Key figures

Chapter 9: Giolitti and the Crises of the Liberal State, 1920-1928

The Salandra Ministry

Francesco Nitti and Giolitti held office during the most fevered moments of the Red Years of 1919 and 1920. After November 1919 it was difficult to create a stable majority in a parliament dominated by 156 Socialists and 106 Catholics. The revolutionary leadership of the Socialists Party, caught up in the illusion of an Italian revolution, refused to use its sizable parliamentary delegation as a constructive force. Industrial and agricultural strikes and land occupations by peasants seemed to presage the beginning of an Italian revolution, and on the right Gabriele D’Annunzio and the Nationalists continued to defy the government in Fiume. Both of these movements would peak in the fall of 1920. In September the auto workers briefly occupied the factories in Milan. This was followed by a bitter agricultural strike in Emilia and an even more bitter settlement in October. Finally, in November and December an agreement was reached with Yugoslavia for Fiume and D’Annunzio was driven from the city.

Giolitti’s last government was a transition from the postwar period, when divisions within the political class were still marked by memories of the split between interventionists and neutralists, to the events that would take Italy to the March on Rome and the Fascist dictatorship. The failure of the Italian revolution should have meant a return to order, but a new factor entered the calculations. In March 1919, Benito Mussolini formed the first fascio di combattimento in Milan. Giolitti certainly took no notice of what at the time seemed to be just another group of former interventionist veterans. But under Giolitti’s government the Fascist movement transformed itself from a marginal leftist faction to a powerful force on the political right, and Giolitti was confronted by the initial fateful decisions on how the Fascists would be handled by the political and police authorities.¹

Giolitti’s profound distrust of mass movements put him at a particular disad vantage in dealing with fascism. Well aware that simple repression was never going to work, Giolitti stated openly that he would follow the same policy that he used with socialism: if a movement became identified with the aspirations of a broad segment of society, then it would have to be accommodated politically by reaching some accord with the national representatives of the movement, by co-opting its moderates, and by marginalizing the extremists. But Giolitti never succeeded in manipulating the piazza in order to strengthen his hold on power, and he dealt exclusively with leaders who remained within the context of parliament and the state administration. Popular socialism, nationalism, irredentism, and fascism were always viewed as extraneous to governing, not as weapons at the disposition of the political class. The interests of the state were simply not those of the rabble. Giolitti tolerated the rise of a Socialist mass movement because he concluded that socialism was the price of modern social and economic progress. Nonetheless, the movement and its leaders were never fully accepted. The reformists were soon disillusioned with the place offered them by Giolitti, and the revolutionary leadership rejected the whole idea of working within the constitution. Eventually, a radicalized Socialist movement spun out of Giolitti’s control. When that happened, Socialist agitation became very much a police matter.

Fascism posed a more complicated problem. Like Giolitti himself, the Fascists competed for support within the ranks of the Italian bourgeoisie. ==He assumed that they would cease to be a problem when Socialist violence and middle-class fear subsided. ==The government’s mission was to return the country to economic and social stability as rapidly as possible. In the short run, fascism would be allowed to redress the balance of power in rural and industrial Italy that had moved too far in favor of the Socialists; in the long term, a few of its leaders would become part of the political class. Unfortunately, Giolitti did not understand that Mussolini, the former revolutionary Socialist, had no intention of becoming a mere appendage of the liberal political class and would not allow the disruptive activities of the Fascist squads to let up until he achieved power.

From Nitti to Giolitti

In June 1920 Giolitti had what he had always wanted - almost universal consensus that the succession was his. The conservative Gaetano Mosca referred to the new prime minister as "the last card that the Italian bourgeoisie can play." Giolitti's return was particularly delicate for the Corriere della sera and its director. Luigi Albertini liked new Foreign Minister Carlo Sforza's conciliatory Adriatic policy. Nationalists and Fascists had quite contrary expectations; Nitti had relegated the "myth of interventionism" to the attic (where, presumably, it joined Marx), but all that was water under the bridge. Now Giolittie represented a possibility for "the restoration of the authority and the functions of the sates and an Italian solution to the Adriatic problem." ==For Mussolini, Giolitti represented a chance to reverse Nitti’s accommodating policies toward the former allies and to assert Italian rights in the Adriatic.⁴

Someone had to be wrong, but Giolitti had no intention of breaking the consensus before he was forced to do so. He put out feelers to his old rival Sidney Sonnino, who accepted Giolitti’s guarantee that he would fight for the London Treaty. Senator Francesco Ruffini wrote to Albertini that Sonnino’s shift surprised his friends: “In the stormy meeting of the Giornale d’Italia where they decided on the new line, the most fanatic was Sonnino.” An irate Gaetano Salvemini exploded to Ugo Ojetti: “Here we are again at Giolitti with Sonnino, who directed the campaign of the Giornale d’Italia, as the matchmaker. Our only consolation: that we did not need to wait for this stinker in order to hold Sonnino in as much contempt as Giolitti.”⁶

The New Government

Giolitti designed the new government to bridge the gap between interventionists and neutralists. His overriding aim was to take foreign policy out of the domestic debate by reaching settlements in Albania and the Adriatic, and to return Italy to tranquillity and order. The ministry that took on this task was a coalition of the democratic left: four liberal democrats (Francesco Tedesco at Finance, Camillo Peano at Public Works, Giovanni Raineri at Liberated Territories, and Luigi Rossi at Colonies); three Radicals (Luigi Fera at Justice, Giulio Alessio at Industry and Commerce, and Rosario Pasqualino-Vassallo at Posts); two Catholics (Filippo Meda at Treasury and Giovanni Miceli at Agriculture); two reformist Socialists (Ivanoe Bonomi at War and Arturo Labriola at Labor); and one independent (Benedetto Croce).⁷ Giolitti recalled the faithful Camillo Corradini as his undersecretary at Interior, and Giacomo Vigliani returned as head of Public Security. Sforza, Bonomi, and Fera had been proponents of Italian participation in the war. Alfredo Frassati, who wanted a government exclusively of former neutralists, was discontented about the presence of Bonomi, who, he recalled, had predicted a three-month war. Giolitti’s response was typical: “When you go into the kitchen, you must cook with the ingredients that you find.”⁸

Socialist hostility underlined a potential weakness of the government. Normally, Giolitti’s program—an inquiry into excess war profits; registration of stock ownership; tax increases on inherited wealth; parliamentary approval of treaties, international agreements, and declarations of war; the creation of permanent commissions for foreign affairs; and limitations on the power of governments to make decree laws—should have attracted moderate Socialists, but Giolitti did not even try to bring in Filippo Turati, who had been unenthusiastic when Giolitti first advanced the program in the La Tribuna interview.⁹ In fact, Turati was petrified that he would be asked to assume any responsibility during the crisis of the Nitti government: “As for the danger of an offer from Nitti or Giolitti to call us to power to realize all of my program,” Turati wrote to Anna Kuliscioff in February 1920, “I hope that it is less imminent than you predict, and in any case we will find some pretext to put off the bitter chalice.” At the beginning of March, Turati lamented: “You say that it is our moment. It would be if we had, or could have, the masses and the party with us. But you know perfectly well that the reality is different.”¹⁰

Though the government won an overwhelming majority in July 1920 with only the Socialists, Republicans, some veterans, and a few right liberals in opposition, victory concealed real weaknesses. Unlike Giolitti’s prewar governments, which rested on a solid liberal majority, the new government had no bedrock support. His leftist domestic program did not match his parliamentary majority. Giolitti’s proposals on stock registration risked alienating the Vatican, whose investments would become public knowledge. Even in the best circumstances, the large Catholic bloc of deputies was unreliable. Popular Party secretary Luigi Sturzo had opposed joining the government. Sturzo, a Sicilian priest, had little in common with the prime minister, who considered him an intriguing prelate.¹¹

On foreign policy Giolitti’s consensus was even more fragile. Nationalist support was predicated on a firm defense of the Italian position in the Adriatic, Dalmatia, and Fiume, but Giolitti’s appointment of Sforza indicated that he was willing to compromise on Dalmatia. Giolitti had not mentioned foreign policy in any detail in his Tribuna interview of May 28 and deliberately left the issues ill-defined as the new government was formed. Here again, he risked defections on the right without picking up any stable backing on the left. The government worked hard to maintain support for its foreign policy. Giolitti did not stop food and medical supplies from reaching Fiume, nor did he halt recruitment for the Fiume legions within Italy. Sforza and Bonomi also engaged in negotiations with Alceste De Ambris to reach a compromise on Fiume. Sforza wrote to Giolitti that he sought a meeting with Fascist leader Mussolini and that he had advised Albertini to ease up on the Adriatic issue in favor of attacks on those conservatives who were encouraging dissidence within the military. Sforza also visited Sonnino in August to request the conservative leader’s intervention with Alberto Bergamini to keep the Giornale d’Italia in line.¹²

Giolitti moved quickly to pass parts of the program. Hikes in the inheritance and automobile taxes, increased progressivity of income taxes, and the inquiry into war profits passed before the summer recess. The stock registration plan, a centerpiece of the governmental program for financial recovery, was more controversial. According to Bonaldo Stringher, the largest part of portable wealth was held in stocks and bonds issued by private and public agencies. The government proposed to force registration in order to allow the tax authorities to track the revenue, but the law risked provoking a capital flight and, in fact, the stock market did tumble when the new government took office. Moreover, as Luigi Einaudi pointed out, neither the stock registration bill nor the inquiry into war profits (long ago converted into other things) could produce immediate revenue.¹³

