Fascist Period
          Italy was plunged into deep social and political crisis by WWI. Veterans, unemployed workers,
          desperate peasants, and a frightened middle class demanded changes, and the 1919 elections
          suddenly made the Socialist and the new Popular (Catholic) parties the largest in parliament. While
          extreme nationalists agitated for territorial expansion, strikes and threats of revolution unsettled the
          nation.

The Rise of Fascism
          In 1919, in the midst of these unsettled conditions, Benito Mussolini, a former revolutionary
          socialist, founded a new movement called "Fascismo". Through a combination of shrewd political
          maneuvering and widespread violence perpetrated by Mussolini's Black Shirt squads, the Fascists
          gained increasing support. In October 1922, after the Fascists had marched on Rome, King Victor
          Emmanuel III named Mussolini prime minister. Within four years, Mussolini had become a
          dictator, destroying civil liberties, outlawing all other political parties, and imposing a totalitarian
          regime on the country by means of terror and constitutional subversion. Public works projects,
          propaganda, militarism, and the appearance of order gained Mussolini considerable prestige, and the
          Lateran Treaty with the papacy in 1929 gave the "duce" (as he was called) a wide measure of
          popularity.

(adapted from Aracaini web page)

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