FASCIST ALTERNATIVE
Fascist march on Rome, 1922. Left to right, Italo Balbo, Benito Mussolini, Cesare Maria de Vecchi, and Emilio De Bono. Source: bpk, Berlin / Art Resource, NY.
On March 23, 1919, several hundred ex-socialists, syndicalists, futurists, and veterans gathered in Milan to found a new movement, the Fasci di Combattimento. Ambitiously its leader, the journalist Benito Mussolini, who had supported Italy’s entry into the war, proposed “to lay the foundation of a new civilization.” To overcome “the limited horizons of various spent and exhausted democracies” and counter “the violently utopian spirit of Bolshevism,” he called for an “Italian revolution.” His ragtag program proposed a national assembly to reform the state, an eight-hour workday, labor participation in management, the formation of technical councils, and anticlerical policies. Later additions included old-age and health insurance, confiscation of uncultivated land, a steep tax on war profits, seizure of church property, and the militarization of the nation. The “antiparty” movement’s name hailed from the Roman fascio, a bundle of rods and an ax carried by magistrates as sign of office.1 This inauspicious beginning marked the birth of a new ideology that evolved into a third version of modernity competing for the future of Europe.
The fascist vision was an unlikely combination of nationalism and socialism that sought to harness the two great ideological forces of the twentieth century. One cornerstone was an exalted “integral nationalism,” championed by Charles Maurras, who placed his own country France above everything else. The publicist Enrico Corradini picked up this nationalist message, arguing “Italy is, materially and morally, a proletarian nation” that must catch up with more fortunate countries in terms of prosperity and empire. The poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti championed similar ideas in his manifestos for “futurist” art, announcing: “We will glorify war—the world’s only hygiene—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman.”2 Such rhetoric appealed to Italians who were frustrated by the gap between their country’s illustrious past and its disappointing present. Inspired also by social Darwinism, these ultranationalists dreamt of a national rebirth that would provide a sense of community at home and restore imperial domains abroad.
The other foundation was a warped form of socialism that deviated from classical Marxism by embracing syndicalism. The inspiration was Georges Sorel, a French theorist, who advocated direct action, the energizing myth of a general strike, and workers’ control of the factories, celebrating violence both as a means and as an end. Such ideas appealed to Arturo Labriola and those Italian socialists who were impatient with Marx’s insistence on developing bourgeois capitalism before a revolution could come about. The syndicalists agreed with socialism in hating exploitation and inequality as well as in hoping for a revolutionary transformation that would give the proletariat power. But they disagreed with the Socialist Party of Italy (PSI) by propounding a productivist creed of industrialization and putting the nation above social class in order to create a national community. As a result, these nationalist syndicalists also supported Italian imperialism and the country’s participation in the First World War.3 Rejecting socialist internationalism, they were therefore ready to make common cause with radical nationalists.
Equally opposed to democracy and communism, fascism attempted to project an alternate modernity, stressing the rebirth of the Italian nation. It originated in a modernization crisis of the Italian state, aggravated by the strains of the First World War and the difficulties of the transition to peace. Though its rhetoric and symbolism invoked the grand legacy of the Roman Empire, many characteristics of the movement such as mass mobilization, the leadership cult, male bonding, exaltation of youth, and aestheticization of politics were quite modern. Moreover, fascist beliefs such as hypernationalism, militarism, natalism, and expansionism attempted to fashion a positive synthesis out of problematic elements of modernity. These confusing traits added up to “a form of revolutionary ultra-nationalism for national rebirth that [was] based on a primarily vitalist philosophy, [was] structured on extreme elitism, mass mobilization and the Führerprinzip, positively value[d] violence as end as well as means and tend[ed] to normalize war and/or military virtues.”4 Above all, fascism was a style and feeling rather than a systematic ideology.
To understand the perplexing appeal of fascism as an alternative to liberalism and socialism, it is imperative to distinguish between the polemical and analytical usages of the concept. Part of the problem is the tendency of the antifascist Left to call everything that it opposes on the right “fascist.” This indiscriminate polemic blurs the considerable difference between fascist systems, based on mass mobilization, and traditional authoritarian regimes, relying primarily on the monarchy, church, army, and bureaucracy. Bad as they were, Franco and Salazar were neither Mussolini nor Hitler. Another part of the confusion results from the lack of distinction between the specific Italian version of fascism and a wider, generic meaning of the term fascist, which designates the spread to other countries of new right-wing movements that shared many beliefs. Although the National Socialists were inspired by Mussolini’s example, they soon went beyond it, propounding a more racist and deadly version of a similar ideology.5 Such distinctions aside, the sudden emergence of a modern version of right-wing politics threw Europe into renewed turmoil.
