Italy

Things happened, and the rest is history

1. 01

   The 'mutilated victory' and Fiume

   Event

   What happened

   Italy joins the First World War in 1915 on the Allied side after the secret Treaty of London promised it territory. At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 it gains Trentino, South Tyrol and Trieste but not all it was promised, and not the city of Fiume. In September 1919 the poet Gabriele D'Annunzio leads irregular troops into Fiume and holds it for about fifteen months.

   ↓ The rest is history

   Nationalists called the outcome a 'mutilated victory', a phrase that fed resentment against the liberal governments. D'Annunzio's occupation offered later Fascists a model of uniforms, mass rallies, balcony speeches and the Roman salute. Italian forces ended it in December 1920 after the Treaty of Rapallo. Historians debate how much Fascism copied from Fiume, but the episode showed that armed nationalists could defy the state.

   Sources

   1. BookGentile, Emilio. The Origins of Fascist Ideology, 1918-1925. New York: Enigma Books, 2005.
   2. BookHughes-Hallett, Lucy. The Pike: Gabriele D'Annunzio, Poet, Seducer and Preacher of War. London: Fourth Estate, 2013.
2. 02

   The Red Biennium and the rise of squadrismo

   Event

   What happened

   In 1919 and 1920, Italy sees mass strikes, peasant unrest and factory occupations, mostly in the north. In March 1919 Mussolini founds the Fasci italiani di combattimento in Milan. From late 1920 armed Fascist squads, often backed by landowners and local authorities, attack socialist offices, newspapers, unions and cooperatives, especially in the Po Valley.

   ↓ The rest is history

   The violence broke the organised left in much of northern and central Italy. The squads gave Mussolini a force outside the law, which he could use as leverage while also seeking a place in parliament. In May 1921 Fascists won 35 seats on a joint list with Giolitti's liberals. In November 1921 the movement became the National Fascist Party.

   Sources

   1. BookLyttelton, Adrian. The Seizure of Power: Fascism in Italy, 1919-1929. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973.
   2. BookSnowden, Frank M. The Fascist Revolution in Tuscany, 1919-1922. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
3. 03

   The March on Rome and Mussolini's appointment

   Event

   What happened

   In late October 1922 Fascist columns gather near Rome while Mussolini waits in Milan. Prime Minister Luigi Facta asks King Victor Emmanuel III to sign a decree of martial law, but on 28 October the king refuses. On 29 October he asks Mussolini to form a government, and Mussolini travels to Rome by train. He takes office on 30 October.

   ↓ The rest is history

   Mussolini's first cabinet was a coalition of Fascists, liberals, Catholics and nationalists. Parliament gave him special powers for a year, and the Acerbo law of 1923 gave the largest party a two-thirds majority of seats. The election of April 1924 was marked by intimidation. The king's refusal to use the army remains the central point in debates over how the liberal state failed to stop Fascism.

   Sources

   1. BookLyttelton, Adrian. The Seizure of Power: Fascism in Italy, 1919-1929. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973.
   2. BookMack Smith, Denis. Mussolini. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981.
4. 04

   The Matteotti murder and the dictatorship

   Event

   What happened

   On 30 May 1924 the Socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti denounces Fascist violence and fraud in the Chamber. On 10 June he is kidnapped in Rome by a Fascist squad and killed. His body is found in August. Opposition deputies walk out of parliament in protest.

   ↓ The rest is history

   The crisis was Mussolini's most dangerous moment, but the king did not dismiss him and the opposition had no unified plan. On 3 January 1925 Mussolini took responsibility for the climate of violence in a speech to the Chamber. The 'exceptional laws' of 1925 and 1926 banned other parties, ended a free press, created a special tribunal for political crimes and set up internal exile. These measures completed the one-party state.

   Sources

   1. BookCanali, Mauro. Il delitto Matteotti. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997.
   2. BookMack Smith, Denis. Mussolini. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981.
5. 05

   The Lateran Treaties of 1929

   Event

   What happened

   On 11 February 1929 Mussolini's government and the Holy See sign the Lateran Treaties. They create the Vatican City State, give the Church a financial settlement, and make Catholicism the state religion in a concordat. This ends the dispute that began when Italy took Rome in 1870.

   ↓ The rest is history

   The agreement gave the regime legitimacy among Catholics, and Pius XI praised Mussolini. Tension continued over Catholic Action and youth organisations, which the regime wanted to control. The Vatican City remains a sovereign state. The concordat was revised in 1984, when Catholicism ceased to be the state religion.

   Sources

   1. BookKertzer, David I. The Pope and Mussolini. New York: Random House, 2014.
   2. BookPollard, John F. The Vatican and Italian Fascism, 1929-32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
6. 06

   The invasion of Ethiopia

   Event

   What happened

   On 3 October 1935 Italian forces invade Ethiopia from Eritrea and Somaliland, without a declaration of war. They use overwhelming air power and chemical weapons, including mustard gas. The League of Nations votes sanctions against Italy, though they exclude oil. Addis Ababa falls in May 1936, and Italy annexes Ethiopia.

   ↓ The rest is history

   Mussolini proclaimed an Italian empire, and the war was at the height of the regime's popularity. The sanctions pushed Italy away from Britain and France and towards Germany, leading to the Rome-Berlin Axis in 1936. Ethiopian resistance continued during the occupation. British and Ethiopian forces ended Italian rule in 1941. Italy only admitted its use of poison gas in the 1990s.

