Fascist Italy

Released in September 2014, the dvd L'arte della comunicazione. Il cinema di animazione di Luigi Liberio Pensuti (1930 - 1940), presents the restored films of Pensuti on project of Fondazione Cineteca Italiana with the collaboration of Istituto Luce Cinecittà and Archivio Cinema d'Impresa (Ivrea) - Csc centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia.
The films are part of the anti-tuberculosis campaign launched in the thirties by the fascist regime. The use of animation and experimental language make this film the real little gems of italian animation cinema.

The paper discusses how Fascist Italy conveyed its ideological messages through the propaganda films exported to Bucharest in the interwar period and, especially, in the 1930s. Mussolini’s dictatorship was in search of consent and praise both home and abroad and exporting movies that depicted favourable aspects of the regime was one of the means it used for this purpose. Il Duce strongly believed in the cinema’s power to bolster pride and raise popular support for its actions from the Italian diaspora and international elites, and Romania was one of the many destinations where the films were enthusiastically received. 
Keywords: Fascist Italy, Fascist propaganda, Interwar Romania, Fascist Cinema, Italians in Romania

The essay aims to examine the links between nationalist literature and political rites in Fascist Italy, by focusing on the poetry of Gabriele D’Annunzio and its exploitation in the aftermath of World War I. As far as the case study of the Alalà formula is concerned, the paper addresses the question of its use in the funerary ceremonies of the Italian Fasces of Combat, as well as its substitution for the national rite of the Appello del caduto, i.e. the ‘Roll Call of the Fallen Soldiers’ in 1921 by the newborn Fascist National Party. On the basis of Italian newspapers, mainly Il Popolo d’Italia, the journal founded by Mussolini, this study provides specific documentary evidence both for this passage from the Alalà to the Roll Call rite and the related political-funerary literature.

"""""During Mussolini’s fascist regime, the Atlante internazionale del Touring Club Italiano – produced in Milan (1927-1938) and widely recognised far beyond the borders of Italy – included among its plates two maps of European ethnic groups. The makers of the TCI’s atlas passed on to us a specific approach to determine the kind of collective that ought to be considered an ethnic group.
The enigmatic second reprint of the fifth edition (1938) was inexplicably not accompanied by the symbolic features required by the fascist authorities, but, after World War II started, the new version of the “Europa etnografica” map – on a 1:12.000.000 scale – clearly showed the changes that occurred in the political context.
Link:
http://www.j-reading.org/index.php/geography/article/view/57/50"""""

L’uso politico dell’analogia storica è stato tra i principali strumenti utilizzati dal regime fascista per fabbricare e alimentare il consenso: attraverso una propaganda capillare, realizzata con la collaborazione del mondo della cultura e ricorrendo a tutti i mezzi di comunicazione dell’epoca, la storia, durante il Ventennio, contribuì a confermare la necessità della nascita del fascismo. La figura di Mussolini venne in questo modo innestata in una rappresentazione unitaria dell’intera vicenda italiana, di cui egli portava a compimento, perfezionandole, le tendenze più profonde.
Il volume intende restituire la complessità di un fenomeno non solo culturale ma anche politico e identitario, le cui tracce sono giunte talvolta fino a noi.
https://edizioni.sns.it/prodotto/il-fascismo-e-la-storia/

Bien que timidement abordée dans certains travaux universitaires, la « love migration » ou « migration d’amour » des migrants italiens « ensablés » en Abyssinie n’a jamais été étudiée ou explorée dans sa complexe diversité en lien avec l’agir migrant. Les trois principaux songes coloniaux reposaient sur es espoirs de liberté, d’enrichissement et d’assouvissement de phantasmes exotiques. Aussi, cette colonisation hâtive et brève (1936-1941) a engendré un nombre considérable d’espoirs tant pour les engagés volontaires que pour es appelés du contingent. Cet article analyse les différents visages de cette
migration italienne qui seront abordés sous l’angle d’un projet migratoire
en rapport étroit avec les destins maritaux, affectifs ou sexuels des ensablés n Éthiopie après la perte de l’Empire d’Afrique orientale (Impero dell’Africa Orientale Italiana).

The shaping of the film culture in Italy and the institutionalisation of 16mm and educational cinema during fascism. The paper moves from an archive based research to provide a detailed picture of the first cine-club era in Italy (from 1926 to 1934) and insists on the crucial role of 16mm standardization in the blooming period of the film culture in Italy. Secondly, the paper explores the nuances of the notions of film culture and cultural film in the italian discoursive sphere during the interwar period.

