An early victim of Mussolini's intimidation.
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Support for Mussolini
The economic depression which followed World War I gave rise to much extremism among Italy's sorely tried working classes. This caused the country as a whole to become politically unstable. Benito Mussolini, soon to be Italy's Fascist dictator, took advantage of this instability for his rise to power.
March on Rome
In 1922, Mussolini led a force of his Fascist supporters on a March on Rome. Prime Minister Luigi Facta and his cabinet drafted a decree of martial law. After some hesitation the King refused to sign it, citing doubts about the ability of the army to contain the uprising without setting off a civil war.
Fascist violence had been growing in intensity throughout the summer and autumn of 1922, climaxing in rumours of a possible coup. On 24 October 1922, during the Fascist Congress in Naples, Mussolini announced that the Fascists would march on Rome to "take by the throat our miserable ruling class".[5] General Pietro Badoglio told the King that the military would be able without difficulty to rout the rebels, who numbered no more than 10,000 men armed mostly with knives and clubs whereas the Regio Esercito had 30,000 soldiers in the Rome area armed with heavy weapons, armoured cars, and machine guns.[6] During the "March on Rome", the Fascist squadristi were halted by 400 lightly armed policemen, as the squadristi had no desire to take on the Italian state.[7]
The troops were loyal to the King; even Cesare Maria De Vecchi, commander of the Blackshirts, and one of the organisers of the March on Rome, told Mussolini that he would not act against the wishes of the monarch. De Vecchi went to the Quirinal Palace to meet the king and assured him that the Fascists would never fight against the king.[8] It was at this point that the Fascist leader considered leaving Italy altogether. But then, minutes before midnight, he received a telegram from the King inviting him to Rome. Facta had the decree for martial law prepared after the cabinet had unanimously endorsed it, and was very surprised when he learned about 9 am on 28 October that the king had refused to sign it.[5] When Facta protested that the king was overruling the entire cabinet, he was told that this was the royal prerogative and the king did not wish to use force against the Fascists.[6] The only politician Victor Emmanuel consulted during the crisis was Antonio Salandra, who advised him to appoint Mussolini prime minister and stated he was willing to serve in a cabinet headed by Mussolini.[9]
By midday on 30 October, Mussolini had been appointed President of the Council of Ministers (Prime Minister), at the age of 39, with no previous experience of office, and with only 32 Fascist deputies in the Chamber.[10] Though the King claimed in his memoirs that it was the fear of a civil war that motivated his actions, it would seem that he received some 'alternative' advice, possibly from the arch-conservative Antonio Salandra as well as General Armando Diaz, that it would be better to do a deal with Mussolini.[8]
On 1 November 1922, the king reviewed the squadristi as they marched past the Quirinal Palace giving the fascist salute.[11] Victor Emmanuel took no responsibility for appointing Mussolini prime minister, saying he learned from studying history that events were "much more automatic than a result of individual action and influence".[12] Victor Emmanuel was tired of the recurring crises of parliamentary government and welcomed Mussolini as a "strong man" who imposed "order" on Italy.[13] Mussolini was always very respectful and deferential when he met him in private, which was exactly the behaviour which the king expected of his prime ministers.[14] Many Fascist gerarchi, most notably Italo Balbo, regarded as the number two-man in Fascism, remained republicans, and the king greatly appreciated Mussolini's conversion to monarchism.[15] In private, Mussolini detested Victor Emmanuel as a tedious and tiresomely boring man, whose only interests were military history and his collections of stamps and coins, a man whom Mussolini sneered was "too diminutive for an Italy destined to greatness" (a reference to the king's height).[15] However, Mussolini told the other gerarchi that he needed the king's support and that one day, another fascist revolution would take place "without contraceptives".[15]
The King failed to move against the Mussolini regime's abuses of power (including, as early as 1924, the assassination of Giacomo Matteotti and other opposition MPs). During the Matteotti affair of 1924, Sir Ronald Graham, the British ambassador, reported: "His Majesty once told me that he had never had a premier with whom he found it so satisfactory to deal as with Signor Mussolini, and I know from private sources that recent events have not changed his opinion".[16] The Matteotti affair did much to turn Italian public opinion against Fascism, and Graham reported to London that "Fascism is more unpopular by the day" while quoting a high Vatican official as saying to him that Fascism was a "spent force".[17] The fact that Matteotti had been tortured by his killers for several hours before he was killed especially shocked Italian public opinion, who were much offended by the gratuitous cruelty of the squadristi killers.[17] Given the widespread public revulsion against Mussolini generated by the murder of Matteotti, the king could have dismissed Mussolini in 1924 with a minimum of trouble and broad public support.