The Anatomy of Fascism by Paxton Robert O

Author:Paxton, Robert O. [Paxton, Robert O.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History
ISBN: 9780307428127
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 188378
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2004-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Italian Radicalization: Internal Order, Ethiopia, Salò

Nazi Germany in its final paroxysm is the only authentic example so far of the ultimate stage of fascist radicalization. Italian Fascism, too, displayed some signs of the forces that drive all fascisms toward the extreme.

We saw earlier in this chapter how Mussolini was torn between the radical wishes of the ras and the squadristi and his own preference for order and state predominance over the party. But he could not escape from his self-promoted image as activist hero, and his language remained colored with revolutionary imagery. He could not ignore entirely his followers’ need for fulfillment and the public’s expectation of dramatic achievements that he had himself encouraged.

In the 1930s, perhaps with the already mentioned aim of rejuvenating his paunchy Blackshirts, perhaps also under pressure to divert his people’s attention from Italy’s mediocre economic performance during the Depression, Mussolini embarked on a farther-reaching period of radicalization. After 1930 he had already adopted a more aggressive tone in foreign policy, calling for rearmament and predicting that “the twentieth century will be the century of Fascism."60 He took back into his own hands in 1932 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and in 1933 the Ministries of War, the Navy, and Air. By 1934 he was secretly preparing a military operation in Ethiopia. Taking as a pretext a minor skirmish in December 1934 at Wal-wal, a remote desert waterhole near the unmarked frontier between Ethiopia and Italian Somaliland (now Eritrea), Mussolini launched his armies against Ethiopia on October 3, 1935.

After a one-sided campaign that required more Italian effort than foreseen, Mussolini was able to proclaim victory and declare King Victor Emmanuel III emperor of Ethiopia on May 9, 1936. From the balcony of his offices in the Palazzo Venezia in Rome, Mussolini engaged in a triumphal dialogue with the excited crowd:

Officers, non-commissioned officers, soldiers of all the armed forces of the State in Africa and Italy, Blackshirts of the Revolution, Italian men and women in the fatherland and throughout the world, listen!

Our gleaming sword has cut all the knots, and the African victory will remain in the history of the fatherland complete and pure, a victory such as the legionaries who have fallen and those who have survived dreamed of and willed. . . .

The Italian people has created the empire with its blood. It will fertilize it with its labor and defend it with its arms against anybody whomsoever. Will you be worthy of it? Crowd: Yes!61

The Ethiopian War gave the Fascist Party a “new impulse." 62 At home, it was the occasion for a masterly bit of nationalist theater: the collection of gold wedding rings from the women of Italy, from Queen Elena on down, to help pay for the campaign. Officially it was the Fascist Militia (MVSN) that went to fight in Ethiopia. The party presence was strong in the conquered territory. The party Federale shared power with the prefect and the army commander, and attempted to regiment both the settler population and young Ethiopians through Fascist youth and leisure organizations.

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