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The Fascist Regime, its Foreign Policy and its Wars: An ‘Anti-Anti-Fascist’ Orthodoxy?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2008

MacGregor Knox
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Extract

The de-legitimisation of the Italian political system that culminated in the upheavals of the late 1980s has permitted a very public re-examination of the meaning and significance of both the Fascist regime and the Resistance to it. Although debates between historians had already begun over these issues, they have been thrust into the media spotlight now that the political consensus surrounding their interpretation has collapsed. The following two articles examine both the content and conduct of these debates, and consider the extent to which they have contributed to a reassessment of the history of these periods. Naturally the opinions expressed in these articles are solely those of the authors themselves: Contemporary European History would welcome further comments and contributions concerning this rethinking of the contemporary Italian experience.

Type
Rethinking Italian History
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , November 1995 , pp. 346 - 365
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 For a useful initial orientation, from an anti-Fascist viewpoint, see the essays on the De Felice debate in Tranfaglia, Nicola, Labirinto italiano. Il fascismo, l'antifascismo, gli storici (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1989).Google Scholar

2 De Felice, Renzo, Mussolini il rivoluzionario, 1883–1920 (Turin: Einaudi, 1965)Google Scholar (thereafter De Felice 1); fascista, Mussolini il, I: La conquista del potere, 1921–1925 (Turin: Einaudi, 1966)Google Scholar (thereafter De Felice 2); fascista, Mussolini il, II: L'organizzazione dello Stato Fascista 1925–1929 (Turin: Einaudi, 1968)Google Scholar (thereafter De Felice 3); Mussolini il duce, I: Gli anni del consenso, 1929–1936 (Turin: Einaudi, 1974) (thereafter De Felice 4); Mussolini il duce, II: Lo Stato totalitario 1936–1940 (Turin: Einaudi 1981) (thereafter De Felice 5); Mussolini l'alleato, 1/1,2: L'Italia in guerra 1940–1943 (Turin: Einaudi, 1990) (thereafter De Felice 6). Passages cited in the text from these and other De Felice works are my translations; I have attempted, perhaps inadvisedly, to preserve both the syntax of the originals and their author's characteristic use of quotation marks as qualifiers.

3 Taylor, A. J. P., The Origins of the Second World War (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1963), i, 9Google Scholar; De Felice, Renzo, Intervista sul fasciscmo (thereafter De Felice, Intervista), ed. Ledeen, Michael (Bari: Laterza, 1976), 112.Google Scholar

4 ibid., 7, 10, 20, 112 and (for Tasca), 1:xxii; for a recent denunciation of his critics, see De Felice 6:x-xii (1990).

5 See especially Rochat, Giorgio, ‘Il quarto volume della biografia di Mussolini di Renzo De Felice’, Italia Contemporanea, Vol. 122 (1976), 89–102Google Scholar, and idem, ‘Ancora sul “Mussolini” di Renzo De Felice’, ibid., Vol. 144 (1981), 5–10.

6 Which in Italy, as Rochat has observed, have suffered from a ‘lack of interest … encouraged equally by Left and Right, anti-militarist circles and generals’. Rochat, Giorgio, L'esercito italiano da Vittorio Veneto a Mussolini (Bari: Laterza, 1967), 3.Google Scholar

7 De Felice, Renzo, ‘La storiografia contemporaneistica italiana dopo la seconda guerra mondiale’, Storia Contemporanea, Vol. 10, no. 1 (1979), 100.Google Scholar At least some of De Felice's critique strikes home – but this particular claim ignores the extensive and penetrating work of Rochat on the Fascist regime's military affairs and of Giampiero Carocci and others on its foreign policy.

8 De Felice 4, 655 n. 1 on Libya; on Ethiopia, ibid., 745, n. 1, and the parenthetical remarks on the post-1936 ‘rebellion’ by the Ethiopians, De Felice 5, 104–5. For dispassionate and carefully documented accounts of Fascist Italy's Libyan and Ethiopian pacification efforts, seeRochat, Giorgio, Guerre italiane in Libia e in Etiopia. Studi militari 1921–1939 (Milan: Pagus, 1991)Google Scholar, and Boca, Angelo Del, Gli italiani in Africa orientale. La caduta dell'impero (Bari: Laterza, 1982).Google Scholar

9 Vivarelli, Roberto, ‘Benito Mussolini dal socialismo al fascismo’, Rivista Storica Italiana, Vol. 79, no. 2 (1967), 444.Google Scholar

10 De Felice 4, 124.

11 ibid., 298; also De Felice 2, 469–70

12 De Felice 1, xxvi; De Felice 2, 19, 166, 168, 321, 462–6, 431, 441, 472–5.

13 De Felice 2, 537–8.

14 De Felice 3, 9; the involved syntax and frequent ambiguity is characteristic; see also ibid., 67 (‘un' operazione trasformistico-autoritaria su vastissima scala tendente di realizzare un regime di generale compromesso’).

