind of tin-pot dictatorship. He declares it the Italian Regency of Carnaro, pledging it to the motherland. But the Italian government expresses unease, preferring not to upset the international apple cart. And so, bizarrely, D'Annunzio declares war on Italy too. The administration in Rome dispatches warships to blockade the city.

But Fiuma will survive the siege, and over the coming months it will become a haven for artists and radicals, a fantasy camp for revolutionaries. D'Annunzio will style his army as legionarii, legionaries. He dresses them in black-shirted uniforms. They hail him with a stiff-armed Roman salute. As their leader, he styles himself a duke, Duce. Benito Mussolini is furiously taking notes. Denuncio was never a fascist, even though in so many ways he originated it. But his originality lies with the dramaturgy. He has this shriek, which he claims was the battle cry of Achilles. It's he who makes these great speeches from balconies. It's he who poses as the re-embodiment of Casanova, the greatest lover in history. even though he was a kind of shriveled and ugly little man,

and personified this romantic, martial, nationalistic spirit, this ethos, which Mussolini then just inherited. Danunzio will ultimately be evicted from Fiume, but he stands as proof as to what can be achieved by daring, rhetoric and the application of bayonets. You make the Italian people through war. Their blood will make Italy, right? And D'Annunzio is very much about blood making Italy.

D'Annunzio goes around with these blood-soaked flags all the time that were wrapped around heroes who died on the battlefield. Events at Fiuma are indicative of the basket case that Italy is fast becoming. It has been politically humiliated. Its economy has tanked. Its government is a revolving door of weak prime ministers and ineffective coalitions. It has had a generation of young men wiped out, with hundreds of thousands of civilians to follow, courtesy of the Spanish flu. In the wake of the Russian Revolution,

the Italian left has become radicalized and emboldened. Beyond mainstream socialism, communists and Bolsheviks dominate the powerful trade unions and local councils. A new strand, anarcho-syndicalism, has emerged. There is a push to reorganize society as Bolshevik-style Soviets. Joshua Arthurs is Associate Professor in the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies at the University of Toronto, Scarborough. To a significant degree, you have to understand the disorder of the post-war years. On the home front, Italians suffered terribly. There were extremely brutal conditions in the factories.

There were food shortages, medicine shortages. And so, particularly in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution, there was a general sense of unrest that exploded in both agrarian areas and in industrial areas. As will happen in Germany, nationalists feel cheated. They subscribe to the notion of a stab in the back. At the same time, you also had military veterans returning home, brutalized by their experiences at the front and angry at what they saw as a betrayal by Italy's political elites.

And so you had this atmosphere of social breakdown and of a government that seemed incapable of reining it in. Mass unemployment, industrial unrest, rampant inflation, soaring food prices. This newly constituted country is in danger of falling apart. Professor Helen Roche. I mean, since time immemorial, there had been this very stark difference between the North, which was in general much richer, more industrialised. But in the South, you have all of these immiserated peasants, you have so much illiteracy, you don't have, in some places, running water, let alone electricity or proper roads. It's really another world. There are people out there

who don't really even think of Italy as the nation. They're very centred on their little locality and what that means. To the Italian nationalists, the threat of Bolshevism is acute. Not too far away in southern Germany, a Bavarian Soviet republic has been declared. Over two days in July 1919, Italy's unions call a general strike in sympathy with the Russian revolution. From the fiat machinists of Turin to the olive pickers in Calabria, the country succumbs to demos and occupations. The hammer and sickle flies over factory gates. It will mark the start of what will become known as the Bieni Oroso, the two red years. This is a period when it feels like revolution is going to happen any minute. There's strikes

almost daily. There are revolts in some parts of Italy, people shot in the streets by the army. It's an incredible time. Occupations of the factories, production falling down, transport strikes on a daily basis. And yes, it does feel terrifying for many people. You know, are we become like Russia? It's certainly true that in many of these uprisings, you have groups trying to emulate the Bolshevik example. That said, when we think about the two red years, we have to think about the perception of threat and disorder more than the genuine prospect of a proletarian revolution. To the nationalists, the very soul of Italy is now at stake. For the nationalists, the very soul of Italy is now at stake. So you know the idea that we can stop this, that we can bring order, you know the terrible

