In 1919 at the Paris Peace Conference, the Allies compelled the Kingdom of Italy to yield to Yugoslavia the Croatian seaport of Fiume (Rijeka), a mostly Italian city of little nationalist significance, until early 1919.

In September 1919, the nationalist response of outraged war hero Gabriele D'Annunzio was declaring the establishment of the Italian Regency of Carnaro.

[46] To his independent Italian state, he installed himself as the Regent Duce (Leader) and promulgated the Carta del Carnaro (Charter of Carnaro, 8 September 1920), a politically syncretic constitutional amalgamation of right-wing and left-wing politics – anarchist, proto-fascist and democratic republican ideas – which much influenced the politico-philosophic development of early Italian fascism.

[46][47] Founded in Rome during the Third Fascist Congress on 7–10 November 1921,[48] the National Fascist Party marked the transformation of the paramilitary Fasci Italiani di Combattimento into a more coherent political group (the Fasci di Combattimento had been founded by Mussolini in Milan's Piazza San Sepolcro on 23 March 1919).

In the early years, groups within the PNF called Blackshirts (squadristi) built a base of power by violently attacking socialists and their institutions in the rural Po Valley, thereby gaining the support of landowners.

The march itself was composed of fewer than 30,000 men, but the King in part feared a civil war since the squadristi had already taken control of the Po plain and most of the country, while fascism was no longer seen as a threat to the establishment.

Many business and financial leaders believed it would be possible to manipulate Mussolini, whose early speeches and policies emphasised free market and laissez-faire economics.

After a drastic modification of electoral legislation (the Acerbo Law), the Fascist Party clearly won the highly controversial elections of April 1924.

[citation needed] This status was formalised by a law passed in 1928 and Italy remained a one-party state until the end of the Fascist regime in 1943.

The fasces adorned public buildings, Fascist mottos and symbols were displayed in art and a personality cult was created around Mussolini as the nation's saviour called "Il Duce", "The Leader".

[citation needed] In 1939, Ettore Muti replaced Starace at the helm of the party, a fact that testifies to the increasing influence of Galeazzo Ciano, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and son-in-law of Mussolini.

[citation needed] On 10 June 1940, from the balcony of Palazzo Venezia Mussolini announced the entry of Italy into World War II on the side of Hitler's Germany.

Mussolini was imprisoned, and the Fascist organizations immediately collapsed and the party was officially banned by Pietro Badoglio's government on 27 July.

The PRF did not outlast Mussolini's execution and the disappearance of the Salò state in April 1945, amidst the final Allied offensive in Italy.

[34] Italian Fascism opposed liberalism, but rather than seeking a reactionary restoration of the pre-French Revolutionary world, which it considered to have been flawed as it had a forward-looking direction.

[73] The Fascists quoted Italian national hero Giuseppe Garibaldi who said: "Corsica and Nice must not belong to France; there will come the day when an Italy mindful of its true worth will reclaim its provinces now so shamefully languishing under foreign domination".

[78] Claim was also raised on the basis that areas now part of Graubünden in the Mesolcina valley and Hinterrhein were held by the Milanese Trivulzio family, who ruled from the Mesocco Castle in the late 15th century.

[79] Also during the summer of 1940, Galeazzo Ciano met with Adolf Hitler and Joachim von Ribbentrop and proposed to them the dissection of Switzerland along the central chain of the Western Alps, which would have left Italy also with the canton of Valais in addition to the claims raised earlier.

[86] Upon entering World War II, Italy declared its intention to seize Tunisia as well as the province of Constantine of Algeria from France.

[55] The term "totalitarian" had initially been used as a pejorative accusation by Italy's liberal opposition that denounced the Fascist movement for seeking to create a total dictatorship.

He was fired from his newspaper and put under 24-hour surveillance, but otherwise not harassed; his employment contract was settled for a lump sum and he was allowed to work for the foreign press.

Knickerbocker contrasted his treatment with the inevitable torture and execution under Stalin or Hitler, and stated "you have a fair idea of the comparative mildness of the Italian kind of totalitarianism".

[89] However, since World War II, historians have noted that in Italy's colonies Italian Fascism displayed extreme levels of violence.

[92] Fascism identifies the physical age period of youth as a critical time for the moral development of people that will affect society.

[104] The Fascists publicly identified King Victor Emmanuel II – the first King of a reunited Italy, who had initiated the Risorgimento – along with other historic Italian figures, such as Gaius Marius, Julius Cæsar, Giuseppe Mazzini, Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, Giuseppe Garibaldi, and others, for being within a tradition of dictatorship in Italy that the Fascists declared that they emulated.

[106][self-published source] The King initially held complete nominal legal authority over the military through the Statuto Albertino.

[104] After Mussolini was deposed by the King in 1943 and Italy switched sides from the Axis to the Allies, Italian Fascism returned to republicanism and condemnation of the monarchy.

Italian Fascism justified its adoption of antisemitic laws in 1938 by claiming that Italy was fulfilling the Christian religious mandate of the Catholic Church that had been initiated by Pope Innocent III in the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215.

Mussolini's establishment of law and order to Italy and its society was praised by Winston Churchill,[112] Sigmund Freud,[113] George Bernard Shaw[114] and Thomas Edison,[115] as the Fascist Government combated organised crime and the Mafia with violence and vendetta (honour).

[120] In Brazil, Italian Fascism played a role in inspiring and financing Plínio Salgado's Brazilian Integralist Action.