ITALIAN BACKWARDNESS
Until the middle of the nineteenth century, Italy was, in Prince Metternich’s sarcastic phrase, not a state but a geographic expression. Cut off from Europe by the Alps and surrounded by the Mediterranean, it enjoyed a mild climate, but its fertile land had been overused and contained few natural resources like coal or iron. The grand Roman past was but a distant memory, kept alive by physical ruins, though the common language had dissolved into rival dialects. The city of Rome remained the seat of the papacy, but the Catholic Church was not content to be a spiritual force and also meddled in secular politics. After the barbarian invasions during the migration of the peoples, the country had fragmented into principalities, alternately dominated by the Spanish, French, and Habsburgs. While city-states like Venice, Florence, and Milan were renowned for their wealth and culture, the Italian Peninsula remained politically disunited. Moreover, the social differences between the industrious North and the agricultural South were enormous, while overpopulation forced countless generations to emigrate all over the globe.6
Italy only became a nation state in 1861 owing to a fortuitous combination of ideology, insurrection, and diplomacy. Napoleonic occupation sparked some liberalizing reforms and inspired an intellectual Risorgimento that renewed Italian pride and made unification a political dream of intellectuals. The republican writer Giuseppe Mazzini issued poetic calls for action followed by students, but the various local insurrections, including the revolutions of 1848, ultimately failed, forcing him to live in British exile. More successful was the romantic revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi, who overthrew the Bourbon dynasty in Naples with a ragtag army of peasants, malcontents, and adventurers, thereby becoming a national legend. But it was the reformer and diplomat Count Camillo Cavour, prime minister of Piedmont-Sardinia, who managed to unite Italy. With the help of French armies and Bismarck’s acquiescence this liberal constitutionalist toppled the Austrian princes in 1861, conquered Venice in 1866, and occupied Rome in 1870, incorporating all liberated provinces save Trentino and Trieste into an expanded Piedmont.7
The new Italian state was a constitutional monarchy that gradually evolved into a parliamentary government. Based on the statuto of 1848 the king had ultimate authority, but Vittorio Emmanuele II was an insignificant man, so that power gradually devolved onto the ministers and deputies. Since suffrage was initially limited to only 2 percent of the males, its extension became a constant bone of contention. With over two-thirds of the population still in agriculture and illiterate, politics was a game for the men of property and education, as the declining nobility were mostly content to enjoy the rents from their estates. Parliament was divided between a Conservative-Liberal faction that wanted to preserve its privileges, while making only a few concessions, and a Democratic-Radical wing that agitated for more popular rights but often lacked electoral support. By following the practice of transformismo, the governing elite sought to co-opt its critics by giving them a share of power in order to silence them.8 As a result, politics remained remote from the daily lives of most Italians who struggled to survive, often in abject poverty.
The Catholic Church rejected the emerging nation-state because it was inspired by liberalism. Resenting the loss of his temporal possessions, Pope Pius IX declared himself “a prisoner in the Vatican” and refused to come to terms with the new national government that installed itself in Rome. It did not help that Cavour and the liberal founders confiscated church property and insisted on establishing the state’s authority over teaching in primary schools and over marriage by requiring a civil ceremony. As a result the pope and the curia hardened their “antimodernist” stance, reaffirming doctrines such as papal infallibility and the immaculate conception of Mary as well as issuing a Syllabus of Errors that attacked secular progressivism. Though religious ritual still governed the rhythm of daily life of parishioners, the Vatican forbade its flock to participate in national elections! While the clergy retained much local power, the refusal of the curia to recognize the national state prevented the formation of a conservative party until after the First World War, when the Partito Popolare Italiano was founded in order to make the Catholic voice heard in politics.9
The new state was also hampered by the slowness of its economic development. Though most Italians still tilled the land, the yields of growing cereal, wine, or olives were low except in some favored areas like Tuscany, sufficing at best for subsistence or supplying local markets. In the middle and South, the dominant latifundia produced commercial crops with sharecroppers but often cultivated depleted soils with age-old methods that were not particularly productive. While Italy had many accomplished artisans, industrialization came late because there were few natural resources aside from hydropower and sulfur, and too much of the available capital was invested in land. In Lombardy and other northern provinces machine-driven factories gradually emerged to produce textiles made of wool, cotton, or silk. To tie the country together the government supported the building of railroads, which required impressive engineering feats so as to overcome numerous geographic obstacles.10 Hampered by ingrained conservatism, Italy began industrializing rapidly only after 1896, developing its own steel, shipbuilding, and automobile industries.
Social protests against such conditions were endemic both in the countryside and in the cities. The South witnessed a mixture of rebellious brigandage, Mafia crime, and rural theft. In the 1870s the exiled Russian revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin inspired an anarchist movement that attempted local insurrections and turned to political assassination. With the growth of an industrial working class in the North, Marxist socialism also began to develop in the 1880s, split between a “legalist” branch (POI) and a revolutionary wing (PSRI). Guided by the Milanese sociologist Fillippo Turati, various groups combined in 1892 in order to found the Socialist Party of Italy (PSI) following the successful example of the German Social Democratic Party. Backed by chambers of labor (syndicalist workers’ councils) and a rapidly expanding set of trade unions, this new party managed to survive several waves of government repression. By 1900 the PSI had grown so successful at the polls that the cabinet, prodded by Giovanni Giolitti, reached out to Socialist deputies in order to reconcile them to the state. Nonetheless, the conflict between reform and revolution continued unresolved.11
Hoping to become one of the great powers, Italy succumbed to the lure of imperialism, though its objects were poorly chosen and expensive. In 1890 the Roman government proclaimed its authority over Eritrea on the Horn of Africa where traders had established a foothold. Inspired by dreams of recapturing the glory of ancient Rome, it also annexed Somalia in 1905. But these two new possessions embroiled it in a conflict with the king of Ethiopia, who defeated an Italian detachment in 1887. In order to avenge this loss, Prime Minister Francesco Crispi pushed for control over the entire Ethiopian Empire, but in 1896 the Abyssinians killed about five thousand Italian soldiers and took two thousand prisoners at Adowa. Undeterred by this signal defeat, his successor Giolitti attacked the Ottoman Empire in 1911 and succeeded in subduing Libya after a bloody campaign. This policy of prestige created a huge budget deficit and failed to relieve Italy’s population surplus, since emigrants preferred other destinations such as America.12 Imperialism was, therefore, a disastrous course that devoured resources and fed chauvinist arrogance.
