Shortly after replacing Francesco Ercole as the minister of national education in January 1935, Cesare Maria De Vecchi di Val Cismon addressed the regime’s finance committee about his ministry’s budget. Of utmost importance to De Vecchi in this presentation was to remind his fellow Fascists of the education system’s extraordinary significance in the greater Fascist project. What was this project in the thirteenth year of Mussolini’s revolution? As the minister declared, it was, and always would be, imperial. Of course, this in and of itself was “not a new or revolutionary affirmation, nor [was] it merely a rhetorical and sterile exaltation of racial pride.” It was a return to the essence of the Italian civilization, which was why “all of our spiritual strength revolves around the unfaltering cornerstone of romanità, a cornerstone that is unfailingly imperial.”1 The MEN found itself at the center of this mission, he continued, as “school is the meat of the meat and the blood of the blood of the state. It is the state itself.”2 It had the essential task of preparing Benito Mussolini’s children to seize their imperial destiny. Given the immense value of this undertaking, it was imperative that the regime extended its funding of the ministry and all of its auxiliary organizations, as a “warrior’s education cannot actually begin simply with one particular discipline. . . . The duty and honor of the school is the complete formation of new Italians, making the Italian, the son of Rome, spring from its civil, political, and military education.”3
De Vecchi’s appointment to the MEN and his perspective on the role of the education system in Fascism’s undertaking illuminate much about the political and pedagogical moment of 1935: Italy’s renewal of the Roman Empire was at hand. Like many of Mussolini’s later education ministers, De Vecchi had no background in pedagogy or education policy. However, he did have credentials that were much more valued at this point: he was a Fascist of the first hour and an experienced colonial bureaucrat.4 A veteran of the Great War, the lawyer from Piedmont had joined the Fascist squads during the earliest days of the movement, and in 1922 he marched into Rome alongside Mussolini as one of his quadrumvirate. The four men honored with such membership—De Vecchi, along with Michele Bianchi, Emilio De Bono, and Italo Balbo—were considered Mussolini’s four most trusted colleagues, and each subsequently became a foundational member of the regime. For his part, De Vecchi spent much of the 1920s as the governor of Italian Somaliland; after the historic signing of the Lateran Pacts in 1929, he became Italy’s first official ambassador to the Holy See.5 He would serve as the minister of national education for less than two years (1935–36), but the placement of one of the Duce’s most trusted generals and colonial officials as the nation’s chief pedagogue reflected the regime’s demand for an educational system that could mold and mobilize a race of imperial soldiers. In the words of one historian, he was considered to have the military style inherent in true Fascism.6
Since the Fascists’ rise to power in 1922, international relations had played an important role in the regime’s development; but as some historians have argued, the state focused much more of its attention during the 1920s and early 1930s on domestic and colonial affairs. The regime’s confrontation with Adolf Hitler’s speedy rise to power in 1933 and his rapid implementation of an aggressive racial campaign, however, could only have demonstrated to Mussolini the continuing need to impress Italy’s inherent grandeur on the world.7 From the Italian perspective, many of the comments Mussolini and the PNF made about race and the racial makeup of the Italian nation in the 1930s could be read in conversation with their German counterparts.8
What most obviously differentiated Nazi racism from Fascist racism in the mid-1930s was its racial categorization of Germans as Aryans, Nordics, and, well, Germans. More significantly, however, Nazi racists placed priority on the argument that somatic characteristics were the manifestation of mental and moral characteristics; they believed one could identify the nature of an individual—or an entire group—with a glance. Such connections between physical and moral or intellectual attributes allowed Nazis to develop a much more superficial racial campaign. That is, external traits—as opposed to Fascism’s more nebulous spiritual traits—supposedly became the chief measure of German racial fitness. Of course, the fact that many of these physical characteristics—most notably of Jews—were invented meant that the Nazi regime had many of the same difficulties distinguishing Germans from non-Germans that the Fascist regime did within Italy. Finally, Nazi racism diverged dramatically from its Fascist counterpart with its determination to purge German racial weaknesses through negative eugenic policies, such as sterilization and euthanasia, and not simply through positive, pronatalist initiatives.9
Nevertheless, one must not place too much responsibility for Mussolini’s decisions in the hands of Hitler—or global politics and personalities more generally—as it risks eclipsing the role of Fascism’s long-standing racial and imperial objectives and the evolution of the regime’s efforts to realize them. The expansion of the Italian nation-state and the creation of a second Roman Empire were critical components of the regime’s racial project as clear evidence of Italians’ military, political, and racial strength. More to the point, a well-developed belief in racism and its corollary of a racial hierarchy was an essential prerequisite of the Fascist, or indeed any, modern imperial mission. An active imperialist campaign only served to reinforce those beliefs. Thus, a successful colonial undertaking in the Kingdom of Ethiopia, ruled since 1930 by Haile Selassie I, presented the ideal next step in the state’s resolution to intensify the Fascist racial campaign.
