THE ITALIAN ECONOMY BETWEEN THE TWO WARS

With this elaborate, it is intended to analyze the nature of the Italian economy and economic policy in the Interwar period. The main protagonist of this historic period is certainly the fascist regime, which will cover most of the time. It is very useful in order to better define the economic nature of the fascist period, to begin this process from 1919, analyzing the Italian economic situation from the immediate first post-war period, in order to understand later, how much the advent of fascism really did or did not impact on the Italian economic policy. The European economic situation, at the end of the First World War, was marked by a strong inflation, which caused a currency depreciation of foreign value for many countries. In the following years there was a short general growth, followed by a recession, which between 1920-1921 caused severe banking crisis in several countries. These monetary and financial problems were the direct consequence of the First World War, as well as the debt burden between the allied countries and their attempts to extort huge payments for repairs from Germany. In the mid-1920s, there was a revival of the economy due to several factors, such as the increase of industrial production and the acceptance of the Dawes Plan in 1924, for the deferral of payments between European powers. In these years in Italy the first Mussolini Government took office, with the liberal economic policy of the Minister of finances De Stefani, which last until 1925, when the fascist dictatorship took absolute power. After a few years of economic stability in Europe, followed a long series of financial disasters, which culminated in the early 1930s with the failure of major banks and serious credit institution crisis: it was the beginning of the Great Depression, a period of decline on a global scale. Identifying precisely, a definition of “Fascist Economy” is not a direct process. The organization of the Italian production system and the economic policies of the regime did not differ much, at least until 1933-1934, from those of the other countries. If, however, we need to identify a specific “fascist economy”, the analysis must be conducted on the period after 1934 , with the economic revival obtained through the autarchy and the increase of public spending on war supplies, in order to support the effort of Italian imperialism, it certainly constitutes the most “Fascist” moment in the Italian economic system. However, many elements of the economic policy of that time, especially those related to the autarky, were not only present in Italy, but also in other European countries.