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United States President Harry Truman signs the document implementing the North Atlantic Treaty, marking the birth of NATO in August 1949. Italian Charge d'Affairs Mario Lucielli is at the far right. Photo: National Archives.
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Enticed by the potential of territorial rewards and no longer a part of the Triple Alliance (whose dominant powers were Germany and Austria-Hungary), Italy joined the side of the Allied forces during World War I. Yet after the war ended and the spoils were divided, Italy was left with less than had been promised.
Social and political unrest followed and, with it, came the rise of the Fascist party, led by Benito Mussolini. In 1922, with the support of King Victor Emanuel III, Mussolini became Italy's premier. During the 1930s, Mussolini sought to expand Italian power, seizing Ethiopia and Albania and joining forces with Hitler's Nazi Germany. In 1943, following the Allied invasion of Italy, Mussolini was overthrown and jailed, only to be freed by Nazi commandos. In late April 1945, days before the end of World War II, Mussolini was captured and executed by Italian forces, his corpse hung upside-down on display in Milan. Once profoundly popular, his war-mongering left him the most hated man in Italy.
After World War II, the Italian monarchy was on its last legs. The king's support of Mussolini had irrevocably undermined the populace's support for a monarchy. That year, through a plebiscite, the country voted to become a republic. A new constitution was adopted and, in 1946, the nation's first legislative elections were held. The Italian parliament was divided into two houses -- a lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, and an upper house, the Senate. The members of the Chamber of Deputies were determined through proportional representation. The composition of the Senate was determined through a more complicated process that, in practice, amounted to proportional representation.
The three major political parties that emerged in the early years of the Italian republic were the Christian Democrats -- by far the majority -- and the Italian Socialist and Communist parties. Alcide De Gasperi, a Christian Democrat, became the republic's first prime minister, a position he would hold from 1945 to 1953, through eight successive coalition governments. During this period, Italy increasingly aligned itself with the post-war Western powers: In 1949 the nation joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and in 1958 joined the European Economic Community (today, the European Union).
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