However, as with many of Giolitti’s reforms, the issue was more symbolic than real. To render the law on stock registration operative, the ministers of Industry and of Finance had to draft regulations, which also needed parliamentary approval. The government slowly backed off from drafting these regulations. After a meeting with representatives of banking and industry, Alessio wrote to Giolitti on November 16 that the government might consider delaying application of certain parts for a year.¹⁴ In fact, the enabling legislation was delayed into 1921. Nonetheless, the inquiry into war profits and the stock registration bill opened the first cracks in the consensus behind the new government. Industrialists in Genoa and Milan protested; a flight from government bonds took place; major layoffs in Genoa were announced by the Ansaldo firm. The open opposition of the Perrone brothers led Giolitti to warn “some of the billionaire sharks” who organized against him: “If there are those who believe that with the billions earned [from war profits] they can influence the public life of the country, they are mistaken.”¹⁵

The Factory Occupations

In late August, as Giolitti headed to Cavour for a vacation, he had much reason to be pleased. The initial legislative agenda had been passed. The country was calmer. The balance of power that had so favored the workers in the immediate postwar period was now shifting. The major unions in the heavy industrial sector were well aware of these changes when they began to negotiate for a new contract during the spring and summer of 1920. In May and June, the Socialist Federazione Italiana Operai Metallurgici (FIOM) presented its proposals to management. It soon became clear that the industrialists preferred a strike upon the expiration of the contracts in August and September, although as late as August 25 Giovanni Agnelli of FIAT assured the government that management would not force a lockout.¹⁶

In August the unions opted for a work slowdown within the factories to put pressure on the owners short of a strike, but they assured Labor Minister Labriola that the tactic would be abandoned if the industrialists would negotiate. Obstruction, first used in Milan, spread rapidly to Brescia, Reggio Emilia, and other industrial centers. The crisis took a more serious turn on August 30–31. When the news spread that Alfa Romeo was going to close its plant rather than negotiate, the FIOM decided to occupy the factory. Within days 400,000 workers were occupying factories in various cities in the industrial North. Giolitti met with Agnelli on August 31, just as the decisions for the lockout and occupations were being made, and confirmed his decision not to intervene. Agnelli informed his fellow industrialists in Turin that the government would not use police against the workers.¹⁷

The target of the occupation, Alfa Romeo, was unlikely to win Giolitti’s benevolence. Camillo Corradini, who reflected Giolitti’s thinking, told the French diplomat François Charles Roux that the Perrone-controlled Banca di Sconto and Ansaldo were behind the factory occupations and had instigated the lockout at Alfa Romeo in order to bring down Giolitti.¹⁸ Of more immediate concern was the possibility that the arms which management stored in the factories were deliberately allowed to pass into the hands of the occupiers. In a telegram to the prefect of Milan, Alfredo Lusignoli, Giolitti criticized the industrialists for allowing this to happen: “The extremely serious fact of having left arms in the factories constitutes an enormous responsibility and justifies the suspicion that in some cases there was a deliberate plan to create problems for the government for financial motives. Under these conditions one has the right to impose negotiations on the industrialists.”¹⁹

The prefects were warned to guard against the possibility of insurrection by revolutionary syndicalists and anarchists. As for the occupations, Giolitti wanted the authorities to avoid provocations, if the strikers proceeded peacefully. The scope and intensity of the worker reaction only reinforced Giolitti’s conviction that the issue had to be resolved in the political arena. As he would later do in dealing with widespread Fascist illegality, ==Giolitti contended that the government could not stop obstructionism by force short of civil war, and he would not allow the industrialists to force his hand. ==Instead, the dispute would have to be channeled into political and economic negotiations.²⁰

At the beginning of the conflict, Labor Minister Labriola unsuccessfully pressed both sides to resume negotiations, but Giolitti made it clear that he thought overt intervention was still premature. On September 2 he telegraphed Corradini:

With regard to the metalworker question, I believe the government’s action should be as little visible as possible. At the limit, the government must not intervene unless it is called upon by both sides. Every government initiative makes the conflict more bitter. In Turin, I explained to the industrialists that they could not count on public authorities. Workers occupying factories have no interest in wrecking machinery, knowing that it would mean a long period of unemployment.²¹

Giolitti did little to convey his strategy to the public. The result was a sense of drift that was certainly accentuated by the prime minister’s absence from Rome during much of the crisis. He even visited French Prime Minister Alexandre Millerand at Aix-les-Bains in early September to reassure Europe that the Italian government was secure in its control of the situation. Before his departure a delegation of industrialists came to Bardonecchia to state their case. When one of the industrialists called for making some forceful symbolic gesture, Giolitti half-jokingly responded: “Bombard a factory,” the industrialist replied. Giolitti half-jokingly responded: “In this case I will start with yours.”²²

Giolitti used his well-tested practice of managing the crisis from afar through faithful prefects and officials at the Interior Ministry. It was the last time this system functioned efficiently, yet even here there was a cost in terms of middle-class confidence. From the sidelines Nitti attacked the government’s apparent lack of direction. Old fears revived of the “Bolshevik of the Annunziata,” who would abandon the interests of the bourgeoisie to curry favor with the Socialists. Giolitti’s name was again linked with the hated Nitti in the Nationalist press: the one had lost the fruits of victory, and now his successor surrendered on the domestic front.²³

An indication that Giolitti finally would take a direct role came in a message from Prefect Lusignoli in Milan to Corradini on September 9: “On behalf of the president . . . I feel my duty to make a formal appeal to the industrialists to consider the gravity of the situation and to make every effort to represent sacrifices for the industrialists.”²⁴ The victory of moderates within the General Confederation of Labor increased the government’s leverage. On September 13 the industrialists indicated to Lusignoli that they would reopen negotiations. The next day Giolitti met with a delegation of industrialists and workers, led by Prefects Paolino Taddei of Turin and Alfredo Lusignoli of Milan, to forge a settlement. On the suggestion of industrialist Ettore Conti, Giolitti himself proposed a labor-management commission to examine wages and worker participation in management. After a bitter dispute between moderate industrialists and hard-liners, the management consortium reluctantly accepted the accord, and on September 19 a ministerial decree granted wage increases and set up a twelve-member commission to present further proposals.²⁵

Giolitti largely succeeded in limiting the dispute to economic issues. Worker participation in management, though on the list of union demands, represented more a symbolic than a real victory that industrialists like Ettore Conti would sabotage at a later date. In the short term, the FIOM won a more favorable contract than its bargaining position justified. The result was deep resentment and anger that the Idea nazionale tried to fan: “In this crisis it is not possible to stand on the sidelines; each must take his position to fight or to acknowledge being a deserter.”²⁶ According to the Corriere della sera, even the General Confederation of Labor was surprised: “There was a logic to the policy of the government: absolute abdication without limits, without shame, without scruples.”²⁷

Unfortunately, Giolitti’s intervention in favor of the unions failed to create a framework for future cooperation with the Socialist Party. The revolutionary leaders of the Socialist Party ignored Giolitti’s efforts on behalf of the FIOM; instead, they resumed the familiar tactic of parliamentary obstructionism over a bill to abolish price subsidies for bread.²⁸ But there was another, more insidious message in the crisis for the Socialists and the unions that would become apparent only a few months later when the Fascist campaign of violence started. On September 20 Giolitti stated the principle that governed his actions: “When it is a matter of a movement that involves over 500,000 workers it is not possible to apply ordinary legal norms purely and simply.” Individual actions would be prosecuted, “but a mass movement of 500,000 workers cannot be in itself the object of a [judicial] proceeding.” The factory occupations earned special status by becoming a mass political movement. With some consistency Giolitti would take the same position when fascism became a mass movement of bourgeois reaction.²⁹

In the process of working out the settlement with the Socialist-led FIOM, Giolitti ignored the Catholics. Only on September 25 did he meet with Luigi Sturzo and members of the Popular Party’s parliamentary group. Giolitti rarely saw Sturzo, and this encounter went badly. He refused to make the Popular Party’s project for worker participation through stock ownership a cabinet bill, on grounds that it was merely a party proposal. Sturzo fired back, “Even yours is a party proposal.” Giolitti, visibly angered, countered, “I defend the interests of the country, not those of a party.” But Sturzo did not back down: “If you imply that we defend the interests of a party against the country, you are mistaken.”³⁰

Giolitti’s political problems became more evident during the autumn of 1920. With increased Socialist resistance to reducing the bread subsidies, his parliamentary majority was even farther to the right of his program. In the short run, he could use Socialist hostility in order to keep the conservatives in line. Even the Corriere della sera admitted that no alternative to Giolitti was yet apparent.³¹ But the November vote to renew local municipal councils revealed the serious mismatch between policies and political base. ==The Socialists ran lists hostile to the government. The Popular Party also fielded its separate list. The government found itself drawn into the conservative blocs of Liberals, Nationalists, Radicals, and democrats that successfully countered the Socialists in Genoa, Florence, Pisa, Naples, Bari, Palermo, and Rome.==³² Although the Socialists won a majority of the towns in central and northern Italy, the tide had turned. The new mood was apparent after a Nationalist member of the Bologna city council, Giulio Giordano, was shot during a violent encounter over the flying of the revolutionary red flag over city hall. The incident was provoked by the Nationalists and Fascists, but the government suspended the Socialist administration. Even this action did little to satisfy middle-class opinion, which demanded an end to strikes and intimidation.³³

