A BOON OR DETRIMENT 2
A Boon or Detriment: Benito Mussolini's Rise to Power?
Benito Mussolini was born on 29 July 1883 in central Italy. Benito’s father was a blacksmith,
and their quality of life was so poor that he decided to move to Switzerland in 1902. Further, he
migrated to avoid his drafting into the Italian military. Due to his involvement in pushing for
Italy’s participation in World War I (WWI), Mussolini left the socialist ideals that he learned in
Switzerland and came up with the Fascist Party. Before his rise to power, Italy was facing many
problems including post World War I depression (Kertzer, 2014). In addition, the country feared
that there could be a socialist takeover, which caused hysteria among the people. Even though
they had won the battle against Germany, the country knew that it had been cheated on some
territorial settlements. Benito Mussolini’s rise to power is as a result of his military control skills
and the determination to make Italy as one of the world’s superpowers.
While in Switzerland, he became actively involved in socialist politics but went back to his
country in 1904 where he became a journalist in a socialist press. However, his push for Italy’s
involvement in World War I meant that he had left his socialist ideals and was later drafted into
the Italian army in September 1915 (Archer, 2017). After being wounded in World War I,
Mussolini suggested that Italy needed a dictator who could help it in addressing its problems,
indicating that he could be the said tyrant. In 1919, he formed the fascist party through the help
of unemployed war veterans. They created a group of armed squads that terrorized their political
opponents, and the organization was nicknamed Black Shirts. They attacked political institutions
with the aim of gaining power.
His Fascist party rose to prominence after WWI due to the problems that Italy experienced at that
time. The formation promised to restore order to the people, and this move was achieved through
his army of unemployed war veterans (Hughes, 2017). Moreover, he used the country’s high