Fascists had worked to establish a martial and imperial ethos within Italians from Mussolini’s initial ascension to power. Still, the period between 1934 and 1936 witnessed a surge in efforts to shape a disciplined race that could accomplish two interrelated goals at the heart of the Fascist undertaking: the expansion of the kingdom’s borders and the reestablishment of Italy as one of the world’s greatest powers. The accomplishment of the first goal was necessary in order to achieve the second; but in order to achieve either of them, the Italian race as a whole needed to embody the greatest strengths of italianità. Ferdinando Loffredo, a rising star in Fascist eugenics, defined Fascism as “a revolution that is creating, and wants firmly to impose on the world, a new civilization. It is a revolution that works in a country for which the people constitutes the greatest wealth.”10 Shaping the population—its “greatest wealth”—to personify the ideals of that new civilization was the most essential step toward expanding the race and Fascism beyond the confines of the Italian nation-state. And as Mussolini saw the opportunity to establish a second Roman Empire loom before him in the mid-1930s, completing the prerequisite of creating an orderly, united, and powerful race of New Italians became increasingly urgent.
The educational efforts of Fascism’s first twelve years had established the infrastructural and ideological framework to cultivate Italian children aware of and actively embodying the cultural, spiritual, and physical attributes of their race. They had concentrated on developing this sense of racial unity and superiority among those individuals who were positively designated as Italians. In other words, the regime had been more concerned with clarifying who was Italian than who was not Italian. As part of this goal, it had been the obligation of the education system to help young Italians define and embrace their racial entitlement to empire. However, the Duce’s mounting impatience for greater international prominence required an intensified effort in this campaign to strengthen the Italian race. Such escalation demanded the continued promotion of the increase and improvement of Italians but also a critical demonstration of their dominance over enemies and inferior societies.11
Of course, the Fascist Revolution always had enemies. In the early years of Fascism, its prime targets were political anti-Fascists—above all Socialists and Communists but also Liberals and Masons. And while those enemies were targeted throughout the Fascist era—as well as a growing list of others, such as homosexuals, Slavs, alcoholics, religious minorities, and other enemies of Fascistization—by the mid-1930s the regime also increasingly turned its attention to the identification of individuals and groups it designated as “foreign,” “bourgeois,” and marshaled against Italy’s rise to political, economic, cultural, and racial primacy.12 By this point, foreignness applied to homosexuals, Roma, Slavs, unmarried adults, and immigrants within Italy’s boundaries that affected the quality of the population just as much as to individuals and groups living outside the nation. Nonetheless, increasing an Italian colonial presence outside the peninsula would further help delineate the characteristics that unified Italians and demonstrate their superiority over others.
Unquestionably, the pedagogical decisions of the second half of the 1930s built on those of the 1920s and early 1930s. Still, the policies and rhetoric of the period between 1934 and 1936 experienced significant radicalization amid the heightening sense of urgency to answer supposed domestic needs and foreign threats, especially in light of the global economic depression that had shocked much of Europe in the years since late 1929. In particular, the educational initiatives that Ministers Ercole and De Vecchi established between 1934 and 1936 aimed to expand the regime’s totalitarian project even further and to train Mussolini’s children to take part in the nation’s impending seizure and subsequent protection of the second Roman Empire.
The institutional and pedagogical modifications of this period by and large reflected the slogan Libro e moschetto, fascista perfetto, which was increasingly central to youth education in these years. Awkwardly translated as “a book and a rifle make a perfect Fascist,” the phrase succinctly conveyed the two broad categories of education Mussolini’s children were meant to receive in preparation for their roles as the leaders, providers, protectors, and mothers of a second, Fascist, Roman Empire: intellectual understanding and physical preparedness. As one writer explained in a 1936 article, students were meant to develop a “sense of national pride and, above all, love of Fatherland that would make one willing to sacrifice and dedicate oneself completely to the security, strength, and power of the Motherland [Madre-Patria] according to the increasingly realistic concept that the nation was an impending force of expansion in the world.”13 The educational policies of these years continued to increase state control over the development of young Italians, especially with the growth of the ERR and the 1935 institution of the Fascist Saturday. Additionally, the elementary curriculum further increased its emphasis on expanding the Italian race and Fascism abroad, primarily in the form of imperialism; and the ONB expanded its efforts to prepare young Italians militarily for their inevitable conquest and control of a second Roman Empire. All of these adjustments to the elementary education of Mussolini’s children conformed to a more definitive and aggressive set of racial characteristics. Still, these maneuvers in no way represented changes of direction in the Fascist mission. On the contrary, this period of increased militarization and aggression represented an intensification of Fascist campaigns that educational policies and texts had framed since 1922.
The author of a 1936 curricular guide for rural schools introduced his material to readers by reminding them that Mussolini taught Italians about “the experience of the civilizing mission” and the purpose of “a new Italy, a greater Italy” by way of the classroom.14 While the efforts to instill a “colonial mentality” in Italian students had punctuated Fascist education for the entirety of Mussolini’s rule, by 1934 they had visibly appropriated a front seat in Mussolini’s national and racial projects. If he was to conquer a second Roman Empire, the Duce needed to ensure a popular acceptance of the race’s imperial imperative; as such, he intended for his young students to absorb their lessons and then share them with family and community members. The regime believed that students, more than anyone else, could influence the spirits of their elders with their admirable examples, especially within the nation’s more inaccessible peasant populations.15 Thus, developing acceptance of the Fascist imperial program among elementary students was an essential step in creating an imperialist Italian nation-state and race. Consequently, Ercole and De Vecchi’s reform efforts focused on increasing access to the state’s imperial messages.
