Fascist Italy

Faşizm kavramı bir yüzyılı aşkın süredir siyaset içerikli pek çok tartışmanın merkezinde bulunur. 21. yüzyıldaki tartışmalara bakıldığında ise, iki bağlamın öne çıktığı hemen fark edilebilir. Bunlardan ilki, 20. yüzyılın son çeyreğine kadar varlığını sürdürebilmiş tarihsel-klasik faşizm örnekleri ve zaman zaman “neofaşizm” olarak nitelenen bugünkü kimi faşist yapıların söz konusu örneklerden devraldıkları mirastır. Diğeri ise, -faşist, otoriter ya da demokratik- emperyalist ülkelerin sömürgelerine dayattığı sömürge tipi faşizm ve bu formun yeni sömürgecilik ilişkilerinde değişen-dönüşen karşılığıdır. Her iki bağlam da fiilen anayasanın ve parlamentonun askıya alındığı ve olağanüstü halin kalıcılaştığı ülkeler, sokaklarda etki alanını genişleten, devlet içinde kümelenebilen ve yer bulabilen faşist örgütlenmeler, merkez partiler arası iktidar salınımına çomak sokan faşist figürler gibi bugün karşılaşılan nice örnekle, zengin bir tartışma alanı ortaya koymaktadır. Bu kitapta amaçlanan da söz konusu tartışmalara farklı noktalardan müdahil olmak ve “Faşizm nedir?” sorusuna verilen yanıtın derinlik kazanmasına katkıda bulunmaktır.

Is it possible to build a bulletproof economy in the era of globalization and economic warfares? Yes, it is; but sacrifices are needed.
This 300-page original work, written between Italy and Russia, with which I got my master's degree in Area and Global Studies for International Cooperation at the University of Turin, has only one aim: to help policy-makers of developing countries to face economic warfares and to turn life-threatening challenges into once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to growth and flourish.

This article explores the way in which wine came to be viewed as a quintessentially ‘Italian’ beverage among Italy's middle- and upper-class households during fascism's twenty years in power. Due to significant increases in wine consumption among the labouring classes during the years immediately following the First World War, wine, as a general category of beverage, had become closely associated within the minds of many bourgeois and wealthy consumers with the country's popular taverns and saloons, alcoholism and physical and moral ‘degeneration.’ In response, fascist Italy's typical wine growers, merchants and industrialists worked feverishly to rehabilitate the beverage's downtrodden reputation via a series of wide-ranging public relations and collective marketing campaigns during the 1920s and 1930s. By promoting the beverage's hygienic and alimentary qualities, as well as systematically intertwining the moderate consumption of the peninsula's standardised wines with the dictatorship's nationalisation and popular mobilisation programmes, this article will show, the Industrial Wine Lobby successfully re-established ‘wine's honour’ and, simultaneously, recontextualised the country's typical wines as Italy's wholesome, family-friendly, ‘national beverage’.

The proximity of French territories such as Savoie, Nice and Corsica to the Italian border, and their histories as part of  the Italian states, has resulted in the inevitable existence of Italian communities in these regions. Following the creation of the Fascist government in Italy, these communities grew as thousands of political exiles fled to France. This paper intends to explore the issues raised by these minorities and their contribution to an anti-Italian sentiment in parts of France. It will also address Fascist Italy’s use of these minorities as a political tool in irredentist politics. The unusual policy of encouraging irredentist sentiments in the pre-war era was not matched by Italian actions during the occupation of these same regions, when Rome tried to distance herself from political groups. The highly charged political atmosphere in these territories led to a reluctance to support these groups openly, whilst continuing to harbour the hope that they might win over the Italian population. Finally, it will place these policies within the broader context of Italian irredentist policies across Europe at this time.

It is one of the great ironies of the history of fascism that, despite their fascination
with ultra-nationalism, its adherents understood themselves as members of a
transnational political movement. While a true “Fascist International” has never been
established, European fascists shared common goals and sentiments as well as
similar worldviews. They also drew on each other for support and motivation, even
though relations among them were not free from misunderstandings and confl icts.
Through a series of fascinating case studies, this expansive collection examines
fascism’s transnational dimension, from the movements inspired by the early example of Fascist Italy to the international antifascist organizations that emerged in
subsequent years.

