Fascist Italy

This article covers a topic that, by its very nature, is a magnet for flamewars. Try not to get too assmad at what you're about to read.

This article is about something that is considered by the overpowering majority of /tg/ to be fail. Expect huge amounts of derp and rage, punctuated by /tg/ extracting humor from it.

"It is better to be a lion for one day then a sheep for a hundred."

– Benito Mussolini, NOT Voltaire in spite of the common misatribution

"Well, at least he made the trains run on time!"

– Everyone missing the fucking point, also he didn't

...Totally not a sheep eh?

Fascist Italy is generally used to describe the Kingdom of Italy and its colonies from 1922 to 1943, which was briefly followed by the Italian Social Republic in the last two years of World War II. It is also known for its UTTERLY HORRIFIC FAIL in everything it ever attempted to do. Seriously, you ever see those old-school propaganda cartoons where the Germans were portrayed as bumbling idiots who couldn't think their way out of a paper bag? That was actually a reasonably accurate depiction of the Italian high command. While Italy did excel in certain areas as touched on below, It was significantly better known for the countless disasters it experienced on every conceivable level: command, weapons, supplies, morale, manpower and manufacturing. Italy holds the questionable fame of being the only major Axis country to be defeated without Soviet help (yep, the Kwantung Army's destruction in Manchuria was a significant contribution to the Japanese defeat and it's still a matter of debate whether they were more scared by the atom bomb or the Soviet declaration of war). One of its primary armored vehicles was the Carro Veloce 35... A tankette; in other words a tractor with some sheet metal welded on and a machine gun that modern civilian trucks could probably survive being hit by. And yet Mussolini's certainty that he would usher in a new Roman Empire was absolute. How the FUCK did this happen? How come seemingly every battle had Italy failing against forces that they outnumbered ten to one? Were the Italian soldiers just THAT bad or is this a case of the French being cowards again? Well, buckle up, kids it's gonna be a bumpy ride...

Backstory

In the aftermath of The Great War much of Europe was an utter mess. Those areas which were not devastated by the fighting or caught up in the Russian Civil War were hit hard by economic collapse. Governments had racked up massive debt, agriculture had declined, millions of people had been killed or maimed, there were shortages of everything and in a lot of places social order had broken down. The Russian Empire had collapsed into civil war after 1917 and the German and Austrian Empires were disintegrating even before they were abolished by the Entente. There was a lot of uncertainty about the future, nationalist sentiment that had been riled up in the war was left sloshing about to fester without a target, communist and socialist agitation was on the rise across the continent, and the Red Scare was in full effect.

But not Italy. Oh, no. Things in Italy were much worse. But to understand why we're gonna have to rewind a bit.

After the fall of Rome, Italy took an entirely different path from the rest of the empire, splintering into a motley collection of city-states theoretically loyal to the Holy Roman Emperor. Because of the warmer climate, fertile soils, and coastal cities, Dark Age feudalism never really got established in the region the way it did elsewhere. Italy also bore the worst of the Black Death, so the working-class population who survived enjoyed more power, enough to make merchant republics (sometimes with princes) the norm rather than feudal kingdoms. A good chunk of the region was also controlled by the Pope as his personal stomping ground, the Papal States. And they liked to fight with each other. A lot.

Protected from the northern powers by the Alps, the Italians were free to focus on killing each other over supporting the Pope (Guelphs) vs the Holy Roman Emperor (Ghibellines). But these weren't really wars. They were more like town-vs-town raiding parties, and eventually were more about revenge and pride than a serious dispute over who Italy should unite behind. Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet is set in this period. This went on for LITERALLY CENTURIES until one day a short Corsican with a French army plowed his way through the Alps and told Italy to get with the times.

