Mussolini gets overshadowed by the magnitude of Stalin and Hitler, or even the longevity of Francisco Franco - but the casual view of him seems to be that he wasn’t all that terrible as autocrats go, until the rise of Hitler and the Axis alliance supposedly pushed him into backing antisemitism and militarist adventures. They point to things like the Lateran Treaty (making a sovereign Vatican City), his supression of organized crime, and the old cliché of making the trains run on time. (Ok the trains may not have run on time, but that was a metaphor for bringing apparent effeciency to a rather backward European country).
No less a source than the Encyclopedia Britannica (the link would work for subscribers) seems to suggest that if Il Duce had perhaps fallen off the balcony in the early 1930’s, before Hitler, he would have gone down in history as an important (not necessarily benevolent) statesman, and not as a rather incompetent brute. Perhaps I am misreading what its trying to say.
Before their famous meeting, Hitler was actually a great admirer of Il Duce. He was a brute and tyrant, and killed a large amount of people in his own right.
Many similar arguements have been made about Hitler dying in 1936 or so, same problem. Just because the extreme ends of their policies would not have been realized does not mean that their initial policies were good.
You ask if Mussolini was truly effective. Is that really the standard you want to judge him on? Not, say, justice perhaps?
It’s a matter of scale, I think, and, compared to Hitler and Stalin, everyone looks good. The fascist government in Italy was pretty brutal. It was militaristic, nationalist and aggressive, it stripped away basic political and civil rights from its citizens, and it used intimidation and violence to keep people in line.
In short, it was brutal. But it was an ordinary kind of brutality…the kind you find and have found in countries all over the world from the beginning. Unfortunately, that time period was marked by the rise of extrordinary brutality, which makes almost everything look benign in comparison.
I would also point that Mussolini’s Italy invaded several countries – Ethiopa, Albania & Greece – without any provocation. If I remember correctly, Fascist Italy also invaded France after the German invasion in hopes of getting spoils.
In 1935, Mussolini subdued Ethopia with poison gas. Then, in the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam became the most successful practitioner of poison gas combat since Mussolini.
Being bracketed with Saddam is no compliment in my book. Yes, Mussolini was that bad.
I expect most people here would rightly condemn Mussolini, but these are some other points.
From time to time I hear of certain right wing, but apparently respectable and mainstream Italian political parties being labelled ‘neo-fascist’ (Lega Nord, Alleanza Nazionale) . They maintain that they are not neo-nazis or even Haider-like, but defend the record of pre-axis Mussolini fascism. These parties I believe are included in the current Italian government. Mussolini’s name may be mud in the English speaking world, but perhaps not other parts of the world.
Even the Straight Dope seems to take the view in this column that while the Fascists were hardly compassionate, they were nothing like the S.S. or NKVD - more like the Teamsters. After an initial bout of violence, the worst they did was give dissidents a bad case of the shits.
To use a crude analogy… Adolph Hitler was like Charles Manson and Benito Mussolini was like Al Capone.
That is, both were dangerous, and neither had any compunctions about hurting or killing people who got in their way. The difference is, as long as you were paying Al Capone his protection money and not interfering with his plans, he had no desire to cut your throat. Charles Manson, on the other hand, was driven by all kinds of inner demons, and was liable to desire the deaths of people he didn’t even know.
Mussolini was a thug, but he was a garden variety thug. He wanted power, and he sought it opportunistically. He’d grab land at gunpoint if and when he thought he could get away with it, and he’d kill people he perceived as his enemies… but he didn’t have any grand vision or genuine ideology that led him to invade other nations or kill people willy-nilly.
From reading a biography of Mussolini by Dennis Mack-Smith I’d say that Mussolini was nationalist before he met Hitler, having switched from Socialism when it didn’t get him anywhere. As such he was strongly in favour of wars that would advance Italy’s greatness.
The debate is how genuine this was, as in the war that the Liberal pre-Mussolini Italian establishment began (in Libya IIRC) was slammed by Mussolini, who was at that time a Socialist, although this could be compared to the BNP not supporting the UKs role in Iraq as it doesn’t directly contribute any advantage to Britain.
nationalism and socialism are opposite ends of the political spectrum. Hitler never paid more than lipservice to the socialist aspects of his party, he got rid of all the serious ones in the Night of the Long Knices, so I’d maintain that Hitler was only nationalist.
In fact, the political spectrum is more of a circle than a straight line. At the most extreme, fascism and communisim are more similar to each other than to any other political system.
I’ve always wondered why Mussolini felt the urge to invade Ethiopia-it wasn’t as if Ethiopia was especially valuable! As I recall, this war cost the Italians pretty dearly-they lost quite a few men, and what was the point of occupying a dirt-poor, backward country with fewor any resources? Stealing acountry makes sense if there is something there-I don’t quite get whay the Italian people would be in favor of a war to annex a place like Ethiopia!
Probably (and this is just a guess) so Italy could have a land route between Libya and Italian Somaliland, and wouldn’t have to rely on the Suez canal to ship material back and forth.
The motivation seems to have been a combination of a desire for military glory and colonies to prop up the asperations of the regime, with revenge.
Italy had attempted to invade Ethiopia before the rise of fascism, and had been thoroughly beaten in battle by the Ethiopian army – a unique “achievement” among Europian colonialists (who occasionally lost battles against African troops - famously, in the case of England, against the Zulus at Isandlwana – but never lost an entire war. Technological difference usually overcame bravery in the long run: as the poem goes, “whatever happens, we have got/ the Maxim gun, and they have not”).
At a place called Adowa, the Ethiopians destroyed an Italian army:
Evidently, this defeat rankled, and Mussolini set out to even the score. As someone wrote above, Mussolini can best be thought of as a gangster writ large …
Not true. He did allow private industry, but it was always clear that they were subservient to the government. In exchange, the gov helped them out with labor and such and many other things. It was not a Communist/Marxist government, but it was a socialist one.
Anyway, the night of long knives was about the brownshirts.
ok, smiling bandit we’re not going to see eye to eye on the matter of Hitler’s political allegience, so I won’t pursue that one anymore.
However, the night of the long knives was not only about the browshirts, it was also a convenient time to get rid of some of his opposition, including some of the more extreme Socialist elements in his party, most notably one of the Strasser brothers if I remember the history lesson correctly
BrotherCadfael fair enough comment about the political specturm, although I will maintain that Hitler was never a Socialist.