As with almost all of the dictatorships, a serious event or series of events took place in order to set the stage for an eventual seizure of power. The fall of the Weimar Republic was a critical step towards the rise of Hitler in Germany during the early 1930s, and the October Revolution of 1917, and the resulting Civil War, played a role in the rise of Bolshevism, consequently leading to Stalin in the USSR. In Italy, it was a number of events that helped Mussolini rise to power. The failures of Liberal Italy, combined with the dissatisfaction of the public over the Treaty of Versailles, were some of the more important factors that lead to the downfall of the former government of the country. The public fear of a revolution, such as the one that had taken place in Russia, as well as the desire for national glory were manipulated to give an advantage to the newest political group, the Fascists. Mussolini had founded the Fasci di Combattimento (literally “Groups for Combat”) on March 23, 1919, which, in 1921, became the Partito Nazionale Fascista, the National Fascist Party, after a congress in Rome . On October 27, 1922, Mussolini’s Fascists marched on Rome; while Mussolini conveniently stayed near the Swiss border, ready to flee if the situation called. On October 29, however, King Victor Emanuel III officially recognized the Fascists as a government party and, at the age of thirty-nine, Mussolini became the youngest Prime Minister in the history of Italy.

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"Tolerance has never brought civil war; intolerance has covered the earth with carnage" Voltaire
"War is the fruit of man's depravity; it is a convulsive and violent sickness of the body politic.." Diderot