Supported by a wave of nationalist euphoria, Italian participation in the First World War exposed the structural weaknesses of a country that was still catching up to modernity. The initial decision for neutrality was a compromise between adherents of the Triple Alliance and advocates of liberating Italia irredenta, that is, unredeemed Italian territories, from the Habsburg yoke. Since the Entente promised Istria, Trentino, and Dalmatia as well as colonies, Prime Minister Sidney Sonnino, following the maxim of sacro egoism, signed the Treaty of London and entered the Great War in May 1915. But hopes for quick victory over the multiethnic Austrian forces were dashed in the trenches of Friuli, and the army was routed at Caporetto in 1917. Though industrial companies like FIAT expanded rapidly during the war, troop morale was low because soldiers were poorly trained and failed to understand the cause they should die for. Only able to beat the Austrians in October 1918, the ineptly led army had six hundred thousand killed and more wounded. The unnecessary suffering deepened the divisions between a skeptical majority and an interventionist minority.13
POSTWAR CRISIS
Facilitated by such modernization problems, fascism was a product of the postwar crisis of parliamentary government. Although Italy received most of the territories promised in the Treaty of London such as Trentino, veterans were disappointed that they did not include the Dalmatian coast and new colonies. Angry that their hopes were not fulfilled, nationalists complained of a vittoria mutilata, a mutilated victory. The delineation of the new frontier toward Yugoslavia was most controversial, since many cities were inhabited by Italians while the surrounding countryside in Istria and Dalmatia tended to have Slovenian or Croatian majorities. In order to put pressure on Rome, the diminutive poet Gabriele d’Annunzio gathered a legion of about two thousand ex-soldiers, deserters, and desperadoes, and occupied the port of Fiume, today known as Rijeka. There he established a theatrical regime, full of proclamations and parades, inventing fascist traits like the raised fist and the “corporate order.” Eventually the navy evicted him, but Fiume remained an Italian city, showing what a determined right-wing militia could accomplish.14
The Nitti and Giolitti cabinets proved unable to manage the economic transition to peacetime, allowing a sense of panic to spread through the middle class. With guns, ammunition, and ships no longer in demand, some firms that had produced war matériel collapsed. The demobilization of veterans created about two million unemployed, while inflation rose to about 600 percent of 1914 prices. Inspired by the revolutionary example of the Bolsheviks, workers responded to the deepening recession with increased militancy. A rash of strikes immobilized production, food riots broke out, and factories were occupied for weeks. In the countryside peasants seized the land, breaking up the large holdings of the latifundia. When the government tried to appease popular demands by conceding the eighthour workday and increasing social insurance, the propertied feared that their possessions would be taken or taxed away. The introduction of universal suffrage had transformed the cozy game of elites into mass electoral contests with uncertain outcome.15 Instead of restoring stability, the politicians failed to find a way out of the postwar chaos.
This turmoil provided a chance for populist newcomers like the journalist Benito Mussolini. He was born in 1883 in a modest house in Predappio, a small town in the Romagna. His father, a blacksmith, was an anticlerical republican and socialist who named his son after the Mexican revolutionary Juárez. An unruly boy, Benito showed enough intellectual promise to be sent to a Catholic school where, after several scrapes, he received a teaching certificate. Too restless to fit into the routine of an elementary schoolteacher, he went to Switzerland where he came into contact with radical ideas. After completing his military service, he became a journalist and joined the Socialist Party, rising rapidly to become the editor of the main paper, called Avanti, owing to his fiery rhetoric. After the outbreak of World War I, he broke with the PSI because he passionately argued for intervention, founding a new paper, this time titled Popolo d’Italia. A postwar police report described him as “an emotional and impulsive person” and “a good speaker” who was “very intelligent, shrewd, cautious, thoughtful, with a good understanding of men.”16
Mussolini was not a systematic thinker but rather an impressionable, largely self-taught intellectual who dramatized popular slogans with an emotional rhetoric. In his autobiography he claimed not to believe in book learning and to have had only one teacher: “The book of life—lived.” Many of his impulses derived from the poverty of his origins, the anticlericalism of his youth, the conflicts with authorities as a young man, and the exciting adventure of war as a man. Nonetheless, his political speeches were laced with references to exploitation from Karl Marx, direct action from Georges Sorel, the need for an elite from Vilfredo Pareto, the power of will from Friedrich Nietzsche, and the malleability of the crowd from Gustave Le Bon. These half-digested notions instilled in him a deep hatred of the Italian political class, be it liberal, Catholic, or socialist. Considering himself “a fighter in my newspaper office,” he celebrated the “spirit of national solidarity,” exalting in “the victory for the whole Italian race.” By 1919 Mussolini was therefore an ex-socialist and integral nationalist who considered himself “desperately Italian.”17
The fascist movement, founded that spring, combined the competing groups among the interventionists on the Italian left. The name “fascist” denoted a number of nationalist factions such as followers of d’Annunzio, syndicalists inspired by Sergio Panunzio, futurists led by Marinetti, as well as decommissioned shock troopers. Mussolini’s idiosyncratic combination of egalitarianism and nationalism resonated especially with these students and officers who were disappointed in the peace and often without work. Financed by industrial interests who feared to lose business by the conversion to peace, the Popolo d’Italia stridently criticized the socialists and promoted a productivist and hierarchical agenda in order to achieve a national rebirth. To intimidate their many enemies the fascists formed paramilitary squads that could beat up their opponents or raid rival newspaper offices of the PSI. By dint of his revolutionary rhetoric, personal magnetism, and organizational skill Mussolini gradually succeeded in integrating various leftist and nationalist groups and created a mass movement of malcontents intent on overthrowing the parliamentary regime.18
The allure of fascism derived from a pervasive sense of male bonding that made the renewal of Italy seem like a manly adventure. Wearing black uniforms and armed with clubs and revolvers, the squadristi emulated the military in structure, appearance, and bearing. Since many were returning veterans or youths who had missed the excitement of the war, they craved the comradeship of the trenches and the closeness of the fighting community. Their imagination was full of liberal and socialist threats, demanding heroic action in order to rescue Italy from disintegration. This task demanded not persuasion but physical violence as “righteous force,” legitimizing the street battles with communist workers for control of public space. Fascists saw themselves as a political elite, which, free from the outworn dogmas of its opponents, held the key to the future, inventing its actual course from day to day by “will and power.” In this Manichaean universe, there was no place for women or tender feelings. Following the call of their duce (leader), many fascists therefore elevated male toughness to the level of an ideology.19
Much of the popularity of fascism in the postwar chaos stemmed from its struggle against socialism, which won it the sympathy of an anxious middle class. The PSI victory in the 1919 election and the creation of a Communist Party inspired a host of local insurrections that conjured up the specter of a general revolution. When peasant leagues sequestered property, fascist squads endeared themselves to landowners by descending in force, beating up socialist leaders, and returning the land to their prior proprietors. Similarly, when communist workers went out on strike, fascist militia would swoop into a town, round up the ringleaders, and restore production under somewhat syndicalist auspices. Even if they then expected protection money, a grateful bourgeoisie would comply, considering the blackshirted street fighters, or Blackshirts, the smaller evil. Local police and the military tended to look the other way when fascist retribution got out of hand, since it claimed to be serving the restoration of law and order.20 As a result of protecting property, fascism began to turn more to the right, compromising with the powers that be.
