Black Shirts

Italy was a unique blend of old and new at the start of World War II. Her ancient capital of Rome had been the center of the largest Empire antiquity had ever seen, but she had unified her ancestral lands in a great civil war just fifty years before Benito Mussolini was asked to form a government.

Benito Mussolini was the recognized leading dictator of Europe when Hitler was a still a local politician leading a group of thugs against the Weimar Republic. Mussolini had solidified his power across all of Italy through murder, blackmail, and slander campaigns against Italy's press, politicians, and leftists.