Mussolini's fascism and Hitler's Nazism were both totalitarian and anti-democratic, but their ideological cores differed. Mussolini's doctrine centered on the state as the absolute—the nation as a spiritual and political unity, with the individual existing only within it. Hitler's Nazism was built on racial-biological hierarchy, with the Aryan race and antisemitism as its organizing principles. Mussolini came to power first, in 1922, and his regime became a model for Hitler's. Despite later alliance, Mussolini privately viewed Nazism as crude and overly racialized, and their relationship was often fraught with rivalry.

'The Doctrine of Fascism' was published in 1932 in the Enciclopedia Italiana and attributed to Mussolini, but the primary author was Giovanni Gentile, the philosopher who served as Mussolini's minister of education. Gentile provided the systematic philosophical framework—actual idealism, the ethical state, the rejection of individualism—while Mussolini contributed the political rhetoric and authority. The essay functioned as an official statement of fascist ideology rather than a work of original philosophical inquiry. Mussolini's personal role in drafting it was more supervisory than authorial, though he approved and sanctioned every claim.

The March on Rome was not the armed conquest Mussolini later celebrated. In late October 1922, thousands of Blackshirts gathered outside the capital, but they faced little resistance. King Victor Emmanuel III refused to sign a state-of-siege order, and the government resigned. Mussolini, waiting in Milan, was invited to form a cabinet on October 29 and arrived in Rome by train the next day. It was a transfer of power within the constitutional framework, made possible by the monarchy's capitulation to fascist intimidation. Mussolini then staged a triumphant parade to create the myth of a revolutionary seizure.

The corporate state was Mussolini's flagship economic institution, designed to replace class conflict with state-supervised cooperation between employers and workers. Through the National Council of Corporations, established in the late 1920s and formalized in 1934, representatives of capital and labor were organized into sectoral bodies under state arbitration. In practice, the system favored employers, suppressed independent unions, and gave the state control over wages and working conditions. It did not produce the promised harmony or economic dynamism. Mussolini called corporativism 'super-capitalism,' and critics saw it as a mechanism for disciplining labor rather than genuine economic coordination.

The 'Mussolini made the trains run on time' myth is one of the most persistent pieces of fascist propaganda. While Italian railways did improve in the late 1920s under Fascist management, the claim was vastly exaggerated by regime publicity. Historians note that punctuality statistics were often manipulated, and the improvements reflected broader modernization rather than uniquely fascist efficiency. The phrase itself likely originated as a foreign observation that Mussolini's defenders embraced. More importantly, the myth serves as a rhetorical device to suggest that authoritarian efficiency justifies the loss of liberty—a claim the regime's violent repression fundamentally undermines.

Mussolini's fascism was neither laissez-faire capitalism nor socialism; it was a third position that subordinated the economy to state power. Private property and profit were retained, but markets were heavily regulated, independent unions were banned, and employers' associations were folded into state-controlled corporations. Mussolini rejected classical liberalism's separation of economy and state, arguing that production existed to serve the nation's power and demographic destiny. In 'The Doctrine of Fascism,' he explicitly opposed both socialism and 'classical liberalism,' claiming that fascism 'reasserts the rights of the State.' In practice, the regime coexisted with big business while disciplining labor.

The Lateran Treaty of 1929 resolved the decades-long standoff between Italy and the Vatican. Mussolini, though personally anticlerical, recognized the political value of reconciliation with the Catholic Church. The treaty established Vatican City as a sovereign state, recognized Catholicism as Italy's official religion, and paid compensation for the papacy's loss of the Papal States. In return, the Church agreed to stay out of politics. The agreement gave Mussolini enormous legitimacy among devout Italians. Relations later soured over Fascist racial laws and the regime's growing ties to Nazi Germany, but the Lateran Treaty remained in effect long after Mussolini's fall.