The Similarities Between Benito Mussolini And Adolf Hitler

The similarities between Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler are extremely striking. They both fought in World War I, Mussolini for Italy and Hitler for Germany, and for a brief time the countries were on the same side, until Italy abandoned Germany and joined the Allied side. After World War I, Mussolini created the Fascist party, which gained support from nationalists, business owners, and manufactures. The Fascists were opposed to both democracy and communism, believing the government should control everything except free enterprise. Hitler joined the Nazis the year it was founded and became it’s leader not long after. The Nazis directly opposed communism, and during Hitler’s rule as Chancellor and dictator, sought to destroy communism. The Fascists, also known as the Blackshirts, were extremely violent, just as the Nazis were, with no one in either country to really stop it. …show more content…
They both manipulated their legislature into dissolving any power that belonged to anyone other than the dictator. Mussolini pushed through election laws that the party with the most votes in the next Parliamentary election would receive ⅔ of the seats. When the Fascists got the next votes, thus getting a ⅔ majority, in 1925, Parliament named Mussolini head of government. On the first day of Hitler becoming chancellor, he manipulated the president of Germany to dissolve the Reichstag and called for new elections. On March 23, the newly elected Reichstag met and passed Hitler’s Enabling Act, which in effect would vote democracy out of existence in Germany and named Hitler the legal dictator of Germany. Mussolini and Hitler were very similar in how they came to power and in their overall