Between 1829 and 1871, Italy was slowly united, as Italian nationalists pushed one duchy after another to bend the knee to the House of Savoy and took all the land away from the Papal States until they only had a fortified hill in Rome left. This didn't mean that the Italians stopped killing each other, though; far from it. With widespread poverty, unemployment, homelessness, the papacy being salty over losing most of their private demesne and stirring up trouble, and at best marginal success on the industrialization front, Italy in the back half of the 19th century was a shitshow of brigandry, civil war, and familial revenge murder.

What? You've seen "The Godfather" haven't you? You think they just came over to America and started doing all that shit just because?

Before the Great War kicked off, Italy was a member of the Central Powers, but as the conflict started the Italian government decided to rethink their relations with Germany, since they'd mainly promised to get involved if Germany was attacked and Germany had instead squared up to Serbia and Russia after Franz Ferdinand was assassinated. Both sides promised some post-war goodies - Berlin offered them parts of France (mainly Savoy and Provence), while London did the same with Austrian South Tyrol, Albania (then Austrian-dominated) and parts of the Ottoman Empire. In the end Italian ambitions in the Adriatic region prevailed, and they joined the Entente in 1915, hoping to quickly get what they wanted.

They failed. While the occupation of Albania was a definite victory, the Italian theater quickly became one of the least successful fronts in the war. To get the right kind of picture, they couldn't push into Austria-Hungary, a country that couldn't completely liberate Galicia from Russian armies for three years, even as their senior partner Germany battered their way into France against the best and the most that the British and the French could throw at them. In fact, at some point they almost lost Venice to an Austrian offensive. And while they managed to survive until the end of the war and even get some Anatolian lands according to the Treaty of Sevres, Ataturk's now reorganized resistance managed to retake Asia Minor and Britain's unfair treatment of the island possessions crushed their dreams of Mediterranean domination. In the end, they got nothing, which led to them referring to their victory as the "Vittoria Mutilata" (Mutilated Victory)

Enter Il Duce

Into that environment stepped Benito Mussolini.

He rallied a collection of nationalist army-vet toughs, named them the Fascists (from Fasces, an axe tied into a bundle of rods, an old Roman symbol of law and order), beat up a bunch of communists and socialists and projected an image of strength and certainty that won people over. Soon enough his gang of schlubs marched on Rome as a show of strength. King Victor Emmanuel III and the old-school conservatives saw him and his black-shirted thugs as a solution to their communist/socialist/anti-monarchist liberal problems and made him prime minister. He further secured his position by negotiating a treaty between the Vatican and the Kingdom of Italy, defusing the decades-long conflict between the two parties and gaining the church's tacit approval of the fascist regime, basically setting up the situation today. At the same time, his Fascist party embedded itself into the government, fed their message to the masses (which included the need for discipline, nationalism, hierarchy and a belief that war was a good thing in its own right), cracked down on their political enemies, and entrenched themselves into Italian society. By rolling several sixes and being in the right place at the right time, Mussolini became the champion of the European far right, boasting about how he'd rebuild the Roman Empire and inspiring copycats across the continent. At least until Hitler stole his thunder in the late '30s.

Now, although the nature of Germany's sudden wealth and power after the Nazi takeover is explored in depth on their own page, the overall point is that Hitler acquired resources, public support, finances, and a highly trained, well-equipped fighting force before deciding to start invading places. This wasn't just in regards to the army, but using propaganda and public works to win the public over to his side. While he had many issues in regards to actually fighting a war, something Hitler understood was that you need a strong nation (even if it was temporary) in order to support a strong armed force. Il Duce on the other hand, while also mimicking Hitler's giant Ponzi scheme, used his cash flow to support the economy in total, rather than specifically focusing on infrastructure and industry. Italy was an agrarian state with very few exploitable natural resources or material stockpiles compared to Germany, which sat on considerable reserves and could support autarky if it tightened its belt for a while. Worse still, after the economic and human disaster that was World War I, very few people had knowledge and experience in anything other than farming. While Germany was experimenting with tanks, Italy was struggling to scrape enough metal together to even make even one! Ultimately, Italy's weapons were often of First World War vintage (especially their rifles, which were still using ROUND HEADED BULLETS) with new weapons that had horrifically bad issues (their light machine guns being the best example) being manufactured to the very end of the war because they lacked the resources to develop anything new.

