Benito Mussolini's Power

1. How did each government begin and maintain its power? After the Great War that ended in 1918, Europe was hit by another obstacle, the Great Depression. During these dark ages, the citizens had no choice but to elect a powerful figure that would be able to lead the nation back to where they were. The Great Depression had taken its tole on all the people in Europe and North America, causing inflation in Germany and politics to become more polarized and extreme. Also, after World War One, many countries converted to democracy, however, this type of government were not known by the people and the people did not have enough experience to effectively execute this new government. This problem led to instability throughout the nation. In order …show more content…
For instance, he made a pact with the Liberals which was under control of the prime minister Giovanni Giolitti however their pact was for deceit and Giolitti were planning to use Mussolini and betray him after his desire is fulfilled, although, Mussolini had an upper hand for he had another pact made with the government coalition. With this ally, Mussolini were able to gain respect and free hand for his squadristi. Also, he slowly gained seats in parliament throughout his struggle to gain his power in Italy and after his victory in the national election on April 6, 1924, Mussolini was established the Fascist dictator in 1926. In order to maintain his newly found control over his country, he made a youth organization called the Young Fascist to indoctrinate the young minds of the nation in Fascist ideas. However, he was not successful. Many of the young simply refused the organization and refused to attend to the Fascist Young meeting. Although, Mussolini were successful in getting supports from the older citizens for the reason that a family were able to produce a big family with many children that would be the future by bribing them with supplementary pay, loans, prizes, and subsidies. Also, Mussolini granted huge money from his regime, Lateran Accords, and recognized Catholicism as “sole religion of the state” in exchange for the Catholic Church to encourage Italians to support the …show more content…
Stalin was challenged by Leon Trotsky who was originally the next leader of Soviet Union. Lenin himself were sure that Trotsky were to follow his steps, thinking that Stalin would be too dangerous to hold such great power as the leader of the huge country and he also had stated in his Testament that he would abuse his powers if he were to become the leader. Originally, Stalin had an alliance with Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, however, their alliance were in delicate condition as time passed and was already ready to snap in 1924 but nevertheless they helped Stalin to retain his title as the General Secretary of the Central Committee and still sided with Stalin even though he revealed a fact of Zinoviev’s and Kamenev’s opposition to the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917, the fact that they wanted to keep it as a secret. They were successful in damaging Trotsky’s military reputation during the Russian Civil War. However, their alliance broke between the three in 1925 and Stalin allied with Communist Party theoretician and Pravda editor Nikolai Bukharin and Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Rykov while the other two allied with Trotsky. Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev made a new organization called the United Opposition and they had fought against Stalin. However, they were only