Matteotti Crisis

The assassination of Giacomo Matteotti sparked widespread criticism of Fascism and of the Prime Minister Benito Mussolini. In the days following Matteotti's disappearance, it became clear Matteotti had been assassinated on the order of people at the top of the regime, prompting the outrage of the opposition. Within a fortnight of the murder the judge appointed to investigate the crime, Mauro Del Giudice, had ordered the arrest of high-profile members of Mussolini's inner circle and questions were asked about Mussolini's personal involvement.

In those weeks "Fascism fielded an articulated series of misdirections, obstructions of justice and red herrings, to declare the moral question closed".^[2] After a few weeks of confusion, Mussolini gained a favourable vote from the Senate of the Kingdom.

All opposition parties then united to agree to abandon Parliamentary proceedings until the government had clarified what had happened to Matteotti in what became known as the Aventino Secession. This was an attempt to give strength to the "moral question" that would point to public disapproval of fascism but also to put pressure on the King to dismiss Mussolini.

However, Victor Emmanuel III refused to act, since the Government was supported by a large majority of the Chamber of Deputies and almost all the Senate of the Kingdom. Moreover, he feared that compelling Mussolini to resign could be considered a coup d'état that eventually could lead to a civil war between the Army and the Blackshirts.^[3]

However, during the summer, the trial against Matteotti's alleged murderers and the discovery of the corpse of Matteotti once again spread rage against Mussolini – newspapers launched fierce attacks against him and the fascist movement.

On 13 September, a fascist deputy, Armando Casalini, was killed on a tramway in retaliation for Matteotti's murder by the anti-fascist Giovanni Corvi [it].

During the autumn of 1924, the extremist wing of the Fascist Party threatened Mussolini with a coup and dealt with him on the night of San Silvestro in 1924. Mussolini devised a counter-manoeuvre, and on 3 January 1925, he gave a famous speech both attacking anti-fascists and confirming that he, and only he, was the leader of Fascism. He challenged the anti-fascists to prosecute him and claimed proudly that Fascism was the "superb passion of the best youth of Italy" and grimly that "all the violence" was his responsibility because he had created the climate of violence. Admitting that the murderers were Fascists of "high station", as Hitler later did after the Night of the Long Knives, Mussolini rhetorically claimed fault, stating "I assume, I alone, the political, moral, historical responsibility for everything that has happened. If sentences, more or less maimed, are enough to hang a man, out with the noose!" Mussolini concluded with a warning: Italy needs stability and Fascism would assure stability to Italy in any manner necessary.^[4][5] The speech is considered the beginning of the dictatorship in Italy.

Five men (Amerigo Dumini, the operational leader of the Fascist secret police; Giuseppe Viola, Albino Volpi, Augusto Malacria, and Amleto Poveromo) were arrested a few days after the kidnapping. Another suspect, Filippo Panzeri, fled from arrest. Only three men (Dumini, Volpi and Poveromo) were convicted in 1926 and shortly after released under an amnesty approved the previous summer by the Mussolini government.

Before the trial against the murderers, the High Court of the Senate started a trial against general Emilio De Bono, commander of the Fascist paramilitary Blackshirts (MVSN), but he was discharged: even after this trial the investigation records were kept strictly secret, to the point that, during the flight from the advancing Allied troops in 1944, the fascist leaders stole its documents and took them to Northern Italy, where they were recovered at the end of the Second World War.^[6]

After the Second World War, in 1947, the trial against Francesco Giunta, Cesare Rossi, Dumini, Viola, Poveromo, Malacria, Filippelli and Panzeri was re-opened. Dumini, Viola and Poveromo were sentenced to life imprisonment.

In none of these three trials was evidence declared of Mussolini's involvement,^[7] due to trial extinction for the death of the defendant.