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The Rise Of Benito Mussolini And Adolf Hitler

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“There was no contemporary politician Hitler venerated more than Benito Mussolini, Italy’s Fascist dictator” - Wolfgang Schieder. The period following World War I (WWI) saw the rise of two dictators in Europe, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. Hitler’s Nazi beliefs were entirely based off of Mussolini’s fascists ideologies in both domestic and foreign policies, through collectivism and expansion. As Hitler admired Mussolini’s style of leadership in Italy, he strove to achieve the same style of government in Germany. These two dictators would eventually form a strong alliance, the Pact of Steel, because of their similar ideologies. It was after observing how Mussolini rose to power and ran his Fascist government that Hitler learned how he should run his own. As traditionalist historian Wolfgang Schieder stated in Fatal Attraction: The German Right and Italian Fascism, a section in Hans Mommsen’s The Third Reich between Vision and Reality: New Perspectives on German History, 1918-1945, “Hitler’s rise to power would not have occurred so easily without Mussolini’s precedent”. In terms of domestic policies, one principle that Mussolini focussed on was collectivism. As such, Mussolini got all Italians working for the state so that more could be achieved in less time, as the citizens are no longer divided by individual interests. In doing so, Mussolini also brought Italians closer together and began to abolish regionalism and shift towards intense nationalism that the country

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