Of utmost importance in this mission, therefore, was the continued expansion of educational resources in rural Italy. To that end, in 1935 the ONB announced its determination to ensure the availability of fourth-grade classes in all rural schools under its jurisdiction.16 In theory, the MEN—and the MPI before it—had long required rural schools to have all five elementary grades available to its students. Until 1935, however, the obligation largely remained limited to paper. One contributor to the Annals of Elementary Instruction, Renato Marzolo, emphasized the practical advantages of expanded schools, writing, “Families now have the option to leave their young children in school and entrust them to older students for a longer period of time,” allowing parents more time to work for the good of the nation, free of child-rearing obligations. More important to the Fascist project of developing New Italians, Marzolo explained that the “institution of the fourth grade has also shown itself to be very useful for reinforcing the lessons taught in the lower grades and entrenching in students the habit of reading books and newspapers, even without the guidance of their teacher.”17 Once again, the longer the state could maintain regulated influence over its student population, the greater the likelihood that Fascist lessons were learned and Fascist habits were established.
With like purpose, the educational programming of the ERR began in earnest in 1935.18 Another article in the Annals of Elementary Instruction announced that the ERR had already distributed 4,563 radios across the nation as of February 1935, which, according to the author’s mathematics, made its programs available to an impressive 1,069,351 students. While the accuracy of those numbers is questionable—they suggest that each radio was accessible to an average of 234 students—state statistics collected in 1976 claim the state budget for radio programming in Italy almost doubled between 1936 and 1940, from 697,062 to 1,329,723 lire.19 Such an increase in spending clearly indicates the rising importance and use of radio broadcasting in the ever-expanding Fascist propaganda machine during the second half of the 1930s.20 The ambition of the ERR, the author of the Annals of Elementary Instruction article reminded his readers, was to help the rural masses realize they were “the beating heart of the Fatherland.” Once the state had rid the peasant population of any “feeling of isolation” or inferiority in relation to the nation’s urban populations, he explained, it would comprehend its immense value to Italy and Fascism’s project to create a second Roman Empire.21
The state’s attention to the spread of a technological and bureaucratic infrastructure throughout the nation did not exclude a continued reverence for agricultural life. Much like officials in other parts of Europe, such as Germany, France, and many of the new nation-states in southeastern Europe, Fascist educators and politicians persisted in encouraging Italians to move back to the countryside and embrace the agricultural heritage of the fatherland and therefore some of the deepest roots of italianità.22 And as elementary school acted as a crucible in which the raw and precious inheritance of the Italian youth became refined and strengthened, one pedagogical article reminded its readers, “Where a rural school emerges, clean, spacious, cheerful . . . it raises a beacon of civilization; it firmly plants a sentinel of the New Italy.”23 The real concern for the rural population, therefore, stemmed from the regime’s increasing desire to have all Italians receive the same information—that is, to control, more and more, the substance of each and every child’s education. While the administration had to rely on teachers and their individual personalities for a great majority of lessons, it fought to make the input—and then the output—of the schools as uniform as possible. The expansion of educational radio programming was a logical result of this impulse.24
Further supporting these totalitarian aims, state textbooks continued to pull away from regionally specific lessons and aimed to present a single national curriculum. Occasional lessons in local dialect, tradition, or history still emerged from regional versions of the texts, but overall the material focused far more on nationally unifying factors. In particular, the campaign to make the national language predominant among Italians persisted; as Carmela Toscano succinctly explained to her Balilla and Piccole Italiane readers, a shared language “tightens the bonds of solidarity and makes one more strongly feel love for the country.”25 Of course, language was only one manifestation of the Italian racial character, and similar efforts in the fields of history and culture were likewise directed toward Italians’ unifying racial features.
To the occasional complaint that a national textbook was not useful in a country with such dramatic regional diversity, the Fascist pedagogue and head elementary school inspector for the MEN Piero Bargellini declared, “Every man has a core of humanity that does not change with variations in countryside; he has a core that does not alter even with the changing of historical events; he has a spiritual foundation that he never loses.”26 Bargellini continued, evoking the dangers of liberal Europe and Communist Russia, “Every initiative that comes from Rome must have a universal character. Without this character, the Roman initiatives and missions do not mean anything more than those from Paris or Russia.” With its national uniformity, the state textbook “overcomes all of the complaisance of folklore, all of its psychological preciousness, all of its descriptive laziness and environmental particularities.”27 Again, if the Duce was to create a second Roman Empire, he needed to create a united home front, spiritually as well as politically. Only then could Italians truly prove their racial supremacy over all other peoples.
In addition to the state textbooks and radio transmissions, the regime encouraged the publication of multiple new national youth-oriented periodicals to inform student populations of events and issues of national concern. While Fascist Youth (Gioventù fascista), a bimonthly magazine of the PNF, had been published since 1930, it was geared toward an older student readership. The weekly magazine Il Balilla, founded early in 1934, became a much more important and prominent publication for the younger, primary school–aged readership. According to reports in the official bulletin from the MEN, each issue contained illustrations, photos, and descriptions of recent Fascist achievements, current events, historical vignettes, and national hagiography. The publication was, Minister Ercole explained, crafted with “a pure spirit of italianità” and would therefore be an essential resource for elementary educators taking on the “lofty mission of the spiritual formation of the Fascist youth.”28 The ministry, on behalf of the regime, highly desired its wide distribution, and multiple announcements in MEN bulletins expressed the strong suggestion for elementary schools to subscribe.29 In theory, such resources would inform students about their nation-state and race, as well as the world around them, making them aware, in the words of historian Benedict Anderson, “of the hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people in their particular language-field,” strengthening the entity of “the nationally imagined community.”30 In turn, these readers would feel more personally connected to the goals and demands of the Fascist state and, of particular concern to this chapter, the conquest and protection of a second Roman Empire.
