What Problems did the Italian Government face at the end of World War One?.
The war for Italy, although they had won, had not excelled their position in Europe as much as they had anticipated in May 1915 after they made a delayed entrance. Unlike the other allies, Italy suffered a mutilated victory. Economically Italy was in chaos before the war, with unification debts and the debts of the war plus the human cost led to both social and political problems for the Italian government. The economic, social and political problems led to resistance from the workers and uprising amongst other political parties such as the Fascists and the Socialist parties.
By 1919, Italy's national debt had raised form 16 billion lire to 85 billion lire and these vast loans were not even sufficient to pay for the war on top of the arrears they already faced from unification costs. With Italy being seriously in debt, the government saw that they had no other choice but to print more money, this of course led to inflation.
Inflation was indiscriminate, it effected everybody form the factory worker to the factory owner. Inflation destroyed people's savings and purchasing power fell by 25% between 1915 and 1918.
Industrial companies lost their armaments contracts, as there was no longer a need for arms and other machinery, Fiat and Pirelli in particular had done well from these lucrative contracts, but the industry would from end of the war in 1918 struggle economically.
This led to strikes in 1919 in which 1,000,000 participated and a surge of members into socialist trade union from in 1914 50,000 to 250,000 in 1919. Naturally these events did not reflect positively back on the government and they were seen as incompetent on their lack of support for the shop and factory owners who were mainly effected by the riots. In the country the government dismissed concerned landowners when they refused to remove peasants who were illegally occupying farmland.