The Fiume Crisis

The transitional nature of Giolitti’s government in the passage from the immediate postwar period to fascism was nowhere more apparent than in the handling of D’Annunzio in Fiume. Giolitti entered office with the support of both hard-line Nationalists and conciliators on the question of Italy’s border claims with Yugoslavia. Now public and parliamentary opinion had to be prepared for a compromise settlement that would involve withdrawal from much of occupied Dalmatia. Fiume, which had not been claimed by Italy in the 1915 London Pact, would become a free city with direct territorial access to Italy.³⁴

The mood in both Fiume and Dalmatia was sullen anger. Admiral Enrico Millo, the Italian military commander in Dalmatia, threatened resistance if the government ordered a pullback. Giolitti faced the possibility that D’Annunzio and his military supporters might use the factory occupations to stage a coup or to move against Slavic centers near Fiume. In late September and October plans for such a coup were developed by the Nationalists. Even as Giolitti pressured Millo not to join any action against the government, on October 24 he ordered the prefects along the Adriatic coast to enforce a state of alert against possible troop movements. Coming very close to a public call for rebellion, the Idea nazionale proclaimed: “The cohesive force of the state no longer exists. . . . Today the government of Giovanni Giolitti deserts. The traitor of May 1915 renews his betrayal. . . . The veterans must voluntarily, on their own initiative, face the new enemy that stabs the nation in the back.”³⁵

Giolitti worked to disupt the formation of any coalition around D'Annunzio. In October, Prefect Lusignoli in Milan and Sforza in Rome began negotiations with Mussolini. The foreign minister met with Mussolini after October 24 to discuss the political atmosphere in Fiume. Mussolini, whose Fascist squads could be a vital component of any uprising within Italy, had reacted unfavorably when shown plans for an insurrection while on a trip to Fiume at the end of September. Though no formal alliance between Giolitti and Mussolini ever existed, both men had a short-term interest in forcing D’Annunzio out of Fiume and to the political sidelines.³⁶

Giolitti won support from the Corriere della sera’s Albertini and Giovanni Amendola, who were close to Sforza and favored a rapid settlement of the Adriatic question. He told Amendola that he would face down any military revolt: “If a regiment revolts, I will dissolve it and authorize the soldiers to return to their homes, freeing them of any obligation to obey.” When Amendola suggested that more than one regiment might rebel, Giolitti declared, “I will dissolve them all, I’ll dissolve the army.” Amendola countered that the Socialists might then take power. Giolitti responded, “Exactly. The Nationalists ought to consider that they are playing a bad game.”³⁷

On November 12 the Rapallo Treaty with Yugoslavia was signed, fixing the Italian border, setting up Fiume as a free city with a territorial link to Italy, assigning Zara and a number of islands off the Dalmatian coast to Italian sovereignty, and offering guarantees for the Italian minorities in Dalmatia. Though urged to accept the treaty by Mussolini, De Ambris, and other advisers, D’Annunzio reacted badly. ==The Nationalists vowed to block future progress on reconciliation with Yugoslavia, but the army held firm and Admiral Millo did not revolt. ==Giolitti’s calculation paid off. With Mussolini on the sidelines, the anti-Giolitti coalition lacked a vital and activist element. The ministry’s position had been temporarily strengthened. Nitti’s supporters, who counted on a failure, were disconcerted by the treaty.³⁸ Amendola’s first reaction was to proclaim to Albertini that the Giolitti interlude was over: “With the conclusion of the Adriatic peace and with the resolution in principle of the question of restoring order, with the increase in the price of bread on the books, it seems to me that the Giolitti experiment has run its course.”³⁹

However, D’Annunzio still held Fiume. In a meeting with a parliamentary delegation that had visited Fiume, Giolitti reassured the deputies that neither

Italy nor Yugoslavia would move against the poet. When someone objected that D’Annunzio would not stay in the city forever, Giolitti shot back: “I well know that it is not pleasant being the mayor of Fiume.” At the same time, he kept his potential opponents divided. Prefect Lusignoli reported that after meeting with Mussolini on November 23, the government could be relatively certain that a military move in Fiume would be met by no serious resistance.⁴⁰ Again Giolitti’s careful preparation paid off. From Milan, Lusignoli reported that Musollini would keep his fascists outside any action sponsored by the Nationalists. Unable to persuade D'Annunzio to withdraw from Fiume, Giolitti ordered troops to move forward on December 24. By December 29 the army was able to impose the government's terms: disarmament and departure of D'Annunzio Legionnaires, entry of regular Italian troops and police, and D'Annunzio's withdrawal from the city.

The Decline of the Ministry

Giolitti's resolution of the Fiume issue was to be his last great triumph. The new year brought problems from several directions. First, the Socialist campaign against abolition of bread price subsidies intensified in Parliament. Giolitti's hope of incorporating the reformists into his majority was dashed at the Socialist congress of Livorno when only the extreme left broke off to form the Communist Party of Italy and reformists like Turati continued their disastrous alliance with the majority of Socialist revolutionaries. Second, the Nationalists continued their war of attrition against ratification of the Rapallo Treaty. Finally, ==the beginning of a ferocious fascist reaction swept large areas of northern and central Italy. An increasingly frustrated Giolitti then made a major error by calling elections.

As 1921 bagan, little remained of Giolitti's original progressive program. The project for worker participation in management and stock registration became mired in Socialist obstruction over the eternal question of bread subsidies and in disputes over the legislative calendar while the Catholic party wanted the laws on agrarian contracts and states examinations for public and private schools taken up immediately after the budgets were passed, and the Confederation of Industry (Confindustria) pressed the government to give priority to cuts in spending and tax reductions. The Nationalists were content with anything that ate up time.

Problems with Socialists and Catholics

All observers predicted that the reformists would be forced out of the Socialist Party and the remainder of the party would vote to join the new Communist International at the party's upcoming congress in January 1921. Instead, ==Moscow overplayed its hand and the reformists stayed with the revolutionaries, who resented the terms dictated by Lenin.==As a result, only the extreme left of the party withdrew. Giolitti abandoned any hope of working with the reformists. The battle over bread subsidies sealed the breakdown. The government rammed through repeal by forging a solid anti-Socialist bloc of deputies. Obstruction over the bread subsidy was then replaced by Socialist anger over government toleration of Fascist violence against worker organizations.⁴³

Difficulties also arose with the Catholics. Finance Minister Meda, on the brink of resigning in January for health reasons, reluctantly agreed to stay on until the end of the legislative session in the spring. More troubling was the question of state examinations for students in the college preparatory high schools. As part of a general reform of the system, Benedetto Croce prepared a reform that allowed parity between students who attended state-run and private Catholic schools. The Croce bill appealed to the Catholics but was opposed by the Socialists and Communists on the left and by the large teacher organization, the Unione Magistrale. The inexperienced Croce failed to reassure proponents of state schools that he took their concerns seriously and, unexpectedly, the Chamber of Deputies’ Commission on Public Instruction rejected the bill. Croce offered to resign. To the dismay of his Catholic allies, Giolitti allowed the project to die.⁴⁴ As a result, the only major achievement of the spring parliamentary session was the passage of Agriculture Minister Miceli’s bill regulating agricultural contracts and the amounts by which landowners could increase the rents.

The development of fascism during the winter and spring of 1921 posed an entirely new set of problems for Giolitti. The Fascist movement enjoyed a spectacular period of growth from the end of 1920, when there were 88 fasci with 20,615 members, to November 1921, when the movement reached 834 fasci with almost 250,000 members. By March 1921 the Fascist groups numbered 317 with 80,000 members. This figure jumped in April to 417 fasci and 98,000 members. At the beginning of the year, Mussolini’s squads mounted a major campaign in the Po Valley, Tuscany, and Venezia Giulia.⁴⁵

Giolitti viewed this Fascist phenomenon in political terms from the start. He believed that Mussolini’s movement could be dealt with only politically and never intended to attack it through police measures. In early 1921 enforcement of legality was still viewed by most middle-class observers as applying to the subversives of the left. La Stampa clearly reflected Giolitti’s thinking on violence in Emilia, where the Fascists began their attacks: “The president of the Council has clearly distinguished, in the present struggle between Socialists and anti-Socialists, a police problem or one of public order and a political problem … the reestablishment of order must come about without any of those exceptional measures against which Giolitti has reiterated his traditional and fundamental aversion.” Thus, the situations in the agriculturally rich Po Valley in 1901 and in 1921 were reduced to chapters in the eternal conflict between workers and landowners.⁴⁶