Mussolini correctly sensed that the weakness of liberal parliamentarianism provided an opportunity that fascism could exploit in more conventional terms. After having been utterly defeated in the first postwar election, he redoubled his efforts by writing inflammatory editorials in the Popolo d’Italia, later claiming “our democracy of yesterdays had died; its testament had been read; it had bequeathed us naught but chaos.” The Duce also reveled in raucous mass meetings, shouting down his opponents, and haranguing his followers with slogans, dramatized by exaggerated gestures. His steady litany of antiliberal and antisocialist articles as well as revisionist orations deploring the injustice of the peace treaty slowly began to attract youthful but more sophisticated followers like Italo Balbo and Dino Grandi, who would play important roles. Feeding on chaos, the fascist movement gained thousands of members each month, making it increasingly confident. The dual strategy of fostering street violence and pursuing political organization was bearing fruit, because the defenders of democracy proved singularly inept.21
SEIZURE OF POWER
Since Italian politicians misunderstood the depth of the modernization crisis and the difficulties of postwar adjustment, they were unwilling to take the drastic measures needed to meet them. In the early 1920s, parliamentary politics was dominated by three parties: the newly founded Popolari, representing political Catholicism with about 100 seats; the bourgeoning Socialists, torn between revolutionary rhetoric and reformist practice with about 150 seats; and the slowly eroding liberal centrists, supported by the secular middle classes with about 90 seats. The fascists formally entered this arena in 1921 as the Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF). But preoccupied by parliamentary maneuvering, the leaders of the three major parties—Don Sturzo, Turati, and Giolitti—ignored Mussolini as a populist upstart, confident that they could contain him by co-opting his movement. Like the rest of the Italian establishment the crafty Giolitti consistently underestimated their threat and put the Fascists onto his list for the 1921 election, earning them 178,000 votes and 35 seats.22 Confronted with mounting labor unrest and increasing street violence, the parliamentarians continued to play musical chairs, oblivious of the gathering storm.
The fascists’ growing success confronted Mussolini with the challenge of turning popularity into power within a parliamentary system that he claimed to detest. Attracting followers from rural laborers, urban workers, and the lower middle class, the fascist movement swelled to about two hundred thousand members by the fall of 1922, making it increasingly difficult to control.23 For a while Mussolini sought to play the parliamentary game by cooperating with his sworn enemies, the Socialists, against the weakened liberal-centrist government, but his militias refused to follow him. In late 1921, when he formalized the movement into the PNF, he turned the unruly squadristi into its militia arm. Gradually, by a combination of agitation and violence, the Fascists began to gain control of important cities such as Ferrara, Cremona, Parma, Ravenna, and Livorno. At last waking up to the danger, the Socialists called for a general strike—but it was an abysmal failure. Though the Duce now openly demanded a dictatorship, the bourgeois parliamentarians were still seeking to pull him over to their side. By the fall of 1922 his ascent to power seemed inevitable—the only question was whether through invitation or force.
