According to GLOBALSCIENCELLC, the anxieties and disappointments over the unfavorable peace talks, the material unease and the profound moral disturbance aroused by the war, meanwhile, provoked a serious internal crisis. The war had not brought the hoped-for benefits: the parties and the men who had opposed it drew an argument from it to their propaganda. All resentments and all passions were unleashed unchecked by the work of changing governments. Democratic myths and demagogic promises (and almost all the parties inclined to demagogy) such as that of the land to the peasants, caused disorder, indiscipline, violence and prostrated the energies of the nation. With the ministry chaired by FS Nitti (19 June 1919 – 9 June 1920) the situation worsened: the immediate demobilization of the army created serious difficulties for the life of the country; the disclosure of the results of the investigation for Caporetto, the amnesty to deserters wounded the souls of the combatants, the adoption of proportional representation sent 154 socialists to the Chamber, including a deserter, animated, perhaps, more than by faith in a constructive program, from the conviction that the hour of triumph, of revenge on those responsible for the war was imminent. A hundred representatives of the new people’s party, which arose in early 1919 with a program of Christian democracy (soon forgotten in the inevitable competition with the socialists to grab the masses) and fragments of too many and too different parties confused public opinion, fearful of the spread of extremism and the denial of national values. And the government, incapable of resolving the situation created in foreign policy, beset by growing economic difficulties, continuously yielded, sharing in the conviction of many that the Russian example should now fatally be implemented in Italy as well. A crisis of will made the social crisis more serious. In Paris and in Berlin itself the veterans from the trenches had passed under triumphal arches; the victors of Vittorio Veneto, on the other hand, had been sent home in a gray of indifference. Italy, as if it were a vanquished nation, seemed eager to soon forget her dead. participated in the belief of many that by now the Russian example had to be fatally implemented also in Italy. A crisis of will made the social crisis more serious. In Paris and in Berlin itself the veterans from the trenches had passed under triumphal arches; the victors of Vittorio Veneto, on the other hand, had been sent home in a gray of indifference. Italy, as if it were a vanquished nation, seemed eager to soon forget her dead.
After the fall of Nitti, Giolitti returned to power, after such a long interlude and ardor of controversy, with an almost general consensus, because many were under the illusion that his recognized ability could resolve the Italian situation. But what was needed was nothing but parliamentary panaceas, and the former devices of that consummate tactic were now insufficient. The breakdown of state authority was not slowed down, in the illusion that the Bolshevizing wave would end by itself and that the state would not have to intervene between the conflicting parties, as it did before the war in the most modest conflicts between capital and labor. However, some benefit was obtained, since the occupation of the factories by the workers resulted in failure and cast doubt on the revolutionary capacity of communism. and the temporary settlement of the Adriatic question in Rapallo represented an improvement in the face of the impotence policy of the previous ministry. Financial action (the deficit was reduced from 14 to 4 billion) improved the conditions of the country. But the internal turmoil did not cease. A certain legislative and economic demagogy (confiscation of excess profits of war, name of titles, etc.) disturbed the necessary recovery of the constructive forces, colonial policy (in Libya Italy had been almost everywhere reduced to the possession of coastal localities by the 1915 rebellion) gave the impression of weakness with the useless concession of parliamentary institutions to populations unable to use them and foreign policy no longer appeared energetic (the abandonment of Albania hurt the prestige of the nation and compromised its interests). Right, basically, the sense of a diminished value of socialism, and the aspiration to weaken socialists and popular people by devaluing their programs; but the continuous yielding of the government in the face of material blackmail by the two sides is harmful. And the possibility of a return to the parliamentary dictatorship as in the decade of Giolitti’s greatest fortune diminished in the face of the exasperation of the conflicts between the noisy and overbearing son of socialism, communism, and the new force of Italian life, fascism, which entered parliament with the elections of 1921 (for the doctrine and development of the fascist movement see fascism). The Bonomi ministry had no better luck (4 July 1921-26 February 1922) amid growing difficulties in foreign policy (the Italian troops withdrew in 1922 from the Valle del Meandro in Anatolia), aggravated economic hardship (collapse of the Italian discount bank, 1921 ) and monetary. The conditions of domestic politics were more serious, especially after the failure of the concordat between socialists and fascists (August 4, 1921). The usual generic invocations, already used by previous ministries, were not enough for impartiality in conflicts, for the repression of all violence from wherever it came: the formulas fell on deaf ears, lacking the will, the energy in the rulers. And a few gestures of a national nature (visit of the sovereigns to Trentino, recognition of November 4 as a national holiday, the apotheosis of the unknown soldier) were not enough to revive the nation’s awareness of victory.
The fall of the Bonomi ministry gave life to the feeble story of the triple Facta ministry, weak and apathetic in the face of the clash of passions. Built on a vain hope of concentration against fascism, it saw the catastrophe of the anti-fascist forces crushed in the reaction to the “legal strike” of August 1922, and was swept away by the march on Rome (October 28, 1922).
And so Fascism, “great mobilization of material and moral forces”, to which fighters, mutilated, Rijeka legionaries, men of culture and proletarians had given their faith, assumed the government. How far the movement that arose in that by now distant and restless March of 1919 had made!