[17] Orlando told the king that the majority of the Italian people were tired of the abuses of the squadristi, of which the murder of Matteotti was only the most notorious example, and were hoping that he would dismiss Mussolini, saying that one word from the king would be enough to bring down his unpopular prime minister.[18] The newspaper Corriere della Sera in an editorial stated the abuses of the Fascist government such as the murder of Matteotti had now reached such a point that the king had both a legal and moral duty to dismiss Mussolini at once and restore the rule of law.[18] During the Matteotti affair, even pro-Fascist politicians like Salandra started to express some doubts about Mussolini after he took responsibility for all the Fascist violence, saying he did not order Matteotti's murder, but did he authorise the violence of the squadristi, making him responsible for the murder of Matteotti.[17] The king affirmed that "the Chamber and the Senate were his eyes and ears",[19] wanting the sovereign a parliamentary initiative, according to the Statuto Albertino. The knowledge that the king and the Parliament would not dismiss the prime minister led to the Mussolini government winning a vote of no confidence in November 1924 in the chamber of deputies by 314 votes to 6 and in the Senate by 206 votes to 54.[17] The deputies and the senators were unwilling to risk their lives by voting for a no-confidence motion as the king had made it clear that he would not dismiss Mussolini even if the motion did carry the votes of the majority.[17]
Victor Emmanuel remained silent during the winter of 1925–26 when Mussolini dropped all pretence of democracy. During this time, the king signed without protest laws that eliminated freedom of speech and assembly, abolished freedom of the press, and declared the Fascist Party to be the only legal party in Italy.[20] In December 1925, Mussolini passed a law declaring that he was responsible to the King, not Parliament. Although under the Statuto Albertino Italian governments were formally answerable only to the monarch, it had been a strong constitutional convention since at least the 1860s that they were actually answerable to Parliament. In January 1926, the squardristi used violence to prevent opposition MPs from entering Parliament and in November 1926, Mussolini arbitrarily declared that all of the opposition MPs had forfeited their seats, which he handed out to Fascists.[21] Despite this blatant violation of the Statuto Albertino, the king remained passive and silent as usual.[22] In 1926, Mussolini had violated the Statuto Albertino by creating a special judicial tribunal to try political crimes with no possibility of a royal pardon. Even though the right of pardon was part of the royal prerogative, the king gave his assent to the law.[22] However, the king did veto an attempt by Mussolini to change the Italian flag by adding the fasces symbol to stand beside the coat of arms of the House of Savoy on the Italian tricolour. The king considered this proposal to be disrespectful to his family, and refused to sign the law when Mussolini submitted it to him.[22] By 1928, practically the only check on Mussolini's power was the King's prerogative of dismissing him from office. Even then, this prerogative could only be exercised on the advice of the Fascist Grand Council, a body that only Mussolini could convene.[22]
Whatever the circumstances, Victor Emmanuel showed weakness from a position of strength, with dire future consequences for Italy and fatal consequences for the monarchy itself. Fascism was a force of opposition to left-wing radicalism. This appealed to many people in Italy at the time, and certainly to the King. In many ways, the events from 1922 to 1943 demonstrated that the monarchy and the moneyed class, for different reasons, felt Mussolini and his regime offered an option that, after years of political chaos, was more appealing than what they perceived as the alternative: socialism and anarchism. Both the spectre of the Russian Revolution and the tragedies of World War I played a large part in these political decisions. Victor Emmanuel always saw the Italian Socialists and Communists as his principal enemies, and felt that Mussolini's dictatorship had saved the existing status quo in Italy.[23] Victor Emmanuel always returned the fascist salute when the Blackshirts marched past the Quirinal Palace and he lit votive lamps at public ceremonies to honour the Fascist "martyrs" killed fighting against the Socialists and Communists.[23] At the same time, the Crown became so closely identified with Fascism that by the time Victor Emmanuel was able to shake himself loose from it, it was too late to save the monarchy. In what proved to be a prescient speech, Senator Luigi Albertini called the king a "traitor" to Italy by supporting the Fascist regime and warned that the king would one day regret what he had done.[24]
Victor Emmanuel was disgusted by what he regarded as the superficiality and frivolity of what he called the "so-called elegant society" of Rome, and as such, the king preferred to spend his time out in the countryside where he went hunting, fishing and reading military history books outside.[25] A taciturn man who felt deeply uncomfortable expressing himself in conversation, Victor Emmanuel was content to let Mussolini rule Italy as he regarded Il Duce as a "strong man" who saved him the trouble from meeting various politicians as he had done before 1922.