The famous “March on Rome” that overthrew liberal parliamentarianism was mostly a well-calculated bluff. While Mussolini was still secretly negotiating about participating in a solution to one of the periodic ministerial crises, he grandiloquently threatened civil war in the PNF Congress in Naples: “Either they will give us the government or we shall seize it by descending upon Rome!” To underline his determination, he roused his faithful followers to a fever pitch with editorials, but he himself stayed in the background in Milan. Instead, he ordered his lieutenants to organize columns of about thirty thousand armed squadristi and converge by truck or train on the Italian capital. At last the government of Liberal Party prime minister Luigi Facta realized it was facing “a revolutionary attempt” and tried to “maintain public order by any means and at any price.” Though King Vittorio Emmanuele III did not like the Fascists, he refused to proclaim martial law so as to avoid bloodshed, offering a nervous Mussolini “the responsibility of forming a Ministry.” Relieved that his gamble had succeeded, the Duce greeted the parading columns: “I was then triumphant and in Rome!”24
Technically, the new cabinet with Mussolini as prime minister, formed on October 20, 1922, was a coalition in which the Fascists were a minority, reflecting their lack of parliamentary strength. Glossing over the limits of his power, Mussolini called for the creation of a unified national government in order to end the fighting between factions and to reconcile all Italians. Aside from him the cabinet contained only three Fascists, two Popolari, four Liberals, one Nationalist, and three nonpartisan personalities such as the philosopher Giovanni Gentile. After a rousing speech by the prime minister, Parliament confirmed the new government with the lopsided vote of 306 to 116 and 7 abstentions. With all the bourgeois parties supporting Mussolini, only the Socialists and Communists (PCI) dared to oppose his new regime. As a reward for the support of the Blackshirts, who expected a social revolution, he created a national militia, paid by public funds that provided jobs in exchange for respecting law and order. Moreover, Mussolini also absorbed the Nationalist Association Party en bloc as well as numerous careerists into the Fascist Party, thereby broadening his popular base.25
Dispensing with parliamentary concerns, the Duce set out to manufacture a popular mandate that would cement his power against any challenge. To overcome the political fragmentation of proportional representation, he hit upon the ingenious expedient, codified in a voting law proposed by Fascist Giacomo Acerbo, that would give any party that received at least one-quarter of the popular vote two-thirds of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies, creating a stable majority. When the Holy See ordered the Popolari to abstain, the Fascists, supported by Liberals and Nationalists, won the decisive vote on the Acerbo Law that emasculated Italian democracy. After some minor foreign-policy successes Mussolini called for his first election in April 1924, carefully constructing a cabinet list that blended Fascist activists with traditional politicians. This combined ticket was overwhelmingly approved with 66.3 percent of the popular vote, electing 374 deputies of whom 275 were Fascists and decimating the various opposition groups. Distancing himself from the intransigent radicals in the PNF, Mussolini now called for “order, hierarchy, discipline” so as to repudiate “the putrid body of the Goddess Liberty.”26
The final blows were the decapitation of the labor movement, the destruction of parliamentary opposition, and the muzzling of the press. When the Socialist Giacomo Matteotti attacked Fascist violence and corruption in the Chamber of Deputies, he was murdered by the Fascist secret police on June 10, 1924. Though Mussolini shifted the blame to his underlings, the opposition deputies seceded from Parliament according to an old Roman custom and retired to the Aventine Hill, hoping to block further legislation. But the boycott failed to rouse the populace or force the elite to abandon the adventurer, since even the philosopher Benedetto Croce praised fascism for its “love of Italy.” As a result, the Fascists abolished freedom of the press partly by government decree and partly by pressuring the owners of newspapers to dismiss liberal editors like Luigi Albertini. When evidence implicated him in the Matteotti murder, Mussolini dramatically assumed “full responsibility for all that has happened,” claiming that he alone could give Italy “peace and tranquility.” Instead of toppling him, the Matteotti crisis marked the transition to open dictatorship.
The establishment of dictatorial rule was a gradual process, propelled by a mixture of Fascist coercion and public compliance. The seizure of power was a blend of constitutional legality, in the appointment of Mussolini as prime minister, and concession to the extraparliamentary pressure of a violent mass movement. The collaboration of the establishment was essential, since the liberal and national elite cooperated under the illusion that Mussolini could be contained according to the recipe of transformismo. Engineered by incessant propaganda in the press and mass meetings, popular acclamation for the nationalist coup forced the hand of skeptical politicians who did not want to stand in the way of a national renewal. With a mixture of incentives and repression, the Fascists divided and immobilized opponents in the labor movement and among democratic intellectuals who found themselves deserted by the public. Mussolini’s government rested on an uneasy compromise between established institutions like the monarchy, church, and army as well as newly invented Fascist bodies like the PFN, the Blackshirt militia, and the secret police.27
Mussolini’s successful seizure of power galvanized youthful members of the European Right by presenting a model that combined tradition with modernity in a novel blend. Born in the male comradeship of the trenches, his action-oriented movement sought on the one hand to restore conservative values such as order and hierarchy, social community, and national power. On the other, fascism was profoundly modern in its admiration of technology, use of electronic media, and youth orientation, thereby conveying an image of dynamism that defenders of the old order lacked. All over Europe from Norway to France, from Portugal to Romania, the fascist rejection of the discredited traditional authorities appealed to young neoconservatives casting about for an alternative to Marxism and liberalism that might offer a better way into the future.28 Though the movement owed much of its character to the specific postwar confusion of Italy, its foreign admirers included the racist rabble-rouser Adolf Hitler, who understood the exciting novelty of fascism sufficiently to attempt to repeat Mussolini’s coup a year later in the Munich Beer Hall Putsch.
THE FASCIST STATE
While it incorporated many traditional elements, the fascist dictatorship differed from conventional authoritarian regimes by being more modern and intrusive. With typical exaggeration Mussolini himself claimed: “The Fascist conception of the state is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the fascist state—a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values—interprets, develops and potentiates the whole life of the people.” Marking the contrast to the limited obedience demanded by kings, priests, or generals, Mussolini used the neologism “totalitarian” to describe his more far-reaching attempt not just to rule politically but also to restructure society all the way down to the private sphere.29 Fascism therefore set out to mobilize the masses in order to transform the country fundamentally, creating a proud and powerful national community that would be capable of gaining Italy its rightful place of honor among European nations. To achieve this ambitious aim, Mussolini used a whole repertoire of innovative measures for making Italy fascist.