old cliche which is often trotted out, make the trains run on time right, does have a basis in reality because what that refers to is this chaos. After chaos must come order. A call goes out for someone to do what D'Annunzio did in Fiume, but on a national scale. In his newspaper, Mussolini eulogizes such a redeemer. A man, he says, who is ruthless and energetic enough to make a clean sweep. And that person, he fancies, is himself. Mussolini may have been cast out by the Socialist Party,

but he is building a popular following. He knows how to keep a message simple. He had appealed for Italy's entry into the Great War with a typical slogan, Blood alone moves the wheels of history. He had appealed for Italy's entry into the Great War with a typical slogan, blood alone moves the wheels of history, and he has plenty more up his sleeve. As a wounded veteran too, he is immediately relatable. He can look an old soldier in the eye. Many of them come out of that experience where they've been forced into a kind of camaraderie, a brutal camaraderie of blood.

And Mussolini himself, you know, is part of that experience. He fights in the trenches, he gets wounded. He represents our other generation in post-war Italy. That anger, that violence coming out of that forced experience. This is a phrase that Mussolini uses. Many of them have come to see themselves as a trenchocracy, as a new elite that is born of the experience of the war. So not only are they in dire circumstances, but they've been betrayed by their leaders. They are the true elect who should be leading Italy. In one of his editorials, Mussolini uses an obscure reference. He talks of the fasci, of revolutionary action.

Fasci is an arcane term that harks back to ancient Rome. In the days of the Roman Republic, a consul would be accompanied by a ceremonial entourage, a team of priests called lictors. Each lictor would carry a bundle of birch rods, bound around an axe. The idea was that these symbolized the consul's power. They were the tools with which to discipline and punish. This bundle, the rods and the axe, has a name. Fasces. Mussolini alights on this symbolism and adds to it. A birch rod in isolation is fragile, he says. It can be snapped, but, bundled together, the rods represent strength through unity.

Power, discipline, strength, unity. The cogs are whirring. It's March the 23rd, 1919, in Milan. We're in a smoke-filled hall in the Piazza Sansepolcro. The ink has not yet been blotted at Versailles as Mussolini takes to the stage. It's a fringe meeting. Less than 200 are present. They're the usual bunch of misfits. Disenchanted socialists, anarchists, would-be revolutionaries, some of whom had been arditi

commandos. A good many, too, who are no strangers to a jail cell. Those present will go on to call themselves the Sansepolchristi, the disciples, present at the creation. The Mussolini will dub them something else. He declares the birth of a new political party, Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, the Italian Fasci of Combat, which makes them all, for short, fascists. fascists. On June the 6th in Il Popolo

he publishes the first fascist manifesto. It's full of radical if half-baked policies an 80% tax on war profits the seizure of church property abolition of the stock exchange. He is anti-monarchy

he's anti-pope anti-just about everything. One of the Stock Exchange. He is anti-monarchy. He's anti-Pope. Anti just about everything. One of the things that's really striking about the creation of fascism is the fact that it feels like it happens in quite a haphazard way. I read that the original committee was just picked randomly out of people from the front of the meeting. And a lot of scholars have talked about the fact that at the beginning, fascism is quite incoherent as an ideology.

Mussolini's trying to appeal to so many different constituencies. But I also think that's one of the reasons why fascism could be quite alluring to many different types of people because they could pick out the bits that they liked. There's no dogma that you have to subscribe to. Mussolini's critics ridicule him. But when the ruling liberal coalition starts to fragment, it presents a chance for Mussolini to put his money where his mouth is.

