[1871 - 1946] Kingdom, Conflict, and Collapse

In 1871, the map of Europe finally showed a unified Italy, a kingdom stretching from the Alps to Sicily. Yet this new nation, stitched together by conquest and diplomacy, was less a coherent country and more a geographical expression, deeply and tragically divided. In the halls of power in Rome, King Victor Emmanuel II presided over a state that struggled to connect with its people. The most profound fracture was the infamous ‘Questione Meridionale’—the Southern Question. While the northern cities of Milan and Turin were beginning to pulse with the rhythm of the Industrial Revolution, their factories belching smoke and their new middle class aspiring to modernity, the south remained trapped in a near-feudal past. Here, in the sun-scorched landscapes of Sicily and Calabria, life was governed by the harvest, ancient traditions, and the crushing poverty of the ‘latifondi,’ vast agricultural estates owned by absentee landlords. Illiteracy was rampant, exceeding 70% in some southern regions, compared to more manageable rates in the industrializing north. A deep chasm of culture, economy, and even language separated a factory worker in Piedmont from a sulphur miner in Sicily. The very creation of Rome as the capital had opened another wound; Pope Pius IX, stripped of his temporal power, declared himself a ‘prisoner in the Vatican,’ forbidding faithful Catholics from participating in the politics of the new state, a standoff that would poison Italian society for nearly sixty years. As the 19th century gave way to the 20th, Italy entered its own Belle Époque, a glittering age of progress and optimism, at least on the surface. Electric lights began to illuminate the grand avenues of Rome and Naples, the first Fiat automobiles sputtered to life in Turin in 1899, and the soaring arias of Verdi and Puccini filled magnificent opera houses like La Scala. Politics was dominated by one man: Giovanni Giolitti. A master of a political system known as ‘trasformismo,’ he maintained stability through a web of flexible, often cynical, alliances that blurred party lines and co-opted opponents. He oversaw the expansion of voting rights and introduced some social welfare programs, but his era was also defined by corruption and a growing public distrust in parliamentary democracy. Beneath the elegant façade, social tensions simmered. Violent strikes paralyzed the industrial north, while peasant revolts erupted in the south. Anarchist and socialist movements gained followers, promising radical change to those left behind by progress. For millions, the only answer was to leave. Between 1880 and 1915, in one of the largest voluntary migrations in human history, nearly 13 million Italians, the vast majority from the impoverished south, packed their few belongings and boarded crowded, disease-ridden ships in the ports of Naples and Genoa. They were heading for the Americas, a diaspora of hope and desperation that would forever change both Italy and the nations that received them. The gathering storms in Europe soon shattered Italy’s fragile peace. When the Great War erupted in 1914, Italy, nominally allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary, declared itself neutral. The nation was fiercely divided. While socialists and Catholics advocated for peace, a loud and aggressive chorus of nationalists, led by flamboyant figures like the poet-warrior Gabriele D'Annunzio, demanded intervention. They saw the war as a chance to complete the Risorgimento, to ‘redeem’ Italian-speaking lands like Trento and Trieste still under Austrian rule. In 1915, swayed by their promises and a secret treaty with Britain and France, Italy entered the war against its former allies. The reality was a nightmare. Instead of heroic cavalry charges, Italian soldiers found themselves in the brutal, static trench warfare of the Alpine front. They fought in conditions unimaginable to the generals in Rome, battling not just the Austrians but also frostbite, avalanches, and altitudes of over 10,000 feet. The twelve bloody Battles of the Isonzo River became a horrific meat grinder. Then, in October 1917, came the ultimate disaster: Caporetto. A combined German-Austrian offensive shattered the Italian lines, resulting in a catastrophic retreat. Over 300,000 Italian soldiers were captured or went missing. It was a moment of profound national humiliation that burned itself into the Italian psyche. Though the army would rally and ultimately achieve a decisive victory at Vittorio Veneto just before the war’s end, Italy emerged from the conflict on the winning side, but as a broken nation. With over 650,000 military dead, a crippled economy, and society more divided than ever, the stage was set for a new, far more dangerous political force. The post-war years descended into chaos. Nationalists raged about a ‘vittoria mutilata’—a mutilated victory—furious that Italy had not received all the territory it had been promised. The economy was in freefall, and demobilized, unemployed