The Socialists failed to arouse Giolitti’s innate sense of law and order. When Socialist Claudio Treves and Lodovico D’Aragona of the General Confederation of Labor met with Giolitti on measures to stop attacks against their organizations, they found him unwilling to move from relative neutrality. A frustrated Anna Kuliscioff dismissed excuses that preventive measures were impossible against "spontaneous" Fascist violence: "What game is your Giolittone playing? On the one hand he is great friends with you all; on the other, he allows the most brutal violence to be unleashed against you without any distinctions between socialist nuances."⁴⁷

The decision for elections

Giolitti's decision to call elections in the spring of 1921 was the most serious error of his long political career. Friends and even enemies advised against it. From Berlin, Alfredo Frassati warned that frustration with the existing Chamber of Deputies was no excuse: "But will the new Chamber be better? Given the proportional system, I have little hope." ==Italy seemed to be following the path of the Weimar Republic: == "Since the psychology of peoples after the war is about the same in all countries, you will see that from new elections two groups will profit notably, the Communist and the Fascist."==⁴⁸ Nitti, who continued to believe that Giolitti's government would fall within months in the existing Chamber, argued that dissolution of the Chamber during a recess was a mistake. Albertini concluded that Giolitti simply was out of touch: "Not only has the electoral mechanism altered, but the cyclone of the war changed many other things."⁴⁹

Turati believed that key figures in Giolitti's entourage (Luigi Ambrosini; Pietro Faudella, the head of the cabinet at the Interior Ministry; and Agostino Mattoli, Giolitti's personal physician) had ambitions to enter parliament and favored the dissolution.⁵⁰ But the motivations certainly went beyond revenge and personal ambitions. The parliament of 1919, the first since 1900 that had not been elected with Giolitti at the Interior Ministry, had been especially hard on the Giolittians. Giolitti was tempted to rectify this situation by conducting the elections himself. Obstruction by the Socialists, the restiveness of the Catholics, and moves within the Radical group to force its cabinet ministers to resign certainly made governing more difficult. Finally, Giolitti was less comfortable with the parliamentary system after the 1913 elections. After leaving office in March 1914, he spent as little time as possible in Rome. His letters were laced with attacks on the petty ambitions of the capital's political world. As he grew older, Giolitti was less and less eager to make the sacrifices necessary to hold power. The unanimity that greeted his return in June 1920 had been ideal, but the consensus did not hold. Even violence offered Giolitti no reason to delay the voting: "The will of the people is the greatest force to impose the cessation of violence and the reestablishment of the rule of law."⁵¹ But, in reality, during the electoral campaign violence reached a point where it became an issue. Renzo De Felice calculated ==that during the five weeks after the beginning of the campaign—April 8 to May 14, 105 deaths and 431 injuries were reported (in contrast to 102 deaths and 388 injured from January 1 to April 7).==⁵²

The Problem of Fascist violence

Substantial evidence exists that Giolitti and Corradini had lost control of officials on the local level. Government orders that illegal weapons be handed over to the police were ignored by "patriotic" organizations.⁵³ After incidents of Fascist violence in Florence, Vincenzo Trani, an official of the Interior Ministry's Public Security branch, reported that Socialist and Communist violence had led many younger officers to sympathize with fascism:

None of the prefects hid from me the fact that their impartiality in the suppression of crimes from whatever source was blocked by the above-mentioned attitude of civil servants and agents who considered the subversives to have provoked the Fascist reaction.⁵⁴

Giolitti, aware that the police apparatus of the state was spinning out of his control, ordered the prefects in Emilia, Tuscany, Bari, Foggia, and Rovigo, where Fascist violence was especially intense, to take special precautions:

Fascist violence during the electoral period constitutes a serious crime and dishonors the country. A Chamber elected with violence will lack moral authority. Unfortunately, public authority in this province fails in its duty by not repressing such serious crimes. . . . Therefore I invite you to indicate with a telegram personally to me, by tomorrow, the names of the officers of the Carabinieri or Royal Guards whom it would be useful to transfer.⁵⁵

But the responses of the prefects offered no reassurances. The tough Cesare Mori in Bologna complained that the police "do not always completely follow my precise orders and my repeated verbal and written recommendations and reminders. Yesterday the police chief reported that the local Public Security officials feel isolated and without support from the police when it comes to acting against Fascists." Prefect Carlo Olivieri of Florence emphasized the support that the Fascists received from industrialists, landowners, and merchants. Prefect De Martino of Pisa, who tried to negotiate an end to electoral violence in his province, met a firm refusal from Fascist leader Marchese Dino Perrone Compagni who demanded instead the end of measures against officials under suspicion of working with the Fascists. War Minister Bonomi acknowledged that in Arezzo an officer granted a request for fifty muskets and ammunition made by a fellow officer on behalf of the Fascists. All Giolitti could do was call on Bonomi to remind the military "of the rigorous observation of the duties of the public forces, about the incompatibility that exists between the military status and certain manifestations of a politticial character."

The National Bloc List

The problem was of Giolitti's own making. He wanted Fascist participation in the government-sponsored electoral list as a step toward normalisation, hardly a way to encourage local officials to take a stand against the Fascists. To this end, the government forged a large bourgeois bloc of Nationalists, Fascists, Liberals, Radicals, and Social Reformists. La Stampa complained of "the excessive preponderance that certain elements had taken at the expense of certain others." The result, according to the paper, was the opposite of what Giolitti intended: "anti-ministerialism, more precisely, anti-Giolittianism."⁵⁷ Fascists and Nationalists set the tone for the National Bloc lists in The Marches and Emilia and in key cities like Bologna, Verona, and Rome. In the capital they dominated a ticket that featured the popular Nationalist Luigi Federzoni and the young Fascist Giuseppe Bottai. In Naples the Nationalists put forward the war hero Raffaele Paolucci on a list with the Giolittians Enrico De Nicola and Giovanni Porzio and the more conservative Fascists in the province. In Puglia, Antonio Salandra joined with agrarians and Fascists on the Giolittian National Bloc list. The governmental list in Turin, headed by Luigi Facta, included the Nationalist Giuseppe Bevione and the Fascist Cesare De Vecchi. In Cuneo, Giolitti put together a homogeneous liberal list headed by himself, Camillo Peano, and Marcello Soleri.⁵⁸

In contrast to the benevolence shown to the Fascists, Giolitti purged Nitti's followers with such ruthlessness that it ended relations between the two men. Nitti protested the maneuvers of the prefects in Basilicata against his list, to the benefit of the Fascists, and reminded Giolitti that he had not interfered with the Giolittians during the 1919 elections. Prefect Enrico Flores, who had been Nitti's head of cabinet at the Interior Ministry and whom Giolitti exiled to Catania, wrote to Nitti: "You can imagine with what emotion I followed the elections in Basilicata, not because I doubted the results, but to see how far they would go to get a man."⁵⁹

Nonetheless, the election results surely disappointed Giolitti. At the time of dissolution there were 137 Socialists, 17 Communists, 99 Popular Party members, 23 right liberals, 91 democratic liberals, 57 Radicals, 21 Reformists, 33 in the Rinnovamento group, and 15 in a mixed group. The new Chamber of Deputies was not appreciably different, except that the extreme right grew at the expense of the center and the Radicals. To the surprise of many observers, the Socialists lost only 34 seats from November 1919 and still held 122; the new Communist Party gained 16. The Popular Party increased to 107 seats. Only 307 of the 507 incumbents returned. Two hundred deputies gathered in Montecitorio for the first time. The National Bloc won about 275 seats, but it was a heterogeneous majority that stretched from democrats and Giolittians on the left and center to thirty-five Fascists, ten Nationalists, and many avowed conservative anti-Giolittians on the right.⁶⁰ The Democrazia Liberale, with eighty-five seats, was the largest group within the bloc. It included most of the prominent Giolittians—Francesco Cocco-Ortu, Facta, Vito De Bellis, Gaspare Colosimo, Corradini, and Soleri—but also independent political figures like Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, and De Nicola. Nitti, Amendola, Alberto Beneduce, and Andrea Finocchiaro-Aprile formed the nucleus of an energized and resentful group of thirty-five anti-Giolittian democratic deputies.⁶¹

None of Giolitti's objectives were achieved. Frassati saw the elections as confirmation that "it was an illusion to believe that public opinion had been so radically changed as to produce a radical change in the Chamber."⁶² Camillo Garroni in Constantinople was equally blunt: "It is certainly not an outstanding result to have eliminated twenty or so Socialists."⁶³ Still, Giolitti was under no immediate pressure to go. He faced obstruction on the part of unhappy state workers, but his government won the support of the Corriere della sera.⁶⁴ Although the Popular Party was unhappy, the government still enjoyed support of all the major parties of the coalition. Even the right hesitated to break with Giolitti over domestic policy. But foreign policy was another matter. Sforza was under attack from conservatives, Nationalists, and Fascists for his policy of cooperation with the Yugoslavs. Giolitti's government fell when the Socialists and Nittians joined the extreme right in voting for a motion of no confidence on Sforza. The incoherent nature of this opposition certainly offered Giolitti sufficient justification to stay on, but he judged his thirty-four vote majority too narrow to continue and refused to jettison Sforza.⁶⁵

The record of the last government

In striking a balance sheet on the Giolittian experiment, the Corriere della sera was surprisingly benevolent. Albertini noted that Giolitti might have taken revenge on those who excluded him from power in 1915, but he did not. Taking the successes and failures into account, "one must recognize readily that the balance sheet of this year had closed with a notable gain for Italy."⁶⁶ Giolitti healed the rift within the bourgeoisie over intervention, presided over the conclusion of two years of labor agitation without adopting overtly antilabor policies, and ended the embarrassing crisis over Fiume by engineering the ouster of D'Annunzio without civil strife. But there were negatives. Increasingly Giolitti showed that he no longer had the patience to work within the constraints of the postwar politics. He believed that proportional representation only accentuated the defects of universal manhood suffrage. His decision to call elections in 1921 was made despite evidence that he no longer controlled the electoral mechanisms nor could win a solid liberal majority. He then withdrew in disgust and spent the next sixteen months trying to regain the office that he had let slip from his grasp. Holding office in a system of mass parties demanded a much more active struggle than Giolitti was willing to make. At seventy-nine years of age this particular old dog was not going to learn new tricks.