The vast majority of the force employed by the Italians to crush local resistance in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica was composed of Libyans, Eritreans and Ethiopians. The article examines why the Italians came to rely so heavily on colonial soldiers. It highlights two key predicaments the Italians faced: how to contend with the social, economic and political repercussions that military recruitment for the counter-insurgency created in East Africa; and the extent to which they could depend on forces raised in Libya itself. Finally, the article offers an initial assessment of how the counter-insurgency exacerbated tensions between Libyans and East Africans.

In the political and social doctrine “The Ideology of Twentieth Century” the fascist leader Benito Mussolini expresses his view about the aims of the Fascist government with impressive but indirect way: “The Fascist State express the will to exercise power and command. Here the Roman tradition is embodied in a conception of strength. Imperial power, as understood by the fascist doctrine, is not only territorial, or military, or commercial; it is also spiritual and ethical. An imperial nation, that is to say, a nation which directly or indirectly is the leader of others can exist without the need of
conquering a single mile of territory…” (Griffin, 1998, p. 256). It is very difficult to define clearly what were the exact aims of the Mussolini’s fascist government, and it is difficult to speak about all these aims in one paper, but based on the Mussolini’s thought where we examine in the sources and historical facts we should argue that the substantial aims of the Fascist government were to establish common imperialistic thought which would ensure the militaristic, popularly supported, centralized, and internationally recognized Hegemon State. In order to fulfill these objectives, the Fascist state implemented complex internal and external strategy which we will examine below.

In 1935 the Third International established that far from being a revolutionary movement, fascism was in fact the final stage of the imperialism of monopoly capital. Ever since, generations of Marxist historians have argued that fascism - and particularly the two regimes in Italy and Germany - was the product, either directly or indirectly, of capitalist interests. The major industrialists of Italy and Germany in particular have been indicted for their support of fascism in its earliest, pre-regime form.
This paper will present a critical analysis of the relationship between industrialists and the early fascist movements during their formative, pre-regime years in Italy and Germany. The paper challenges the Marxist argument that postulates fascism as the final stage of capitalism and 'Big Business' as the paymasters of fascism. A comparative analysis of the variety, manner and timing of financial support by industrialists in both Italy and Germany will underscore the weakness of the Marxist case, as will a brief examination of fascist ideology and its relationship to capitalism.

In PBSR 88 (2020)
Ephemeral architecture was the antithesis of the permanent buildings typical of the 'Fascism of stone', and yet many architects took advantage of this paradox to create an imaginary Rome. A widespread use of ephemeral structures was made around 1938, during the Mostra Augustea della Romanità and Hitler's state visit to Italy, in order to support a political programme that marked the totalitarian turn in the Fascist regime after the foundation of the empire and aimed at strengthening the alliance between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Relying on methodologies of particular relevance to Roman art history and on various sources unknown to date, this paper investigates the relationships between ephemeral architecture and romanità. The case study is a monumental tribune built in via dei Trionfi that inevitably suffered a damnatio memoriae: a combination of classicizing and futuristic decorations, it looked back at ancient Rome and, at the same time, highlighted the Fascist regime's aspirations for might and modernity.

Articolo con un breve studio incentrato sulla scuola elementare rurale di Ruscio (Monteleone di Spoleto - PG) negli anni ’30 del XX secolo. Lo scritto è nato in affiancamento della pubblicazione di una foto della famiglia De Angelis che presenta una parte di insegna lignea con l’emblema dell’Ente scuole dei contadini, ideato da Duilio Cambellotti. Il testo è stato pubblicato su "La barrozza", notiziario quadrimestrale dell'Associazione Pro Ruscio, anno XXV, n. 1, Cesvol Editore, Perugia, Primavera 2016.

"Rom-Berlin" is a historical study that investigates the competitive relationship between Nazi Germany and fascist Italy in the field of architecture between 1936 and 1942. Written in Italian, it presents the results of the archive research carried out in Berlin, Munich, and Rome from May 2019 to March 2020.

