Making Italy Great Again: Mussolini, Italian Fascism, and Its Impact

100 years ago in 1922, Benito Mussolini and his followers marched Rome in a show of force that ushered in a period of radical change in Italian government and society, culminating in the establishment of the first fascist totalitarian regime. Who was Benito Mussolini? What were the factors that made Mussolini's rise to power possible? What was his fascist ideology? What effect did Mussolini have on Hitler and the NAZIs and what effect did Hitler have on Mussolini's Italy? What was Italian fascist culture? What was Mussolini's legacy in the wider world? What parallels exist between the world today and the world of the early 20th century? We will investigate these and other questions in this class.