Giolitti’s Governments introduced universal male suffrage, important labor standards, they proceeded to nationalize the railroads and insurance and worked to reduce government debt and the development of infrastructure. In foreign policy, in addition to continuing its colonial expansion in the Horn of Africa, Italy went to the Triple Entente of France, United Kingdom and Russia.

Italy's position in the First World War was at first neutral, then went into battle alongside the Triple Entente in 1915. To General Luigi Cadorna was given command of the army with the goal of entering Vienna although after initial Italian advance, the Austro-Hungarian soldiers were ordered to dig in and resist.

So we arrive at a war of position similar to the one he was wearing out the troops on the western front: the Italian and Austrian armies faced each other without substantial achievements for the rest of 1915 for everything 1916 and for much of 1917.

On October 24, 1917 the Austro-Hungarian and German broke the front and attacked the Italian army near Caporetto, the defeat was so great that the city's name is still synonymous with defeat and led to the replacement of General Cadorna with Marshal Armando Diaz in the role of Chief of Staff.

Diaz eased the iron discipline imposed by Cadorna and, being now the Italian troops back to the line of the river Piave, there began a military tactic voted to defend the territory more than to undergo unnecessary offensives.

In October 1918, a year after the disaster of Caporetto, departed from Vittorio Veneto the Italian army's offensive. The Austro-Hungarians were now reduced in conditions of great difficulty, the country was on the verge of economic collapse and Italian troops had no great difficulty entering the Veneto and Friuli. On 3 November of that year, in Padua, the Austro-Hungarian Empire signed the armistice and Diaz announced the victory and annexation, as a result, the cities of Rovinj, Porec, Zadar and Rijeka.

The Kingdom of Italy completes its process of reunification through the annexation of Trentino Alto Adige, Venezia Giulia, Istria and some territories of Friuli

After the Great War, the country's position was precarious, the Italian banks were crying poverty and raw materials in short supply.

The general climate of discontent began to spread that was fertile ground for the emergence of movements that did own the ideologies of militarism and social redemption.

In 1919 Benito Mussolini founded in Milan on the first beam of combat, basing the symbolism of the movement on symbols like the skull and black shirt.

Action teams spread in fascist Italy in recent years giving rise to real paramilitary organizations, clashed repeatedly with the Socialists and in 1921 launched the PNF - National Fascist Party, which finally turned the movement into a political party.

In a climate of unpunished violence they themselves had helped to create, the Fascists gained 45 seats in the elections of 1921. Therefore Mussolini began to implement his plans for insurrection against the weak state and at end of October 1922 the Italian Fascist troops, having conquered much of the country, marched on Rome, where the king commissioned Mussolini to form a new government.

Mussolini declared himself dictator quickly and soon were dissolved all not fascist political parties and trade unions, all freedom of press, of assembly and speech was suppressed and the death penalty was reinstated.

The fascist dictatorship faced numerous problems in recent years following the war, including the devaluation of the currency, the heavy debts that plagued Italy and conflictual relationship with the Church, at least in the early years.

During the years of fascist rule, the colonies abroad, and especially Eritrea, were the subject of a strong policy of modernization to help strengthen the consensus that the regime aspired to obtain at home.

In 1938 Hitler's Germany had annexed Austria and was aiming to Czechoslovakia. Mussolini, after conquering Ethiopia, identified the new ideal colony of Italy in Albania, the two signed the Pact of Steel on May 22, 1939 and Europe was prepared to face a new world war.

In 1940 Italy entered the war alongside Germany against France and the United Kingdom.

The incredible successes of Hitler during the 1939 and 1940 had convinced Mussolini that the war would be resolved quickly in favor of German Nazism: Mussolini believed strongly in the victory of Hitler with a kind of blitzkrieg, something that never occurred and the conflict took on global proportions with time.

Italy showed great unpreparedness to face a war so massive and at the end of the conflict in 1945, the country was in critical condition: the fighting and the Allied bombing raids had reduced many cities and villages to rubble, the main streets of communications were interrupted and the territory was occupied by the Anglo-American troops.

After the war, popular discontent against the monarchy was very high so that, on June 2, 1946, an institutional referendum definitively sanctioned the end of it and the birth of the Italian Republic.

The young republic experienced difficult years even if, in the late '50s and the beginning of '60s, Italy witnessed a veritable economic boom, with GDP growth and consumption among the highest ever recorded by the country.

The first President of the Council in 1946, was Alcide De Gasperi and the Italian government, with few exceptions, remained in Democratic hands until 1993.

Starting in 1992, after the political revolution brought about by Clean Hands on the spreading phenomenon of bribery, starts to the so-called period of the Second Republic, in which in Ital, the phenomenon of bipolarity comes up up to the history that characterizes the present days.