Mussolini's Rise to Power (1919-1922)

Benito Mussolini was born in Predappio, Emilia-Romagna, in 1883, trained as a schoolteacher, and was active as a socialist militant in his youth, directing the socialist newspaper "Avanti!" from 1912. His shift from neutralism to support for Italian intervention in the First World War led to his expulsion from the Italian Socialist Party in 1914, after which he founded his own newspaper, "Il Popolo d'Italia," and served in the military, where he was wounded. On March 23, 1919, he founded the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento at a meeting in the Piazza San Sepolcro in Milan, with an initial program that was strikingly ambiguous, mixing republican, anticlerical, and social-revolutionary elements, including proposals for women's suffrage and an eight-hour workday. Despite this, the movement failed outright in the November 1919 elections, winning not a single seat in Milan.