ABSTRACT
Benito Mussolini constantly exchanged the limited support of the Fascist movement for the institutions of the established Italian state, while allowing the former an expanding space in the marshalling of the people. The Fascist Grand Council issued a much-vaunted Charter of Labour a year later, which set the parameters for industrial relations. Fascist syndicalists like Edmondo Rossoni found themselves having to fill the yawning gap left by the destruction of the socialist and Catholic trade unions, and had to do so with something concrete. In fact, from Mussolini's point of view, the principal weakness of the Fascist Regime as it evolved over the late 1920s and through the 1930s was the role of the monarchy in the hybrid Italian constitution. The reality was that the benefits bestowed on Mussolini and his Regime by the victorious Ethiopian War would not have materialized had it not been for the spectre of Adolph Hitler.