Alfredo Frassati hit on the tragedy of Giolitti's political strategy in 1921 and 1922. His historic merit had been to open the political process to the working classes, yet his resentment against the Socialist leadership led him to equate its errors with the movement itself, whereas in the case of fascism he was willing to distinguish between the movement and its criminal violence. In so doing, Giolitti betrayed his lasting contribution to Italian political life.⁶⁷ Like most liberals of his generation, Giolitti did not understand the new politics of the mob and direct action. Therefore he did not understand the sources of Mussolini's strength. Fascism seemed to be merely a useful and necessary corrective to the evils of proportional representation, Socialist obstruction, and unstable majorities. Giolitti considered the new movement a political force that might be integrated into a parliamentary framework when, clearly, the Fascists had no intention of playing by the old rules. The stronger fascism became, the more determined Giolitti was to integrate Mussolini's movement into the political system.

From Bonomi to Facta

The end of the Giolitti government in June 1921 opened a prolonged period of instability. The two obvious choices to succeed Giolitti were Enrico De Nicola and Ivanoe Bonomi. The outgoing prime minister suggested De Nicola as his successor, but the Neapolitan refused, and the designation went to Bonomi, whose weak government had much the same coloration as Giolitti's ministry but without authority.⁶⁸ As 1921 closed, Giolitti was far from optimistic about the general situation:

I would like to hope that the new year might be much better than the one that is about to end, but unfortunately I see no promising signs and notable improvements. . . . Sorry to say I have the feeling that not only have we not begun the upward curve, we have not even finished the downward slide.⁶⁹

The collapse of the Banca Italiana di Sconto in early 1922 dealt the final blow to Bonomi's brief government and offered Giolitti a first chance to recapture the presidency of the Council of Ministers. In his letter to Frassati, Giolitti referred to the collapse of the bank:

The suspension of payments by the Banca di Sconto will have an impact especially in the South, poorer in capital and where the bank had the greatest penetration. . . . All of this is due in large part to the crazy idea of many, too many, that the war made Italy richer and stronger. It is a fact that never has so much money been wasted and people have worked so little than after the war. It is strange to see the various parties involved in everything but finance and the economy.⁷⁰

Bonomi's refusal to bail out the bank led, as Giolitti thought it would, to a revolt of Southern deputies whose constituents would be hard hit by the collapse. On February 1, 1922, the two center left parties in the government, Democrazia Liberale and Democrazia Sociale, voted to break with the government. With the defection of two core groups of his majority, and the right already in opposition, Bonomi resigned. The Popular Party remained loyal and resentful of the way its liberal democratic partners brought down the government. As early as February 5, Sturzo rejected a Giolitti ministry, prompting the Corriere della sera to comment with some satisfaction that Giolitti had been outmaneuvered by a relative newcomer to Montecitorio.⁷¹

The fall of Bonomi’s government opened a month-long crisis. Neither Orlando nor De Nicola could bring the Catholics and the other democratic parties into a viable coalition. Giolitti then made one last attempt to overcome the Popular Party’s veto by trying to put together a government with both Orlando and De Nicola, but he could not overcome their veto despite an appeal to the Vatican. Orlando and De Nicola abandoned their effort to form a government without Giolitti when leading Giolittians like Facta refused to participate.⁷²

The Facta compromise and continuing Fascist violence

Facta’s move from being Giolitti’s intermediary in the negotiations for a government of national concentration, to being a possible participant in the Orlando-De Nicola government, to candidate for the presidency came about because this veteran of so many governments was able to unite Giolittians, other factions of the Democrazia, and the Catholics. But the balance shifted rightward. Pietro Lanza di Scalea, an ally of the Nationalists and Fascists, became war minister, and Salandra’s friend Vincenzo Riccio, public works minister. Otherwise, it was the same story: the Giolittian Carlo Schanzer took the Foreign Ministry; Justice and Treasury went to Giolittians Luigi Rossi and Camillo Peano; the three representatives of the Popular Party—Antonino Anile at Public Instruction, Giovanni Bertini at Agriculture, and Giovanni Battista Bertone at Finance—were the most Giolittian leaders in the party. One Nittian, Giovanni Amendola, entered the government as minister of Posts.⁷³

The crescendo of Fascist violence made Facta’s task of keeping the seat warm for Giolitti difficult. On July 12 the Fascists invaded the home of the left-wing Catholic deputy Guido Miglioli. The Catholics and many democrats, including Nitti, walked out of the Chamber of Deputies in protest. The Socialists and the radical wing of the Popular Party finally had an issue on which they could bring down Facta, who, like his mentor Giolitti, refused to distinguish between the Fascist aggressors and their victims. The crisis opened with the vote against Facta on July 18. Nationalists and the allies of Salandra lined up behind the government, and the Fascists broke with the conservatives and passed into opposition. Camillo Corradini wrote to Giolitti that the confidence motion, which called on the government to use force against the Fascists, was “a declaration of war on the right and on fascism.”⁷⁴

Giolitti fully supported Facta’s refusal to consider force, which “would have been a true civil war in circumstances rendered even more serious by the economic crisis.”⁷⁵ His solution to the crisis revealed how alienated he was from the new mass-based political system. He called for integrating fascism’s moderate wing into the parliamentary system, a rigid policy of economic austerity, and return to the single-member constituency system before new elections. Abandonment of proportional representation became a constant refrain, as if the power of the Catholic, Socialist, and Fascist movements would disappear by waving the magic wand of new electoral laws. Giolitti’s demand that the Socialists participate fully in a government that would not act against the Fascists revealed the contempt in which he held a party that squandered its assets so recklessly and now was being systematically destroyed.⁷⁶

Facta Redux

Orlando emerged once again as a candidate to head a “national concentration” government that might include Socialists, Catholics, and Fascists, but the idea ran into difficulties on all sides. Sturzo preferred a government without the extreme left or right. Orlando informed the Socialists that he was in substantial agreement with Giolitti on a government of pacification with Fascist participation that would call new elections to be held with single-member constituencies.==Neither the Socialists nor the Catholics would accept such a program.==⁷⁷

When Facta’s government survived the crisis, the Giolittians were confident that they were in the driver’s seat. Giolitti, however, was not to be rushed. Facta and Frassati pressed Giolitti to form a government at the end of August, only to be told that Giolitti excluded a summer crisis with the Chamber of Deputies closed. Facta met again with Giolitti and Frassati in mid-September to warn that the crisis was worsening and that more than one minister had proposed a troop mobilization. Colosimo reported that key deputies of the Popular Party told him that there would be no automatic veto against Giolitti. Around September 24 or 25 Public Security official Effrem Ferraris and Interior Minister Paolino Taddei visited Cavour to reinforce Facta’s promptings.⁷⁸

Giolitti’s itinerary in August and September was at odds with that of a man bent on returning to power. On August 19 he wrote to Corradini that he had returned from Paris, Basel, Zurich, and Bern and would stay in Bardonecchia and Cavour until the reopening of parliament in November. He blamed parliament for the scant regard in which Italy was held abroad: “I am very happy to find myself out of Rome in the period of the crisis. I avoided a nauseating spectacle.”⁷⁹

Only Frassati and Justice Minister Giulio Alessio worried about Fascist violence. Alessio wrote to Giolitti: “Certain provinces live under a reign of terror in which it is not even possible to hold criminal trials; they are better delayed inasmuch as the aggrieved parties and witnesses are reluctant to testify out of fear of being killed or at least beaten.” Giolitti’s brief and unfeeling response spoke volumes: “I understand your sorrow for the increasing criminality, especially crimes of violence. The habit of violence is a legacy of the war, and we will need much time to correct it. For now I do not see the possibility of repressing such tendencies in one stroke. The cure must be more political than police.”⁸⁰

Three things about Giolitti’s role in the final crisis of October 1922 stand out. He was not, nor did he intend to be, the final barrier against fascism. All evidence reveals a Giolitti who sought to bring the Fascists into the government and who explicitly rejected the use of violence against them. Moreover, Giolitti was not going to restore the rights of parliament. He had long given up on any Chamber of Deputies elected by proportional representation and was committed to new elections and a reform of the electoral system to punish the Catholics and Socialists. Finally, nothing suggests that Giolitti was willing to struggle to gain power. He wanted to be brought back by the unanimous consent of the bourgeois parties. A Giolitti government in October 1922 would likely have been a short-lived experiment. Nicola D’Atri came close to the truth when he wrote to Luigi Albertini: “In my poor judgment, with the Fascists or without, the next Giolitti government will be a ministry of decadence for the man and of diminution for those who will go with him.”⁸¹