15 De Felice 3, 264.

16 De Felice 4, 25–6, claims that Mussolini developed a long–term strategy and ‘moral idea’, and refers the reader for confirmation to De Felice 3, 357ff. That passage does vaguely suggest that Mussolini developed a long-term strategy by 1927–8, but also repeats forcefully (ibid., 364) yet again the objectless opportunism thesis which De Felice drops in volume 4 and after.

17 De Felice 3, 364.

18 Yet this was not a new Mussolini theme: it was already a commonplace of his socialist period. See for instance Opera omnia di Benito Mussolini (Florence: La Fenice, Rome: Giovanni Volpe, 1951–78), 3:66, 87 (1910).

19 De Felice 4, 462; but see the comments of Denis Mack Smith, ‘Un monumento al duce’, in Smith, Denis Mack, Ledeen, Michael A., Un monumento al duce? (Florence: Guaraldi, 1976), 28–47.Google Scholar

20 See especially De Felice 4, 650, 798–802, De Felice 5, 265–6.

21 De Felice 5, 93–101.

22 De Felice 5, 155.

23 De Felice 4, 331.

24 De Felice 2, 239, 559–65, De Felice 3, 223, 335, 337, 340, 342; idem, ‘Alcune osservazioni sulla politica estera mussoliniana’, in idem, ed., L'Italia fra tedeschi e alleati (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1973), 62.Google Scholar

25 De Felice 4, 338–9.

26 De Felice 4, 358, 359–60.

27 De Felice 4, 374 (370 n. 1 for the source); policy: 4, 381.

28 De Felice 4, 378, 379 (emphasis in original).

29 De Felice 4, 379 and I documenti diplomatici italiani (Rome, 1952- ) (thereafter DDI) 7/10/272, p. 418.

30 See esp. De Felice 4, 464–6.

31 De Felice 4, 418, 506.

32 Mussolini memorandum, 30 Dec. 1934, De Felice 4, 606–9, and DDI 7/16/358 (emphasis in original).

33 De Felice 4, 609, 662, 686–8 (‘plans’: 687), 706–8, 743.

34 De Felice 5, 333.

35 ibid., 339.

36 ibid., 466.

37 ibid., 348 (but contrast De Felice 2, 230).

38 ibid., 5, 534, 535 (quotation marks in original).

39 De Felice 6, 61.

40 De Felice 5, 543; see also Rosaria Quartararo, Roma tra Londra e Berlino. La politica estera fascista dal 1930 al 1940 (Rome: Bonacci, 1980), chs 6, 7.

41 De Felice 5, 501, De Felice 6, 70–5.

42 De Felice 5, 568, 546–7; Quartararo, Rosaria, ‘Inghilterra e Italia. Dal Patto di Pasqua a Monaco’, Storia Contemporanea, Vol. 7, no. 4 (1976), 679–84Google Scholar; Quartararo's credibility is not enhanced by her concomitant claim (ibid., 641–2 n.) that Hoggan, David L., Der erzwungene Krieg (Tübingen: Deutschen Hochschullehrer-Zeitung, 1961, 1964)Google Scholar, is ‘perhaps still … the best general account from the German side’ of the Munich period, or the suggestions in Roma tra Londra e Berlino that ‘if there nevertheless was an Ethiopian campaign, it was a consequence not of the will of Mussolini but of that of the English’ (93), that the war of 1939 was a British ‘preventive war’ against Germany (490, 506, 516), and that British intransigence pushed into war in 1940 a Mussolini who sought compromise (610, 616ff.).

43 De Felice 5, 590.

44 ibid., 593.

45 ibid., 618, 621–2 (Grandi citation), 624, 639–40.

46 ibid., 669, 675, 771, 679, 685.

47 ibid., 782.

48 ibid., 806–7, 834 (emphasis in original).

49 De Felice 6, 92, 94, 101, 102, 104, 283; ‘victory’ or ‘victorious conclusion’: ibid., 105, 111, 115, and above all 174.

50 ibid., 302–3.

