Benito Mussolini — or "Il Duce" (the leader) — made extensive use of propaganda during his time as Italy's dictator. All official visual materials — like the photograph seen here — were carefully orchestrated to give Mussolini a powerful and almost omnipotent presence.

For its contribution to the Allied cause, Italy was rewarded with just two small territories. Italian nationalists blamed the liberal government for accepting a "mutilated victory" that failed to compensate Italy for its casualties of 500,000 dead and 1 million wounded. A post-war economic depression was exacerbated by this resentment against the peace treaties.

Into this crisis stepped a man of action, Benito Mussolini, Il Duce, the leader. Mussolini, who himself was wounded at the front, tapped into this pool of disaffected and unemployed veterans, riding their anger to control of Italy.

Mussolini was a committed socialist before the war, but he broke with the party in support of Italy's entry into World War I. After the war he organized in Milan the first fascio di combattimento, a combat group of ultra-nationalists called the Black Shirts. Scoffing at death and willing to die for Mussolini, they would inscribe the motto, Me ne frego ("I don't give a damn") on the bandages of their wounds. Groups of Black Shirts soon began to attack the offices of labor unions and socialist groups. Socialist Red Shirts responded, and street violence rose, helping to destabilize Italian politics.

Italian leader Benito Mussolini, like his German counterpart Adolf Hitler, was able to whip people into a frenzy of support for his cause. Here, Mussolini overlooks a crowd of tens of thousands from his balcony in Rome.

At the time, Fascists held only 35 of the 535 seats in parliament. But by 1922, the Fascist party had a number of supporters, including advisers to the king. Industrialists thought the Fascists could prevent a communist takeover, and army officers and intellectuals were attracted to Mussolini's nationalism and to his philosophy of action. The Catholic Church supported Mussolini fearing an anti-religious communist alternative.

Haile Selassie was Emperor of Ethiopia at the time of Mussolini's invasion in 1935. Selassie refused to cede his country to the Italian fascists and hoped that the international community would come to his aid. No such aid was given, and Ethiopia fell in 1936.

What, precisely, did Italian fascists support? As Mussolini explained it: "We stand for the sheer, categorical, definitive antithesis to the world of democracy…to the world which still abides by the fundamental principles laid down in 1789." To put his principles in action, he quickly established a dictatorship. Non-fascists were removed from office. Independent trade unions were attacked. Opposition parties and newspapers were suppressed. A secret police was set up to establish conformity to Fascist principles. Finally, in 1928 he disbanded parliamentary government altogether.

Mussolini consolidated his power by signing the Lateran Treaty with the Vatican in 1929. The treaty created the sovereign state of Vatican City, established Roman Catholicism as the only official religion in Italy, and mandated religious study in secondary schools. As a result, the Church supported him throughout his reign.

Mussolini secured the support of Italian corporations through militarization and protective tariffs. Unemployment dropped, but prices rose. While claiming to champion the common people, Mussolini helped mostly big businesses, which were free to deal with labor groups on their own terms.

To secure the public's support, mass rallies were held to celebrate his regime. Photos portrayed him as a virile leader in the tradition of Julius Caesar. Fascist youth groups spread the Fascist ideology among Italian teens. "Mussolini is always right," "Believe! Obey! Fight!" and other slogans glorified Mussolini and war. He brilliantly used the psychology and the imagery of war to mobilize Italians to support him and his agenda. Words and images of war and violence coursed through the airwaves and newspapers. "War alone," Mussolini argued, "brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it."

Although Mussolini did not agree with Hitler on all matters, Mussolini did enter into a powerful alliance with Germany known as the Rome-Berlin Axis. This photo shows the two meeting in Munich, Germany, in 1940.

Mussolini put these principles into practice in 1935 when he embarked on the conquest of Ethiopia. Despite the appeals of Ethiopian leader Haile Selassie, the League of Nations did little to stop the invasion except to issue meaningless sanctions. Encouraged by the League's inability to act, Mussolini gave critical military support to Spanish nationalists during the Spanish Civil War. Starting in 1936, Italy sent over 50,000 troops, artillery, airplanes, and other war materiel in support of General Franco.