Since its doctrine remained fuzzy and its policies malleable, fascism might best be understood as political theater, an ever-changing self-dramatization arranged by Mussolini. At its core was the cult of il duce del fascismo, the fascist leader whose carefully staged charisma inspired a whole nation to follow. Since Mussolini was a small man, he stuck out his chin, puffed up his chest, planted his arms on his hips, strode with large steps, and assumed dramatic poses, such as sitting on a horse or flying an airplane, to indicate extraordinary vision and strength. Reviewing columns of Blackshirts, he would raise his fist in a Roman salute to show his authority over his followers. Sometimes he mimicked the great statesman, dressed in an elegant tuxedo, surrounded by admiring women, to underline his machismo. On special occasions he would appear on a balcony of the Palazzo Venezia and address the crowd with inspiring phrases, supported by exaggerated gestures. Propagandists never missed an opportunity to disseminate his portrait into schools or to capture his exploits in newsreels designed to teach the populace that “Mussolini is always right.”30
Fascism also introduced new syndicalist and corporatist institutions to discipline labor and circumvent Parliament. The syndicates were a kind of trade union that replaced the Marxist organizations, negotiated contracts with employers, and represented labor interests while domesticating them at the same time. With the improving economy they even managed to push through modest improvements in pay, leisure hours, and family allowances. Inspired by hierarchical elements of Catholic social theory, the better-known corporations were a reprise of medieval organizations that brought employers and employees together at the negotiating table so as to overcome class conflicts. Founded in 1926, the corporate structure was expanded into a National Council of Corporations four years later and eventually subdivided into twenty-two different occupational groups. In 1939 a Grand Council of Fasces and Corporations was set up that transformed the legislature into an entirely fascist deliberative body.31 Claiming to present an alternative to capitalism or communism, this corporatist structure served as a fascist tool to control the country and rubber-stamp Mussolini’s policies.
Fascist efforts to transform Italy culminated in repeated campaigns to modernize the economy and revitalize society. While free trade had created an initial boom, the collapse of the lira forced Mussolini into a drastic upward revaluation aided by steep tariffs in 1925. To counter the high price of imported cereals, he launched a “battle of grain,” pushing for higher domestic yields in order to achieve autarchy. He also initiated a public-relations effort to stem the flight into the cities by glorifying the benefits of rural life. Moreover, the dictator sought to combat the decline of the birthrate by giving prizes to women who bore many children and raising taxes on bachelors! A grand program of public works sought to drain the Pontine Marshes, build roads, and provide rural electrification. Finally, Mussolini encouraged the creation of semipublic companies such as for oil refining (AGIP) and created an Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (IRI) as a government-controlled investment bank. Promoted with great fanfare, such propaganda-drenched campaigns scored some visible gains but failed to correct the underlying weakness of the economy.32
Mussolini’s greatest success was the solution of the “Roman question” through reconciliation with the Catholic Church in 1929. The emasculation of the Liberals paved the way for a compromise between the state and the papacy, ending a struggle that had poisoned relations since 1871. Though Mussolini was an atheist, he understood the necessity of bringing Catholics into the fascist camp; while Pius XI was not enthusiastic about fascism either, he feared the socialists and communists even more. Spurred by conciliatory gestures like the rescue of the papal bank, the conclusion of the two Lateran treaties took three years of negotiations. The first recognized the Vatican as an independent state and paid 1.75 billion lira as compensation for the loss of its temporal possessions. The second defined the role of Catholicism as “the sole religion of the state,” resolving the conflict between church and civil marriage, making religious instruction mandatory in schools, and allowing organizations such as the Azione Cattolica (Catholic Action) to survive.33 This concordat was crucial in cementing Mussolini’s rule through the blessing of the church.
Ideological indoctrination focused primarily on the young, since Mussolini believed that youth held the key to the future as celebrated in the party song “Giovinezza.” In 1926 the Fascists founded the official youth organization Opera Nazionale Balilla, modeled after the Boy Scouts, which combined attractive leisure activities with militarization and propaganda. Starting at age six, there was a level for each age up to the avanguardisti at age twenty-one, while parallel groups were set up for girls. Once at the university, young fascists continued in the Gioventu Universitaria Fascista (GUF), which similarly blended ideological indoctrination with social activities. The public schools also stressed political education so that every pupil would become a proud, fascist-minded Italian upon graduation. When university professors were compelled to sign an oath of allegiance “to the country and to the Fascist regime,” only twelve of about twelve hundred refused, and these were subsequently dismissed.34 This strenuous effort succeeded in creating a veneer of fascist orientation among the young, but the vagueness of the ideology itself prevented a deeper conditioning.
For adults the Fascists created new forms of popular culture and mass leisure, offering cheap recreation to tired workers so as to gain their loyalty. Mussolini was quick to recognize the propaganda potential of radio, which grew from modest beginnings in 1924 to one million sets in 1938, eagerly listened to in trattorias and homes. Similarly, Fascists encouraged sports, such as the car race Mille Miglia, the bicycle competition Giro d’Italia, and the soccer World Cup, which Italy won in 1934 and 1938. The key institution was the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro, a network of “after work” clubs that attracted four million members by 1939. By offering facilities such as bars, libraries, and sports fields as well as cheap vacations, dancing, and even welfare handouts, this state- and business-supported leisure organization was quite popular, since it provided inexpensive recreation otherwise beyond the reach of many ordinary Italians. It was always accompanied by a political message, but that could be endured if one wanted to take advantage of a particular activity.35 Fascism owed much of its popularity to such “soft stabilizers” of the regime.
As a dictator Mussolini wanted not only to be loved but also feared, since he believed that the affection of a crowd, like that of a woman, was basically fickle. While his popularity increased until 1936, Fascist power also rested on repression, a dark underside that often escaped foreign observers. The path to power was already paved with the victims of squadristi violence and the torture or murder of numerous enemies. In 1926 the secret police Organization for Vigilance and Repression of Anti-Fascism (OVRA) was reorganized and politicized in order to hunt down opponents more effectively. Many leaders of competing parties such as the Catholic Don Sturzo, the Liberal Gaetano Salvemini, and the Socialist Pietro Nenni were forced into exile. But even there they were not safe, since Carlo Roselli, a particularly determined dissident, was assassinated in Paris. Others, like the historian Luigi Albertini, languished for years in fascist prisons, which is where the communist intellectual Antonio Gramsci compiled his pathbreaking notebooks before he died in 1937.36 Though the Italian fascists killed fewer victims than the Nazis or the Soviet communists, their dictatorship also rested on ruthless oppression.