51 For a small selection from the much larger body of contemporary evidence on this point, Knox, MacGregor, Mussolini Unleashed, 1939–1941.Politics and Strategy in Fascist Italy's Last War (thereafter Knox, Mussolini Unleashed) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 3–4.Google Scholar

52 De Felice 2, 384 (vote for everyone); De Felice 3, 128; De Felice 4, 51; Mussolini, Opera omnia 21/362, 22 June 1925.

53 For a selection of the very extensive evidence supporting this early dating of Mussolini's attempts to remake the Italian people, see Knox, MacGregor, ‘Conquest, Foreign and Domestic, in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany’ (thereafter Knox, ‘Conquest’), Journal of Modern History, Vol. 56 (1984),14–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and idem, ‘Il fascismo e la politica estera italiana’ (thereafter Knox, ‘Il fascismo’), in Bosworth, Richard and Romano, Sergio, eds, La politica estera italiana (1860–1985) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1991), 293–9.Google Scholar

54 Grandi, Diary, 12 Sept. 1930 and 6 Jan. 1931, from Paolo Nello, Un fedele disubbidiente: Dino Grandi dal palazzo Chigi al 25 luglio (thereafter Nello, Fedele) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1993), 90–1, 115; further Grandi diary passages quoted below are cited from the microfilms of the originals available at the Georgetown University Library, Washington, DC.

55 Grandi, Diary, 20 March 1932.

56 De Felice 5, 321–5, but first exploited as a statement of Mussolini's war aims by Sir William Deakin, The Brutal Friendship: Mussolini, Hitler, and the Fall of Fascism (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1962), 5–6; key portions also translated in Knox, , Mussolini Unleashed, 40.Google Scholar

57 See the detailed reconstructions in Knox, ‘Conquest’, 19–20, and ‘Il fascismo’, 296–9.

58 Neurath to Auswärtiges Amt, 2 Dec. 1924, US National Archives microcopy T-120 (German Foreign Ministry files), 6059/E447588–94, first noted by Jens Petersen, Hitler–Mussolini (thereafter Petersen, Hitler–Mussolini) (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1973), 2–3. Knox, ‘Conquest’, offers a framework for understanding the intertwining of revolutionary foreign and domestic goals suggested in this document.

59 See Ceva, Lucio, ‘1927. Una riuniune fra Mussolini e i vertici militari’, Il Politico, Vol. 50, no. 2 (1985), 321–37Google Scholar (quotation 334), and Maria Ormos, ‘L'opinione del conte Stefano Bethlen sui rapporti italo-ungheresi (1927–31)’, Storia Contemporanea, Vol. 2, no. 2 (1971), 301ff.

60 Nello, Fedele, 24, claims that Grandi was always hostile to an Italo-German alliance – a view refuted by the 1930–1 Grandi diary passages cited below.

61 For what follows, Grandi, Diary, 6 and 24 June, 18 Aug. 1930, 3 April 1931 (emphasis in original).

62 What follows, with the exception of ‘Between 1935 and 1936 … Francek’ (from Grandi, Diary, 19 June 1930), are from Gàzzera's notes of meetings with Mussolini, 11 June 1929, 30 May, 30 June, 23 Dec. 1930; 22 July 1932 (emphases from originals). For more on Gàzzera's papers and for some of the passages quoted here, see Pelagalli, Sergio, ‘Il generale Pietro Gàzzera al ministero della guerra (1928–1933)’Google Scholar, (thereafter Pelagalli, ‘Gàzzera’) Storia Contemporanea, Vol. 20, no. 6 (1989), 1040–5; remaining quotations from a microfilm of the originals in the author's possession.

63 For the context of the Capello mission, which sought to sound out German interest in an Italian alliance, see especially Petersen, , Hitler–Mussolini, 7–24Google Scholar, and Cassels, Alan, ‘Mussolini and German Nationalism, 1922–25’, Journal of Modern History, Vol. 35, no. 2, 137–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; when quoting these remarks of Gàzzera, , Pelagalli, , ‘Gàzzera’, 1040Google Scholar, omits the highly significant reference to Capello.

64 This sentence (‘Occorre ormai prevedere in un periodo da 4 a 6 anni la guerra con Francia e Yugoslavia’), but not subsequent ones, omitted from the quotation of this entry by Pelagalli, ‘Gàzzera’, 1041.

65 Quotation, , Felice, De, Intervista, 51.Google Scholar

66 De Felice 4, 370–8.

67 See the analysis, with partial texts of Grandi's actual speeches, one of which is actively anti-French, in Knox, , ‘I testi “aggiustati” dei discorsi segreti di Grandi’, Passato e Presente, Vol. 13 (1987), 97–117Google Scholar; also reply to Paolo Nello, ibid., Vol. 16 (1988), 190–2.

68 Grandi, Diary, 20 March 1932 (emphasis in original).

69 ‘Gone to bed …’. Roberto Cantalupo, Fu la Spagna (Milan, 1948), cited in De Felice 4, 394; Grandi, Diary, 8 Aug. 1932.

