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Having obtained a parliamentary majority in the 1924 election and the following year passed a law increasing
the powers of the head of government, it was in 1926, with the abolition of all the other political parties, that
the Fascist dictatorship formally began. By such means Mussolini, both on the national and international level,
was able to expand without any further formal hindrance. In 1929 following the Concordato with the Catholic
Church, he also managed to gain the support or at least not the hostility of the Church itself an through this
the Catholic masses, which were equivalent to the majority of Italians. Such consensus increased also because of
an undoubted improvement in the country's economic condition and a policy of social reform involving the poorest
classes.
The continuation of land reclamation, already begun in the previous century even before the unification, increased
the amount of land under cultivation with a satisfactory level of basic provisions. Examples of these initiatives
can be found in the `grain battle' and the draining of the agro pontino, which produced an entirely new piece of
territory. At the same time, industry was being brought up to date and developed, especially after the world economic
crisis of 1929. The Istituto Mobiliare Italiano was created in 1931 to provide credit for industry and the Istituto
per la Ricostruzione Industriale (1933) began the era of public intervention in large-scale industrial reform.
In its external policy the Fascist regime especially sought prestige by further colonial expansion, as that into
Ethiopia (1935-36) or participation in the Spanish Civil War on the side of Franco's forces. Gradually, Italy's
good relations with France, Britain and the Soviet Union (whose revolutionary government Italy was the first country
to recognize) deteriorated, while her links with Hitler's Germany increased (Rome-Berlin Axis, 1936). In 1939 the
Pact of Steel with Germany, after an initially non-belligerent phase, inevitably dragged Italy, in 1940, into the
tragic events of the Second World War (1939-45).
Italy's increasingly unsuccessful war, fought on many fronts and against better trained and equipped armies, overwhelmed
Mussolini in 1943, when he was censured by his own party. He was replaced as head of government by the Marshall
Pietro Badoglio, who immediately signed an armistice with the allied powers (3 September 1943). The formation of
a new government by Mussolini in Northern Italy, the Repubblica Sociale Italiana based at Salò, with the
support of Germany and in opposition to the monarchial government (temporarily based at Brindisi) provoked a civil
war. This was only brought to an end by the intervention of the allied armies, the formation of the partisans,
the abdication of the king and the end of Mussolini (28 April-2 May 1945).
After an interlude with several national coalition governments and the provisional rule of Umberto II of Savoy,
Alcide De Gasperi of the Democrazia Cristiana became President of the Council. On 2 June 1946 the results
of the institutional referendum brought to an end the monarchy of the House of Savoy (its last king, Umberto II,
going into exile) and heralded the republic which was officially proclaimed on 18 June 1946. Enrico De Nicola
was elected as the Republic's first President. Under the government led by De Gasperi, the first parliamentary
assembly to be freely elected by the people began work on the new Constitutional Charter that was to come
into force on 1 January 1948.