   Sources

   1. BookDel Boca, Angelo. The Ethiopian War, 1935-1941. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969.
   2. BookMockler, Anthony. Haile Selassie's War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.
7. 07

   The racial laws of 1938

   Event

   What happened

   In July 1938 a 'Manifesto of Race' signed by Italian scientists claims that Italians are an Aryan race. In September and November the government issues decrees that expel foreign Jews, remove Jews from schools and public jobs, and ban marriages between Jews and non-Jews. Earlier colonial laws had already banned relationships between Italians and Africans in the empire.

   ↓ The rest is history

   About 46,000 Jews lived in Italy, and many were hurt by the loss of jobs and rights. The laws followed Italy's alliance with Germany, though historians dispute how much was copied from Berlin and how much came from the regime's own racism. After the Germans occupied northern Italy in 1943, thousands of Jews were deported, many to Auschwitz. The laws were repealed in 1944 and 1945.

   Sources

   1. BookSarfatti, Michele. The Jews in Mussolini's Italy: From Equality to Persecution. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.
   2. BookZimmerman, Joshua D., ed. Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
8. 08

   War, the king's coup and the fall of Mussolini

   Event

   What happened

   Italy enters the Second World War on 10 June 1940 beside Germany. It suffers defeats in Greece, North Africa and East Africa. After the Allies land in Sicily on 10 July 1943, the Fascist Grand Council votes on 24 to 25 July against Mussolini. The king dismisses him and has him arrested, and Marshal Badoglio takes over.

   ↓ The rest is history

   Italy announced an armistice with the Allies on 8 September 1943, and German forces occupied the north and centre. Germans freed Mussolini, who headed the Italian Social Republic at Salò. Italy was then a battlefield and a civil war between Fascists and the partisan Resistance. Partisans captured and shot Mussolini on 28 April 1945. Italy became a republic after a referendum in June 1946.

   Sources

   1. BookBosworth, R. J. B. Mussolini. London: Arnold, 2002.
   2. BookPavone, Claudio. A Civil War: A History of the Italian Resistance. London: Verso, 2013.
9. 09

   Mussolini made the trains run on time

   Popular belief

   The legend

   People often say that whatever else Mussolini did, he made the Italian trains run on time. The claim is used to suggest that the regime brought order and efficiency to a chaotic country.

   ↓ The rest is history

   Italian railways did improve in some respects, with electrification and new lines. But punctuality problems continued, and some of the better record came from reforms and investment begun before 1922. Propaganda greatly exaggerated the regime's successes, and the claim became a stock phrase in the 1920s and 1930s. Denis Mack Smith, among others, noted that the legend was far more famous than the evidence for it. Meanwhile the regime ended free press and independent unions and left the economy weighed down by war spending.

   Sources

   1. BookMack Smith, Denis. Mussolini. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981.
   2. BookBosworth, R. J. B. Mussolini's Italy: Life under the Fascist Dictatorship, 1915-1945. London: Allen Lane, 2005.
10. 10

    Italians were 'good people' in the war

    Popular belief

    The legend

    A common postwar belief holds that Italians were milder than Germans, so that Fascist Italy committed few crimes and was mostly an unwilling partner of Hitler. The phrase often used is 'italiani, brava gente'.

    ↓ The rest is history

    Many Italians did help Jews and escaped prisoners, and Italian occupation officials in places like southern France and Croatia sometimes refused to hand Jews over to the Germans. But the regime itself used poison gas in Ethiopia, ran concentration camps in Libya and in Yugoslavia, and passed racial laws. Historians such as Angelo Del Boca have argued that the myth long hid these crimes, since few Italians were tried for them. Italy's own crimes were only widely discussed from the 1990s.

    Sources

    1. BookDel Boca, Angelo. Italiani, brava gente? Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 2005.
    2. BookFocardi, Filippo. Il cattivo tedesco e il bravo italiano. Rome: Laterza, 2013.
11. 11

    Mussolini hanged by his feet at Piazzale Loreto

    Popular belief

    The legend

    A widely told story says that Mussolini was publicly hanged upside down by a crowd in Milan. Some versions say that he was killed there by the mob.

    ↓ The rest is history

    Mussolini and his partner Clara Petacci were shot on 28 April 1945 near Giulino di Mezzegra, on Lake Como, by partisans. Who fired and the exact circumstances are still debated. On 29 April the bodies were taken to Milan and dumped at Piazzale Loreto, where fifteen anti-Fascist prisoners had been shot by Fascists the previous August. Crowds abused the corpses, and they were then hung by the feet from a petrol station frame. So the display was real, but it came after death.

    Sources

    1. BookBosworth, R. J. B. Mussolini. London: Arnold, 2002.
    2. BookMack Smith, Denis. Mussolini. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981.
12. 12

    The Fascists' own legend of the March on Rome

    Popular belief

    The legend

    Fascist tradition tells of a great revolutionary march in October 1922 in which black-shirted heroes seized Rome and forced the state to surrender to Mussolini. The regime celebrated it every year as the start of a new era.

    ↓ The rest is history

    The march was far weaker than the legend. Poorly armed squads of perhaps tens of thousands gathered in rain outside Rome, and the army could have dispersed them. Mussolini stayed near Milan, ready to flee to Switzerland if it failed. He took power through the king's decision and political bargaining, not conquest. The regime counted years from 1922 as Year I of the Fascist Era, and used the myth as its founding story.

    Sources

    1. BookLyttelton, Adrian. The Seizure of Power: Fascism in Italy, 1919-1929. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973.
    2. BookGentile, Emilio. Il culto del littorio. Rome: Laterza, 1993.