As the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini decided to invade Greece it was a common belief that the Greek army would collapse after some days or weeks. Mussolini took his decision after Germany sent troops to Rumania to protect the significant oilfields of Ploiesti against eventual air raids of the Royal Air Force or an invasion of the Red Army. Mussolini saw in this development a German provocation because the German decision was been taken with-out consulting with the Italian leadership and wanted through the invasion of Greece to re-establish a power balance to Hitler. The Greek army didn’t collapse and took initiative in the battlefields with the result that the Italian army was forced to retreat. Hitler was aware of a British presence in Greece, which would be a serious threat for the oilfields. The problem could be solved by an invasion and occupation of Greece by German forces or eventually by an armistice and a peace treaty between the two enemies.
I researched for continuities in the German foreign policy concerning Greece, the Greek-German relations in the second half of the 1930s, the Italian policy relating to Greece and the German foreign policy in relation to the Greek-Italian war in its double strategy: the preparations for the Balkan-Campaign that took place in spring 1941 and the attempt to bring the two enemies to negotiations. Considering that some historians have ignored and are still ignoring these attempts I focused on the presence of these attempts in the historians’ research and the way of their presentations together with the evaluation of the documenta-tion of the sources. Before that I tried to show that these attempts were part of continuity in German foreign policy. In addition I am presenting two documents that show that the at-tempts were been taken seriously by the British and Greek diplomacy.

ABSTRACT (Albanian)
Ky punim ka si objektiv të identifikojë dhe të analizojë, qoftë edhe shkurtimisht, faktorët e origjinës së sjelljes në lidhje me Italinë fashiste nga ana e dy përfaqësuesve të politikës, Ahmet Zogolli e Fan Stilian Nolit, të cilët dominuan institucionet politike shqiptare midis viteve 1922 dhe 1924. Analiza e këtyre elementëve, ende pak të trajtuar në studimet historiografike përkatëse, lejon në të vërtetë një kuptim më të plotë jo vetëm të marrëdhënieve diplomatike midis Shqipërisë dhe Italisë, por edhe të qëndrimit personal të mbajtur nga Zogolli dhe Noli kundrejt Musolinit.

ABSTRACT (Italian)
Il presente lavoro si pone l’obiettivo di individuare ed analizzare, seppur in breve, i fattori alle origini della condotta tenuta nei riguardi dell’Italia fascista dai due esponenti politici che tra il 1922 ed il 1924 dominarono la scena istituzionale albanese, ovvero Ahmet Zogolli e Fan Stilian Noli. L’analisi di tali elementi, ancora poco indagati nei pur approfonditi studi storiografici sul tema, permette una più complessiva comprensione non solo delle relazioni diplomatiche intercorse tra Albania ed Italia nel periodo in questione, ma anche del personale atteggiamento tenuto da Zogolli e Noli nei riguardi di Mussolini.

In Rommel’s Rear: War Crimes, Colonial Mass Violence and the Persecution of
Jews in North Africa, 1940-1943 – Conventional wisdom holds that the Desert
War was an honorably fought and dispassionate war with no Gestapo, persecuted
civilians, or ruined homes. No doubt the fighting in North Africa was marked by
acts of generosity and humanity towards the enemy. However, this is only one
side of the coin. As I will show on the basis of new archival findings in seven
countries and a critical reassessment of the existing literature, in the shadow of
El Alamein, both sides committed serious atrocities against enemy soldiers and
civilians. While it is certainly true that the level of violence was lower than in
Eastern Europe, the North African Campaign was anything but a war without
hate. There were numerous intentional crimes and infringements of the rules of
conduct, including the ill- treatment and murder of captured enemy soldiers; the
plunder of the indigenous population; the rape of local women; as well as the
exploitation, murder, and mass detainment in concentration camps of Arabs,
Berbers, and Jews, which was often motivated by racial and anti-Semitic hatred.
Thus, the Desert War has to be recontextualized and put into the larger historical
frameworks that shaped WWII and, more broadly, the first half of the 20th
century. Conceptually, I reconnect the North African Campaign to the overarching
policies and prevailing ideologies of both the Axis and Allied regimes and
their societies. In particular, I show that much of the war violence that we see in
North Africa resulted from two major factors: the colonial context in which the
fighting took place, and the simple yet too often ignored fact that on the Axis side
the war was waged by fascist regimes that shared the violent vision of creating
racially pure societies. Thus, the Desert War has to be seen for what it actually
was: an integral part of the World War II experience which itself was inextricably
linked to the Axis powers’ imperial drive for “living space” and their murderous
biopolitics.

My contribution focuses on the archival resources and special collections available in music libraries and archives (in and outside Italy), which are of interest for the study of Fascist persecution against Jewish musicians, composers, singers, and music critics, both Italian and foreigners.

