Benito Mussolini summary

Prime minister, the head of government in a country with a parliamentary or semipresidential political system. In such systems, the prime minister—literally the “first,” or most important, minister—must be able to command a continuous majority in the legislature (usually the lower house in a

Axis powers, coalition headed by Germany, Italy, and Japan that opposed the Allied powers in World War II. The alliance originated in a series of agreements between Germany and Italy, followed by the proclamation of an “axis” binding Rome and Berlin (October 25, 1936), with the two powers claiming

Munich Agreement, (September 30, 1938), settlement reached by Germany, Great Britain, France, and Italy that permitted German annexation of the Sudetenland, in western Czechoslovakia. After his success in absorbing Austria into Germany proper in March 1938, Adolf Hitler looked covetously at

Nationalism, ideology based on the premise that the individual’s loyalty and devotion to the nation-state surpass other individual or group interests. This article discusses the origins and history of nationalism to the 1980s. For later developments in the history of nationalism, see 20th-century