From his coming to power in 1922 Mussolini had one clear policy that would play a
             major part in how he ruled Italy for the next twenty one years. His vision was to
             raise Italy's prestige in the eyes of the world and attempt to re -create an empire to
             rival that of Ancient Rome. To achieve this, various policies were introduced to
             revolutionise and influence most parts of Italian Industry and society, in an eventual
             attempt to transform Italy into a self -sufficient nation, from this basis point Mussolini
             could then follow his colonial and imperial ambitions for enlarging the Italian
             empire. However, "opportunities" such as the World War Two soon showed Italy was
             unable to maintain a modern war machine, and this under -preparation clearly had
             it's foundations in various failed economic and social policies that had been
             When Mussolini came to power in 1922 the Italian economy was backward
             compared with the rest of Western Europe, and it's industries, though steadily
             growing, needed development and were centralised in the northern part of the
             country. Indeed half the population still made it's living by farming and agriculture
             and even this was flawed by the fact land was not available for everyone. However,
             Mussolini had little knowledge or interest in the economy as a whole and adopted
             policies that were relatively short -term and aimed at making Italy self -sufficient in
             the event of war. Such policies as the "Battle for wheat" did enjoy some success and
             wheat production had doubled by 1939, however the land used had to be taken from
             traditional growing sites such as olives and fruit which eventually reduced income
             from these products. Mussolini's other major effort for self -sufficiency; the "battle
             for land" was also mostly a failure. Indeed marsh land was reclaimed and provided
             thousands of jobs but the amount of land was limited and the crop output made little
             difference to the...