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.

"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?

Facist Italy is generally used to describe the Kingdom of Italy and it's colonies from 1922 to 1943, which was followed by Italian Social Republic in the last two years of war. It is also known for it's UTTERLY HORRIFIC FAIL in everything it ever attempted to do. Seriously, you ever see 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 JUST Italian high command. While Italy did excel in certain areas as touched on below, It was significantly better known for the countless disasters on every conceivable level from command, weapons, supplies, moral, manpower and manufacturing. Italy holds the questionable fame of being the only Axis leader country to be defeated without a Soviet help (yep, Kwantung Army destruction in Manchuria was very significant for Japanese defeat). It's primary armored vehicle, it's version of the Panzer IV, was the Carro Veloce 33... A tankette; in other words a tractor with some extra metal coat and an autocannon modern civilian trucks would laugh at. And yet, the certainty of Mussolini that he would usher 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. The governments had wracked up massive debt, agriculture had declined, millions of workers had been killed, there were shortages of everything and in a lot of places social order had broken down with the Russian Empire collapsing into civil war and the German and Austrian Empires being abolished by the Entente. There was a lot of uncertainty, nationalist sentiment that had be riled up in the war was left sloshing about to fester without a target, a lot of communist and socialist agitation was in progress and the Red Scare was in full effect.

But not Italy. Oh, no. Italy was 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 Europe, disintegrating into a motley collection of city states theoretically loyal to the Pope. Because of the warmer climate, fertile soils, and coastal cities, the depths of dark age feudalism never really became entrenched. Italy also bore the worst of the black death, so the working classes enjoyed more power, enough to make merchant republics (sometimes with princes) the norm rather than feudal kingdoms. A good chunk of it was also controlled by the Pope as his personal stomping ground, the Papal State. 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 into one nation as Italian nationalism pushed one dutchy 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 for loosing most of their country, 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, Italian government was a member of Central Powers, but as the conflict started it decided to rethink their relations with Germans. Both sides promised some post-war goodies - Berlin offered parts of France (mainly Savoy and Provence), while London did the same with Austrian South Tyrol, Albania (then Austrian-dominated) and parts of Ottoman Empire. In the end Italian ambitions in Adriatics prevailed, and they joined the Entente in 1915, hoping to quickly get what they wanted.

They failed. While occupation of Albania was a definite victory, Italian theater quickly became one of the least successful fronts in Great War. To get the right kind of picture, they couldn't push into Austria-Hungary, the country that couldn't completely liberate Galicia from Russian armies for three years, even as their senior partner Germany advanced for thousand of kilometers into enemy's land. 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 Sevres treaty, Ataturk completely crushed their dreams of Mediaterranean domination by getting back Turkish lands. In the end, they got nothing.

Enter il Duce

Into that enviroment stepped Benito Mussolini.

He rallied a collection of nationalist army-vet toughs, named them 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 in chaotic times 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 his Communist/Socialist/Anti-Monarchist Liberal problems and made him Prime Minister. He further secured his position by negotiating a treaty with the Vatican and the Kingdom of Italy, defusing the decades long conflict between the two parties, gaining tasset approval of the church to the fascist regime and basically setting up the situation today. At the same time, his Fascist party dug itself in, fed their message to the masses (which included the need for Discipline, Nationalism, Hierarchy and a belief that War was a good thing in it's 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 copy-cats. At least until Hitler stole his thunder in the 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 well trained well equipped fighting force before deciding to start invading place. 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. Ill Duce on the other hand while also mimicked Hitler's giant ponzy scheme it was to support the economy in general, rather then infrastructure and industry. Italy was a mostly agricultural state with very little natural resources or even stockpiles. Worst still, after the economical disaster of WW1 very few people had knowledge and experience in more then just farming. While Germany was experimenting with armored warfare Italy was struggling to scrap enough metal together to even make them in the first place! Ultimately Italy's weapons were often of WW1 vintage despite many (especially their rifles which were still using ROUND TIPPED BULLETS) with new weapons that had horrifically bad issues (LMGs being the best example) being manufactured to the very end of the war since there simply wasn't enough resources to develop replacements.

On top of all that, Benito Mussolini never even held much support. While somewhat popular, he was nowhere near as loved as Adolf and his party was when they took over Germany. Making matters worst while the Vatican, while not outright calling out Benito for obvious reasons, was VERY anti fascist to the point even the pope was helping resistance fighters behind the scene.

It didn't help that the Italy Fascist Party was not in any way devoted Nazis. Racism was a mixed bag down south, Mussolini himself once having Jewish paramours and Italo Balbo, one of the members of Fascist Council supported bringing Jews, Muslims and Africans to Italian Fascism, to speak nothing of Jewish Italians supporting Fascism early on. Of course this doesn't absolve them on going full WMD's on North African Berbers and using Nazi methods of concentration camps but yeah. Nazi-level racism in Italy was not prevalent, but more of a cultural bigotry on "barbaric" enemies always existed since Roman times. Not all fascism is Nazism, but all Nazism is fascism. If you still don't get it, you can be a fascist without being a racist, focusing on the state.

While this also took place in Germany there were at the very least some in the German high command that had drunk the kool aid wholesale but in Italy it was more of a everyman for himself sort of deal. It says a lot that the Co-Belligerent government and it's armed forces (those in southern Italy that surrendered to the allies and declared war on Germany) were significantly successful compared to Mussolini's second government in the North despite the former initially having almost NO support from the allies while the latter was practically a vassal of Germany.

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 conditions for alliance with Germany). In fact, many futurists initially supported Mussolini, including Phillipo Marinetti, Father of Futurism himself (although he and his comrades left the politics after Il Duce started leaning into traditionalist side of fascism more than revolutionary one). There is no clear explanation for why this happened - was Benito trying to present himself as a part of intelligentsia, was it a pragmatic move, or did he genuinely liked it - but it definitely made Italian propaganda much more memorable and unique than German and Soviet realisms.

Mussolini's decision to destroy mafia in Italy also unintentionally caused a gigantic domino effect, which we can still observe in modern culture. A lot of bosses fled to US and Canada, where they established new crime families, effectively kicking off interest in Italian mafia that we can still observe through Godfather, The Sopranos etc.

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 WW 2. 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 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 then 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.

Facist Italy and /tg/

Well apart from Italian's being perfect fodder for level 1 characters in a WW 2 setting they are often injected into games as antagonists in groups that have a no Nazi 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 Italian's weren't into the whole Nazi "wir waren Aryanz" 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.

Things Italy was ACTUALLY Good at

• 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 sub-machine guns, especially from the Beretta company. In fact they were so good 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. 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
• Airforce (post 1943). Yeah despite little support from Germany and essentially having to fend of the Allied Airforce by themselves not only did they hold them off but actually ending up taking down an addition 500 planes over their enemies. Italian aviation engineering was in truth pretty good (especially at building seaplanes and multi-engine airliners; eg CANT Z.506) but was hamstrung by conflicts between firms, a few political mandates and the ever present resource crunch.
• 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.
• It's soldiers. Yeah 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 allies 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.
• 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.

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 was quickly crushed after the war thanks to the whole Cold War thing going on.
• 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.