Editing Fascism (section)

===Fascist Italy===
Historian Stanley G. Payne says:

<blockquote>[Fascism in Italy was a] primarily political dictatorship. ... The Fascist Party itself had become almost completely bureaucratized and subservient to, not dominant over, the state itself. Big business, industry, and finance retained extensive autonomy, particularly in the early years. The armed forces also enjoyed considerable autonomy. ... The Fascist militia was placed under military control. ... The judicial system was left largely intact and relatively autonomous as well. The police continued to be directed by state officials and were not taken over by party leaders ... nor was a major new police elite created. ... There was never any question of bringing the Church under overall subservience. ... Sizable sectors of Italian cultural life retained extensive autonomy, and no major state propaganda-and-culture ministry existed. ... The Mussolini regime was neither especially sanguinary nor particularly repressive.{{sfnp|Payne|1995|p=122}}</blockquote>

====Mussolini in power====
[[File:RegioniIrredenteItalia.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|Italian ethnic regions claimed in the 1930s. [[Italian irredentism in Savoy|Savoy]] and [[Italian irredentism in Corfu|Corfu]] were later claimed.
{{legend|#01ec95|[[Italian irredentism in Nice|Nice]], [[Italian irredentism in Switzerland|Ticino]] and [[Italian irredentism in Dalmatia|Dalmatia]]}}
{{legend|#f41820|[[Italian irredentism in Malta|Malta]]}}
{{legend|#bc85be|[[Italian irredentism in Corsica|Corsica]]}}]]
Upon being appointed Prime Minister of Italy, Mussolini had to form a coalition government because the fascists did not have control over the Italian parliament.{{sfnp|Payne|1995|p=110}} Mussolini's coalition government initially pursued [[Economic liberalism|economically liberal]] policies under the direction of liberal finance minister [[Alberto De Stefani]], a member of the Center Party, including balancing the budget through deep cuts to the civil service.{{sfnp|Payne|1995|p=110}} Initially, little drastic change in government policy had occurred and repressive police actions were limited.{{sfnp|Payne|1995|p=110}}

The fascists began their attempt to entrench fascism in Italy with the [[Acerbo Law]], which guaranteed a plurality of the seats in parliament to any party or coalition list in an election that received 25% or more of the vote.{{sfnp|Payne|1995|p=113}} Through considerable fascist violence and intimidation, the list won a majority of the vote, allowing many seats to go to the fascists.{{sfnp|Payne|1995|p=113}} In the aftermath of the election, a crisis and political scandal erupted after Socialist Party deputy [[Giacomo Matteotti]] was kidnapped and murdered by a Fascist.{{sfnp|Payne|1995|p=113}} The liberals and the leftist minority in parliament walked out in protest in what became known as the [[Aventine Secession (20th century)|Aventine Secession]].{{sfnp|Payne|1995|p=114}} On 3 January 1925, Mussolini addressed the Fascist-dominated Italian parliament and declared that he was personally responsible for what happened, but insisted that he had done nothing wrong. Mussolini proclaimed himself dictator of Italy, assuming full responsibility over the government and announcing the dismissal of parliament.{{sfnp|Payne|1995|p=114}} From 1925 to 1929, fascism steadily became entrenched in power: opposition deputies were denied access to parliament, censorship was introduced and a December 1925 decree made Mussolini solely responsible to the King.{{sfnp|Payne|1995|p=115}}

====Catholic Church====
[[File:Firma_dei_Patti_Lateranensi_1929.jpg|thumb|right|The signing of the [[Lateran Treaty]], Mussolini shown on the right side of the photograph.]]
In 1929, the fascist regime briefly gained what was in effect a blessing of the Catholic Church after the regime signed a concordat with the Church, known as the [[Lateran Treaty]], which gave the papacy state sovereignty and financial compensation for the seizure of Church lands by the liberal state in the 19th century, but within two years the Church had renounced fascism in the Encyclical ''[[Non Abbiamo Bisogno]]'' as a "pagan idolatry of the state" which teaches "hatred, violence and irreverence".{{sfnp|Payne|1995|pp=119–120}} Not long after signing the agreement, by Mussolini's own confession, the Church had threatened to have him "excommunicated", in part because of his intractable nature, but also because he had "confiscated more issues of Catholic newspapers in the next three months than in the previous seven years."{{sfnp|Mack Smith|1983|p=162}} By the late 1930s, Mussolini became more vocal in his anti-clerical rhetoric, repeatedly denouncing the Catholic Church and discussing ways to depose the pope. He took the position that the "papacy was a malignant tumor in the body of Italy and must 'be rooted out once and for all,' because there was no room in Rome for both the Pope and himself."{{sfnp|Mack Smith|1983|pp=222–223}} In her 1974 book, Mussolini's widow Rachele stated that her husband had always been an atheist until near the end of his life, writing that her husband was "basically irreligious until the later years of his life."{{sfnp|Mussolini|1977|p=131}}