Elections are scheduled for November 16th, 1919. The fasci Italiani are going to the polls. This is a new era for Italian democracy. Pre-war, the franchise had been limited to property-owning men. Parliament had been dominated by conservatives and liberals. Post-war, however, the franchise has been extended

to all adult males, though not yet women. It is about to upend the political order. In the Chamber of Deputies, the ruling liberals lose their majority, but for Mussolini, it's a case of too much too soon. His new party fails to win a single seat, garnering just 4,000 votes. You have the coming together of this, frankly, oddball coalition of groups, right?

Military veterans and nationalists, alienated socialists, futurist artists. And they put together this manifesto, the founding manifesto, which is this real hodgepodge of ideas. They run on that platform and are completely wiped out.

They don't even register on the electoral seismograph. By contrast, 1.8 million ballots are cast for the victorious Socialist Party. Avanti, the newspaper Mussolini once edited, bestows the last rights on fascism. In Milan, an effigy of Mussolini in a coffin is carried to the streets and burned. Mussolini doesn't panic. The swing to the left he knows will cause further polarization in society. It will bring more people over to the fascist persuasion.

Sure enough, Mussolini is joined by two star recruits, two generals. They are Emilio de Bono, conqueror of Libya, and Cesare Maria de Vecchi, the governor and butcher of Somalia. The fascist movement is about to shoot off in a new paramilitary direction. The movement is about to shoot off in a new paramilitary direction. Other key players will emerge. Italo Balbo, a young, decorated war veteran. Michele Bianchi, the party general secretary. Together they will become Mussolini's Quadrum Viri, his big four.

There are two Dino Grandi and Roberto Farinacci, important players in the Mussolini story, but we will come to them in due course. Things are now about to move at an incredible pace, so quickly that Italy won't know what's hit it. In June 1920, the centrist Nitti resigns, and is replaced by a liberal prime minister, Giovanni Giolitti, returning for his fifth crack at the top job. Giolitti tries to placate the left, only for Italy to be gripped by further industrial paralysis and waves of violence. Professor Giulia Albanese The election of 1919, together with the demonstration, strikes and social conflict,

created a situation in which much of the Italian elites started to believe that the liberal state wasn't the institutional solution able to grant Italy a just development, richness and order, etc., etc. Mussolini enlarges his constituency again. He can now count on businessmen from industrialists to shopkeepers, people whose livelihoods are directly at stake. Remember, Italy is, to a degree, a nation of small businesses or very small landowners. That's a huge part of Italian society. It's not some anonymous industrialized proletariat in the millions. It's not a race of serfs as Russia had been. The small, independent, peasant proprietor, the small shopkeeper, the small little restaurant owner, these are the

Italians. And these are not the people who are going to go communist. We start to see what fascism becomes in the summer of 1920. They jettison the more radical elements of that original fascist coalition and they instead reposition themselves as allies of industrialists and landowners and as instruments for the repression of labor unrest. Mussolini will present his fascists as guardian angels, the ones who can keep the country functioning. Where there are transport strikes, his men will operate the trams. Where there are refuse walkouts, his men will sweep the streets. Such things take organization, but with the movement packed with ex-military men now, this is no problem. They will form themselves into local units, squadlisti, or action squads. Stealing from the nuncio, they will adopt as their uniform a black shirt, and of course, that Roman salute.

Then there's that term, that one of leadership. Benito Mussolini has been called it before. It is not entirely original. But, in another nod to Denuncio, he confirms it as his preferred title. Il Duce. And he emerges from this as the top journalist in Italy virtually, who has now got not only his own party, but also his own goon squad. In other words, exactly like in Germany, you have a huge residuum of unemployed soldiers who are very angry.

Fascism has been described, not by me, I wish I'd thought of it as the socialism of the soldier. They present themselves almost like boy scouts, the helpers of old ladies. But if there's one thing every squadrista knows, it's how to do violence. Tooled up with guns or wooden clubs, the infamous manganello. Fascist hit squads will target trade union and socialist agitators and pummel them into submission. They're squadristi. They're a kind of unofficial army. Obviously they're illegal. Obviously they should all be arrested, but they're not. And they begin to operate around the country.

