Then they said . . . that we were an ephemeral movement; they said we had no doctrine.
Mussolini, Speech in Milan, 28 October 1923
I conclude my speech with a question; but before you reply, bear in mind that the great King, the Father of the Fatherland is watching you, and the Unknown Soldier is listening: now, if it is necessary, will you do tomorrow what you did, what we did, yesterday?
Mussolini, Speech in Rome, 4 November 1928
In December 1918 nationalist imperialist Alfredo Rocco argued that while the recently concluded conflict was commonly seen as one between a democratic Entente on the one hand, and German imperialism and militarism on the other, each of the Great Powers had in fact conducted a war for the preservation and expansion of its own empire. The principle of nationalities was only a democratic smokescreen that allowed the Yugoslavs ‘to perpetuate foreign control’ in the Balkans, and at Italy’s territorial expense. Italy therefore needed to abolish the democratic basis of her national life and to reorganize her social formation in preparation for ongoing war. The State had to impose ‘the discipline of inequalities’ and, from there, ‘hierarchy and organization’ (Rocco, 1918).
From the very beginning of his post-war journalistic campaign in II Popolo d’ltalia, a newspaper which he had owned and run since November 1914, Mussolini supported a different interpretation of Italy’s war. On 4 November 1918, the day on which the armistice between Italy and the now defunct Austro- Hungarian Empire came into force, he defined Italian victory with reference to Giuseppe Mazzini, the democratic prophet of national independence during Italy’s Risorgimento. He wrote that Mazzini was among the Italian dead ‘who are still living’ and who had ‘led the armies’ (OO, XI: 458-9). In his Questione morale of 1866, Mazzini had argued that Italy’s international and humanitarian mission was identifiable with a victorious war against Austria-Hungary that would liberate both Italy and the Balkan peoples (Mazzini, 1961: 52-3). On 5 November Mussolini reproduced this idea as a dominant feature of Italy’s war: ‘[The Austrian] corpse’, he wrote, ‘will no longer stifle the atmosphere . . . Italy, the nation of the future . . . has liberated the peoples’ (OO, XI: 460).
Yet in February 1923, just four months after the fascist March on Rome, the Associazione Nazionale Italiana, of which Rocco was a member, dissolved into the Partito Nazionale Fascista led by Mussolini. The two organizations had found what, in a joint statement, they termed a ‘unity of ideals’ (De Felice, 1966, Appendix: 773-4). What had come to pass that such a fusion was now possible? According to De Felice, an examination of the kind of people present at fascist meetings in 1919 and the early 1920s is crucial for understanding the political transformation that fascism underwent in its ascension to power. In early 1919 there were the ‘old guard’ socialist, syndicalist and anarchist revolutionary interventionists of 1914-15. These attest to the ‘markedly left-wing’ character of the original fascist movement. When, however, it comes to the congresses of Rome (November 1921) and Naples (October 1922), a radical transformation can be noted: now predominant among fascist ranks were agrarians and industrialists reacting against land and factory occupations. For De Felice, ‘in the two sets of names is already synthesized the [progressive] evolution [and then reactionary] involution of fascism’ (1965: 504-6). Even with this involution, however, the original fascist movement would continue to exist throughout the fascist period and, according to De Felice, ‘is the “guiding thread” which links March 1919 to April 1945’ (1975: 28). Elements of this argument were later taken up by Emilio Gentile, according to whom the fascism of 1920 was revealing a ‘progressive moving away from the fascism of the original programme’ (1975: 192). More recently, Richard Bosworth has spoken of the fascist programmes of 1919 as having contained ‘radical plans to push society towards equality’ (2002: 21).
To what extent do these assessments conform to the documentary evidence? On 18 March 1919 Mussolini announced the aims of the founding meeting of the fasci di combattimento which was to be held five days later. He continued to differ radically from Rocco in his characterization of the war’s legacy: fascism, he stated, was out to achieve ‘political and economic democracy’. But he also specified that fascism would be setting out ‘from the terrain of the nation, of the war, of the victory’. In short, it would be starting ‘from interventionism’. For Mussolini, Italian intervention in May 1915 had represented a revolution, or rather ‘the first phase of a revolution’ that was ‘not finished’ and in fact ‘continues’ (Mussolini’s emphases). To bring this ‘revolution’ to completion was the purpose of nascent fascism (OO, XII: 309-11). Hence even at this early stage Mussolini, like Rocco, placed emphasis on the nation and shared with the nationalist imperialist the view that the war was an ongoing process. In Piazza San Sepolcro in Milan five days later Mussolini presented the fascist programme, which is reproduced in full here:
I.
The meeting of 23 March dedicates its first salute, its memory and its reverent thought to the sons of Italy who fell for the greatness of the Fatherland and for the liberty of the World; to the mutilated and the invalid; to all the combatants and to the ex-prisoners who carried out their duty. It declares itself ready to energetically support the claims of a material and moral nature put forward by the combatants’ associations.