A much more sweeping and far-reaching initiative with similar intent was the mid-1935 creation of the Fascist Saturday (sabato fascista). With this reform, the national workweek officially ended at lunchtime on Saturday. Thereafter, all Italians were to partake in one of the multitude of Fascist extracurricular organizations that most commonly put them in contact with the rifles that were becoming a growing presence in daily life. In terms of Fascist elementary students, they were to report to their section of Balilla or Piccole Italiane for various “instructional activities,” principally military education.31 Because membership in the ONB organizations was still officially voluntary, the regime placed growing pressure on teachers to enlist students in their ranks.32 Of course, obtaining student subscriptions was also purely “voluntary,” but a teacher’s ability to increase the numbers of ONB members among his or her students was prominently mentioned in annual reviews.33
During these Saturday afternoon meetings, children took part in athletic competitions and local parades, visited local exhibitions, participated in community service and commemorations, and departed for camping trips and other outings. As one fourth grader, Antonio, wrote in his school diary in April 1939, the Fascist Saturdays were when “we learn to be real Italian Fascists and to follow the orders of the Duce, above all by studying and being proud in the face of those who threaten our dear and beautiful Fatherland.”34 Italians were to be Fascist at all times, and the Fascist Saturday ensured that the regime could monitor even more of the time spent outside of school.
With these changes to the ever-expanding educational infrastructure of Fascist Italy, the regime increasingly ensured the distribution of those books and rifles that were so necessary to the development of Mussolini’s New Italians. Of course, supplying all Italian children with the basic materials for their Fascist transformation was only the first step; the messages and training that went along with those resources would determine the quality of their racial rejuvenation.
Embracing the idea that Fascists needed to be educated both mentally and physically to meet the global demands of a superior Italian race, educators first needed to inculcate faith in the need for a second Roman Empire. As De Vecchi proclaimed to Italian children at the end of the 1934–35 school year, they needed to work “Romanly” (romamente) for the nation and race: “As you already know, [to work] Romanly means [to work] like those who desire to work, who know what they want for themselves and for Italy, and who do not fear fighting one or all in order to conquer their destiny.”35 The general themes of elementary textbooks geared toward developing New Italians who would work Romanly did not much change in the mid-1930s. They continued to underscore connections between ancient Rome and modern Italy, the religious and secular heroes of Italian history, the great and small achievements of the Fascist regime, the physical characteristics of the nation-state, and the equation of the New Italian with the faithful Fascist.36 Additionally, however, texts demonstrated the increased attention and significance placed on teaching students about Fascist aims outside the borders of the Italian peninsula and islands, as well as the heightened emphasis on the persecution Italy had suffered and continued to suffer at the hands of foreign powers.
Reflecting this sharpened focus on the extramural ambitions of the regime, textbooks expanded the number of lessons and vignettes on Fascist goals for national autarky, irredentism, and colonialism. The first order of business was to stress the continuity of Mussolini’s goals for the Italian race and nation-state—that is, to show that the present aims of the regime had always been considerations of the Duce. In 1935 the author Giuglielmo Strata explained to young members of the ONB that national expansion had been one of Mussolini’s lifelong goals. According to Strata, Mussolini had traveled and worked abroad as a young adult in order to learn about different peoples and cultures but was ultimately expelled because of his strong irredentist views.37 Regardless of the inaccuracy of such a narrative, its critical message lay in its emphasis on the Duce’s selfless efforts for national redemption, even at a young age. More generally, Strata’s anecdote asserted that the increased Fascist stress on the expansion of Italy’s borders echoed the regime’s long-term ambitions.
As part of this larger campaign, educators were also tasked with demonstrating Italy’s entitlement to the irredentist regions of Trentino-Alto Adige and Venezia Giulia, as well as Dalmatia, after the Great War. Again according to Strata, until their “return” to the fatherland, the spiritually—racially—Italian residents of those regions had suffered under foreign oppression.38 The power of this rhetoric was twofold. First, it presented postwar irredentism as a continuation of the Risorgimento and its mission to unify the disparate regions of the nation.39 Second, it clearly identified Italians as needing to protect themselves against aggressive, foreign enemies. Nationalist and irredentist content had been present in educational texts prior to and throughout the Fascist era, but the new thrust of these pieces lay in the predominantly negative portrayal of other European powers in contrast to the benevolent—even altruistic—aspirations of the Fascist regime.
