Fascism collapsing – Europe’s revolution has begun

Wellred

Core Argument

The fall of Mussolini in July 1943 is here presented not as a mere military or diplomatic event but as the opening salvo of a continent-wide revolutionary upheaval. The chapter argues that fascism’s collapse in Italy was neither sudden nor accidental, but the predictable outcome of two decades of internal decay, corruption, and brutal exploitation that had thoroughly alienated the Italian masses. The regime’s desperation drove it into imperial adventures—Abyssinia, Spain, and the Second World War—which only deepened the misery of workers and peasants, producing apathy among soldiers and a simmering revolt at home. Evidence is drawn from reports of strikes in industrial towns, peasant uprisings, mutinies, and the revival of underground revolutionary agitation, all of which had placed the regime under “irrepressible strain” well before the Allied invasion of Sicily.

The chapter’s core narrative thrust is that the ruling class—capitalists, landowners, generals, monarchy, and Church—installed Mussolini to protect their property and privileges, and discarded him with the same cynicism when he became a liability. His removal is likened to dismissing an office boy, a calculated manoeuvre to salvage the old order by striking a deal with British and American imperialism. The new government under Badoglio and the king is denounced as equally complicit in fascism’s crimes, with historical evidence drawn from Daniel Guérin’s Fascism and Big Business to demonstrate the army’s active role in fascism’s rise. The chapter warns that the removal of the “safety valve” will not pacify the masses but unleash their pent-up fury, driving them toward socialist revolution.

A sharp polemic runs throughout, directed at Churchill and Roosevelt. Churchill’s hypocritical volte-face is exposed through his own past praise of Mussolini in 1927, and his refusal to rule out dealings with Badoglio is presented as proof that the “democracies” aim to suppress revolution, not defeat fascism. The text explicitly recalls Churchill’s role in organising intervention against the Soviet Republic after the First World War, warning that British and American imperialism will again attempt to crush the coming social revolution. The chapter concludes by calling on British workers to prevent their rulers from rescuing Italy’s rotten ruling class, framing the fall of Mussolini as the “first faint dawn” of the epoch of socialist revolution across Europe.