The Nazis in Germany employed similar anti-clerical policies.{{sfnp|Gellott|2006|pp=69–70}} The Gestapo confiscated hundreds of monasteries in Austria and Germany, evicted clergymen and laymen alike and often replaced crosses with swastikas.{{sfnp|von Lang|1979|p=221}} Referring to the swastika as "the Devil's Cross", church leaders found their youth organizations banned, their meetings limited and various Catholic periodicals censored or banned. Government officials eventually found it necessary to place "Nazis into editorial positions in the Catholic press."{{sfnp|Evans|2005|p=239}} Up to 2,720 clerics, mostly Catholics, were arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned inside of Germany's Dachau concentration camp, resulting in over 1,000 deaths.{{sfnp|Berben|1975|pp=276–277}}

====Corporatist economic system====
The fascist regime created a corporatist economic system in 1925 with creation of [[Pact of the Vidoni Palace|the Palazzo Vidoni Pact]], in which the Italian employers' association {{lang|it|[[Confindustria]]}} and fascist trade unions agreed to recognize each other as the sole representatives of Italy's employers and employees, excluding non-fascist trade unions.{{sfnp|Pollard|2006|p=150}} The Fascist regime first created a Ministry of Corporations that organized the Italian economy into 22 sectoral corporations, banned workers' strikes and lock-outs and in 1927 created the [[Labour Charter of 1927|Charter of Labour]], which established workers' rights and duties and created labour tribunals to arbitrate employer-employee disputes.{{sfnp|Pollard|2006|p=150}} In practice, the sectoral corporations exercised little independence and were largely controlled by the regime, and the employee organizations were rarely led by employees themselves, but instead by appointed Fascist party members.{{sfnp|Pollard|2006|p=150}}

====Aggressive foreign policy====
In the 1920s, Fascist Italy pursued an aggressive foreign policy that included ambitions to expand Italian territory.{{sfnp|Kallis|2000|p=132}} In response to revolt in the Italian colony of [[Libya]], Fascist Italy abandoned previous liberal-era colonial policy of cooperation with local leaders. Instead, claiming that Italians were a superior race to African races and thereby had the right to colonize the "inferior" Africans, it sought to settle 10 to 15 million Italians in Libya.{{sfnp|Ahmida|1994|pp=134–135}} This resulted in an aggressive military campaign known as the [[Pacification of Libya]] against natives in Libya, including mass killings, the use of [[concentration camp]]s and the forced starvation of thousands of people.{{sfnp|Ahmida|1994|pp=134–135}} Italian authorities committed [[ethnic cleansing]] by forcibly expelling 100,000 [[Bedouins|Bedouin]] Cyrenaicans, half the population of Cyrenaica in Libya, from their settlements that was slated to be given to Italian settlers.{{sfnmp|Cardoza|2006|1p=109|2a1=Bloxham|2a2=Moses|2y=2010|2p=358}}

====Nazi adoption of the Italian model====
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 119-1486, Hitler-Putsch, München, Marienplatz.jpg|thumb|Nazis in Munich during the [[Beer Hall Putsch]] ]]
The March on Rome brought fascism international attention. One early admirer of the Italian fascists was [[Adolf Hitler]], who less than a month after the March had begun to model himself and the [[Nazi Party]] upon Mussolini and the Fascists.{{sfnp|Kershaw|2000|p=182}} The Nazis, led by Hitler and the German war hero [[Erich Ludendorff]], attempted a "March on Berlin" modeled upon the March on Rome, which resulted in the failed [[Beer Hall Putsch]] in [[Munich]] in November 1923.{{sfnp|Jablonsky|1989|pp=20–26, 30}}