On top of all that, Mussolini never had much actual support. While somewhat popular, he was nowhere near as beloved as Adolf and his party was when they took over Germany (as limited as that popularity was electorally). Making matters worse was the Vatican. While they never outright denounced Benito for obvious reasons, and the Fascists weren't running around executing nuns and priests like the Communists, the church took a very anti-fascist stance and supported resistance movements behind the scenes.

Now, the Italian Fascist Party was not devoted in any way to German National Socialism. That is, they are NOT Nazis. Nazi racial theory had a mixed reception down south. Mussolini himself had several Jewish mistresses and Italo Balbo, one of the left-leaning members of the Fascist Council, focused on Fascist outreach to Jews, Muslims, and Africans, while many Italian Jews supported the Fascist Party in its early years. Additionally, Nazi racial theory held Mediterranean races, like the Italians, in lower regard than the superior Nordic stock, so it couldn't be expected that Italian Fascists would embrace such a self-degrading ideology. That said, the Fascists were definitely not nice people; they freely used what are now recognized as WMDs against North African Berbers and Ethiopians when they resisted, and even used proto-concentration camps to anyone rebelling, the only silver lining being that those who cooperated were seen as equals. But such racism as Italy professed -haphazardly with German pressure no less- was the kind of cultural bigotry against "barbaric" enemies which had existed since Roman times. Not all fascism is Nazism, but all Nazism is fascism. What mainly sets Italian Fascism apart from other contemporary authoritarian ideologies (and frustrates the hell out of historians and political scientists to this day) was that it was barely backed up by any coherent ideology and underwent several shifts along the way, mainly driven by Mussolinis political opportunism. If anything, the most comparable ideological system would probably be Putinism, both characterized by aggressive nationalism and a hodge podge of policies meant to appease a largely depolitized populace in the sole service of the leader of the country staying in power. Nazism on the other hand was a clear-cut ideology with tenets and goals.

Interestingly enough, unlike their totalitarian colleagues, Fascist Italy was much more tolerant to the so-called "degenerate" and "bourgeois" futurism (at least before 1938, when this form of art was banned as one of the conditions for their alliance with Germany). In fact, many futurists initially supported Mussolini, including Phillipo Marinetti, Father of Futurism (although he and his comrades left politics after Il Duce started leaning into the traditionalist side of fascism more than revolutionary one). Modern academics generally don't appreciate why this happened, believing it may have been simple pragmatism on the part of Il Duce, but for European intelligentsia fascism offered all the appeal of progressivism without the waywardness and lack of discipline seen in the United States and the sheer destructive terror of communism. This perception that Italian fascism offered the path to a shining industrial future accounted for its strong support among the educated classes in its early years and even into World War II, and was mirrored by the international respect garnered by Il Duce pre-Munich. As a result, the propaganda of Fascist Italy is more memorable and eye-catching than its contemporaries.

Mussolini's decision to try and destroy organized crime in Italy had an unintentional ripple effect which has left its mark on modern society. Many crime bosses fled to the New World and established new crime families and organizations, creating the American Mafia and ultimately kicking off a cultural fascination that has resulted in popular media like The Godfather and The Sopranos, among other things.

Fascist Italy Portrayals in Fiction

While it's very true that the Italians are vastly overshadowed by their German allies you'd be surprised how many tropes were inspired, often indirectly, by Italy's actions and performance in WWII. Ever seen the trope where our heroes go to a small poor nation with a dictator who talks big shit about being some grand empire poised to take over the world? How about the big bad bringing in all the representatives of the groups he controls, and there's one really shouty man who thinks he's big shit and often gets killed by the big bad to make a point? Hell, the Cardassians in Star Trek actually have a lot more in common with Fascist Italy, especially in Deep Space 9, than they do with Germany! If they themselves ever appear, though, it's either as the butt of a joke or to be the guys our heroes stomp in order to show how badass they are.

