Our Least Favorite Moose in the World (913-919)

Italy may have been one of the winners of WWI, but severe debt and loss of life still left it in a difficult predicament; Italy was a much poorer nation than Britain and France, and therefore the debts were more crippling. The country had never been economically strong, and as the debt accumulated, Italy's long standing economic issues were only aggravated. Inflation and unemployment wracked the economy, and soon striking became frequent. On top of these financial troubles, Italy's gains from the war were far fewer than promised. The lands on the west coast of the Adriatic were hotly disputed by Yugoslavia, and even the Austrian territories Italy gained were not enough to compensate for the copious losses. Thus, as a result of the political and financial turmoil, radicalism began to take hold in the hearts of the people, and they turned to socialism for their fix of revolution.

Enter Mussolini, AKA Fascism. The son of a socialist blacksmith, Mussolini went into journalism and was able to rally support among like-minded colleagues. These groups, coincidentally, were called fasci and idealistically preached intense nationalism. When the Fascist Party went public, it held many surprising ideals, such as universal suffrage (for men and women), an eight hour workday, and inheritance taxes. Another platform dropped economic reform, but neither were successful, and it was only their aggressive determination that led to the ultimate success of the party. Once Mussolini began transforming the fascist government into a one-party dictatorship, he built a political foundation in Italy composed of statism, nationalism, and militarism. It was only a matter of time before this new political structure would spread to Italy's unstable neighbor, Germany, which was being upheld by the Weimar Republic. Mussolini's supported dictatorship, in particular, would appeal to a little boy with a taboo mustache...