milar to Germany's condition in 1923. Armed bands with a strong nationalistic bias, known as the Fascisti fought socialist and communist groups throughout Italy. On October 24 1922, Mussolini, with the support of conservatives and former soldiers, demanded that the government be entrusted to his party. He threatened to seize power by force if his conditions were refused. As the Fascisti readied for a march on Rome, Prime Minister Luigi Facta resigned. On October 28 Victor Emmanuel called on Mussolini to form a new government. Here some differences start to appear between the two leaders in their rise to power. Although he was given incredible powers to restore order, Mussolini initially governed constitutionally while Hitler strove entirely for sole dictatorship. But after the violence of the 1924 elections (Hitler rigged what few elections did occur in Germany) in Italy, Mussolini moved to suspend constitutional government. He then proceeded in stages to establish a dictatorship by 1) forbidding the parliment to initiate legislation, 2) by making himself responsible to the King alone, 3) by ordering parliment to authorize him to issue decrees having the force of the law, 4) by establishing absolute censorship of the press (Hitler did the same), and 5)by 1926 suppressing all opposition parties. Another difference between the two is the most obvious; Mussolini was rising to power ten years before Hitler, even though the primary catalyst for both of the countrys decay was World War I which affected the countries (surprise) at the same time. A probable reason for this is the interference of the Weimar Republic and the inability of the German people to fall so easily into the ideals of Fascism/Nazism as they did in Italy. The people had their own government and wanted to give a trial run. One other reason that might be related to the slow start of Hitlers rise to power is the view in which the stucturalists have. The structuralists see the...