PRESTIGE AND EMPIRE
The strengthening of the nation served one overriding goal—Italian expansion abroad, reviving the glories of the Roman Empire. The country’s central position in the Mediterranean offered multiple targets on its immediate frontiers, the Balkan region, and the African continent. But its limited resources required a cautious search for allies, while Mussolini’s lack of international experience and impulsive temper complicated this quest for increasing Italian prestige. In his foreign policy, the Duce therefore vacillated between playing the statesman charming foreign visitors and the dictator blustering toward presumed inferiors. True to its origin as a protest movement against the peace terms, the Fascist regime openly worked toward the revision of the Versailles Treaty system, irritating the French. At the same time Mussolini tried to make Italy into a leading regional power by bombing Corfu in 1923, annoying the British. Moreover, he also succumbed to the lure of empire, though the “pacification” of Libya proved costly and dragged on until 1932.37
As long as he could play a central role, Mussolini was, however, willing to stabilize Europe by suggesting a four-power directory in 1933 in order to contain the Nazi threat. Pleased that Hitler’s seizure of power had followed his own example, the Duce sought to defuse the international situation by going outside the League of Nations and suggesting direct negotiations between the leading continental countries to settle various disputes. Though the embassies in Berlin sent alarmist reports about Nazi revisionism, the leaders in Paris and London were unwilling to confront Germany by force. As a result, Mussolini could act as mediator between the wartime victors and the defeated, since the Fascists were also unhappy about the peace treaties and sought diplomatic methods to revise the Versailles settlement. Though irritated by the Italian strongman, the western leaders were willing to make some concession to his vanity in order to keep Hitler in check.38 Even if his initiative quickly failed, the Duce continued to pose as a statesman who was increasing Italian prestige.
By 1935 Mussolini felt confident that rearmament had proceeded far enough for Italy to avenge the defeat of Adowa by invading Ethiopia, the last piece of unclaimed Africa. Marshal Badoglio’s attack on Abyssinia involved over half a million soldiers, required a sustained naval effort to supply the troops through the port of Massawa, and provided a training ground for five hundred military aircraft. After almost a year of bloody fighting, the combination of bombing and mustard gas finally broke the Ethiopians’ resistance. As a result of the victory, Mussolini proudly proclaimed the founding of a “new Italian Empire” from the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia to cheering crowds. This imperialist adventure was a public-relations success at home, increasing the Duce’s popularity. But the brutality of the warfare against the overmatched Ethiopians produced a wave of international revulsion and isolated Italy diplomatically when the League of Nations proclaimed economic sanctions against it.39 Moreover, the break with the West openly aligned the Fascists with the National Socialists in threatening the peace of Europe.
The resulting delusion of grandeur drew Mussolini into the Spanish Civil War, where he supported Francisco Franco’s uprising against the legitimate authorities of the Spanish Republic. In spite of the western nations’ official nonintervention policy, Italy and Germany aided the reactionary coup, while the Soviet Union and the French Popular Front helped the Republican forces. The Duce’s reasons for intervening remain somewhat murky, stemming from ideological affinity and from his interest in dominating the Mediterranean. But in contrast to Hitler’s limited engagement with the Condor Legion, Mussolini sent seventy thousand regular soldiers, dressed as volunteers. Moreover, Italy provided four hundred planes, two hundred bombers, and fourteen hundred pilots who played an important role in the struggle against the International Brigades, which were eventually controlled by Moscow’s communist regime. Though taking credit for the advance of Franco’s forces, Mussolini underestimated the length and cost of the struggle, which severely strained his resources, already overstretched by the conquest of Ethiopia.40 Italy gained nothing from the intervention but rather was driven into Hitler’s arms by it.
Mussolini’s hankering after prestige hastened the diplomatic realignment of the 1930s that precipitated the Second World War. Though the Duce considered himself to be the leader of the international fascist movement, the mounting cost of his wars as well as the ostracism of the West compelled him to sign a friendship treaty with Nazi Germany in October 1936. Grandiloquently he dubbed it the Berlin-Rome “Axis,” because Europe was supposed to revolve around it. A year later Mussolini signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Germany and Japan, creating a front of aggressively revisionist powers, ostensibly to combat Bolshevism. In 1938 the Italian dictator could no longer prevent the German annexation of Austria, since now he depended on Hitler’s good will. The climax of his international role was the Munich Conference, where he pulled a proposal, drafted by the German Foreign Office, out of his pocket that avoided war by turning the Sudetenland over to Germany. With the bridges to its former allies burned, Italy endorsed the tripartite Pact of Steel in 1939, establishing a military alliance of dictators.41
Mussolini’s growing stature encouraged a veritable fascism tourism, attracting a motley group of admirers, commentators, and academics eager to discover the secret of Italy’s revival. Foreign high-society ladies flocked to Rome to marvel at his machismo magnetism. Nosy journalists like Emil Ludwig sought out the Duce to record his views, publishing long transcripts of their conversations. Misguided writers like George Bernard Shaw defended fascism by claiming that “Mussolini, without any of Napoleon’s prestige, has done for Italy what Napoleon did for France.” Somewhat naively, U.S. ambassador Richard Washburn Child introduced his autobiography by asserting that “the Duce is now the greatest figure of his sphere and time.” Finally, conservative politicians like Winston Churchill praised the dictator: “The Roman genius impersonated in Mussolini, the greatest law-giver among living men, has shown to many nations how they can resist the pressures of Socialism and has indicated the path that a nation can follow when courageously led.”42 Often repeated, such acclaim was bound to go to the Duce’s head.