As Giolitti sought to return to power at the head of a rightist coalition, discussions with the Catholics, undertaken by Corradini, reached an impasse. Though Sturzo no longer blocked Giolitti, the Catholics had strong reservations about new elections and about Giolitti’s desire to collaborate with the Fascists at all costs.⁸² However, parallel negotiations with the Fascists proceeded in late September and early October. The deputy Giovanni Porzio, Giolitti’s former undersecretary at the presidency of the Council of Ministers, wrote at the end of September that Mussolini accepted the idea of early elections. On October 2 Corradini reported on contacts that he had with Michele Bianchi, the Fascist secretary, who confirmed that the Fascists wanted elections as early as November 1922. When the negotiations began in earnest, Prefect Alfredo Lusignoli in Milan, who was already in contact with Mussolini, took a central role. His mission was to determine the Fascist leader’s price for entry into a future government.⁸³

Somewhat ambiguously, Luigi Facta, who stated that he was eager to resign in favor of Giolitti, continued in office without provoking a crisis. As Mussolini’s biographer Renzo De Felice argued, Facta might have used divisions in the government over the Fascist occupation of Trieste and Trento as the pretext for a resignation. Instead, he awaited the outcome of negotiations between Giolitti and the Fascists. According to Lusignoli, Albertini wanted Facta’s immediate resignation: “Albertini requested that I influence Giolitti to persuade Facta to go. I won’t do this. But you might speak to Giolitti, making clear to him that every delay is pernicious. Albertini says that an extraparliamentary crisis is justified because the Chamber no longer reflects the will of the country.” On October 13 Facta sent Olindo Malagodi and Marcello Soleri to press Giolitti to act more quickly. Soleri assured the French embassy that Giolitti would soon form a government that would include the Fascists.⁸⁴

Until October 13, Giolitti could easily have opened the crisis. As far as he knew from Lusignoli, Mussolini was in agreement. By waiting, Giolitti allowed the situation to slip out of his control, almost in a replay of March 1915. As in 1915, when he finally decided to act, others seized the initiative to keep him from office. In mid-October, Mussolini suddenly drew back. As long as Giolitti seemed the inevitable successor to Facta, Mussolini was compliant, but Giolitti was never his preferred solution. Although we know that Giolitti would not have used force against the Fascists, the Fascist leader could not be so certain. An indication of a change in Fascist plans came on October 13 when Lusignoli wrote that Mussolini and Bianchi now wanted to delay the crisis until after the Fascist congress on October 24. The rest of Lusignoli’s news, however, was positive. A delegation of prominent industrialists (Senator Ettore Conti, the deputies Stefano Benni and Gino Olivetti, president of the Industrial Federation Targetti, and Alberto Pirelli) promised its support to Giolitti. Similarly, Orlando told Lusignoli that he would support Giolitti. Finally, the prefect indicated that Giolitti could expect little opposition from the Catholics.⁸⁵

Giolitti, firmly committed to governing with the Fascists, was now obliged to wait until the Fascist congress concluded. ==A last-minute appeal from Claudio Treves to accept Socialist support for a ministry without the Fascists was ignored. Giolitti also disregarded Soleri’s warning, based on accurate information from a military source, that Mussolini had no intention of joining a Giolitti government but was instead planning a coup.==⁸⁶

Unfortunately for Giolitti, Lusignoli no longer had a clear understanding of what was happening, even while he was still negotiating with Mussolini over the composition of a Giolitti-Orlando government. The prefect assured Facta, who by now knew better, that neither Bianchi nor Mussolini had raised serious obstacles over the number of ministries to go to the Fascists. In fact, the Corriere della sera reported that the Fascists wanted representation equal to their strength in the country, which translated into three ministries and the choice of foreign minister. Roberto Forges Davanzati, a Nationalist with close ties to the Fascists, predicted that the negotiations between Giolitti and the Fascists would fail.⁸⁷

As the Fascists hardened their position, Facta’s attitude seemed to alter. He began to plan ceremonies with D’Annunzio for the anniversary of the Italian victory on November 4. After months of reassuring his wife that he was eager to leave office, the prime minister discussed on October 22 the circumstances under which he would not resign. Francesco Cocco-Ortu and Soleri also noticed that the president of the Council of Ministers seemed to be engaged in longer-term planning and decided to send Doctor Agostino Mattoli to Cavour to tell Giolitti that Facta had convened the Council of Ministers for October 28. Cocco-Ortu felt that Giolitti would react badly and force Facta’s resignation. As it turned out, Mattoli did not leave on October 25; when he was ready to depart the next day, the crisis of the Facta government had already begun.⁸⁸

The March on Rome

On October 23 Giolitti spoke at the provincial council of Cuneo, where he repeated his invitation for an alliance with the “new party” that was destined “to take the place to which the number of its adherents gave it a right.”⁸⁹ He was to meet with Orlando around October 25. The timetable for a crisis after November 7 remained unaltered. In the interim, Mussolini was moving on several fronts. A report to the Interior Ministry indicated that the Fascist leader was in contact with D’Annunzio and Orlando to form a government to block Giolitti’s return. Giolitti countered by dispatching Lusignoli to meet with D’Annunzio. On October 25 Lusignoli telegraphed Facta that D’Annunzio had expressed the highest regard for both Giolitti and Facta, which the prefect took to mean that D’Annunzio might steer clear of Mussolini.⁹⁰ Even as Giolitti dealt with Mussolini’s approach to D’Annunzio, the Fascist leader had already turned to Antonio Salandra, with whom he met on October 23, on his way to the Fascist Party meeting in Naples. Clearly, Mussolini had no intention of joining a Salandra government, but it did not hurt to stir Giolitti’s old enemy to action.⁹¹

The crisis of Facta’s government obviously caught Giolitti by surprise. He had scheduled a meeting with Orlando on October 26. Unexpectedly, Salandra, backed by the Nationalists, took the initiative. After a meeting with the nationalist leader Luigi Federzoni, Salandra went to visit Facta at the Interior Ministry to urge the resignation of the government. Salandra’s ally Vincenzo Riccio then submitted his resignation and formally launched the crisis.⁹² Frantically, Corradini telegraphed the prefect of Turin, Carlo Olivieri, to urge Giolitti to come immediately to Rome. He was now aware that the Fascists were mobilizing their squads all over Italy and that the government had resigned.⁹³ At 12:30 on the morning of October 27, Facta telegraphed Doctor Mattoli in Cavour to tell Giolitti that he was trying to gain a bit of time: “It would be well for our great friend to come immediately to Rome.”⁹⁴ Lusignoli was the next to disturb whatever peace remained to Facta that night, with a report that he had seen Mussolini on October 26, and the ==Fascist leader now wanted four ministries and four undersecretaries. Lusignoli then went immediately to Cavour, where Giolitti agreed to Mussolini’s terms.==⁹⁵

Later that morning, as things were falling apart, Lusignoli reported to Facta that he would have another meeting with Mussolini. Facta passed the information that he held the resignations of the cabinet. Lusignoli said that he understood what Facta wanted to do. Facta then asked, “What is your impression? Do you think that up there something can be concluded?” Lusignoli replied, “Up here they want to conclude, and from the information just arriving, I understand that even here [presumably Milan] they consider it opportune to finish.” Facta telegraphed Olivieri in Turin to inform Giolitti that the king would return to Rome that day, and Giolitti should also make plans to come. Lusignoli had obviously informed Mussolini because by 3 A.M. the Fascist leader reported to Michele Bianchi that Lusignoli had promised Navy, Treasury, Agriculture, and Colonies to the Fascists and the War Ministry to a pro-Fascist. In addition, the Fascists would receive four undersecretary positions. Mussolini would have to give his response by 9 A.M. Bianchi suggested, “At this point it is no longer a matter of discussing ministerial positions.”⁹⁷

The situation unraveled rapidly for Giolitti on October 27. During the morning Mussolini sounded out Salandra to see if he would be designated to form the new government. Salandra wanted Mussolini in Rome for negotiations. Corradini informed Giolitti that the Fascist mobilization had begun. With the king returning to Rome, Camillo Corradini felt that Giolitti had to be there, but now the Fascist mobilization worked against Giolitti’s ability to travel. Nothing had been done to impede the disruption of the rail system by the Fascist squads. Once he was cut off from Rome, Giolitti no longer counted in the maneuvers of October 27–28 that brought Mussolini to power. During the night Facta consulted with the king and drew up the decree ordering the state of siege, which the monarch refused to sign the next morning. The Facta government thereupon resigned.⁹⁸

On October 28 Giolitti received a telegram from Facta inviting him, in the name of the king, to come to Rome. In fact, Giolitti never left Cavour because Prefect Olivieri told him that he could not proceed safely beyond Turin. Giolitti’s absence played a part in the king’s decisions. Francesco Cocco-Ortu recalled telling the monarch that they could wait for Giolitti, who might arrive the next day. But the king responded, “who can guarantee that [the Fascists] will allow him to arrive in Rome?” De Nicola confirmed that Vittorio Emanuele seemed in a hurry to appoint Salandra, even when told that most leaders would wait a day for Giolitti.⁹⁹

During the afternoon Lusignoli informed Giolitti that the ==king had named Salandra but that Mussolini now wanted to form the next government himself. The Fascist leader still indicated that if he failed, Giolitti was the only alternative.==In a telephone conversation involving Mussolini, Cesare Maria De Vecchi, Costanzo Ciano, and Dino Grandi, Mussolini stated: “Rather than go in a Salandra ministry, I would much prefer a Giolitti cabinet.” This slim possibility was enough for Lusignoli to urge Giolitti to revise his plans and come to Rome, but it was far too late.¹⁰⁰

In a subsequent interview with La Stampa, Giolitti left the impression that the negotiations with the Fascists failed over names and positions in a future government. But he also took a larger view that fascism was one of the many transitory phenomena produced by the war:

After violent agitations (and what more violent than the last war!) there comes forward a wave of very young Saint-Justs, Napoleons, Hoches and thousands of unknowns. True merit is affirmed and remains in the forefront, the rest disappear, ==and then the world resumes its normal rhythm.==¹⁰¹

Unfortunately, it would take twenty years of dictatorship and another war for the world to “resume its normal rhythm.”

