Mussolini carried out most of the land reclamation in Italy.

1. Mussolini made land reclamation a signature public project and centralized it

Beginning with the Mussolini Act (law 3134/1928) the regime pursued an integral land-reclamation campaign—bonifica integrale—aimed at draining marshes, fighting malaria and increasing arable land, and it placed expropriations and project management under state authority and agencies like the Opera Nazionale Combattenti to implement and settle reclaimed areas ^{[1] [4] [5]}.

2. The Pontine Marshes became the showcase, not the whole story

The draining and settlement of the Pontine Marshes was the most visible Fascist reclamation, featuring new towns such as Littoria (Littoria/Sabaudia) and major propaganda staging that linked Mussolini’s image to physical transformation, but scholars stress this was a highly curated showcase—important symbolically and locally, not proof of nationwide numerical supremacy in reclamation ^{[2] [6] [3]}.

3. Work increased employment and infrastructure but produced mixed agricultural gains

Fascist projects provided jobs during the Depression and funded roads, canals and settlements while slightly raising cultivated area and grain production; nevertheless, the effectiveness varied by site and many schemes were incomplete before the war, so outcomes were uneven despite considerable public spending and technical investment ^{[7] [8] [9]}.

4. Quantitative claims are disputed and propaganda inflated results

Contemporary and later sources show official Fascist propaganda overstated achievements: for example, reclamation of the Pontine area and other projects were touted as reclaiming vast tracts but measured gains were far smaller than some regime claims—one calculation puts 80,000 hectares reclaimed between 1928–1938 while propaganda suggested much larger fractions of national land ^{[10] [7]}.

5. Reclamation was not unique to Mussolini—there was a long pre-Fascist history

Efforts to drain swamps and reclaim land in Italy predated Mussolini by centuries, with papal and Piedmontese attempts noted in the Pontine area and state schemes before the 1920s; Mussolini expanded and institutionalized reclamation, but he built on pre-existing technical, legal and institutional precedents rather than inventing the practice ^{[3] [6]}.

6. The regime relied on the cooperation—and sometimes expropriation—of landowners and state subsidy

Large-scale reclamation under Fascism often depended on state subsidies and legal mechanisms to compel cooperation or expropriate unproductive land; this meant that the visible accomplishments were as much the product of political power and state financing as of engineering alone ^{[4] [7]}.

7. Legacy: visible landscapes and contested memory, not uncontested numerical dominance

The Fascist period reshaped landscapes and left a durable territorial and urban legacy—new towns, national park creation around reclaimed zones, and reforestation projects—that remain contentious in Italian memory; historians caution that while Mussolini’s campaigns were transformative locally and politically, the evidence does not support the simple claim that he carried out "most" land reclamation in Italy’s long history ^{[1] [2] [3]}.

Conclusion: a qualified rebuttal of the blanket claim

Mussolini centralized and amplified land reclamation in the late 1920s and 1930s, producing high-profile engineering feats and social experiments that had lasting local impact, but the assertion that he carried out most of Italy’s land reclamation ignores prior centuries of efforts, the patchy and uneven results across regions, and the inflationary spin of Fascist propaganda; available scholarly and archival accounts support a conclusion that Mussolini’s regime was a major accelerator and a symbolic author of reclamation, not the sole or numerical majority agent of all Italian reclamation ^{[1] [7] [10] [6]}.