Dr. Lisa Pine. Now, these squads were made up of something like between 200 and 250 very well-armed individuals who, by the end of 1920, were going around attacking and burning down socialist headquarters and newspaper offices, chambers of labor, many other left-wing printing presses and newspapers. And the important thing here is that violence was absolutely crucial from the start. Fascism developed quite a following in rural areas to begin with. The fascist movement then was used by both agrarian landowners and industrialists to destroy the power of working class organizations.

Mussolini's strategy was to play a double game. On the one hand, to promise order. On the other hand, to foment disorder. To encourage squads to engage in political violence against leftists. And then to present the fascists as the only ones who could sort of turn on and off the tap of disorder. That they're both the solution and the cause. As it turns out, Prime Minister Giulietti finds this turn of events all rather convenient. His government has got someone to do its dirty work,

a freelance army of strikebreakers. The police seem quite happy to stand aside, to have the black shirts break skulls on their behalf. The reality in the end, particularly by the time Mussolini came to power, was perhaps that that red threat had actually passed. But nevertheless, this use of violence by the fascist squads really was very helpful to landowners and industrialists in trying

to keep the communist threat quashed and quelled. And if the message is not getting through, they have a little trick up their sleeve. It's a signature of Varinacis, the force-feeding of castor oil, the golden nectar of nausea, as he calls it. This household laxative can have a humiliating effect on a dissenter. The most respectable of opponents, once kidnapped and sourced, can be paraded in public while soiling themselves. can be paraded in public while soiling themselves. If there's one thing inevitable in Italy, it's that a fresh round of elections is always around the corner.

And the ones of May 1921 will be a completely different proposition. Not only is Mussolini's popularity soaring, but the squadristi can be used to intimidate voters at the polling stations. This time, 35 fascists are elected to Italy's chamber of deputies. Out of 500 seats, they are still in a minority, but they now have a parliamentary voice, in opposition as part of Giolitti's anti-socialist bloc. One of those new deputies is Benito Mussolini. At 37, he's got his foot in the door. I am obsessed by this wild desire, he writes. It consumes my whole being. I want to make a mark on my era with my will,

like a lion with its claw. Mussolini presents himself as an exemplary deputy. He dresses the part of, really, a 19th century politician at this point. He is a member of the Chamber of Deputies. He is in negotiations with other parties, including many that do not really align with fascism on many issues, but it's all part of a coalition building process. His anti-clerical stance is ditched for a sudden love of the church. His republicanism is replaced with a

new fondness for the monarchy. He even backs the 1920 Treaty of Rapallo, the international agreement whereby Italy renounces its claims to Dalmatia. But behind Mussolini the Gentleman, there is always Mussolini the Thug. Out there, on the streets, his followers continue to do their stuff. In November 1921, he has another rebrand. Sufficiently emboldened, he ditches his liberal partners altogether. His movement will become, more simply, the Partito Nazionale Fascista, or PNF, the National Fascist Party. The membership now numbers 320,000 and is growing by the hour. In the summer of 1922, the Alliance of Labour, a conglomeration of trade unions, calls for

another general strike. It will take place on August the 1st. Faced with an entire national shutdown, Mussolini has a message for the powers that be. If the government can't deal with the strikers, then he will do so himself. 1922 is about to become, as one historian puts it, the fascist year zero. In Ancona, Leghorn and Genoa, union officers are attacked and socialist HQs are stormed. Across the country the blackshirts rampage, burn and loot. So the Italian Communist Party and the Italian Socialist Party, rather than standing up against fascism, were so involved in internecine conflicts and problems amongst themselves that they kind of didn't see early enough or react strongly enough to this fascist threat coming and effectively didn't put up any resistance. The fascists had a huge advantage on this.

They were thugs, but as ex-soldiers, they were used to inflicting violence, you see. I mean, if you've just been a trade unionist all your life, the fistfights and all the rest of it, it doesn't come so naturally to you. As it would be to a soldier who's been out there in the trenches who's made bernie charges you know who's busy keep stabbed shot the enemy in late july thousands of black shirts descend on Ravenna, Forli, Cesena. In Bari and Ancona, red strongholds.