Beyond educating Italian children of the need to reclaim “Italian” lands from foreign occupiers, elementary education of the mid-1930s had the goal of clarifying the state’s mission to reappropriate a more significant imperial—and not just national—presence in the Western world as part of the Italian race’s birthright. Italy had maintained African colonies in East Africa since the 1880s and further established its authority in Africa after the 1912 takeover of Libya from the Ottoman Empire. However, these three colonies combined were apparently not noteworthy enough to allow Mussolini’s claim of commanding an Italian empire. To achieve such an appellation, Italians needed to show clear dominance over the last remaining autonomous kingdom on the continent of Africa: Ethiopia. Italy’s elementary textbooks, pedagogical journals, and student assignments argued that such a conquest would prove to the world the Fascist nation-state’s military, political, and racial preeminence.40
Especially important to a regime preoccupied with its place in history, such an enterprise would lead to national and racial vindication for the historic embarrassment incurred at Adwa in 1896. This battle, which cost the Italian military and state much more in pride than financial and personal losses could indicate, was the only successful attempt in modern history of an African power to keep European forces from occupying its land.41 A Fascist victory over the same kingdom thus had the potential to confirm Italians’ military and racial prowess. The cover of one student copybook drove home this imperative with the illustration of a Fascist soldier picking up a rifle from the skeleton of a countryman collapsed next to a tombstone inscribed “Adwa, March 1, 1896.” Above, a quote from Mussolini declared, “We have old and new debts to settle: we will settle them.”42 Just as important, an Italian rout of Ethiopia’s forces in the 1930s would definitively prove Fascism’s might in an area where Italy’s former Liberal state had clearly and utterly failed, further proving Mussolini’s overwhelming value to the Italian nation and race.
A military campaign against the Kingdom of Ethiopia would also nourish the long-standing Fascist principle that struggle actively unified the Italian race; a collective battle against an other provided a perfect opportunity for the race to further define italianità.43 Educational texts increasingly distinguished Italy from other nations and races through terms of inferiority and superiority; one text reminded members of the ONB of the much-revered nineteenth-century nationalist Alfredo Oriani, who declared, “The superiority of our razza awards Mediterranean Italy . . . a predominance over those of France and Spain.”44 A published letter from an elementary school student to Rodolfo Graziani—the general in charge of the southern campaign in the 1935–36 Italo-Ethiopian War—reflected the value of such sentiments in a war for an Italian empire. In an effort to motivate Graziani to continue his work, young Filomena Boffoli explained:
The foreigners who are jealous of us try in vain to starve us with their sanctions, but they don’t know that they cannot subdue a brave people, a great people, without great difficulty. No one can conquer us because the Italian army is united, ready at a nod from the Duce. The sanctionist nations say that they are civilized, but if they truly were, they would not have applied sanctions to a people that marches to Ethiopia, a barbaric and primitive land, to liberate the poor slaves from the yoke of their leaders. But as long as we have intrepid generals like you, for whom nothing is impossible, we will not fear the sanctionists or the barbaric Abyssinians.45
The sense of pride, outrage, and entitlement in this short letter reflected perfectly the emotions that the Fascist government desired of its people—toward Ethiopians and anyone else who stood in Italy’s way.
The successful conquest of Ethiopia would officially allow Mussolini to initiate the era of a second Roman Empire and expand Italian influence abroad; a resurrection of the great Roman Empire would plainly illustrate the racial, economic, and political strength of Fascist Italy to all.46 In addition to proving and enhancing Italian racial superiority domestically, Fascism’s imperial project had the critical aim of demonstrating Italian supremacy abroad. At the very roots of the Fascist Revolution was a search for national respect—and fear—from the international community; in light of this objective, the aim of the mid-1930s was to give the world concrete examples of Italian strength. Giovanni Gregorio, writing in Fascist Youth early in 1935, explained that imperialism was the most powerful expression of an expanding state and that “all strong peoples have wanted and created empires.” In short, the Fascist state was obliged to create an empire. He continued, “The strength of its ideas; the intelligence of its leaders; the needs of the nation; the traditions and geographic position of Rome; the discipline and military power of the young generations; the genius of the Duce—these are the . . . reasons for believing in this superior civilization.”47 Of course, it could only be a superior nation, led by a superior race, that would be able to successfully revitalize an empire that was the touchstone of civilization for all Western powers.
All these ambitions were overlaid with the sense of racial obligation discussed earlier in this chapter; as another article in Fascist Youth most clearly expressed, “Forty years ago, reckless officials and unlucky military heroism forced Italy to experience the first Adwa. Afterward, a chorus of voices was heard in Europe lamenting the repercussions that European prestige—that is, the prestige of the white race, the expression of civilization—had suffered following the Ethiopian victory. For all of this, Italy carried the responsibility of not knowing how to erect a bulwark for the untouchable white superiority.”48
It was imperative for Italians to redeem themselves and demonstrate their innate superiority—under Fascist leadership—over the last remaining independent African kingdom. Despite the fact that imperialism carried great responsibilities and occasional challenges, another author noted, “these difficulties will always be overcome by the New Italian; it is also true that the colonies form our will, expand our horizons, and provide new inspiration for hard work.”49 The strength and superiority of the Italian race would grow with its colonial holdings; any and all difficulties were simply additional opportunities to prove the worth of the New Italians.
An even more obvious rhetorical example of Fascist instruction in the superiority of the white Italian race and its clear entitlement to imperial rule was the opening story in Giuseppe Fanelli’s 1935 textbook for fifth graders, The Most Beautiful Flowers:
Almighty God created white men and black men. He gave them two precious gifts and said, “Here is gold, and here is writing—choose which one you want!”
