Until 1920, the ministry was a stronghold of the upper hierarchy of the Royal Army, who always rejected any form of control by the Parliament of Italy. During the years from 1861 to 1920, the minister usually was a Royal Army general, the office of the Royal Army's chief of the general staff dominated Royal Army policymaking, and civilians rarely had much of a say in the Royal Army's affairs. If anything, Italy's participation in World War I(May 1915–November 1918) increased the general staff's dominance within the ministry. When Ivanoe Bonomi became Minister of War in the Fifth Giolitti government in 1920, however, he introduced a reform of the military system which took his name and reduced the powers of the office of the chief of the general staff.[2]
Under the fascist government of Prime MinisterBenito Mussolini, Mussolini himself served as the Minister of War from 1925 to 1929 and from 1933 to 25 July 1943, delegating its ordinary management to a Royal Army general, who he appointed as undersecretary of state. The Mussolini government made changes to the Ministry of War's responsibilities during the mid-1920s. On 30 August 1925, it split off the Ministry of War's oversight of aviation activities into a new Ministry of Aeronautics, reflecting the transformation of the Ministry of War's Commissariat for Aeronautics into the new Regia Aeronautica ("Royal Air Force") in 1923.[3] With the "Mussolini Order" of 1926, oversight of the Royal Corps of Colonial Troops (Italian: Regio Corpo Truppe Coloniali, or RCTC) in the colonies of the Italian Empire moved from the Ministry of War to the Ministry of the Colonies.
In 1946, the Italian Republic replaced the Kingdom of Italy. Under the republic, the Ministry of War exercised oversight of what was now known as the Italian Army (Italian: Esercito Italiano).
