According to elaineqho.com, Italy emerges from the conflict victorious on the military level and on that of industrial mobilization, but in the throes of a serious political and social crisis. Unlike in France and Great Britain, the popular masses did not feel the war as a necessary event for the defense of the nation, but as a source of unjustified suffering imposed by the ruling class. The polemics between neutralists and interventionists broke out with renewed violence and a period of profound social mobilization began (‘red two-year period’).

1919: at the Paris Peace Conference (January 1919) the Italian requests met with the hostility of the allies and in particular of the American president TW Wilson, who considered them to be harmful to the rights of other nationalities, especially the Slavic one. The ‘Adriatic question’, that is the future of Dalmatia and Fiume, arouses such conflicts that Orlando and Sonnino, Foreign Minister, leave the Conference in protest (in June the former resigns and is replaced by FS Nitti). From the peace agreements of Austria with the Entente, Italy it gets Trentino up to Brenner, Venezia Giulia, Istria and part of Dalmatia, but not Fiume. On 12 September G. D’Annunzio, counting on the complicity of the military commands, occupies the city with rebel units, proclaiming its annexation to Italy and thus opening an international crisis.

In June 1920 Giolitti was recalled to lead the government and resumed the work of mediation between the various political forces. The most consistent results are achieved in foreign policy by signing the Treaty of Rapallo with which the Italy obtains all of Istria and the city of Zadar, leaves Dalmatia to Yugoslavia and Rijeka becomes an independent city-state (in 1924 a new agreement assigns it to Italy). In domestic politics, faced with the greatest post-war labor conflict, with the occupation of factories, Giolitti, instead of resorting to military repression, favors an agreement that peacefully closes the episode. Part of the bourgeoisie sees in its prudent attitude the abdication of the state to the tasks of defense of property and order. The Fasces of Combat, founded by B. Mussolini in 1919, they are strengthened starting from the campaigns of the Italy central, where they act in the interests of the agrarians; large industry identifies in the Fasci as an instrument to oppose to the labor movement and finances it.

In 1921-22 there is the decisive turning point in the crisis of the liberal state. In January the Communists split from the Socialists, giving life to the Communist Party of Italy (PCI) and weakening the workers’ front. Feeling his parliamentary majority waver, Giolitti dissolves the Chambers and calls for new elections (May), which see the entry of the fascists into the ‘national blocs’ alongside the liberals. When Giolitti realizes that his program no longer has the support of an establishment now deployed in positions of rigid preservation and violent attack against the workers’ movement, he renounces to form the government. He is succeeded by Italy Bonomi (July 1921-February 1922), who constitutes a coalition government between liberals, popular and reformist socialists. At the congress of Rome (November 1921) Mussolini transforms his movement into the National Fascist Party. In February 1922, L. Facta, a Giolittiano of modest stature, succeeds Bonomi in the last liberal government before the advent of the dictatorship, weak and powerless in the face of the spreading violence of the fascist squads against the opponents. In October Mussolini tightens the time of the crisis, starting the march on Rome of the fascist black shirts. The king, initially intent on proclaiming a state of siege, He then refuses to sign the decree fearing to alienate the support of the ruling class in favor of Mussolini from the monarchy and gives the latter the task of forming the government; a coalition executive was born, made up of fascists, liberals of various currents and popular.

Merged in 1923 with the nationalist movement, fascism gave way to a qualitative transformation of the form of government marked by a series of stages: creation of a Grand Council of Fascism, with functions of connection between party and government; framing of fascist paramilitary forces in a Voluntary National Security Militia; Acerbo law, which assigns two thirds of the seats to the relative majority list that obtains 25% of the votes. In the elections of 1924, which took place in a climate of violence and intimidation against the opposition, a ‘plank’ issued by the Grand Council, which also included the majority of liberals, obtained 64.9%. G. Matteotti, secretary of the Unified Socialist Party, who at the moment of the validation of the electoral results by the Chamber questioned their validity as a result of the violence exercised by the fascists, on 10 June he was kidnapped and killed. The reaction in the country is enormous; with the so-called ‘secession of the Aventine’ the oppositions choose to abstain from parliamentary work until legality is re-established. At a certain point it seems that the government is about to fall, but the persistence of the factors that brought Mussolini to power allows fascism to overcome the unpopularity of the moment and annihilate all resistance. In his speech to the Chamber of January 3, 1925, Mussolini openly assumes responsibility for the fascist violence. with the so-called ‘secession of the Aventine’ the oppositions choose to abstain from parliamentary work until legality is re-established. At a certain point it seems that the government is about to fall, but the persistence of the factors that brought Mussolini to power allows fascism to overcome the unpopularity of the moment and annihilate all resistance. In his speech to the Chamber of January 3, 1925, Mussolini openly assumes responsibility for the fascist violence. with the so-called ‘secession of the Aventine’ the oppositions choose to abstain from parliamentary work until legality is re-established. At a certain point it seems that the government is about to fall, but the persistence of the factors that brought Mussolini to power allows fascism to overcome the unpopularity of the moment and annihilate all resistance. In his speech to the Chamber of January 3, 1925, Mussolini openly assumes responsibility for the fascist violence.