My doctoral dissertation examines the experiences of the Italian volunteers in the Waffen-SS troops using in-depth interviews with former volunteers as the main primary source. This phenomenon, even if significant in size (depending on the source, some 15 000-20 000 Italian men volunteered in the Waffen-SS), has been hitherto largely unknown to historical research. The available literature on the Italian volunteers, mainly written by military history enthusiast journalists and methodologically weak, concentrates mainly on the combat operations and military organization, and offers a rather stereotypical profile of the volunteers.

My dissertation does not aim to reconstruct the military history of the different divisions of the Waffen-SS in which Italian volunteers operated but instead to examine the subjective, private and intimate experience of the volunteers in order to understand the motivations, attitudes, beliefs and cultural and family background, as well as their political ideas. The main objective of my doctoral dissertation is to discover the ideological precepts of the volunteers’ political credo. As the last phase of fascism and its ideology, often defined as the “Germanisation” or “Nazification” of fascism, is still the object of wide academic debate, a better understanding of the volunteers’ ideology also contributes to deepening overall knowledge of the nature of this last phase.

The theoretical frame of my dissertation lies in oral history, in particular in the postmodernist approach to oral history, through which I reconstruct the volunteers’ ideology. In-depth interviews with former volunteers are the main primary source, but multiple data collection methods have been adopted. Phone interviews and correspondence with the volunteers have also been considered as primary sources. In addition to interviews and correspondence, family archives consisting of diaries, correspondence with the volunteers’ relatives and photographic material have also been collected and examined. An ethnographic observation of the volunteers’ domestic spaces has been conducted during the in-depth interviews, and photo self-elicitation techniques have been used in cases where the volunteers were willing to share their photographs.

An exhaustive portrait of the ideological structure of the volunteers has been obtained, as well as of the cultural and social origins of the values that contributed to the rise and adoption of this ideology. Further, the volunteers’ motivations to enlist have been clearly reconstructed, together with their cultural, political, social and military backgrounds. The results of the research are particularly relevant both for comprehension of the Italian phenomenon of volunteering in the Waffen-SS and for the reconstruction of the ideological dynamics of the last phase of fascism. The volunteers’ political and ideological system, which can be defined as the Italian SS-fascist ideology, disagrees strongly with the vaguely described ideological profile offered by previous studies that describe volunteers as generically “super-fascist”. The research also offers the opportunity for a deeper understanding of the final fascist ideological trajectory, currently defined, not without a certain level of approximation, as the “Germanisation” or “Nazification” of fascist ideology.

My doctoral dissertation examines the experiences of the Italian volunteers in the Waffen-SS troops using in-depth interviews with former volunteers as the main primary source. This phenomenon, even if significant in size (depending on the source, some 15 000-20 000 Italian men volunteered in the Waffen-SS), has been hitherto largely unknown to historical research. The available literature on the Italian volunteers, mainly written by military history enthusiast journalists and methodologically weak, concentrates mainly on the combat operations and military organization, and offers a rather stereotypical profile of the volunteers.

My dissertation does not aim to reconstruct the military history of the different divisions of the Waffen-SS in which Italian volunteers operated but instead to examine the subjective, private and intimate experience of the volunteers in order to understand the motivations, attitudes, beliefs and cultural and family background, as well as their political ideas. The main objective of my doctoral dissertation is to discover the ideological precepts of the volunteers’ political credo. As the last phase of fascism and its ideology, often defined as the “Germanisation” or “Nazification” of fascism, is still the object of wide academic debate, a better understanding of the volunteers’ ideology also contributes to deepening overall knowledge of the nature of this last phase.

The theoretical frame of my dissertation lies in oral history, in particular in the postmodernist approach to oral history, through which I reconstruct the volunteers’ ideology. In-depth interviews with former volunteers are the main primary source, but multiple data collection methods have been adopted. Phone interviews and correspondence with the volunteers have also been considered as primary sources. In addition to interviews and correspondence, family archives consisting of diaries, correspondence with the volunteers’ relatives and photographic material have also been collected and examined. An ethnographic observation of the volunteers’ domestic spaces has been conducted during the in-depth interviews, and photo self-elicitation techniques have been used in cases where the volunteers were willing to share their photographs.

