The Growth of Fascism: Interwar Italy and Spain
Overview
Statewide Dual Credit Modern World History: Unit 13, Lesson 4
A discussion of Italy and Spain in the interwar period, focusing on the rise of fascism in Italy under Mussolini and the Spanish Civil War that brought General Francisco Franco to power. Both nations experienced political turmoil and the influence of fascist ideologies, shaping their trajectories in the years leading up to World War II. Including excerpts from Mussolini's 1932 "What is Facism".
Italy in the Interwar Period
Italy had the most complicated history of all the nations that fought in World War I. In 1882, Italy joined the German and Austrian Empires in forming the Triple Alliance. Wary of siding with its old adversary Austria, Italian officials declared their neutrality in August 1914. The following year Italy joined the Triple Entente hoping to gain the culturally Italian but Austrian-occupied areas of Trentino, South Tyrol and Trieste. In April 1915, Italy declared war on its former allies. However, as Italy remained an overwhelmingly rural country, it lacked the industrial base to equip its military. Although Italian troops attempted several advances against Austria, they failed to make a breakthrough. It was only in October 1918 that a combined army of Italian, British and French troops broke through the Austro-Hungarian lines. The Austrians then sued for peace a week before the Germans did likewise.
Although Italy was among the “Big Four” at the Paris Peace Conference, the British, French and American delegations did little to help them gain Austrian territory. Italian resentment at the Treaty of Versailles gave journalist and former socialist turned fascist Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) political ammunition to use in his rise to power. In March 1919, Mussolini formed his first fasci di combattimento (fighting leagues). Although he coopted certain progressive ideas, such as an eight-hour workday and women’s suffrage, Mussolini primarily pushed an anti-socialist message. A month later, Mussolini’s “black shirts” burned down the offices of a socialist newspaper in Milan and killed four people. Within a year, fascists broke up strikes, suppressed labor unions and intimidated political officials. From 1921- 1922, known throughout Italy as the “biennio nero” (two black years), Mussolini’s black shirts consolidated their hold over the Italian political system.
Mussolini didn't shy away from defining his ideology. In his own words, the fascist concept "accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal, will of man as a historic entity." (Benito Mussolini, "What is Fascism", 1932)
In October 1921, Mussolini created the Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF or National Fascist Party). After crushing a strike directed by the Confederation of Labor in August 1922, Mussolini led a march on Rome in October. King Victor Emmanuel III (1869- 1947) appointed Mussolini Prime Minister, turning over to him the official reins of power. For 18 months, Mussolini served as part of a coalition government but in early 1925, Mussolini ordered a crackdown on all groups opposed to fascist rule. By 1927, he had abolished elections, curtailed freedom of the press, and outlawed opposition parties. The Organizzazione di Vigilanza Repressione dell’Antifascismo or ORVA (Organization for the Vigilant Repression of Anti- Fascism) assassinated those who opposed Mussolini’s regime. Fascist-led committees controlled school curricula and approved textbooks. The government also arranged national holidays and vacations for workers. The government even attempted to control language by banning foreign-sounding words, renaming public places, and promoting fascist slogans such as “Mussolini ha sempre ragione” (“Mussolini is always right”), “Credere, obbedire, combattere” (“Believe, obey, fight”), and “Un Popolo, un impero, un capo” (“One people, one empire, one leader”). Of all the segments of Italian society, only the Roman Catholic Church remained independent of fascist control. In February 1929, Mussolini’s government allowed Vatican City to become an independent nation. The Church also maintained control over church lands and schools.
As Italy had been among the victors of World War I, it did not have to face the issue of reparation payments. However, in 1926 inflation set in, and unemployment started to rise. Following the outbreak of the Great Depression in 1929, Italy’s fascist government created public works and welfare programs and provided loans to banks and businesses. Fascist trade unions, known as syndicates, secured a 40-hour work week, welfare benefits, vacation time and pensions. Committees of business owners and workers, known as corporations, arbitrated labor issues. A system of tariffs protected Italian farmers and wine growers.
Having failed to gain Austrian-held territory at the end of World War I, Italy attempted to build an overseas empire in the 1920s. As early as 1912, Italy had defeated the Ottoman Empire in a brief war through which it gained Libya. When Mussolini came to power, he often postured as a modern-day Caesar, referring to the Mediterranean by its traditional Roman name as the mare nostrum (our sea). In 1923, Mussolini used the murder of four Italians on the Greek island of Corfu to occupy the area until reparations were made. The following year he strong-armed Yugoslavia into giving Italy the city of Fiume on the Dalmatian coast. In October 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia. Although Emperor Haile Selassie (1892-1975) and his forces fought bravely, the 400,000-strong Italian army crushed all resistance. In April 1939, Italian troops occupied Albania, made the teaching of Italian mandatory in Albanian schools, and stocked the Albanian government with Italian officials.