The communists flee. In Ferrara, Bologna and elsewhere, the squadristi are now in control of the town councils. In mighty Milan, where there are pitched street battles, the presses of Avanti are smashed to bits, the building razed to the ground. Blackshirts now occupy the town hall, across the street from La Scala opera house. Many were starting to look at Italy as a country on the edge of a civil war, which wasn't in reality a civil war, because, as you know, in order to have a civil war,

we need to have two actors fighting one with another. And what the fascists demonstrate with their violence was the fact that the Socialist Party wasn't really able to answer with violence. In the battle of black versus red, it's a virtual walkover. In large parts of the country, Mussolini is now running an effective shadow state. And he's not going to stop there. In the capital, shell-shocked. Life carries on.

And the prime ministers keep tumbling. After Giolitti had come the brief tenure of Ivano Bonomi, Italy is now in the hands of a new centre-right Prime Minister, Luigi Facta, a man who devotes more time to combing his lustrous moustache, it seems, than governing the country. than governing the country. It's October the 24th, 1922. 4.30pm. We're in Naples, the Piazza San Carlo.

60,000 baying black shirts are here for the Fascist National Conference. Fascism now seems an unstoppable force, an immovable object. On stage, Mussolini, bathed in the glow of sunset, performs in broad theatrical gestures. He's costumed as a black shirt himself now. Before an array of microphones, he nods, he grimaces, he scoffs.

He has a new move. He rubs his palm down over his face before adopting a pose, legs astride, arms folded. Then he nods his head knowingly, acknowledgement of his own self-evident truths. And one of them is this, that the old liberal state is dead. It has, he says, fulfilled its functions. Either the government will be given to us, or we will seize it by marching on Rome. A new chant goes up this time. Not Duce, but Roma. Roma, Roma, Roma. That night at the Hotel Vesuvio, Team Musso goes into a huddle. With the threat now issued, they cannot back down. At the very least, a mass demonstration of fascist strength in Rome is called for.

It'll focus the minds in the Italian parliament. On November the 4th, National Victory Day, there has already been a big military parade scheduled to proceed through the center of Rome. It's been set up by the new government in an attempt to steal some of the fascist thunder. They've even roped in Gabriele D'Annunzio as chief cheerleader. Mussolini will not allow himself to be upstaged by anybody. Plus, with the Red threat now effectively quashed,

fascism is losing its purpose. In this situation, Mussolini was very conscious of the fact that this was an exceptional moment which wouldn't last forever, and he needed to seize the good moment in order to gain power. Carpe diem. Seize the day. Should they move on Rome, the General Confederation of Italian Industries assured him of its support.

The U.S. ambassador has even tipped him a wink. Power grabbed by Mussolini would come with significant international blessing. His big four, De Bono and De Vecchi, Balbo and Bianchi, must go straight to Perugia in central Italy. From this strategic location they can coordinate an advance on the capital and other actions. The marchers will converge at muster points within range of Rome. Everyone must be in position by the night of the 27th, three days' time. The move must be synchronized with the seizure of national nerve centers, town halls, railway stations, telephone exchanges. General Gavecki is anxious. They have numbers, Duce, yes. But firepower? Should the army be

called out to defend the capital, they would be completely outgunned. Clubs are no match for cannon. But Mussolini issues a wry grin. He knows it'll never come to that. Just get the men in position, he assures. Fate will do the rest. Next morning, Mussolini poses for photographs for the Neapolitan marches. He will not take part personally. He is heading back up to his base in Milan. Privately, he has an escape route planned to Switzerland,

should the whole thing go belly up. The exact purpose of the march on Rome remains hotly debated. A spontaneous demonstration? Or a serious attempt at a coup? A genuine armed threat or a bluff? I think we can view it as theater. We can also view it as a giant game of chicken, where both sides are hurtling towards one another and who's going to swerve out of the way first. And it's a gamble by Mussolini. There is every opportunity for the king to order the army to step in, to repress them. The fascists, even in some instances where they had clashed with the army, were easily defeated. In Cremona, where fighting does take place,

