Mussolini's follies: Fascism in its imperial and racist phase, 1935-1940

Contemporary European History

Volumn 13, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 127-147

  De Grand, Alexander ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950527737     PISSN: 09607773     EISSN: 14692171     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0960777304001602     Document Type: Review

References (119)

1. Alessandro Lessona, Memorie (Rome: Edizioni Lessona, 1963), 269. All translations are by the author
2. Aldo A. Mola distinguishes between imperialism and colonialism. The latter was the occupation of overseas territory as an outlet for emigration, the expansion of metropolitan society and commercial development. A. A. Mola, L'imperialismo italiano: La politica estera dall Unit̀a al fascismo (Rome: Riuniti, 1980), xiii
3. On Mussolini's imperialism, see Renzo De Felice, Mussolini il Duce: Gli anni del consenso, 1929-1936 (Turin: Einaudi, 1974)
4. Macgregor Knox, 'Conquest, Foreign and Domestic, in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany', in Knox, Common Destiny: Dictatorship, Foreign Policy and War in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 60-2
5. Pier Giorgio Zunino, L'ideologia del fascismo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1985), 356-7
6. Knox, 'Conquest, Foreign and Domestic', 61-2
7. De Felice, Mussolini il Duce, 334. Mussolini deeply resented British obstruction of his plans for war in Ethiopia
8. See Robert Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins of the Second World War, 1933-1940 (Houndsmill: Macmillan Palgrave, 2003), 53
9. Giuseppe Bottai, Diario 1935-1944, ed. G. B. Guerri (Milan: Rizzoli, 1982), entry for 30 Nov. 1938
10. for another version of the same speech, see Galeazzo Ciano, Diario 1937-1943, ed. Renzo De Felice (Milan: Rizzoli, 1980), entries for 30 Nov. and 2 Dec. 1938, 219-20
11. 'Il duce proclama che le rivendicazioni italiane hanno nome: Tunisi, Gibuti, Canale di Suez', Il Popolo d'Italia, 37 March 1939
12. G. Bruce Strang, On the Fiery March: Mussolini Prepares for War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), 213-15
13. On Mussolini's concept of 'spazio vitale', see Aristotle Kallis, Fascist Ideology: Territory and Expansionism in Italy and Germany, 1922-1945 (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 50-1
14. Paolo Orano, ed., L'espansione coloniale (Rome: Casa editrice Pinciana, 1940), 37, 83-115, 151-3
15. Nicola Labanca, In Marcia verso Adua (Turin: Einaudi, 1993), 163-4, 79. Labanca does not deny that major economic groups profited from colonial expansion, even if Italy as a whole did not
16. On the forces behind expansion, see Daniel Grange, L'Italie et la Méditerranée (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1994), II, ch. 20, 'Eléments d'un consensus expansioniste', and ch. 22, 'Les groupes de pression'
17. Labanca, In marcia verso Adua, 144
18. Giulia Barrera, 'The Construction of Racial Hierarchies in Colonial Eritrea: The Liberal and Early Fascist Period (1897-1934)', in Patrizia Palumbo, ed., A Place in the Sun: Africa in Italian Colonial Culture from Post-unification to the present (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003). Giulia Barrera generously put this and other unpublished manuscripts at my disposal
19. Nicola Labanca, 'Memorie e complessi di Adua: Appunti', in Angelo Del Boca, ed., Adua: le ragioni di una sconfitti (Rome: Laterza, 1997), 399, 402-6
20. Giulio Pescosolido, 'Il dibattito coloniale nella stampa italiana e la battaglia di Adua', Storia contemporanea, no. 4 (1973), 675-711
21. L. Marcantelli, 'La Waterloo africana', La Tribuna, 13 March 1896, cited in Luigi Goglia and Fabio Grassi, Il colonialismo italiano da Adua allo'Impero (Bari: Laterza, 1981), 59-60
22. Giampaolo Calchi Novati, 'Studi e politica ai convegni coloniali del primo e secondo dopoguerra', Il Politico, 55 (1990), 501-3
23. Angelo Del Boca, Gli italiani in Africa orientale, vol. 2, Conquista dell'Impero (Bari: Laterza, 1976), 7, 19, 74-5
24. De Felice, Mussolini il Duce: Gli anni del consenso, 364-5. De Felice contended that Mussolini lacked a coherent foreign policy programme on taking office and that his impressions were those of a nationalist journalist (p. 331)