An exhaustive portrait of the ideological structure of the volunteers has been obtained, as well as of the cultural and social origins of the values that contributed to the rise and adoption of this ideology. Further, the volunteers’ motivations to enlist have been clearly reconstructed, together with their cultural, political, social and military backgrounds. The results of the research are particularly relevant both for comprehension of the Italian phenomenon of volunteering in the Waffen-SS and for the reconstruction of the ideological dynamics of the last phase of fascism. The volunteers’ political and ideological system, which can be defined as the Italian SS-fascist ideology, disagrees strongly with the vaguely described ideological profile offered by previous studies that describe volunteers as generically “super-fascist”. The research also offers the opportunity for a deeper understanding of the final fascist ideological trajectory, currently defined, not without a certain level of approximation, as the “Germanisation” or “Nazification” of fascist ideology.

This article shows how the Fascist and the Nazi regimes orchestrated their repression proactively. They took advantage of Jewish informers who betrayed their own people, with traumatic consequences for their individual and their community’s sense of identity. No spies were needed to arrest Jewish people under normal circumstances, but spies were essential for finding Jews who had gone into hiding in large cities. This article, based on previous research, court trials of convicted spies, and other archival and documentary material, illustrates this system of repression with cases in Austria, Germany, and Italy.

URL: https://simon.vwi.ac.at/index.php/simon/article/view/169

In 1934, Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime firmly intervened in the delicate issues stemming from the crisis of Italian cinema and the shaping of a national film culture. Among the major interventions, the regime centralized all the cine-clubs, film associations, and amateur cinema organizations within the Fascist University Groups (Guf). Their objective was to reform amateur film practice towards what we might call a committed, rationalized, and top-down driven avant-garde. This book will examine how amateur filmmaking practices were transformed into an instrument that served the totalitarian state, as well as how a semantic shift from the notion of “amateur” to “experimental” cinema took place in relation to the actual mechanisms of cinematic distribution, exhibition, and production of short films. The book reconstruct the first wave of cine-clubs in Italy (1926-1934) and the institutionalization of the so called Italian "Experimental cinema" with the foundation of the Cineguf film clubs between 1934 and 1943. The research presented in this book brought to light 100 short films over a filmography of more than 500 short films, fictional and documentary, that bear testimony of a crucial cultural and aesthetic phenomenon on the way to Neorealism.

Questo libro è dedicato a una pratica cinematografica giovanile che emerge e si definisce nel corso di poco più di un decennio, in Italia durante il fascismo: il cosiddetto “cinema sperimentale”. Questa prende forma e si articola all’interno delle strutture dei Gruppi Universitari Fascisti, dando vita a una delle più originali formule associazionistiche della storia del cinema italiano: i Cineguf. Tuttavia questa non sarà semplicemente, né esclusivamente, una storia del cinema sperimentale italiano “dai cine-club al Neorealismo”; piuttosto una proposta metodologica, teorica e critica, che prenderà le mosse dagli oggetti sopravvissuti di tale esperienza: ovverossia i film sperimentali.
Riportato alla luce dopo molti anni, il cinema sperimentale dei Cineguf si rivela una produzione ineludibile, nonché un passaggio cruciale e complesso per la comprensione della stagione successiva del Neorealismo.

Using previously unpublished material from the LUCE archive and the State Archives in Rome, this
article examines how film-making became part and parcel of the process of ‘taming’ nature in the Pontine
Marshes under Mussolini’s regime. Fascist authorities perceived the undisciplined and unproductive
nature of the ‘death inducing swamps’ as something that had to be extinguished from the face of Italy, to
make way for an ideal fascist nature that would nurture ideal fascist subjects. We argue that the success
of transforming the swamps owed as much to the extensive investment of labour power, capital, and
technology, as it did to the careful staging of every step of the project through cinematographic
representations. Although planning and land reclamation institutions were responsible for the material
production of the reclaimed land, the LUCE institute was instrumental in actively turning this new land
into the ideal fascist landscape. In so doing, the paper offers a new reading on landscape and nationalism
explored through an analysis of the production of landscape in Italy under Mussolini.