Farinacci is shot and wounded. I have a different interpretation, which is that actually the March on Rome is a very serious political project. It was backed by this mass violence over two, three years, so it's not something that comes out of nowhere. The Italian state had more or less collapsed by 1922. Squadristi are invading

entire parts of italy occupying them as an army so the state is essentially either lost control or cd control to an alternative army in fascist legend the march will be mythologized as columns of smiling black shirts yumping peacefully through villages to be strewn with flowers yumping peacefully through villages to be strewn with flowers. In reality, it's somewhat different. But of course in the event, only around 20,000 marched, they were poorly armed, lacking provisions, and more or less waiting some miles outside of Rome from orders from Mussolini, which never came.

Those that do pitch up on Rome's outskirts are a sorry sight. Deluged by the storms that are lashing the country, they will reach their assembly points a bedraggled, starving rabble. But Prime Minister Factor is taking no chances. He declares a state of siege. The army is marshaled to defend the capital. Key buildings are sandbagged, ringed with barbed wire.

At the first shot fired, a loyal general assures Factor, fascism will totally collapse. Milan. It's 8pm on the night of Friday, October the 27th. We're in the Teatro Manzoni for a performance of Ferenc Molinar's play The Swan. The show, as they say, must go on. Mussolini sits in a box with his mistress, Margheritaita Sarfatti taking approving nods from well-wishers

afterwards he returns to the offices of illa popolo armed black shirts have turned the building into a fortress they've used bundles of newspapers to form a barricade which is now being squelched into papier-mâché by the incessant rain. Ever since Naples, the phone has been ringing off the hook from officials in Rome, from his confederates in Perugia. There have been visits from industrialists, journalists, friends, all wondering what the hell is going to happen next. All he can tell them is that his black shirts are in position, ready to move in. It's the morning of the 28th, in the Quirinale Palace in Rome.

The Prime Minister Luigi Facta stands before the King, Victor Emmanuel III. Both men look tired. The current crisis has caused the King to rush back from his holiday. Factor, meanwhile, has been locked in an all-night cabinet meeting. His lustrous moustache is beginning to droop. The only way to stop Mussolini now, Factor explains, is to upgrade the current emergency status to full-on martial law. Let the army be proactive in dealing with this national insurrection. His Majesty, head of state, as well as head of the armed forces, just needs to put his signature to the order. A civil servant brandishing a leather folder steps forward. Victor Emmanuel sighs.

He's hesitant. He walks to the window and gazes out. What he is about to tell his prime minister is absolutely the last thing Fracta will want to hear. He has been thinking long and hard, the king explains. He fears mass bloodshed. As such, he cannot comply. Plus, though he doesn't voice it, he's not entirely convinced his army won't go over to Mussolini. The only way to end this episode, insists his majesty, is to offer the fascists a stake in government.

Factor splutters an objection, but the king raises a hand. He will abdicate right there on the spot should his prime minister not respect his wishes. A shocked Factor leaves. Within the hour he will have penned his resignation. Within the hour he will have penned his resignation. And this is a fundamental moment because from this moment on Mussolini understands that he won. Back in Milan, Mussolini prepares for the inevitable. He is swamped by a deluge of proposals. But Il Duce keeps his cool. He now holds all the cards. Next day, the 29th, mid-morning, and the phone rings yet again. This time the call comes

direct from the Quirinale Palace. Mussolini has been invited for a special audience with his majesty. It can mean only one thing. Mussolini replies insouciantly that he wants the invitation in writing. Thirty minutes later there is the sound of a motorbike. Il Duce looks out. There, racing across the glistening cobbles, is a dispatch rider. A conversation at the front door is followed by the scurry of footsteps up the stairs. An excited black shirt bursts in, brandishing a telegram. Very urgent. Top priority. Mussolini, Milan, it reads. urgent, top priority, Mussolini, Milan, it reads. H.M. King asks you to proceed immediately to Rome as he wishes to offer you the responsibility of forming a ministry.