25. Mussolini's speech was cited in Del Boca, La Conquista del Impero, 11-12
26. on Fascist Italy's rejection of the status quo, see Zunino, L'ideologia del fascismo, 315-16
27. Angelo Del Boca, Gli italiani in Libia, 50, 121-2
28. Gennaro Mondaini, La legislazione coloniale italiana nel suo sviluppo storico e nel suo stato attuale (1881-1930), 2 vols. (Milan: Istituto per gli studi di politica internazionale, 1941), II, 634
29. Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini's Roman Empire (London and New York: Longman, 1976), 36, 42. Concessions made to Arabs in 1919 were considered humiliating and unbearable by the Fascist radical Asvero Gravelli
30. See Asvero Gravelli, ed., Africa: Espansionismo fascista e revisionismo (Rome: Editrice Nuova Europa, 1933), 8
31. Del Boca, Gli italiani in Libia, 52-5
32. Mack Smith, Mussolini's Roman Empire, 38
33. Piero Pieri and Giorgio Rochat, Pietro Badoglio (Turin: UTET, 1974), 614
34. Del Boca, Gli italiani in Libia, 182-3
35. Giorgio Rochat, 'Le guerre coloniali dell'Italia fascista', in Angelo Del Boca, ed., Le guerre coloniali del fascismo (Bari: Laterza, 1991), 177-9
36. Habib Wadaa al-Hasnawi, 'Note sulla politica coloniale italiana verso gli arabi libici (1911-1943)', ibid., 43-5
37. on the use of gas, see Del Boca, 'I crimini del colonialismo fascista', in idem, Le guerre coloniali del fascismo, 237-38
38. Giorgio Rochat, 'L'impiego dei gas nella guerra d'Etiopia', Rivista di storia contemporanea, 17 ( January 1988), 78
39. On De Vecchi, see Del Boca, Conquista del impero, 51-3
40. 'I crimini del colonialismo fascista', in Le guerre coloniali del fascismo, 243-4
41. Nicholas Doumanis, Myth and Memory in the Mediterranean: Remembering Fascism's Empire (New York, St. Martin's Press, 1997), 82-4
42. Felice Guarneri, Battaglie ecnomiche fra le due guerre, ed. Luciano Zani (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1988), 654
43. Mola, Imperialismo italiano, 308-12
44. Giuseppe Maione, 'I costi delle imprese coloniali', in Del Boca, Le guerre coloniali del fascismo, 401, 403-5, 413
45. Rochat, 'Le guerre coloniali dell' Italia fascista', ibid., 177
46. Giulia Barrera, 'Mussolini's Colonial Race Laws and State - Settler Relations in AOI (1935-1941)', Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 8, 3, (2003), 428
47. Nicola Labanca noted the relative lack of studies on colonialism. None of the general histories of the regime attempts to integrate the colonial experience. It is either ignored or treated as a diplomatic problem. See Nicola Labanca, 'Il razzismo coloniale italiano', in Alberto Burgio, ed., Nel nome della razza: Il razzismo nella storia d'Italia (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999), 157-9
48. Maione, 'I costi delle imprese coloniali', in Del Boca, Le guerre coloniali del fascismo, 401, 413-15
49. Mola saw similar sharp increases in total military expenditures between 1935 and 1940. The colonies absorbed 29.6 per cent of public expenditures in 1936 and 23.5 per cent in 1939. Mola, L'imperialismo italiano, 308-21
50. Guarneri, Battaglie economiche, 654, 750-1. Exports reached L350 million in 1937. Alberto Asquini estimated that the negative commercial balance in 1937 would be as high as L 1.75 billion. Costs would run at about 1 billion lire per year, but road building was in a separate budget category (L3 billion) as were other public works (L2 billion)
51. Alberto Asquini, 'La politica economica dell'Italia in Etiopia', Annali dell'Africa Italiana, 1 (1938), 855-6
52. Guarneri, Battaglie economiche, 757, also 494, 751
53. Ciro Poggiali, 'La nuova Addis Abeba', Annali dell'Africa Italiana, 1 (1938), 457-93
54. See Teruzzi's report, 'Il potenziamento dell'Impero', Il Popolo d'Italia, 26 Oct. 1939
55. 'La strada della vittoria', Annali dell'Africa Italiana, 1 (1938), 194-95. Not only were the roads difficult to build, they were hard to maintain
56. See 'Le opere pubbliche', Annali dell'Africa Italiana, 2 (1939), 326-7
57. Krystyna Clara von Henneberg, 'The Construction of Fascist Libya: Modern Colonial Architecture and Urban Planning in Italian North Africa (1922-1943), Ph.D. dissertation, Department of History, University of California at Berkeley, 1996, 72-3, 193
