Benito Mussolini was the originator of Italian Fascism and prime minister of Italy ruling as a dictator from about 1925 until his release in 1943. Mussolini was born to a communist blacksmith. As a child he was rowdy and disobedient. He shared his father’s outlooks picking up other thoughts from authors of the time. Mussolini became an instructor and reporter. He spent quite a few years in Switzerland and married Rachele Guidi. They had five children.

Barred by the Austrians, he became the editor at Forli of a communist newspaper, La Lotta di Classe (The Class Struggle). His early eagerness for Karl Marx was customized by a mixture of thoughts from the attitude of Friedrich Nietzsche, the radical doctrines of Auguste Blanqui, and the syndicalism of Georges Sorel (Marco Palla, Arthur Figliola, Claudia Rattazzi Papka, 1999).
Mussolini had huge goals of running a political machine based on his own beliefs. His thoughts on the power of motherhood, "The fate of nations is intimately bound up with their powers of reproduction," said Mussolini. "All nations and all empires first felt decadence gnawing at them when their birth rate fell off." (Italian Tribune, 1997)

When Italy confirmed war on Turkey in 1911, he was jailed for his antiviolence propaganda. Appointed editor of the bureaucrat Socialist newspaper Avanti, he moved to Milan, where he found himself as the most powerful of all the leaders of Italian socialism. At this period in his life, his political outlooks were anti-militarist and anti-war on the other hand all through the intervention crisis his views altered radically and became opposite of what they were before. In the year 1913 Mussolini became editor of the Milan Socialist newspaper Avanti. When World War I began in 1914 he first opposed Italy's participation, until he changed his mind, saying that Italy should take a place with the Allies (Alan Axelrod, 2001). This got him drove out from the socialist party. He soon establishes his own paper, Il popolo d'italia, which became the spine of his Fascist movement.

 
Il popolo d’Italia initiated on December 1914 and many consider that French money was given to him to found the newspaper for the reason that the French government required Italy’s participation in the war. In his first matter, Mussolini was calling for interference even though he recognized that the masses that have followed him previously would not do it this time (Jasper Ridley, 1998). In addition, if Mussolini wanted people to assemble, collaboration and support was needed between all social classes, which mean that the bourgeoisie would also be involved. Consequently, Mussolini had to compromise his pessimistic views about the bourgeoisie since he needed their money to have any political influence. In addition, he joined the Fascio autonommo d’azione rivoluzionaria and soon enough their coherent became his own. The foundation argued that people, who are ready to guard the independence of nations in opposition to imperialism, should fight a war. For Italy the war meant that it would get its lost territories and the people would become parts of a new and united Italy. During this time these view were based on mobilization of masses. It becomes understandable, that during the interference crisis, Mussolini had shifted his focal point from the working class to the people. He persisted that a revolutionary war would have to plead not only to the proletariat but also to all people. Consequently, the class struggle that he sturdily believed in 1909 would have to be forsaken. He disputed that by 1914 a new occurrence had occurred which had reduced the class difference and that men did not identified themselves in term of class, but in terms of national devotion. By the beginning of the year 1915, Mussolini had begun building a new philosophy based on Italian socialism infused with national feeling. This new “socialism” would join and incorporate Italy and begin a quick production that would put Italy amongst the advanced nations of the world. An antagonistic minority also developed this new anthology of ideas the fascistic whose main plan was mass mobilization (Marco Palla, Arthur Figliola, Claudia Rattazzi Papka, 1999).

As a dictator, Mussolini had all the authority; he made all the conclusions. He told the people to build new roads, new houses, connected rivers, increased manufacture, and run the trains on time. He reduced joblessness and improved the railway survive. Mussolini thought he had enough control to split Eritreand and Libya separately (Denis Mack Smith, 1983). The value of his reform was the enslavement of the Italians. Mussolini kept control in his own hands, by murdering, exiling, and prison camps.
In the year 1919 Mussolini and some other war veterans founded a patriotic revolutionary group called the Fasci di Combattimento. His association turned into influential radicalism, obtaining support from property-owners in the Po valley, industrialists, and many army officers. Fascist Blackshirt groups carried on civil war with Socialists, Communists, Catholics, as well as Liberals.

In October 1922 Mussolini protected permission from King Victor Emmanuel III to form an alliance government. In 1925-26, after a lengthy crisis with the assembly following the killing of the Socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti, he inflicted a Totalarian Dictatorship. His Corporative State came to terms with Italian Capitalism but eliminated the free trade unions. In the year 1929 he ended disagreement with the church through the Lateran Treaty of 1929.

In the 1930's Mussolini turned to a violent foreign strategy, conquering Ethiopia (1935-36) and helping General Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War. In the year 1936 he joined with Hitler's Germany and soon formed a military coalition (1939). In 1939 Mussolini ordered his armies to engage Albania. Nevertheless he kept out of World War II until the year 1940, when the fall of France was looming and the Germans seemed to be winning the war (Denis Mack Smith, 1983).

After a sequence of Italian military disasters in Greece and North Africa, the heads of his party abandoned him. The king released him on July 25, 1943 and had him detained. On September 12 the Germans saved him, making him marionette head of a government in northern Italy. In April 1945 Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, tried to run from advance Allied forced.
Imprisoned by Partisans at Lake Como, they were shot on April 28 and their bodies were hung in a public square in Milan. Mussolini was later buried at Predappio, his place of birth. Even though popular with most Italians until the late 1930's, he lost their support when he pulled his people into a war they were not ready to fight. Few regretted the defeat of Fascism or his death.

During his rule Mussolini changed the confused government that preceded him which didn’t do anything to help the people of Italy and he helps the lower classes, which he empathized with. To many Mussolini and his Fascist government were feared, but in Italy they were loved. Today many of Mussolini's writings and debates are presented in English including an autobiography written in 1939.


Reference
Editorial, (15 May 1997) “Different Perspective Of Motherhood”, Italian Tribune, Italian Tribune Publishing Company, http://www.italiantribune.com/editorials/970515.htm

Palla, Marco, Arthur Figliola, & Claudia Rattazzi Papka, (October 1999) “Mussolini and Fascism”, Interlink Publishing Group,

Axelrod, Alan (October 2001) “Critical Lives: Benito Mussolini”, Pearson Education,

Ridley, Jasper (November 1998) “Mussolini”, St. Martin's Press,

Smith, Denis Mack, (September 1983) “Mussolini”, Knopf Publishing Group,