Fascism’s presumed triumphs also contributed to spreading its message abroad, since this movement seemed to offer a dynamic alternative to moribund democracy and egalitarian communism. Initially Mussolini had been skeptical about exporting his ideas, but flush with success he predicted during the 1930s that all of Europe would be fascist within a decade. Creating a Fascist International similar to the Communist International would have been a contradiction in terms, since its hypernationalism resisted transnational organization. But even in Western Europe some intellectuals in the Action Française, the British Union of Fascists, and the Spanish Falange shared many of its right-wing tenets. In Eastern Europe, radical movements such as the Arrow Cross or the Iron Guard found adherents, especially in the authoritarian states of Hungary and Romania, because of their revisionist aspirations as well as ethnic tensions. Fascism had its greatest impact on the confused German right: the National Socialists imitated many of its traits such as the leadership cult and militia violence.43 But only in the Weimar Republic did fascists manage to seize power on their own.
In contrast to the resistenza myth of widespread opposition, antifascism remained relatively weak until 1938 owing to the regime’s apparent popularity. The bourgeois parties were discredited, while remnants of Marxist groups fought each other. Only the communists retained an underground network of several thousand members. The political émigrés in Paris like Count Carlo Sforza or Gaetano Salvemini debated endlessly but received little support, and found hardly any audience within Italy. Some older scholars like Benedetto Croce and Luigi Einaudi also kept a certain distance from the regime, while younger intellectuals formed the group Giustizia e Liberta, which openly criticized the dictatorship. People who were especially close to the Catholic Church remained impervious to fascism’s ideological appeals, and there was much popular grumbling. But active opposition remained small, since the secret police ruthlessly suppressed dissent. Though Mussolini survived a handful of assassination attempts, a broad-based antifascist resistance coalesced only during the unpopular Second World War, when partisans engaged in military attacks.44
FASCIST REGENERATION
Not merely a reactionary movement, fascism was rather a populist effort to respond to the modernization crisis of Italian society. In structural terms, fascism arose from Italy’s belated transformation from an agrarian to an industrial order, which created deep class divisions and regional disparities between the industrializing North and the agricultural South. In actual politics, it stemmed from the difficulties of transition from war to peace, since Parliament failed to provide an adequate livelihood for the newly enfranchised masses, and to counteract the disappointment created by exaggerated expectations of a favorable peace. The timid Liberal and Catholic politicians were incapable of upholding public order against the violence unleashed by communist attempts to seize factories and right-wing efforts at retaliation. To revitalize a floundering Italy, the fascist movement promised social justice at home and imperial power abroad through a confused blend of futurism, nationalism, and syndicalism.45 It was the failure of parliamentary government to resolve Italy’s long- and short-range problems that gave this populist newcomer a chance.
Mussolini’s key contribution was the invention of a modern form of right-wing politics that did not just proclaim a national renewal but actually seized power and governed for several decades. The fascists responded to the erosion of deference to traditional authorities by creating a new kind of mass movement that claimed to represent the entire national community. To inspire his following, Mussolini systematically constructed a cult of leadership, which endowed the Duce with superhuman qualities that would enable him to divine the collective will and put it into practice. Fascism also made imaginative use of media such as the press, the radio, and newsreels in order to broadcast its message to a much larger number of people than ever before. At the same time it set out to control and indoctrinate the entire country through its fashioning of mass-membership organizations. Finally, Mussolini had no qualms about using violence to suppress internal enemies.46 These innovative features went considerably beyond the traditional methods of authoritarian regimes by aiming at a more total control of society.
Many of the actual policies pursued by the fascists were also modernizing—even if their purpose was to increase national strength rather than to provide greater welfare or enlightenment. Though invoking the glories of the past, Mussolini and other fascist leaders were fascinated by the speed and movement of modern technology—they could be seen flying in airplanes and driving fast cars, sometimes risking their lives. Even the campaign for ruralism was not motivated just by nostalgia but also by the desire to raise agricultural yields so as to achieve self-sufficiency in food. The nationalist attempt to improve infrastructure through constructing new roads, railroads, dams, and power lines not only tied the country together but also brought material progress into remote areas. The militarist project of creating an independent defense sector, capable of producing battleships and fighter planes, also required an expansion of heavy industry as well as an advancement of engineering capacity that benefited civilian users. Though its ends were often irrational and its measures inefficient, fascist practice worked somewhat like a developmental dictatorship.47
In the realm of culture, fascism promoted its own version of modernism as a style that blended references to the glorious past with technological visions of the future. While fascists rejected liberal decadence and communist materialism, they sought to offer an alternative form of spiritual regeneration through a broad range of competing efforts. In architecture the fascist style was a curious amalgamation of historical citations and experimental building techniques, tending toward the monumental, suggesting national unity and power. In the fascist mass spectacles, invocations of Roman greatness mingled with contemporary devices such as amplified sound, projected light, and choreographed motion, creating a sense of drama that appealed to the emotions. Even in daily consumption fascists did not sponsor a return to handicrafts but rather the design of new industrial products to fulfill mass wishes for a better life. Though the proper balance between historicizing (Strapaese) and futurist (Novecento) priorities remained contested, all fascists agreed on the basic project of fashioning a new man through “aestheticizing politics.”48
Fascism was therefore not just a regressive throwback, as claimed by the Left, but an alternate variety of vitalist modernity that promised to control rapid and disorienting change. Though popular in the West, the equation of modernization with capitalist democracy is misleading, as it fails to acknowledge that communism and fascism attempted to develop competing models that avoided the liberal defects of exploitation and degeneration. Part of the confusion arises from Mussolini’s constant invocation of Romanita in his speeches, the use of ancient symbols and the references to former glory. But in spite of this mythicizing, the aims of strengthening the national community biologically and militarily as well as the means of mass mobilization and propaganda were quite modern. The fascist vision appealed to international intellectuals like Ezra Pound and Louis-Ferdinand Céline because it promised to heal the crisis of modernity through fashioning a dynamic national community.49 Tragically, the realization of these confused ideas would create even more suffering, as they would lead to repression at home and aggression abroad.