The Blacks, greedy and not very insightful, yelled immediately like noisy children, “We want the gold! We want the gold!”
“Take the gold,” Almighty God said; and the Blacks had the gold. Writing remained for the Whites.
Each group used its gift as best it knew how. The Blacks, occupied with mines, extracted gold; the Whites, occupied with books, gave themselves to studying the sciences.
What happened after a century? The Whites invented machines, built boats, learned the art of war, and traveled. The Blacks continued to dig up gold, but they did so for the Whites.50
This story—which clearly delineated the existence of a racial hierarchy based on physical characteristics, supplemented, of course, by spiritual distinctiveness—had appeared in earlier textbooks. Its position as the introductory text of this schoolbook, however, illustrated the greater importance of its message to the goals of the Fascist state and primary school curriculum.
A decisive military defeat of the Ethiopian forces would be essential to Mussolini’s objective to prove Fascist and Italian might, but so would a strong and moral approach to subsequent Fascist rule. While Mussolini wanted to be feared militarily, he also wanted to demonstrate that Italians were wiser colonial rulers than the great powers of France and Great Britain.51 Blending concepts of racial superiority with the Catholic notion of redemption, Italian imperialists argued that they would not simply exploit Ethiopia for economic resources or use the military occupation for strategic purposes. Italian colonists would truly benefit East Africa through widespread economic, political, and moral improvement.
The fact that some Ethiopians still practiced slavery became an invaluable asset to Fascist claims for colonization: the Fascists would free Ethiopians from bondage.52 Though the League of Nations had accepted Ethiopia’s membership in 1923—thereby formally recognizing its political sovereignty—the kingdom’s continued reliance on the institution of slavery meant that its admission remained provisional; this tenuous relationship between Ethiopia and the international West left room for the Italian popular press to declare Ethiopia unworthy of political autonomy and to justify a military takeover by a morally superior nation and race.53 The cover of another school copybook illustrated this mindset with a vivid image of Italian soldiers overseeing Ethiopian allies breaking the bonds of grateful slaves under the simple yet powerful title “Civilization.”54 Hypocritically, though unsurprisingly, the Fascist regime declared all Ethiopian slaves free shortly after their initial invasion and then immediately ordered Italian troops to force many of them into the service of the Italian military.55
The continued refusal of the League of Nations to support an Italian invasion of the East African kingdom did nothing to hinder Fascist determination and in fact served to heighten popular support for Mussolini’s crusade for imperial glory, perhaps indicating at least partial success for the regime’s education campaign.56 Indeed, the league’s announcement of sanctions against Italy after the October 3, 1935, invasion of Ethiopia (which did not include the one thing that had the potential to prevent a military engagement, oil) significantly enhanced support from devoted Fascists—as Filomena’s letter to General Graziani demonstrated—as well as from previously self-identified anti-Fascists.57 Renzo De Felice argued that the Italo-Ethiopian War between October 1935 and May 1936 marked the high point in popular support for Italian Fascism, and Victoria De Grazia has subsequently added that the lead-up to and duration of the war provided the best example of Fascist mass organization at work.58 The regime built an expansive media campaign that asserted the nation’s ability to overcome the so-called barbarity of the league and its supporters. To accentuate the effects of the sanctions—or, in Fascist terms, the stoicism of the Italian nation in the face of those economic sanctions—some periodicals actually recorded dates in terms of how long Italy had been sanctioned. For example, alongside January 6, 1936, editors parenthetically noted “Fiftieth day of the economic siege.”59 Such additions to daily life encouraged a collective sense of attack and defiance, uniting Italians and promoting support for the regime that would protect Italian national interests against their enemies.
Capitalizing on this rising sense of national and racial unity, Mussolini followed his initial invasion of Ethiopia with a series of Days of Faith (Giorni della fede) to emphasize the value of every Italian in the successful execution of the East African campaign. First held on December 18, 1935, and followed by numerous others, the Day of Faith called on Italians to donate any and all gold objects to the state to help fund the troops in East Africa. The name given to this day of “voluntary war contributions” was clever, as fede referred both to the faith participants displayed in the Fascist project and to the wedding rings that were a primary donation to the cause. In place of their symbols of marital commitment, Italians received steel rings engraved with the words “For the Fatherland,” formalizing what had been a major goal of the totalitarian regime: training the populace to prioritize the fatherland over the family.60
The success of such events hinged on popular outrage over the international community’s denial of Italy’s right to colonial expansion.61 Mass publications further stoked the fires of popular backing by issuing lists and photographs of the individuals and families who had given their savings to the national cause. Children’s magazines were especially adept at highlighting the youth contributions to such programs.62 One student wrote to Renato Ricci in an album her class put together for the head of the ONB that she was delighted Italy was not suffering from the sanctions imposed by England and its “bad” friends because of the contributions she and her classmates had made.63 Periodicals also ran articles about the donations and support from Italians abroad—especially children—whose offerings “were the purest testimony of the spiritual force of the Fascist Fatherland and of the renewed conscience of its children.”64 As De Vecchi’s address to the finance committee had affirmed in the early days of 1935, the education system—and Italy’s youth—was at the heart of Fascism’s imperial project. These propaganda measures and other initiatives within the education system were used to combat what one author in Motherhood and Childhood termed “egotistical individualism.” The journalist further explained, “The individual, the building block of the state, must work toward moral and physical perfection in relation to his functions within the state” in order for each person to participate in building “the glorious future of the nation.”65 National, and racial, unity was essential to Fascist success both at home and abroad. Therefore, the perceived success of state actions such as the Days of Faith both echoed Fascism’s pedagogy for the previous thirteen years and, as the Duce would claim, allowed Fascism to achieve a “totalitarian victory” in Ethiopia.66 He would officially declare the creation of the Italian Empire on May 9, 1936.