Italy’s aggressive foreign policy worried other European nations. In May 1935, Britain and France slapped economic sanctions on Italy. Mussolini responded by allying with Nazi Germany and creating the “Rome- Berlin Axis.” In May 1939, Mussolini and Hitler signed the “Pact of Steel,” which committed each nation to support the other in case of invasion. Ironically, when Germany and the USSR invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, Italy once again declared itself neutral.
Like Germany, the devastation of World War I and the political turmoil of the 1920s inspired Italian architects, artists and filmmakers to find new forms of expression. Inspired by the futurist movement, Italian architects like Gio Ponti (1891-1979) and Giovanni Muzio (1893-1982) developed the novacento italiano (Italian twentieth century) movement. In particular, Ponti’s Pirelli Tower and Villa Planchart utilized glass, steel and concrete to create large structures that projected strength and functionality. Artists like Fortunato Depero (1892-1960) likewise produced paintings and sculptures that celebrated industrial development and the development of new technologies.
Throughout the 1920s, Italy was home to the “Italian Futurism” movement in filmmaking. Futurist directors, including Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944), Arnaldo Ginna (1890-1982), Bruno Corra (1892-1976) and Giacomo Balla (1871-1958), created cinematic innovations such as superimposition, fade-outs and the use of light and color to mimic human emotions. In the 1910s, Corra and Ginna experimented with adding color to film. Anton Giulio Bragaglia’s (1890- 1960) Thaïs (1917) dealt with the tortured love affairs of Countess Vera Preobrajenska. As the movie’s scenes become more surreal, her trysts and their implications become more complicated. Because the Fascists heavily censored movies in the 1920s and 1930s, the Italian film industry declined, only to enter a golden age in the postwar period with the works of Federico Fellini (1920-1993) and Sergio Leone (1929-1989).
Spain In The Interwar Period
In the 1930s, Spain became the site of a bloody civil war. In 1936, the Spanish military and conservative Catholics revolted against the elected Republican Spanish government. As the war progressed, General Francisco Franco (1892-1975) rose to the top to become the leader of the Nationalist faction. Mussolini and Hitler supplied “Franconia” forces with weapons, vehicles and advisors. The conflict also served as a training ground for Italian and German troops who would go on to fight in World War II. The Republican forces, who continued to support Spain’s constitutional government, received aid from Mexico and the Soviet Union. After four years of bloody fighting, Franco’s forces emerged victorious.
Franco proclaimed himself Head of State and Government under the title El Caudillo. Under Franco, Spain became a one-party state, as the various conservative and royalist factions were merged into the fascist party and other political parties were outlawed. Franco remained dictator of Spain until his death in 1975.1 The Spanish Civil War convinced many otherwise ambivalent Americans, British and French that fascism represented a growing danger to their countries.
1 adapted from Statewide Dual Credit World History | CC By-SA
Primary Source | Fascism
Excerpt from Benito Mussolini's "What is Fascism" (1932)
Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal, will of man as a historic entity...
Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism -- born of a renunciation of the struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have courage to meet it. All other trials are substitutes, which never really put men into the position where they have to make the great decision -- the alternative of life or death....
...The Fascist accepts life and loves it, knowing nothing of and despising suicide: he rather conceives of life as duty and struggle and conquest, but above all for others -- those who are at hand and those who are far distant, contemporaries, and those who will come after...
...Fascism [is] the complete opposite of…Marxian Socialism, the materialist conception of history of human civilization can be explained simply through the conflict of interests among the various social groups and by the change and development in the means and instruments of production.... Fascism, now and always, believes in holiness and in heroism; that is to say, in actions influenced by no economic motive, direct or indirect. And if the economic conception of history be denied, according to which theory men are no more than puppets, carried to and fro by the waves of chance, while the real directing forces are quite out of their control, it follows that the existence of an unchangeable and unchanging class-war is also denied - the natural progeny of the economic conception of history. And above all Fascism denies that class-war can be the preponderant force in the transformation of society....
After Socialism, Fascism combats the whole complex system of democratic ideology, and repudiates it, whether in its theoretical premises or in its practical application. Fascism denies that the majority, by the simple fact that it is a majority, can direct human society; it denies that numbers alone can govern by means of a periodical consultation, and it affirms the immutable, beneficial, and fruitful inequality of mankind, which can never be permanently leveled through the mere operation of a mechanical process such as universal suffrage....
...Fascism denies, in democracy, the absur[d] conventional untruth of political equality dressed out in the garb of collective irresponsibility, and the myth of "happiness" and indefinite progress....”
Source: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/mussolini-fascism.asp