Whether or not a Giolitti government would have been merely a transition to Mussolini or a short-lived experiment (which was likely), Giolitti’s failure to regain office in 1922 indicated that the mechanisms by which he had exercised power over the years no longer functioned in a crisis situation. Everything should have been in order. The ex-prefect Paolino Taddei had been appointed interior minister in Facta’s government at Giolitti’s urging. His replacement, Carlo Olivieri, and prefect Lusignoli in Milan were trusted negotiators in Turin, kept in close contact with his friends Facta, Soleri, Peano, and Corradini in the government. He had been assured the support of key industrialists like Agnelli. And until mid-October the Fascists were forced to go along. But Giolitti was not in Rome when key decisions had to be made very rapidly. Even though the mobilization of the Fascist squads was unimpressive as a military maneuver, it was more than enough to disrupt rail communications and to block Giolitti in Cavour. As in 1915, forces outside of the political-administrative elite escaped Giolitti’s control. In an age of mass movements and direct action, Giolitti still worked with an utter unconcern for the piazza or public opinion. And, even more fatal, he moved at a nineteenth-century pace, managing crises from afar and moving only when ready.

Giolitti and the new Fascist Government

Once the Fascists took power, Giolitti, like most liberals, supported Mussolini’s government and would continue to do so throughout 1923 and much of 1924. He wrote to Luigi Ambrosini:

Certainly politics, especially of a parliamentary nature, could not continue without bringing the country to ruin. The cursed electoral law had fractionalized the Chamber so as to render impossible a homogeneous, strong government, capable of having and realizing a program. . . . Will the new order succeed? I hope so. Meanwhile it is certain that it has brought the country out of the hole in which it risked rotting.¹⁰²

Though a few close associates of Giolitti refused to work with the new regime, ==most Giolittians took a cautiously friendly attitude toward the new government. Like Giolitti, they supported the electoral reform introduced by Giacomo Acerbo that assured a Fascist majority in parliament by giving two-thirds of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies to the electoral list which won merely a plurality of votes.==¹⁰³

Only Fascist attacks on his political base in Cuneo forced Giolitti to respond, but even here, he did not oppose the Fascists as much as try to reassure them. When the local fascio demanded in July that the communal council of Cuneo resign, the Giolittians protested that the council had no subversives, only liberals and veterans. Giolitti then sent Soleri to assure Mussolini and Aldo Finzi that the Giolittians were “disposed to create in the province an atmosphere that corresponds to that which exists in Rome between the government and Honorable Giolitti.” Finzi was conciliatory, but the offensive against liberal-controlled local governments continued, even though Cuneo gained some respite.¹⁰⁴ Of course, nothing was done to protect Socialist administrations. When the Socialist town administration in Ormea was ousted, Soleri did not protest: “The Fascists say that they will not permit possession of the commune by Socialists or Socialist-leaning democrats. They intend absolutely to send people worthy of trust there, even if they belong to our party.”¹⁰⁵

The 1924 Elections

The 1924 elections offered a severe test of the policy of live and let live. Mussolini, who considered these elections a vital step to gaining a parliamentary majority and stabilizing his power, worked very hard to win over key liberal politicians. Salandra, Orlando, and De Nicola signed on to the Fascist-sponsored national list that was designed to pick up the maximum consensus, thereby guaranteeing a solid plurality and two-thirds of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Nonetheless, Giolitti refused Mussolini’s offer of a nomination to the Senate and places on the national list for a number of Giolittians. Instead, Giolitti ran his own list in Piedmont that was coordinated with liberal slates in Liguria and in the Abruzzi, where Camillo Corradini contested the fiefdom of Fascist Giacomo Acerbo, sponsor of the new electoral law.¹⁰⁶ The price of defiance was high. The Fascists treated the Giolittians little better than the hated Socialists and Communists. Corradini, who had run the 1921 elections for Giolitti, was singled out for special attention despite Giolitti’s protestations that “our list, in harmony with what we have done up to now, will not be in opposition.” Faced with Fascist power, Giolitti looked to the future: “The liberal party, in its various and more or less democratic gradations, has governed since 1848 through enormous difficulties and inevitable errors. It cannot and must not disappear, nor fuse into other parties.” Though Giolitti and Soleri survived the elections, most Giolittians lost their seats on April 6.¹⁰⁷

The Matteotti Murder and the Aventine Secession

The elections of April 1924 failed to stabilize the position of the Fascist government. At the convocation of the new parliament in May, the Socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti made a scathing attack on the violence and fraud that accompanied the voting. On June 10 he was kidnapped in broad daylight in Rome. The crime galvanized the opposition, which withdrew from parliament in protest (the Aventine secession) and prepared to topple Mussolini’s government. But the news of Matteotti’s disappearance and presumed murder drew Giolitti closer to the government, despite receiving a detailed description of Fascist complicity from Socialist Senator Giacomo Ferri.¹⁰⁸

Giolitti judged the decision of the opposition to boycott the Chamber of Deputies until the king dismissed Mussolini to have been a monumental error. When Socialists Treves, Turati, and Giuseppe Emanuele Modigliani came to him on June 14 for advice, Giolitti told them to return to the Chamber. “To fire a pistol!” Modigliani countered. Giolitti, as sharp as ever, snapped: “Perhaps, but you go nonetheless.”¹⁰⁹ Not only was the boycott contrary to the logic of Parliament, but it contradicted Giolitti’s continuing belief in Mussolini as a moderating force holding back both Communists and Fascist extremists: “A ministerial reorganization is not a remedy. A reorganized ministry is always weaker at the start. Now Mussolini must have the greatest leverage to contain the extremists and therefore his most dangerous friends.”¹¹⁰ ==No immediate alternative to Mussolini existed.==As Lusignoli put it: “There will be time in November to vote against, which will surely happen if normalization is not achieved.”¹¹¹ A report from the Roman correspondent of La Stampa touched on the anti-Mussolini movement’s fatal weakness in the eyes of most liberals: the general feeling in Rome was that even a Giolitti government would be merely a transitional phase in a swing back to the left. Perhaps with this danger in mind, Frassati urged that a future Giolitti government be quite different from those of the past: “I would be of the opinion that if your ministry was in the offing, it must be a government of maximum powers, with a latent state of siege and with a strong military element.”¹¹²

The democratic opposition’s boycott of parliament remained a major obstacle to collaboration with Giolitti, even as he broke with Mussolini at the opening of the new parliamentary session on November 12. Giolitti, Salandra, and Orlando met, and contacts were also established with moderate Aventine leaders like Turati. On November 15 Giolitti formally joined the parliamentary, not Aventine, opposition when he and six others voted against the budget of the Foreign Ministry. Twenty-six deputies, including Orlando, abstained. The number of opponents increased to seventeen a week later on a second vote, but with the Aventine deputies out of the Chamber of Deputies, there was no way to make this parliamentary opposition count. In December discussions continued to bring dissident Fascists together with the liberal opponents. The Nationalist-Fascist Raffaele Paolucci headed a group of deputies from the Fascist list that was negotiating with Salandra and Vincenzo Riccio. Sensing danger, Mussolini sought to lure back liberal defectors by proposing a return to the old system of single-member constituencies, but Salandra nevertheless joined the opposition. On January 2, 1925, Turati wrote that the alliance of Paolucci, Giolitti, Salandra, and Orlando might be winning.¹¹³ But the king and the army weighed in on the side of the Fascist leader, who put an end to the opposition and moved to establish a full dictatorship on January 3, 1925.