II.
The meeting of 23 March declares itself opposed to the imperialism of other peoples to Italy’s detriment and to any possible Italian imperialism to the detriment of other peoples. It accepts the supreme postulate of the League of Nations which presupposes the integration of each nation, an integration which in Italy’s case must be realized on the Alps and on the Adriatic with the claim to Fiume and Dalmatia and their annexation.
III.
The meeting of 23 March commits all fascists to sabotaging the candidacies of the neutralists of all parties by any means necessary. (OO, XII: 321-3)
A number of issues are at work here. In section I reference is made to Italy’s fallen soldiers and these are linked to ‘the greatness of the Fatherland’. But any notion that this somehow implies egotistic expansionism is offset when those same soldiers are said to have fallen for ‘the liberty of the World’. In any case, in section II Italian imperialism is rejected and fascism’s adherence to the American proposal for a League of Nations is stressed. By the same token, however, Italian imperialism may be acceptable once it is not carried out ‘to the detriment of other peoples’. In his spoken comment on the programme, Mussolini qualified this by saying that ‘what distinguishes one imperialism from another are the means adopted’ and that Italy would never adopt ‘barbaric means of penetration’. He also noted that Italy had a population of 40 million which, he claimed, would be 60 million ‘in 10 or 20 years time’. This contrasted with the fact that ‘we have barely 1.5 million square kilometres of colonies, for the most part sandy, towards which we will never be able to direct the majority of our population’ (OO, XII: 323). There is also some sabre-rattling in section II where it declares that fascism is opposed to whoever may be considering the practice of imperialism ‘to Italy’s detriment’. The same section’s territorial claims to Fiume and Dalmatia therefore represent something of a bull in a shop whose anti-imperialist and pro-nationalities china has already been precariously placed.
Similar contradictions abound. Mussolini’s already-quoted 5 November 1918 article de-emphasized the State, seeing the war as ‘a people’s war’ and victory as ‘the victory of the people’. Also, in his above-mentioned spoken comments on the San Sepolcro programme he argued that ‘in none of the victorious nations can the triumph of reaction be seen. In all of them there is a march towards the greatest political and economic democracy.’ This differed from Rocco, who, as we have seen, envisaged an authoritarian role for the State in reorganizing Italian society in a decidedly reactionary direction. Yet neither was Mussolini without his ambiguities on this issue, some of which reveal a concern to reaffirm and bolster State authority. In reference to section I’s salute to the former prisoners of war who had ‘carried out their duty’, for example, Mussolini specified in his spoken comment that ‘evidently there were those men who surrendered, but these are known as deserters’ (OO, XII: 322). The need for this distinction originated in the fact that during the conflict the military authorities had treated Italian prisoners of war as little more than deserters. The government blocked public aid, thereby contributing to the deaths of about 100,000 Italian captives through starvation and exposure (Procacci, Gv., 1993: 167-75). In December 1918 Mussolini had visited the detention centre at Gossolengo near Piacenza, where newly released Italian POWs were being interrogated about the circumstances of their capture. He remarked that among the 40,000 men there was ‘no “political” ferment’ and concluded by calling for an end to what he saw as the ‘ridiculous speculation of certain people’ who were trying to ‘deviate towards Italy that deeply felt hatred which our brothers have towards that contemptible Austria’. He praised the camp’s officers for everything they were doing to treat the men with ‘a sense of comradeship and humanity’ (OO, XII: 56-9). In short, Mussolini’s main objective was to redirect any political implications deriving from the prisoners’ grievances about their (mis)treatment during the war. If there was any anti-State sentiment in this stopover camp, it was anti-Austrian.
Furthermore, there is an all-important question of State about which the programme of San Sepolcro says nothing - the Monarchy. In his ultimately failed attempt in November 1918 to convene a Constituent Assembly of Interventionism, Mussolini specified that the Assembly was not to have a republican character. ‘We will make the republic when a change in the institutions seems necessary to ensure national development’, he wrote on 14 November (OO, XII: 3-5). Arguably this position reflected a desire not to preclude the participation of non-republicans in the Constituent Assembly. This, indeed, was De Felice’s view (1965: 470). But in February 1919 Mussolini affirmed that, along with everything else, ‘we are also conservative’ (OO, XII: 230-3. Mussolini’s emphasis). Was his non-committal stance on the Monarchy the expression of the tactical shrewdness of a left-wing militant, pace De Felice? Or might it have reflected a concern to underpin the central symbol of State authority and social hierarchy? We can begin to examine these various possibilities by further exploring the San Sepolcro programme’s territorial claims (section II) and its internal social policy (sections I and III). Particular attention will be paid to the role ascribed to Italy’s fallen soldiers, whose centrality is evidenced by the fact that they initiate the programmatic declaration.