Concurrent with the need to bolster a popular sense of imperial entitlement in the lead-up to the Italo-Ethiopian War was the necessity of educating students in the physical demands of a Fascist empire. And while the regime nominally paid lip service to Gentile’s original principles of organic and active learning in these years, the pragmatic concerns of the state to develop successful soldiers, leaders, and mothers clearly outweighed its desire to adhere to the philosopher’s pedagogical ideals. Stated simply, the official stance of the MEN and its auxiliary institutions was that the overarching purpose of educating the Italian youth was to serve the state and, through it, the race.67 As one 1934 ONB publication reminded its young readers, “the order, discipline, and silent work that are at the foundation of the Fascist state will find in you a faithful follower even at gatherings, in the field, and at the gym.”68 And at least in some classrooms, such a lesson was driven home; one unnamed student wrote in his notebook, “To reach the goal, there is only one job: to work; and there is only one obligation: to obey. To work and to obey is required of all Italians big and small, who know their role in the world.”69 The concept introduced in 1934 that there was no distinction between a Fascist citizen and a Fascist soldier—Italians were, in fact, citizen-soldiers—defined the contours of the youth’s obligations most obviously.70 Strata declared in his 1935 book, The Fascist Fatherland, “Fascism arose with the precise goal of reevaluating war and victory, of reinvigorating a love for the Fatherland in its citizens, of making the Fatherland strong, respected, and feared, and of increasing its prestige abroad. In order to reach all of these noble goals, Fascism gave the nation the soul of a warrior.”71 Consequently, one of the most striking steps in the evolution of Fascist education during the mid-1930s was a significant increase in the militarization of youth culture in daily life, and particularly on Fascist Saturdays.
At the end of 1934 the regime passed a law necessitating the inclusion of courses on military culture in all Italian schools.72 In response, one journalist wrote to his young Fascist readers, “Now military culture enters the schools, and not through the window or the back door, but with full honors. It comes to take the place it is due—and should have had for a long time now—next to the old and venerable doctrines that we hope will not turn up their noses at the newcomer, who is young, lively, and brilliant.”73 With such martial qualities, Fascist Italy and the Italian race would be able to maintain and expand its prestige throughout the world.74
In accordance with this new law, all elementary students received a premilitary education with literature and activities designed to excite students about the armed forces and encourage them to enjoy competition. This education in military culture was to give the youth a “heroic spirit” and pride in their race, as well as to prepare them for battles in defense of Italy’s presumed destiny.75 Again, the justification for such preparation was not merely hypothetical; Fascist texts and pedagogues raised the specter of the past to make clear the obligations of the future. Carmela Toscano simply stated, “The course of history has always shown us that strength was the principal element of conflict and victory.”76 Another article, directed more clearly to the conscience of its student readers, asserted that the youth “must fight to continue the work of innumerable generations of Italians who, in every era, fighting with spirit and with muscle, suffering, sacrificing themselves, have kept the Fatherland alive and made it the source and center of world civilization.”77 The Italian inheritance would impel young Italians to protect and perpetuate the accomplishments of their forefathers.
In order to be a good Italian, therefore, one had also to be a good soldier, and this applied in very serious ways both to boys and girls. The regime needed Mussolini’s children to learn to read and write and understand the fundamental nature of the race and nation-state, but it also required them to know how to protect that race and nation-state against any and all enemies. Sport was no longer an end unto itself but was critical to the military preparation of the race.78 More directly, the oath that was compulsory for all members of the ONB stated, “In the name of God and Italy, I swear to follow the orders of the Duce and to serve the cause of the Fascist Revolution with all my strength and, if necessary, with my blood.”79 If students internalized the demand that the needs of the collective—both the nation-state and the race—must transcend the needs of the individual, Italians would be able to claim their intrinsic primacy in the world.
As its oath indicates, the ONB was vital to the military education of Italy’s youth. In De Vecchi’s 1935 address to the regime’s budgetary committee—parts of which opened this chapter—the minister extolled the accomplishments of the ONB alongside those of the MEN. He explained that ONB programs led to the “military and civic education of the entire Italian youth” and clarified that this “Roman” “character is the austere and necessary foundation for the life of a people that wants to conquer its future, the character which is indispensable to Italians who . . . are recovering a spiritual unity in a hardworking way of life that is an example to the world.”80 The military education the ONB imparted was primarily “a discipline of the spirit” that underscored the superior might of the Italian race.81
In order to appreciate the international implications of the Italian race’s martial superiority, a necessary component of effective youth education was the elementary understanding of social Darwinism. In that regard, one teacher articulated that “history is a selective process and only those who retain the masculine character of their spiritual form survive.”82 It was this idea of the “masculine character” of cultural survivors that most prominently directed the lessons in military education for boys during this period. Between 1934 and 1936, gender designations, like racial distinctions, became even more pronounced. Articles tended to combine discussions about the need for military education with the familiar description of physical education as an “education in manliness.” Accordingly, the purpose of the ONB was to “increase the virility and morality of the razza.”83 Manliness was synonymous with strength and power, the characteristics with which Fascists most wanted to imbue the Italian people.