58. Maria Quine recently analysed the plundering of the INPS. A 1935 reform allowed its vast funds to be diverted to public works projects, housing construction, land reclamation and even private ventures. Huge amounts were diverted to Africa at the same time as the regime cut back on its own contributions to the social insurance, old age, maternity and health funds that the INPS managed. See Maria Quine, Italy's Social Revolution: Charity and Welfare from Liberalism to Fascism (Houndsmill: Palgrave, 2002), 115-16
59. Barrera, 'Mussolini's Colonial Race Laws', 428
60. Von Henneberg, 'Construction of Fascist Libya', 193
61. Von Henneberg, 'Construction of Fascist Libya', 329. Two agencies, the Istituto Nazionale Fascist della Previdenza Sociale and the Ente per la Colonizzazione della Libia, paid out almost L300,000,000. Carlo Basilici, 'L'Armata del lavoro', Annali dell'Africa Italiana, 1 (1938), 757
62. Alberto Pirelli, Taccuini 1922-1943 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1984), 121
63. Reynolds M. Salerno, Vital Crossroads: Mediterranean Origins of the Second World War, 1935-1940 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002)
64. Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins of the Second World War. All show an increasing recklessness on the part of the Duce
65. Lessona suggested that one of the reasons for war was the desire to remake Italians. Lessona, Memorie, 172
66. Luigi Ambrosoli, 'Recherches sur les th'emes imperialistes dans les programmemes et les livres de textes de culture fasciste', Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, 41 (Jan. 1991), 51-66, esp. 55-9
67. 'Educazione guerreria', Critica fascista, 15 Feb. 1935
68. Giuseppe Lombrassa, 'Lavoro e costume', Critica fascista, 18 June 1935
69. Giuseppe Bottai, Diario 1935-1944, ed. G. B. Guerri, (Milan: Rizzoli, 1982), entry for 5 Jan. 1936, 74-5
70. See also Giuseppe Bottai, 'Soldato fascista', and Gherardo Casini, 'Accelerazione rivoluzionaria', Critica fascista, 1 Dec. 1935
71. Del Boca, Conquista del impero, 287-8, 344
72. Bottai, Diario, entry for 14 Jan. 1936, 81
73. Fidia Gambetti, Gli anni che scottano (Milan: Ugo Mursia, 1967), 244
74. Ciano, Diario, entry for 10 July 1938, 156
75. 'Rivoluzione morale o autarchia del costume', Popolo d'Italia, 16 Oct. 1938
76. Von Henneberg, Construction of Fascist Libya', 50-1, 55, 153, 201, 340 (citation), 371
77. Eugenio Giovanetti, 'Il viaggio di S.E. Teruzzi in AOI', Annali dell'Africa Italiana, 1 (1938), 440, which expressed the need to start from scratch in Ethiopia
78. Gianni Granzotto, 'La vita d'Africa e il costume degli italiani', Critica fascista, 1 June 1938
79. 'Il volto nuovo di Addis Abeba', Popolo d'Italia, 3 May 1939
80. Giuseppe Volpi, A politica coloniale del fascismo, cited in Goglia and Grassi, Il colonialismo italiano da Adua all'Impero, 266
81. Adalberto di Savoia-Genova, 'Impressioni e riflessioni sull'Etiopia', in Centro di studi coloniali/Istituto Coloniale Fascista, Atti del terzo congresso di studi coloniali, 9 vols. (Florence and Rome: Istituto Coloniale Fascista, 1937), I, 74
82. Saverio Ilardi, 'Appunti per una nuova sistematica del diritto coloniale', Terzo congresso, III, 15
83. Rochat, 'L'impiego dei gas 80
84. Del Boca, Conquista del impero, 440, 487-90
85. Rochat, 'L'impiego dei gas', 90-1
86. Mussolini had assured Pirelli, who was concerned about international outrage, that he would not use gas. Pirelli, Taccuini, 16 October 1935, 133-5. Of course, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon lied about Vietnam, as George W. Bush does now about Iraq, so perhaps the Duce may be forgiven
87. Del Boca, 'I crimini del colonialismo fascista', in idem, ed., Le Guerre coloniali del fascismo, (Rome: Laterza, 1991), 250
88. Mussolini to Graziani, 19 Jan. 1938, cited in Strang, On the Fiery March, 22
89. Ciro Poggiali, Diario AOI (15 giugno 1936-4 ottobre 1937: Gli appunti segreti dell'inviato del 'Corriere delle Sera' (Milan: Longanesi, 1971), entry for 23 Oct. 1936 and 17 March 1937 for citation, 106, 195