This essay is the second preliminary version of a paper that I intend to publish as an article in an architectural-historical journal or a relevant collection of papers.
This article is about the urban project of the ‘Esposizione Universale di Roma’ (also known as EUR or E42), the ‘city’ that was created to stage the World’s fair of 1942 in Rome under the fascist regime of dictator Benito Mussolini. (fig.1) Much has already been written about it, in particular about its architectural style, but I believe that I can contribute some new ideas as to its original urbanistic design. I have three new hypotheses, which are interconneted and rather speculative in character. The first is that the whole layout was oriented on Mussolini’s residence. The second is that it was also oriented on Tunis or the ancient city of Carthage. And the third is that the whole project for the universal exposition was secretly meant for the (symbolical) honouring of the ‘Duce’ and his imperial ambitions, and that under the guise of peaceful international cooperation it was in a sense a trap for the international community to implicitly contribute to these imperial ambitions.
Unfortunately, I am not able to substantiate my arguments with hard evidence, but I wil try to make them plausible by circumstantial evidence and comparison. If there is any truth in my ideas, they demonstrate that the plan for E42 was even more megalomanic than it already appeared to be and that the aspect of personality cult of the leader was even stronger than it already seemed.

L’autore tratta i legami tra l’invasione italiana dell’Etiopia nel 1935 – 1936 e la regione Venezia Giulia attraverso gli articoli pubblicati sull’Istra, foglio zagabrese degli emigranti giuliani di nazionalità croata e slovena nel Regno di Jugoslavia. Nel contributo sono esaminati i riflessi della guerra nella Venezia Giulia e la loro influenza sulla vita quotidiana dei Croati e degli Sloveni di questa regione. Il giornale riportava notizie riguardo la chiamata alle armi per la guerra d’Etiopia, la partenza dei lavoratori alla volta dell’Africa orientale, il diffuso fenomeno delle diserzioni dei soldati di nazionalità croata e slovena dall’esercito italiano e la repressione di stato che per le necessità della censura bellica colpiva le popolazioni slave locali. L’Istra riferiva anche dei casi di morte di soldati sloveni e croati dell’esercito italiano in Africa e pubblicava le rare lettere non censurate dal fronte. Gli scritti antifascisti e antibellici dell’Istra avevano come scopo di omogeneizzare e risvegliare politicamente le coscienze dei propri lettori, gli emigranti nel Regno di Jugoslavia.

This interdisciplinary contribution explores the reality of the air war in the port cities of Liguria that were most heavily bombed between 1940 and 1945: Savona, Genoa and La Spezia, and their surrounding provinces. Bordering with France and full of industries, shipyards, naval bases and crowded ports, Liguria became an important military objective and was subject to massive damage. Despite the rhetorical declarations of the General Direction of Fine Arts about the efficacy of the protection of works of art, and despite the regime’s propaganda, the war declaration and the following air raids took both local authorities and superintendents completely by surprise. This article examines the experience of bombing in Liguria during three major phases: first, 1940-1942, when the British raids concentrated on the industrial areas of
Genoa, Savona and Vado Ligure; second, from the autumn of 1942 to the Italian surrender of September 1943, when “area bombing” extended the aggression to civilian morale and provoked
vast damage to the monuments of the city centre of Genoa in particular; and finally, between the autumn of 1943 and the summer of 1944, when the raids targeted marshalling yards, railway lines and bridges in order to obstruct German supplies, which resulted in continuous attacks for the smaller towns along the coast.

Keywords:WorldWar II, Liguria, AirWar, Bombing

Questo contributo interdisciplinare esplora la realtà della guerra aerea nelle città portuali della Liguria più pesantemente investite dai bombardamenti tra il 1940 e il 1945: Savona, Genova
e La Spezia e le loro provincie. Confinante con la Francia e ricca di industrie, cantieri marittimi, basi navali e porti affollati, la Liguria divenne un importante obiettivo bellico e subì danni ingenti. Malgrado le dichiarazioni retoriche della Direzione generale delle arti circa l’efficacia dei provvedimenti di tutela delle opere d’arte, e malgrado la noncuranza con cui la radio di regime ignorava gli eventi, la dichiarazione di guerra e i bombardamenti che seguirono colsero le autorità locali e le soprintendenze totalmente impotenti. Questo articolo esamina l’esperienza dei bombardamenti in Liguria durante tre diverse fasi: quella delle incursioni britanniche sull’Italia settentrionale nel 1940-42 (con obiettivo le aree industriali di Genova, Savona e Vado Ligure); quella dei bombardamenti “a tappeto” (dall’ottobre 1942 fino all’armistizio del settembre 1943), che estesero l’attacco al “morale” delle popolazioni civili e procurarono danni enormi al patrimonio edilizio e monumentale soprattutto del centro storico di Genova; e
quella delle incursioni, tra l’autunno del 1943 e l’estate del 1944, sui nodi ferroviari, ferrovie e ponti per impedire i rifornimenti tedeschi, che si abbatterono sulle città minori e sui paesi
lungo la costa. L’articolo esamina i sistemi protettivi attuati dal regime per proteggere civili e monumenti, le conseguenze delle incursioni e le reazioni della popolazione civile.