soldiers roamed the streets. Inspired by the revolution in Russia, the years 1919 and 1920 became the ‘Biennio Rosso,’ the Two Red Years. Socialist workers seized control of factories in the north, and landless peasants occupied estates in the south. The specter of a communist takeover terrified the establishment, the middle classes, and the landowners. Into this power vacuum stepped a charismatic and ruthless figure: Benito Mussolini. A former socialist editor turned fervent nationalist, he was a master of political theater and brute force. He founded the ‘Fasci di Combattimento,’ a movement whose black-shirted paramilitary squads, the ‘squadristi,’ unleashed a wave of organized violence. They burned down union headquarters, attacked socialist politicians, and beat their opponents in the streets, all while presenting themselves as the patriotic saviors of national order. In October 1922, Mussolini played his final card. He announced a ‘March on Rome.’ It was more bluff than invasion; only around 30,000 poorly armed Fascists converged on the capital. But the liberal government was paralyzed, and King Victor Emmanuel III, fearing a civil war and having lost all faith in the existing political class, refused to declare martial law. Instead, he handed power to Mussolini, inviting him to form a new government. The age of parliamentary democracy in Italy was over. Mussolini did not establish a dictatorship overnight. He moved methodically, first forming a coalition government while his blackshirts continued their campaign of intimidation. The turning point came in 1924 with the kidnapping and murder of Giacomo Matteotti, a brave socialist deputy who had publicly denounced Fascist violence and electoral fraud. The ensuing political crisis threatened to topple Mussolini, but he weathered the storm. In a defiant speech to parliament in January 1925, he took full responsibility for the violence, declaring, ‘If Fascism has been a criminal association, then I am the chief of this criminal association!’ From that moment on, all pretense of democracy was dropped. Opposition parties were outlawed, freedom of the press was abolished, and a secret police force, the OVRA, spied on citizens. The state was remade in the Fascist image, built on the motto: ‘Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.’ A pervasive cult of personality was built around ‘Il Duce.’ His stern face was everywhere. Children were indoctrinated from a young age in youth groups like the Balilla, marching in uniform and chanting Fascist slogans. Grand, sterile architecture sought to evoke the might of the ancient Roman Empire. There were some notable achievements, such as the 1929 Lateran Pacts, which finally ended the long feud between the Italian state and the Vatican, and massive public works projects that drained marshes and built highways. But it was all built on a foundation of repression, and the economy was increasingly geared toward military strength and a doomed quest for imperial glory. The final act of the Kingdom of Italy was a tragedy of its own making, authored by Mussolini’s hubris. Falling ever deeper under the influence of Adolf Hitler, Mussolini bound Italy to Nazi Germany with the Pact of Steel in 1939. He declared war on Britain and France in 1940, convinced the conflict would be a short, opportunistic affair. It was a catastrophic miscalculation. The Italian military, poorly equipped and led, suffered humiliating defeats in Greece and North Africa. By July 1943, with Allied forces landing in Sicily and the country on the brink of total collapse, Mussolini’s own allies turned against him. The Fascist Grand Council voted to strip him of his power, and the King had him arrested. Italy surrendered to the Allies. The German response was swift and brutal. German troops poured across the Alps, occupying the northern and central parts of the country. In a daring raid, German commandos rescued Mussolini and installed him as the puppet leader of a new Fascist state, the Italian Social Republic. Italy was torn in two. In the south, the King and the new government fought alongside the Allies. In the occupied north, a vicious civil war erupted between the remnants of Fascism, backed by the Germans, and a courageous anti-fascist resistance movement, the Partisans. For nearly two years, Italy bled. The conflict was a grim tapestry of guerrilla warfare, assassinations, and horrific civilian massacres. In April 1945, with Allied forces closing in from the south, Partisans captured and executed Mussolini, his body later hung ignominiously in a Milan piazza. The war was over. In its wake lay a nation in ruins. Just over a year later, in June 1946, the Italian people were asked to decide their future. In a historic referendum, they voted to abolish the monarchy, forever tainted by its two-decade accommodation of Fascism. By a margin of 12.7 million to 10.7 million, the Italian Republic was born, rising from the ashes of a kingdom that had begun with such high hopes and ended in conflict and collapse.