Developing the masculinity of the Fascist race was contingent upon also strengthening Italian femininity—that is, the regimentation of women’s roles as homemakers and caretakers. The textbook for young girls training to be squad leaders in the Piccole Italiane explained that the “Fascist pledge obliges the Piccola Italiana to serve her fatherland in every moment of her life, growing healthy in body and in spirit in order to become a Fascist woman: a wise governess of her house and a teacher of civic virtues to her children.”84 More specifically, it addressed the need for Italian girls to be prepared for war: “Wars are inevitable in the history of peoples, and she needs to have a heart prepared for the most painful sacrifices for the honor and salvation of the fatherland.” Again referring to the heroism of ancient Rome, the book continued to explain that “like the Roman woman, the Italian woman prepares herself for war by fortifying her soul with the memory of the glories of her fathers.”85
In terms of physical education, these goals for Italy’s young girls meant that, as one pamphlet for the English-speaking world explained, “physical training is organised chiefly for aesthetic purposes, intended to make the bodies of the growing women slim, graceful and generally strong. Exercises which are likely to cause physical strain have been banned, games and sports being taught and competitions arranged with a view to safeguarding the physical and moral health of the members.”86 Just as texts in the early 1930s explained, those of the mid-1930s argued that appropriate exercises—such as rhythmic dance and tennis—would create healthy and strong mothers. Unlike Nazi Germany, where women were encouraged to be athletic and muscular, Fascists believed that an “overemphasis” on athleticism could lead to the immoral “masculinization” of women, as it had in many other countries, such as the United States and Great Britain.87 According to one article, such a process affected a woman’s sentiments and consciousness of “her fundamental mission”: motherhood.88 Therefore, it was essential to find the right balance of femininity and physical health, because, as the author continued, “the habits of the sportsman are never accompanied by the tendency to grumble, be superficial, or become embittered—defects that, as is noted, determine ninety percent of marital unhappiness.” Furthermore, “physical health gives the optimism, courage in adversity, serenity, and capacity to understand an exhausted man and to work with him.”89 Too much aggression, independence, and strength, however, and the institution of motherhood—the very bedrock of the race’s future—would be in peril.
Still in the middle of the 1930s, the Fascist regime and its collaborating racial scientists struggled to find a theory of race that adequately addressed the diversity of the Italian nation-state and the goals of the Fascist Revolution. Most frequently, authors talked about a more generic “white” Italian race, the importance of Italian racial hybridity, or the popular concepts of a unique Latin or Mediterranean race that emphasized spiritual and historical commonalities.90 While Italians could not ignore the confidence of racial propaganda coming from the new German regime, most state-sponsored “scholars” refused to engage seriously with the more strictly “scientific” theories of race, Aryanism, and the negative eugenics the Nazis employed.91 Instead, much like their French contemporaries, Fascists upheld the official position that the entire spiritually connected Italian race could, as a whole, be improved through pronatalist policies and, more generally, a campaign of bonifica umana.92 State-sponsored racial scientists and eugenicists did not claim that italianità was not facing challenges, but they did maintain that those threats largely remained outside the Italian race. They believed there were few contaminants within the race that needed to be expunged, as Nazi eugenicists frequently argued regarding the German race. In fact, juvenile delinquents and criminals were most frequently characterized as being either foreign to the Italian race or victims of poor parenting.93
Nevertheless, the regime needed to remain vigilant; a 1935 text commemorating the tenth anniversary of the founding of the ONMI characterized one of the most important missions of the organization as unifying Italians under a single set of goals to improve the race. The memorial book portrayed the ONMI’s ongoing efforts to protect mothers and children in terms of safeguarding the racial interests of the state: “ONMI is an organization for the physical, psychic, and moral protection of mothers and children, placed within preventive medicine and directed toward the important goals of the demographic policies of the Fascist regime.”94 In addition, the text explained that the biopolitical concerns surrounding the health of mothers and children could not be simplified: “The projects that the Regime has assigned ONMI . . . can attest to the vast and multifaceted range of the organization’s activities . . . for the reinforcement of the stirpe, projected through the centuries and which is understood as a substantial and fundamental element of a never-ending conquest of spiritual, political, and social virtues.”95
Mussolini and his state continued to navigate the delicate balance between proving the great successes of the revolution and reminding the population of the work that lay ahead. The age of the second Roman Empire was at hand, as was definitive proof of Italy’s racial, political, and military superiority in the world. Therefore, alongside the commemoration of ten years of work, the ONMI strongly urged its followers that a decade was not much time and that Italians had still much to do. The success of Fascism’s next stage depended on racial strength both through quantity and quality. Numbers were critical to the strength of the military, the empire, and the legacy of Fascism, but only insofar as those Italians adhered to the purest qualities of italianità. Still, the complex set of demographic measures this project of bonifica umana entailed were not set in stone even fourteen years after Mussolini’s March on Rome; the revolution would continue to require renegotiation to ensure the best path toward a powerful second Roman Empire.