ABSTRACT

Fascism was a European phenomenon, in large part the result of the disturbed economic, social and political conditions which were created by the destruction and dislocation of the First World War. Italian Fascism was no exception to this; indeed, it was very much a ‘child’ of war, and it has frequently been claimed that without the war there would have been no (Italian) Fascism. While the crisis of the Liberal state in post-war Italy was in part a continuation of the pre-war situation, the war greatly exacerbated the problems of the earlier period, and this provided the essential conditions for the rise of Fascism.