ABSTRACT
Mussolini exhibited violent impulses at an early age and was expelled from a Roman Catholic boarding school for stabbing another student. Mussolini was expelled from the Socialist Party in 1914, however, because he opposed Italy's neutrality during World War I. In May 1915, Austria declared war on Italy, and Mussolini immediately enlisted in the army. In March 1919 Mussolini formed a new political party, the Fasci di Combattimento, and created a militia of black-shirted youths dedicated to attacking socialists and communists. The 1924 assassination by fascists of a socialist politician, Giacomo Matteotti, helped Mussolini create a dictatorship. In 1936, Mussolini formed an alliance with Nazi Germany and declared war on the Allies in June 1940. Many of Mussolini's policies and tactics inspired Hitler, who formed his own fascist party in the 1920s, naming it the National Socialist Workers' (Nazi) Party. In the Munich putsch of 1923, Hitler attempted a March on Berlin similar to Mussolini's March on Rome.
