a fascist party was formed. In October 1922 Mussolini persuaded the king, Victor
Emmanuel III, by means of a threatened putsch (dramatised by the March on Rome)
to allow him to become prime minister of a coalition government.
The action squads, veteran soldiers from an elite battalion, were in theory
absorbed into the Voluntary Militia of National Security, but dissatisfied elements
in June 1924 killed the socialist deputy, Matteotti, who was a major parliamentary
critic of Mussolini. Mussolini then suppressed all the other parliamentary parties
and created a regime made up purely of fascists. Until 1929 Mussolini was concerned
to consolidate the new system, and in the next decade he embarked upon the
conquest of Abyssinia and formed an alliance with Hitler’s Germany. Although
Italy joined the Second World War on Hitler’s side, in July 1943 Mussolini was
ousted by the king and disaffected fascist leaders and Italy sued for peace with the
anti-German Allies. Mussolini was ‘rescued’ by German troops and in a small town
near Lake Garda an Italian Social Republic was proclaimed, which lasted from 1943
to 1945.
Nationalism and war
Mussolini had argued strongly for intervention in the First World War, and war
was treated by the fascists in Italy as a force for rejuvenation and life. War enabled
the nation to constitute itself as a vital, living force, hence Maronetti (1876–1944),
leader of the Futurist movement, spoke of the need for a nationalism that was ‘ultra-
violent, anti-traditionist and anti-clericalist’, a nationalism based on ‘the
inexhaustible vitality of Italian blood’ (Griffin, 1995: 26). The First World War was
crucial to win the battle for civilisation and freedom. Maronetti believed that this
war would enrich Italy with ‘men of action’, while Mussolini in 1914 broke with
the ‘cowards’ who opposed the war, and declared in 1917 that those who fought
in the trenches were the ‘aristocracy of tomorrow’, ‘the aristocracy in action’ (Griffin,
1995: 26–8). The regime’s slogans were ‘believe, obey, fight’.
The war was regarded by Roberto Farinacci (1892–1945) as the creator of a new
Italian nation and, in Mussolini’s view, the First World War brought about a
‘profound psychological transformation’ among the peasants in the countryside, with
veterans becoming leaders in the rural areas. In Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms,
Frederic says to the priest that the Italian army ‘were beaten to start with’ when
they took the peasants from their farms ‘and put them in the army. That is why
the peasant has wisdom, because he is defeated from the start. Put him in power,
and see how wise he is’ (1985: 157). Clearly, Mussolini would not have agreed
with Hemingway!
Physical exercise was to develop skills, according to the Italian leader, ‘which
may be necessary in a future war’. War was linked to nationalism. The nation,
Mussolini declared shortly before the March on Rome, is a myth to which all must
be subordinated, and Costamagna (1881–1965) insisted that from a cultural point
of view only the individual nation constitutes a universum, a concrete universal.
The Italian nation, argued the National Association in 1920, embraces people of
the future as well as the present, in a venture that is both domestic as well as
international in character: the nation either perishes or dominates. War has, said
Luigi Federzoni (1878–1967) of the same Association, ‘regenerating properties’
Chapter 13 Fascism 285