Although this historical photograph and several others like it are authentic, Mussolini's participation in the harvest was staged for propaganda purposes.
A viral photograph claims to show the early 20th-century fascist Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, harvesting wheat in the fields. The photograph, shared on X and Reddit among other social media platforms, shows a shirtless man wearing a cap and goggles while handling stalks of wheat.
(X user @padresj)
The photo went viral in October 2024, ahead of the U.S. presidential elections and after the Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump, staged a photo op serving french fries at a McDonald's in Pennsylvania.
One caption accompanying the photo said, "A staged propaganda photo of facist [sic] leader Benito Mussolini 'harvesting' wheat in 1938."
Another claimed, "In 1938, Benito Mussolini closed off a wheat field & did a photo shoot showing him harvesting hay in order to portray himself as a common working man." Some posts directly compared Trump's photo shoot to Mussolini's.
The image is authentic. Mussolini did indeed participate in a staged wheat-harvesting photo shoot to promote his "battle for wheat" or "battle of grain" initiative. We found numerous similar photographs and footage of him in the wheat fields. The program began in 1925 and continued for more than a decade, though the exact date of this photograph is unclear. We thus rate this claim as true.
We also found the photograph posted on Wikimedia Commons and in Il Mattino, an Italian newspaper, in an article about Mussolini's sex life and his violent tendencies.
It was also available on Bridgeman Images, an archive of historical photographs and fine art. It was described as follows: "Photograph of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) an Italian politician, journalist, leader of the National Fascist Party and Prime Minister of Italy. Dated 20th Century." (Bridgeman Images stated the photograph was from 1940, not 1938, as the above X post claims.)
The image below appears to have been taken in a similar setting as the one in the social media posts above. Per the caption, "The dictator Benito MUSSOLINI, shirtless, reaps wheat with peasants in the 1940's." The image title says the photograph is from 1940.
(Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone/Getty Images)
The caption for the image below states: "Benito Mussolini working alongside Borgo Montello farmers during threshing, wheat festival, Latina, July 9, 1934, Italy, 20th century."
(DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/Getty Images)
Associated Press and British Pathé archival footage from the time covered Mussolini's wheat campaign. The AP footage is from 1928:
British Pathé's video caption noted the event was clearly staged: "MV Benito Mussolini (Il Duce) feeding wheat into the threshing machine. He is helping with the harvest. We see a camera man recording this staged event. Many of the people around the Italian leader are not really dressed for work in the fields. Different angle shot of Il Duce feeding in wheat."
An archival 1928 article republished by The Guardian states how the fascist leader (referred to as "the Duce" or "leader") awarded prizes for wheat production — including to himself:
In the Argentina Theatre at Rome this morning the Duce distributed prizes ranging from £20 to £200 to Italian farmers who had increased the grain output within the past year. Among the names of the £20 prize-winners was that of Benito Mussolini himself, who had tripled the output on his small experimental farm holding in his native village of Carpena, in the province of Forli.
Before the prize-giving Signor Mussolini made a speech which was broadcast over the whole of Italy, and in the course of which he said, amid loud cheers:— "The grain harvest of 1928 reached a total of 62,250,000 quintals, an increase of 10,000,000 quintals over last year's yield. This is a great step in the ultimate victory of the battle of grain by which Italy will eventually be self-supporting."
The Government, said the Duce, had placed agriculture as the first and preferred item in national economy. "Our victory was first of all won by the blood of the peasant, and it is the farming population that constitutes our real army." This speech, following upon the law promulgated last week by which large landowners who will not improve the yield will have their estates expropriated by Government, forms part of the intensive "return to the land" policy on which Fascism has embarked.
Mussolini also imposed a high tariff on imported wheat, and grain prices were kept artificially high. The initiative resulted in more wheat production and had positive long-term effects on industrialization, according to a researcher from the University of Naples. However, according to an archived Time magazine story from 1938, the "battle for wheat" mostly benefited large landowners who could easily sell surplus stocks to the government, while average small farmers barely produced enough for their own needs.