Short answers, pulled from the story.
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement that rose to prominence in early-twentieth-century Europe. It is characterized by support for a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, and a belief in natural social hierarchy. It stands opposed to communism, democracy, liberalism, pluralism, and socialism.
The Italian term fascismo derives from fascio, meaning bundle of sticks, ultimately from the Latin fasces. The fascists linked it to the ancient Roman fascio littorio, a bundle of rods tied around an axe carried by a magistrate's lictors. The symbolism suggested strength through unity, since a single rod breaks easily but a bundle does not.
Benito Mussolini said the Fasces of Revolutionary Action were founded in Italy in 1915, and the term fascism was first used that year by its members. In 1919 Mussolini founded the Italian Fasces of Combat in Milan, which became the National Fascist Party two years later.
On the 24th of October 1922 Mussolini ordered Blackshirts to converge on Rome in the event known as the March on Rome. King Victor Emmanuel III, judging the risk of bloodshed too high, appointed Mussolini as Prime Minister, and he arrived on the 30th of October to accept. On the 3rd of January 1925 Mussolini proclaimed himself dictator of Italy.
Historian Ian Kershaw compared defining fascism to nailing jelly to the wall, because each group called fascist has unique elements and definitions are often criticized as too broad or too narrow. The new consensus of Stanley Payne, Roger Griffin, and Roger Eatwell centered on the myth of national rebirth, called palingenesis, but other scholars disputed it and some, like John Lukacs, denied that generic fascism exists at all.
On the 28th of April 1945 Mussolini was executed by Italian communist partisans, and Hitler died by suicide on the 30th of April. From November 1945 through 1949 the Nuremberg trials convicted Nazi leaders of war crimes. Since 1945 fascism has been largely disgraced, with the terms neo-fascist and post-fascist applied to later movements such as Greece's Golden Dawn.