70 On all this, see Knox, ‘Il fascismo’, 317–18, and Gàzzera notes, 8 Jan. 1933 (Mussolini–Gàzzera), 9 Jan. 1933 (Gàzzera–Victor Emmanuel III).

71 Mori, Renato, Mussolini e la conquista dell'Etiopia (Florence: Le Monnier, 1978), esp. 72–6, 159–65, 217–29, 233–41, 260–1, 276–82, 292Google Scholar; see also (among much other evidence that Mussolini sought total conquest and rejected any even provisional settlement that did not reduce Ethiopia to helpless fragments) DDI 8/2/355, 842, 854–6, 860, 863, and Mussolini's defiant speech at Pontinia, 18 Dec. 1935, Opera Omnia, 27/202–03.

72 For Mussolini's March 1935 insistence on the conquest of Egypt and the Sudan as the next goal, see Cora, Giuliano, ‘Un diplomatico durante l'era fascista’, Storia e Politica, Vol. 5, no. 1 (1966), 94Google Scholar, and Pirelli, Alberto, Taccuini 1922/1943 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1984), 123–4Google Scholar; likewise Ojetti, Ugo, I taccuini (Florence: Sansoni, 1954), 464.Google Scholar The tactical nature of Italy's pro-Western stance at Stresa and even of Italian support for Austrian independence is also clear from internal memoranda prepared for Mussolini by Pompeo Aloisi and Gino Buti, key Foreign Ministry figures far more moderate than the dictator himself. DDI 7/16/851, 886 (2 and 8 April 1935).

73 De Bono, Diary, notebook 43, 30 Nov. 1938 (not 30 Oct. 1938, as mis-cited in De Felice 5, 549), Archivio Centrale dello Stato.

74 See for instance Mussolini's long disquisition, in his 4 Feb. 1939 Grand Council memorandum, on an aero-naval war with France, quoted in De Felice 5, 324–5, his remarks to General Vittorio Ambrosio on 27 Jan. (quoted in Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, 39), and other evidence for aggressive elements in Italian military planning in this period, ibid., 40–2, 310.

75 Ciano, Galeazzo, Diario 1937–1943 (Milan: Rizzoli, 1980)Google Scholar, 5, 9, 12 May 1938; 1 Jan. 1939 (but see also 6 Nov. and 12 Dec. 1937).

76 Mussolini, , quoted in De Felice 5, 321–2Google Scholar; Documents on German Foreign Policy, Ser. D, Vol. 6 (London: HMSO, 1956), document 386.

77 De Felice 5, 679; on Italian military planning and the August crisis, see Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, 42–3, and documentation cited; Pariani's notes on planning against Greece and Yugoslavia, 17 Aug. 1939, add further useful details. Quaderni Pariani, 15–16/42, Carte Pariani, Civiche Raccolte Storiche di Milano.

78 For all this, Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, ch. 3 and documentation cited therein; see also Fortunato Minniti, ‘Profilo dell'iniziativa strategica italiana dalla “non belligeranza” alla “guerra parallela”’, (thereafter Minniti, ‘L'iniziativa strategica’), Storia Contemporanea, Vol. 18, no. 6 (1987), 1171, on the ‘“minimalist” positions’ of the high command on the use of military force in May–June 1940.

79 Szabó to Honvéd chief of staff, unnumbered, 19 April 1940, papers of László Szabó, K100, Foreign Ministry Archive, Hungarian National Archives, Budapest.

80 Knox, , Mussolini Unleashed, 123.Google Scholar

81 Minniti, ‘L'iniziativa strategica’, argues more ably than De Felice the case for political bluff as the central concept of Italy's war effort in 1940, yet nevertheless concedes (1173) that the attack on France in June does not fit that conception, and sees Mussolini's insistence on attacking Greece in October as an effort to enlarge Italy's ‘strategic horizon’, ibid., 1186.

82 I have borrowed this notion from Giovanni De Luna, Mussolini, Benito. Soggettività e pratica di una dittatura (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1978), 129.Google Scholar

83 Felice, De, Intervista, 41–2, 54, 101–2, 105–6Google Scholar; quotation: De Felice in Panorama, 28 April 1995, 97. Prinz, Michael, Zitelmann, Rainer, eds., Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung (Darmstadt: Wissen-schaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1991)Google Scholar offers a useful introduction to the now extensive literature on Nazism as a variety of ‘modernism’, but see also Zitelmann, Hitler: Selbstverständnis eines Revolutionärs (Hamburg: Berg, 1987)Google Scholar, and Herf, Jeffrey, Reactionary Modernism. Technology, Culture, and Politics in the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).Google Scholar

84 For some preliminary suggestions, see Knox, ‘Conquest’.