The Matteotti murder and the origins of Mussolini's totalitarian Fascist regime in Italy

Abstract

On 10 June 1924 Giacomo Matteotti, a young member of the Italian parliament and Secretary of the Italian Socialist Party, was kidnapped outside his house by agents of the Fascist secret police (Ceka) that were under Mussolini's command. Two months later Matteotti's body was found a few kilometers outside Rome. The Matteotti Affair and his tragic death gave rise to events that resulted in the establishment of a totalitarian Fascist regime, forcing Mussolini to reveal his inherently totalitarian ambitions and abandon the pretense of ‘legality’ that had marked the first two years of Fascist government (1922–24). The so-called ‘fascistissime’ laws that banned all political parties were the means by which Mussolini overcame the crisis precipitated by the murder of Matteotti. While historians agree on the importance of Matteotti's murder in the development of the totalitarian Fascist state in Italy, there has been less agreement over the motives for the murder, the identity of those who gave the orders and over Mussolini's personal role and responsibility. Documents that are now available make it clear that Matteotti's murder was no accident: it was a crime that had been carefully premeditated, planned, and was carried out in cold blood. Mussolini's personal responsibility from the start can now be fully documented. The trial documents reveal that the murder was also closely linked to the system of bribes that served to finance Mussolini's propaganda machine and the sections of the press that formed part of it. The decision to murder Matteotti was linked to what was called the ‘oil trail’ and specifically to the corrupt operations by which the American Sinclair Oil Company was making large payments to leading Fascists – all acting as inter-mediaries for Mussolini – in return for an exclusive monopoly to drill for oil on Italian soil and in the Italian colonies.