Publicly, it was patriotism that prompted his return to Italy in 1915, although in private, his love affair with his leading soprano, Geraldine Farrar, had reached a crisis point from which Italy was the only escape. On his return he devoted himself selflessly to the war effort, despite an over-zealous patriotism and a refusal to submit to the Italian government's ban on German music.

His third and final period at La Scala was marked by a rise in the conductor's stature, which, by this point, even outshone his singers'. Forming a new orchestra of a hundred players and a chorus of 120, he reorganised the opera house, had the stage and auditorium reconstructed and, whilst the work was being completed, embarked on a punishing tour of Italy, the USA and Canada, conducting a staggering 137 concerts in a gruelling schedule that averaged approximately five concerts per week. His reign was sealed with a triumphant tour of Vienna and Berlin in 1929, where the Scala company performed to packed houses and critical acclaim. Only one voice of dissent arose against his otherwise unchallenged authority over operatic and orchestral repertoire, that of Wilhelm Furtwängler:

'In contrast to Nikish, he has no innate manual talent…The size of his beat in the f is such that it makes any differentiation impossible…these tuttis are all the same…I do not hold taking the conductor all too seriously as a person. It is of no consequence whether or not he is disciplined, whether or not he looks good.'
Wilhelm Furtwängler: Notebooks 1924-54 transl. Shaun Whiteside, ed. Michael Tanner, London, 1989, 45-46

That same year saw his resignation from La Scala: his own exhaustion (he was 62) and his frustration at never being able to realise his operatic ideals were combined with a growing dissatisfaction of Italy's Fascist regime, one which, although initially attractive, remained one of the few organisations that could successfully challenge his authority.

Unlike many musicians, Il Duce's oratory had failed to win over Toscanini. Initially, Mussolini had appeared little more than a good-humoured cad who offered post-war Italy a sense of discipline, a persona to whose ideals Toscanini was quite sympathetic. It was not until after his blackshirts swarmed onto the streets in 1919 that the conductor turned away from Mussolini's political rabble-rousing; by the time of the 1922 coup, he had become Mussolini's mortal enemy: 'If I were capable of killing a man, I would kill Mussolini', he claimed on the day that the blackshirts seized power. He soon fell foul of New Italy's system: entering the Scala pit for the final act of Falstaff on 2 December 1922, he ignored calls from the audience to play the Fascist hymn La Giovinezza; as the audience's persistence grew, Toscanini broke his baton and stalked out. To restore order, the Scala's management promised that the hymn would be played after the final curtain and, although Toscanini returned, he refused to conduct it or allow his cast to join in with the singing. In another instance, Mussolini announced his intention to attend the 1924 opening of Puccini's Turandot and insisted that the Giovinezza be played upon his arrival. Again Toscanini refused and, although Mussolini backed down, on his next visit to La Scala he subjected the maestro to a private haranguing. Controlling his temper, Toscanini said nothing, since, for musicians, the cost of dissent was already high: a year after his resignation from La Scala, he went to Bologna to conduct two concerts in memory of his friend, the composer Giuseppe Martucci. Again he was told that he would have to conduct the Giovinezza, again he refused and a compromise was reached whereby a local band would play the anthem in the foyer. However, on reaching the artists' entrance, he was accosted by a group of youths who wanted to know whether he was going to play their anthem. On hearing him say he would not, he was attacked and beaten; Toscanini was bundled away to his hotel where his wounds were tended. An uproar followed, with hundreds of blackshirts shouting outside his hotel window. Respighi was sent out to mediate, but to no avail - Toscanini had to leave Bologna before dawn. On his return home, he complained to Mussolini, whose own reaction was to confiscate his passport and place him under virtual house arrest. Italy's artistic and political community felt the backlash of the outrage that followed: Serge Koussevitsky cancelled his forthcoming concerts at La Scala, Fritz Reiner walked out of a rehearsal in Milan to visit the maestro and thousands of messages of support were delivered to his door. The restrictions were soon lifted, but, whilst Mussolini still lived, Toscanini was not to perform again in Italy.

If his hatred of Mussolini was passionate, it found new heights when it came to the Nazis. Whilst Strauss and Karajan rode on the back of Hitler's regime, Toscanini withdrew from performing any concerts in Germany and, after the Anschluss, in Austria. He openly supported the formation of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra, which he conducted in 1937, signed petitions and raised money for refugees.

Throughout this period, he kept his transatlantic connexions: after two seasons as a guest conductor in New York he was put in charge of the newly-reorganised orchestra, an amalgamation of the Philharmonic and Symphony orchestras. There he remained until 1936, taking the orchestra to new heights of perfection in what has been described as the zenith of his personal career. When the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) offered him a 92-man orchestra with an annual salary of $50,000 and an exclusive recording contract with RCA, he couldn't resist. It was to become Toscanini's main orchestra for the next seventeen years, touring extensively across both South and North America; unlike Stokowski, whose name was becoming inexorably lined with popular classics, Toscanini was portrayed as the thinking man's musician. His recordings almost carried a seal of worthiness, a sign of cultural value for the would-be intelligentsia that formed the backbone of America's middle classes. He twice hit the front cover of Time and, although only polling a sixth of Bob Hope's radio audience, polled twice the ratings of any other conductor.

He returned to Milan in triumph in 1946 to inaugurate the newly rebuilt Scala with a concert of Italian music and continued to return to Italy to conduct until his retirement, after a concert with the NBC in April 1954. He died in New York, two months short of his 90th birthday in 1957.

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