90. Diario AOI, entry for 17 Oct. 1936, 101
91. Poggiali, Diario AOI, entry for 28 July 1936, 73
92. Rochat, 'Le guerre coloniali dell'Italia fascista', 186
93. Giulia Barrera, 'The construction of Racial Hierarchies in Colonial Eritrea: The Liberal and Early Fascist Period (1897-1934)', in Patrizia Palumbo, ed., A Place in the Sun: Africa in Italian Colonial Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, forthcoming)
94. by the same author, Dangerous Liaisons: Colonial Concubinage in Eritrea 1890-1941 (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996)
95. Gianluca Gabrielli, 'Africani in Italia negli anni del razzismo di stato', in Burgio, Nel nome della razza, 201-2
96. Edoardo Zavattari, 'Dottrina fascista e governo dello colonie africane', in Asvero Gravelli, Africa: Espansionismo fascista e revisionismo (Rome: Editrice 'Nuova Europa', 1933), 115, 120-21
97. See Roberto Maiocchi, Scienza italiana e razzismo fascista (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1999), 210, also 158-69 for a fuller discussion
98. Barrera, 'Mussolini's Colonial Race Laws', 426-30
99. Giulia Barrera, Dangerous Liaisons: Colonial Concubinage in Eritrea 1890-1941, African Studies Working Paper1 (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996). 3
100. Gambetti, Gli anni che scottano, 261. Barrera also notes the high number of expulsions from the colonies of rebellious workers and of people engaged in various illegalities
101. Gabriele Turi, Lo Stato educatore: Politica e intellettuali nell'Italia fascista (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 2002), 121, 125
102. MarioRivoire, 'Direttrici politiche del regime: Fine di un antitesi', Critica fascista, 15 Nov. 1938. The author linked autarky, domestic mobilisation and the alliance with Nazi Germany within the imperialist framework
103. For the connection between the growth of the empire and radicalism within the Fascist movement, see Grasso and Goglia, Il colonialismo italiano da Adua all'Impero, 210-11, 219
104. Luigi Goglia, 'Note sul razzismo coloniale fascista,' Storia contemporanea 19 (Dec. 1988), 1223-66, esp. 1238
105. Gennaro Mondaini, 'I problemi del lavoro nel nuovo impero', Terzo congresso, II, 17-18
106. Michele Sarfatti stated that 'in Sep. and Oct. 1938 Mussolini considered revoking the citizenship of all or some of the Jewish Italians'. He limited the measures to foreign Jews who had acquired citizenship after 1918. See Michele Sarfatti, Gli ebrei nell'Italia fascista: vicende, identità, persecuzione (Turin: Einavdi, 2000), 165. Once Libya was made an integral part of Italy, the Arab population was given a special status, short of citizenship
107. Luigi Silva, 'L'organizzazione politica della Libia', Terzo congresso, II, 84
108. Goglia, 'Note sul razzismo coloniale fascista', 1261, 1263
109. In 1937 the racist Lessona presented legislation to ban long-term relationships between Italian males and African females. In July 1937 Italians were forbidden to live in native sections. On the racial regulations of April and July 1937, see 'La legislazione per l'impero', Annali dell'Africa Italiana 2 (1939), 60-2, 70
110. On the ban on mixed race marriages, see 'Il supremo Concesso riunito sotto la presidenza del Duce', Il Popolo d'Italia, 7 Oct. 1938
111. Renzo Sertoli Salis, 'Problemi indigeni sul piano dell'impero', Terzo congresso, II, 112-14
112. Italo Neri, 'Caratteri della politica indigena fascista', Terzo congresso coloniale, II, 140-1
113. For a description of the bureaucracy that was to be moved to the empire, see Carlo Giglio, Partito e impero (1938), cited in Gogli and Grassi, Il colonialismo italiano da Adua all'Impero, 316-21
114. for the party, Davide Fossa, 'L'intervento del Partito nel governo dell'Impero' in Gogli and Grassi, 313-15
115. on the Dopolavoro, 'Il Duce presiede il Consiglio dei Ministri', Il Popolo d'Italia, 24 April 1938
116. Poggiali, Diario AOI, entry for 13 April 1937, 202
117. See Diario AOI, entries for 24 Aug. and 8 Dec. 1936 and 12 Jan. 1937, 84, 132, 171
118. Paul Corner, 'Italian Fascism: Whatever Happened to Dictatorship?', Journal of Modern History 74, (2002), 325-57
119. Ciano, Diario, entry for 2 June 1939, 305-6