Parole chiave: Seconda Guerra Mondiale, Liguria, guerra aerea, bombardamenti

The 20th century is often remarked on by historians to have been one of the most tumultuous periods in human history. Some would go so far as to assert that it was the most violent century in modern times. Certainly, the advances in technology ensured that human life could be destroyed in far greater numbers and with more rapidity. And in an age of warring empires, colonial repression and the coming to power of regimes adhering to the ruthless ideologies of totalitarianism, episodes of the mass murder of innocent civilians are abundant. The loss of life during the massacre of Nanking and the bombing of Guernica, for instance, are tragedies that are emblematic of the troubled times leading to WWII, as are the names of the death camps and mobile killing units associated with Nazi Germany during that conflict. Less well-known, if known at all, is the massacre which was initiated by Fascist Italy in the Ethiopian city of Addis Ababa in February 1937. This savage event, staged as a retributive measure, after an assassination attempt on Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, Benito Mussolini's viceroy to Italian East Africa, is essentially a half-forgotten one.

The article announces the rediscovery of a series of objects that were part of Mussolini’s own collection of propaganda art, seized by the Italian authorities after WW2. They were originally held in Mussolini's hilltop retreat near his hometown of Predappio, the small fortress of the Rocca delle Caminate, and in the nearby Villa Carpena located on the outskirts of the city of Forlì. They were found in the storage room of the Archivio di Stato of Forlì and the author was able to identify them on the basis of unpublished documents from the Archivio Centrale dello Stato in Rome.

During the Second World War, the Vichy government published many of the same antisemitic laws in Tunisia as it did in the metropole. But in Tunisia, the ‘Jewish Question’ also became a question of maintaining control over the French Empire. Vichy racial legislation aimed at the Protectorate’s multinational Jewish population did not only reflect the state’s antisemitic policies; rather, these laws were inextricably bound up in France’s colonial rivalry with Italy. In a colony where French political and economic hegemony had been only tenuously secured in the preceding decades through strategic naturalization, Vichy racial laws presented French authorities with a radically new avenue to consolidate power in the Protectorate; however, they also threatened to upend Tunisia’s economy and provoke Italian intervention. This article explores how the frequently-delayed and often partial application of Vichy anti-Jewish laws in Tunisia resulted from the difficulties of reconciling the aims of economic aryanization with the exigencies of protecting French rule against the pretensions of Fascist Italy.

For a copy of the paper, click the link above or visit http://jch.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/09/11/0022009414542537.abstract

Biography of the librarian Pietro Zorzanello, director of the Marciana Library, by Stefano Trovato, published in "Dizionario biografico dei soprintendenti bibliografici (1919-1972)", Bologna, Bononia University Press, 2011, pp. 622-627 [ISBN 978-88-7395-659-4]

This study aims to provide a fresh look at some of Nicolae Iorga’s travel accounts written on the occasion of his multiple journeys in Venice. I herein argue that the Romanian historian did not have a fixed and homogenous representation of the city from one travelogue to another, as is so often assumed, since every time he returned in an obviously shifting context. Therefore, his writings offer valuable impressions about the life, the people and the socio-political changes in Venice starting from 1890 to 1938, a period of great and rapid changes both for Italy and Romania. An analysis of these notes shows how a traveller’s perceptions about a place change with age, experience, social status, and, ultimately, history. Venice symbolized many things to Iorga throughout this nearly half a century: at first, it was the synonym of its Medieval past, afterwards it evolved into a political entity to be observed and finally it became his first foreign destination, his „second homeland‟. The dynamic path that I propose for the new reading of these journeys follows four understandings of Venice: 1. the Romantic intellectual vision of the city as the ignoble heir of the ancient Serenissima Republic, 2. visions of otherness through Iorga´s perceptions of the Germans, the Jews, the Armenians and the Communists of the city, before and after the Fascist seizure of power 3. the propaganda vision by which Iorga proved to have internalized some of the core Fascist myths 4. a final re-vision of the city as everything pointed to an increasing rapprochement with Nazi Germany.