Benito Mussolini is being invited to become prime minister. The king, through a combination, I think, of opportunism and personal weakness and cowardice even, is the one who flinches in the end and leaves the coast clear for the blackshirts to march into Rome. And I think really calculating that the Bolshevik threat as he saw it was always going to be greater than the fascist threat. Had they attempted to take Rome by force, the Roman garrison could have stopped them. But in the event, of course, no force was needed.

And of course, the really, really important point about this then is that Mussolini's accession to power was not inevitable. So he could have been stopped. What options did the king have? It's often said, oh, they just needed to put the army out there, it would have been all over in five minutes. I totally don't agree with that. This is a serious set of people. They've been in the trenches, they're not a joke. And, you know, it would have been civil war. I mean, kind of, you've got civil war already. Mussolini smiles. Not in his wildest dreams did he imagine that it would be this easy.

There'll be a train waiting for him at 3pm, he's told. The king has sent it. He can be in Rome tonight. But Mussolini is in no rush. He wants to write tomorrow's headlines. He'll catch the later one at 8.30. The king appoints the head of the insurrection prime minister, which is an extraordinary thing to do in many ways. It is a legal seizure of power, backed by an illegal series of events. So it's a very bizarre moment. So he is prime minister on the back of marching with an illegal army. It's kind of a coup, kind of isn't.

It's 11.45 on the morning of October the 30th. We're in the Quirinale Palace again. Benito Mussolini enters. He cuts a strange figure. He's squeezed himself into a too tight civilian suit. He's thrown it over his black shirt to add a veneer of respectability when meeting his majesty. On his head sits a bowler hat. Over garish yellow shoes are a pair of white spats.

He bought them on a trip to the French Riviera. He looks like a chimp at a tea party. Amid the Rococo splendor and the gold leaf finery, Mussolini apologizes to the king for his unconventional attire. I come from the battlefield, he quips. Not so long ago, Benito Mussolini was a vagrant, a convict. Just eighteen months earlier, he wasn't even an elected politician. And now, he is the brand new leader of the nation.

The Duce of Fascism is now the Duce of Italy. The liberal elites, the king, think, oh, well, he won't last long. They don't take him seriously enough. We can control him. He's done the dirty work for us. He's killed all the socialists. Great. But that's a terrible mistake because he will soon turn on them. The liberals will start to get killed and the Catholics. He turns on anybody and ruthlessly destroys anybody who opposes him. The day after Mussolini's appointment, October 31st, there will be a huge fascist victory parade, styled after a Roman triumph. The columns of Squadristi will take six hours to pass.

Among the things that Mussolini and the king discuss, there is also the fact that the squadristi will be able to enter the capital, they will be able to enter and do a huge demonstration in the center of the town as if they were a victorious army coming back from the war. And the king will wait for them and greet them. un'armata territoriale che torna dalla guerra e il re aspetterà per loro e li salverà. Credo che questo sia il chef d'oeuvre di Mussolini, perché non solo ha riuscito a essere chiamato come Presidente del Governo, ma ha anche riuscito a legittimizzare la sua armata violenta e privata come se fosse un'armata ufficiale. and private army as if it was an official army. From this moment on, I think that the dictatorship starts because, in a way, all the parameter of liberal democracy

has already been defeated or has already been changed at a symbolic level, which is a fundamental level for power. at the symbolic level which is a fundamental level for power mussolini reflects perhaps he should have entered rome on a white horse no one has mentioned it but it is coincidentally halloween In the next episode... World leaders line up to hail the new Italian strongman. With his public works and economic reforms, Il Duce is a big hit.

But Mussolini will dismantle democracy and kill off the opposition, quite literally. The cult of fascism will soon spawn a dictatorship. That's next time. To be continued...