Question

Mussolini’s rise to power depended largely on his ability to

Answer 1

First question: he started making alliances after coming to power and a war did happen,  so we have to choose amog the two other options:
 
give powerful and persuasive speeches
create industry and employment where none existed

I find that they're both true and that an even better answer would be that he gave people huge promises of making Italy great again.

If I can choose only one option, then "speeches" is better, since the other one required him to be in power already to do

second question: while the last option did happen, as minorities were persecuted, the major mechanism of keeping the population in control was controlling resistance, so the correct answer is the first one.