Benito Mussolini's Rise and Fall to Power Benito Mussolini had a large impact on World War II. He wasn't always a powerful dictator though. At first he was a school teacher and a socialist journalist. He later married Rachele Guide and had 5 children. He was the editor of the Avanti, which was a socialist party newspaper in Milan. Benito Mussolini founded the "Fasci di Combattimento" on March of 1919. "This was a nationalistic, anti liberal, and anti socialist movement. This movement attracted mainly the lower middle class."1 Fascism was spreading across Europe. Mussolini was winning sympath