The Last Years

Giolitti’s residual power rapidly eroded under the new authoritarian regime after January 3, 1925. In a letter to Corradini he blamed the failure of 1924 on those who left the field of battle to the Fascists:

Now what can be more abnormal than an opposition that completely abandons the field, defaulting on the mandate given them by the voters and, reduced to no longer speaking to the country through the press or meetings, gives up the parliamentary forum where it would be in an unsuppressible relationship with the country?”¹¹⁴

In August 1925 Giolitti was reelected, as usual, to head the provincial council of Cuneo, but the distinction between national and local administration gave way before the logic of full dictatorship. In December a majority of the provincial council, organized by Prefect Osvaldo Nobile, demanded that the president belong to the Fascist Party. After more than forty years of local control, Giolitti knew he was beaten. As he explained in a letter to his constituents, he could not accept the requirement of membership in the Fascist Party:

I respect the government of my country, but I would feel unworthy to represent the proud mountain people of San Damiano and Prazzo if, out of opportunism, I had in any way denied the liberal faith which I professed throughout all my political life and that has been that of all our representatives from 1848 until now.¹¹⁵

After 1925 Giolitti found himself increasingly at odds with a government that represented a constant affront to his nineteenth-century liberal principles. To his grandson Curio Chiaraviglio, Giolitti summed up the experience of the years since the outbreak of World War I. Much of what was disagreeable in the present Italy, he wrote, was attributable to the war, “the greatest disaster for humanity after the great flood.” Italy intervened at the least opportune moment, without any real economic and financial assurances.

After the war the Nitti government allowed the army to be insulted, disorganized the public services, and abdicated all power in the hands of the Socialists. The bestial conduct of the Socialists . . . worked to make government impossible by refusing to assume any responsibility and by trying to bring [public] finance to bankruptcy with the bread subsidies.

Nor were the Catholics spared: “The no less bestial conduct of the Popolari who came to the Chamber with 107 [deputies] put themselves at the orders of a priest, not a politician but an intriguer, more empty than arrogant, without his own program but one rummaged from the scraps of old ideas already abandoned by other parties.”== Giolitti also understood the great gap between fascism and the liberal sensibility:

The law recognizes the carpenter, the philosopher, the shoemaker, the lawyer, the teeth puller, the gravedigger, but not the citizen. Civis Romanus sum is old hat. Liberty? Who remembers it? But the day when the people will remember and demand it? What to do? For those who still can, work. For those who no longer can, stand and watch. Avoid pessimism. A proverb says, Better to cover the head before it gets broken.¹¹⁶

To old friends Giolitti’s presence recalled better days. After Benedetto Croce’s house was ravaged by Fascist toughs, the philosopher wrote: “In letting you know about it, it pleases me to think about you, a representative of the old, honest, and liberal Piedmont, and [to] renew in my soul the sentiment of Italian fellowship that the Neapolitan patriots and liberals, to whom I feel myself linked not only by historic memory but by ties of family, had with that Piedmont.”¹¹⁷

Giolitti seemed to marvel at the years that had gone by. To Corradini, who sent birthday wishes, he wrote:

Many times I wonder how time passes so quickly. But is it really me at eighty-four years? The strange question strikes me especially in this house, where I spent the happiest vacations from the age of two and where memories go back to times when a man of thirty seemed old.¹¹⁸

Often the news from friends was bad. Giustino Fortunato, whose friendship with Giolitti went back forty years, wrote that he was in poor health; Corradini reported that the Fascist regime had removed him from the Council of State for actions deemed “harmful to the work of reconstruction of the National Government,” but that Lusignoli was saved from a similar fate by the intervention of Tommaso Tittoni and Alberto Pirelli. The action against his friend prompted Giolitti to reflect that ==“politics is a truly terrible life. I entered it without wanting to, but, if I were to be born again, I’d rather become a monk. I am quite happy that none of my children nor my grandchildren have entered politics or show the slightest indication of doing so.”==¹¹⁹

Giolitti’s last appearance in the Chamber of Deputies came in the session of March 16, 1928, four months before his death on July 17. On that occasion he was the only deputy to explain his vote against the Fascist reform of the Chamber as contradicting the fundamental meaning of the idea of representative government:

For an assembly to be the representation of the nation, its components must be chosen in full liberty by the electors in the electoral colleges, as Article 39 of the Statuto prescribes. However, all ability to choose is here excluded by the fact that by law only one list can be proposed to the voters. This law that excluded from the Chamber any opposition of a political character by entrusting the choice of deputies to the Fascist Grand Council, signals the decisive departure of the Fascist regime from the Statuto.

The Corriere della sera reported that Giolitti’s remarks were received in “glacial silence. . . . It was like a sense of bewilderment, of indefinable stupor, of sudden unease.”¹²⁰ Perhaps this was a fitting departure for a man who lived long enough to die in a hostile, alien, and brutalized Italy.

Summary of Giolitti's Final Government and the Rise of Fascism (1920–1925)

Background: Postwar Crisis and Transition (1919–1920)

• Key Context: "Red Years" (1919–1920) featured intense strikes, factory/land occupations, and Socialist revolutionary rhetoric. Parliament was fragmented (156 Socialists, 106 Popular Party/Catholics).
• Key Figures: Francesco Nitti (prior PM), Giovanni Giolitti, Benito Mussolini (founded fascio di combattimento in Milan, March 1919), Gabriele D’Annunzio (Fiume occupation).
• Giolitti’s Approach: Returned as PM in June 1920 seeking stability. Viewed fascism initially as marginal and believed it could be co-opted like socialism—accommodate moderates, marginalize extremists.
• Advantages: Restored some order; ended Fiume crisis without full civil war.
• Disadvantages: Profound distrust of mass movements left him ill-equipped for direct action; underestimated Mussolini’s ambitions.

Giolitti’s Last Government (June 1920 – June 1921)

• Key Policies:
  • Broad coalition bridging interventionists/neutralists.
  • Foreign policy: Adriatic settlement with Yugoslavia (Rapallo Treaty, Nov 1920).
  • Domestic: Tax reforms (inheritance, war profits inquiry), stock registration (controversial).
• Key Events:
  • Factory Occupations (Aug–Sep 1920): ~400,000 workers occupied factories. Giolitti refused forceful intervention, pushed negotiations → wage increases and symbolic worker participation.
  • Fiume Resolution (Dec 1920): Troops expelled D’Annunzio; Rapallo Treaty created Fiume as free city.
• Advantages: Limited disputes to economic channels; avoided civil war; achieved Adriatic compromise; passed initial reforms.
• Disadvantages: Alienated industrialists (capital flight, protests); fragile consensus; no stable majority; Socialist obstruction continued.

Elections of 1921 and Rise of Fascist Violence

• Decision for Elections (Spring 1921): Major error despite warnings.
  • Key Dates: Campaign violence April 8–May 14 (105 deaths, 431 injuries).
  • Outcome: National Bloc (Liberals, Fascists, Nationalists, etc.) won ~275 seats. Extreme right gained; Giolitti disappointed.
• Fascist Violence: Squadristi attacks in rural/urban areas; local officials often sympathetic or ineffective.
• Advantages (from Giolitti’s view): Aimed to rectify 1919 parliament; hoped for bourgeois realignment.
• Disadvantages: Boosted Fascists/Communists; violence discredited government; Giolitti’s neutrality favored right-wing reaction.

Post-Election Instability (1921–1922)

• Key Successors: Ivanoe Bonomi → Luigi Facta (weak transitional governments).
• Key Crises:
  • Banca Italiana di Sconto collapse (early 1922).
  • Ongoing Fascist violence (e.g., July 1922 attack on deputy Miglioli).
• Giolitti’s Stance: Supported Facta’s refusal of force against Fascists (“true civil war”); favored integrating moderate Fascists, austerity, and electoral reform (single-member constituencies).

March on Rome and Fascist Takeover (Oct 1922)

• Key Dates: Oct 27–28, 1922 — Mussolini’s forces mobilized; Facta government resigned; King Victor Emmanuel III appointed Mussolini instead of Salandra/Giolitti.
• Giolitti’s Role: Negotiated with Mussolini (offered ministries); delayed action; cut off in Cavour by rail disruptions.
• Advantages (perceived): Hoped for short transitional Fascist role.
• Disadvantages: Misjudged Mussolini’s intentions; absence from Rome fatal; underestimated direct action/mob politics.

Giolitti Under Fascism (1922–1928)

• Initial Support: Backed Mussolini’s government (1922–1924) as stabilizing force; many Giolittians supported Acerbo Law (1923) for Fascist majority.
• 1924 Elections: Giolitti ran independent list; most Giolittians lost seats. Fascists treated them harshly.
• Matteotti Crisis (1924): Murder (June 10) and Aventine Secession; Giolitti opposed boycott, stayed closer to government.
• Break and Decline: Joined parliamentary opposition (Nov 1924); full dictatorship (Jan 3, 1925). Lost local power in Cuneo (1925); resigned provincial council post.
• Death: July 17, 1928.

Overall Assessment of Giolitti’s Strategy

• Strengths: Masterful crisis management (Fiume, factory occupations); pragmatic coalition-building; aversion to civil war.
• Weaknesses: 19th-century liberal mindset unsuited to mass politics/direct action; consistent underestimation of Mussolini; preference for negotiation over repression; electoral gamble backfired.
• Legacy: Opened politics to masses but failed to control resulting forces; viewed fascism as temporary corrective that became permanent dictatorship.

Giolitti’s final years highlighted the limits of traditional liberalism against rising authoritarian mass movements in the interwar period.

Chapter 10: Conclusion