Fascist Italy and /tg/

Well apart from Italians being perfect fodder for level 1 characters in a WWII setting they are often injected into games as antagonists in groups that have a "no Nazis" rule, even as the villains. This often occurs if, in the past, the group has run a game with them as the enemies only for the bard equivalent or the party in general to try and blend in TOO well... A clever DM can even use this to their advantage. Since the Italians weren't into the whole Nazi "wir waren Aryanz un' Scheisse" thing a character that attempts to disguise himself by going full Nazi can be discovered immediately. You can also look at the list below to bring in Italians into a situation they may actually excel at.

Italian Gear, Weapons, and Vehicles

Here's a very rough summary of Italian equipment. Don't get your hopes up, though there are one or two surprises in there.

Main Article: Fascist Italian Equipment

Things Italy was ACTUALLY Good at

Now for some faint praise to go along with the damnation...

• Italian paratroopers performed amazingly in most battles they took part in, and were famously the last Axis force to resist the Allies during the breaking of the Tobruk siege.
• Italian Bersaglieri also get notice. They also performed well in most battles, and some US Rangers were fully convinced that they were the best Italy had to offer. While the Germans sat over there with ok tanks and stupid good LMGs, the Bersaglieri were kicking ass and taking names with the shittiest LMG in the war and "tanks".
• Italian submachine guns, especially from the Beretta company. In fact they were so good that not only were they prime targets for trophies, but the government decided to try and save some resources by asking the company to make their models WORSE.
• Manned torpedoes (midget submarines used to plant mines directly on ships). They were actually so successful plans were being written up to sneak a team through the Atlantic and launch on attack on New York harbor, but was called off with the invasion of Italy. Overall the Regia Marina had good ships (better than Germany) but no radar and inflexible, risk-adverse leadership. Largely because they did not need to rebuild from scratch and they had a longer time to get it ready.
• Air force (post 1943). Yes, despite little support from Germany and essentially having to fend of the Allied air forces by themselves, not only did they hold them off but they actually shot down more planes than the Germans. Italian aviation engineering was in truth pretty good (especially at building seaplanes and multi-engine airliners; eg the CANT Z.506) but was hamstrung by conflicts between firms, a few political mandates and the ever present resource crunch. They also had a thing for three-engine planes (two on wing nacelles and one on the nose) for what it's worth.
• Armored Cars. Oddly enough with their reputation in regards to tanks, Italian armored cars were pretty top notch, even after the 1943 split Germany elected to spend resources to continue the Italian development program.
• Its soldiers. Yes, really. Once they joined the Allies where they could actually fight for something while equipped with actual guns and bullets, they performed so well they shocked the Allied forces they fought beside. The Allies originally wanted nothing to do with the anti-fascist forces but after their first battle they were so impressed they did a complete 180 on the decision. Even before that, the Italian divisions that fought in North Africa impressed the Germans with their fighting spirit and aggression; they just tend to be left out of the narrative because everyone has a boner for Rommel and the Afrika Korps.
• Recycling! Resources were cut in every place they could be, and some weapons were even modified to catch ejected shells so they could be sent back to the factory.

And finally as mentioned previously Italian ships would have been good... but Supermarina thought this whole radar thing was a useless fad. That was a REALLY bad call. The sheer curbstomp of that one battle deserves a repetition of this point.

See Also

• /pol/: For all your fascism goodness. Will rarely try to describe Italy as good actually back then.
• Communism: While not true Nazi the two were still very opposed to each other. Communists actually played a big part in the Italian resistance movement, but became a major and long-lasting annoyance to Italian governments during the Cold War.
• Nazi: The much more brutal and racially fueled version, the concept of race taking precedence over the state. Still not efficient, but caused far more damage to the world.