La visione, la gestione e le trasformazioni della città durante il Ventennio nel saggio dello storico Paolo Sidoni Mussolini si occupava di tutto. Dal modello architettonico avveniristico al decoro: «Cacciate i gatti dal Foro» «Capitale del futuro» L'idea perduta di Roma LA RICOSTRUZIONE I l mito di Roma e i gatti di Ro-ma. La costruzione urbanisti-ca e architettonica dell'Urbe come grande metropoli mo-derna, ma capace di essere ordinata e potente come era stata ai tempi di Augusto, e l'at-tenzione ossessiva al decoro quotidiano di questa città anche nei suoi dettagli più minuti. Mussolini dal suo studio di Pa-lazzo Venezia mandava circola-ri, note, raccomandazioni su Ro-ma a getto continuo, dava ordi-ni e suggerimenti tecnici ("Va tolto di mezzo quell'orrendo carciofo che deturpa l'estetica del centro della città per pubbli-cizzare il ristorante Piperno a Montecenci») e s'interessava quotidianamente al destino e al-la vivibilità della Capitale come vetrina del regime e della nazio-ne. Anche tramite sfuriate al go-vernatore capitolino se gli accat-toni che aveva detto di sloggiare restavano lì e se "la colonia feli-na che infesta e deturpa il Foro di Traiano" non veniva imme-diatamente rimossa. «Nono-stante i miei solleciti, mi dicono che i gatti sono ancora lì, torno a pregarvi di provvedere subito al-la rimozione, anche tagliando l'erba sotto i monumenti per im-pedire che i gatti tornino». Perfi-no su se stesso non era tenero, quando si trattava dell'Urbe: quando vedeva i manifesti "Dux, se avanzo seguitemi" af-fissi su edifici pregiati del cen-tro, ne disponeva la rimozione istantanea. L'APPROCCIO Affinché il volto della città si presentasse al meglio, agli occhi dei cittadini e del mondo, Mus-solini era insomma un pungolo, un martello. Questo approccio all'ordinaria amministrazione, che oggi verrebbe da definire in-vidiabile, s'intrecciava con una visione di grandezza e di mes-saggio universale che-dal Foro Mussolini all'Eur, dalla costru-zione della città universitaria af-fidata al team di Piacentini a tut-to il resto che durante il Venten-nio trasformò straordinaria-mente la città facendola diventa-re la passione di Le Corbusier ha invitato da Massimo Bontem-pelli arrivò nel '34 a omaggiare i nostri architetti, oggetto di visi-ta e di culto degli studiosi sovie-tici e dei migliori specialisti an-glosassoni, coacervo di tradizio-ne e modernità impensabile al-trove-il Duce sintetizzava così: "Roma è una parola chiara. Un segno che esprime un concetto preciso. Una delle forme del ca-rattere: la forza cosciente". Questa epopea, che molto do-vrebbe parlare all'oggi e speria-mo che riesca a farlo, è raccon

"Carlo Gentile analyses the conduct and motivation of the full range of Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS anti-partisan units on the ground in Italy with a new degree of both detail and scope. He achieves this through systematic examination of an enormous range of sources including post-war judicial material and official wartime material generated by the German occupiers, particularly Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS personnel files and unit files down to regimental level. He identifies two main groups of factors that had a particularly immediate, decisive effect upon units’ behaviour: the personal disposition of their troops and troop leaders, which was influenced by training, social background, personal experiences and unit culture; and the particular circumstances on the ground that they faced. Gentile thus achieves a new, sophisticated level of nuance in the study of the anti-partisan campaign.

This is an excellent, groundbreaking study of the mechanics of German anti-partisan warfare in Italy. It provides a differentiated, enriched understanding of the campaign on the ground."

The position of Nice in the years immediately preceding and during the Second World War was one of ambiguity and uncertainty for residents. A pre-war target of Fascist irredentism, the city was coveted by Rome before finally being occupied by Italy following the expansion of the Italian zone of occupation in November 1942. The large Italian community in the Alpes-Maritimes and the overtly political atmosphere of Nice meant that one’s sense of identity became intricately linked with political standing – whether this was intended or not. This paper intends to examine how sense of identity within Nice affected the political outlooks of those residing there. Inversely, it will also examine how the potential political implications led many to abandon their sense of national identity in favour of their political outlook, as well as how both these decisions affected Italo-French relations within the city.

Il libro che mostra il vero volto di Galeazzo Ciano
Questa ricostruzione biografica si basa su una ricca documentazione inedita proveniente dagli archivi italiani, vaticani, britannici, francesi, nipponici, tedeschi, statunitensi e dalle memorie delle maggiori personalità politiche entrate in rapporto con l’ultimo ministro degli Esteri dell’Italia fascista. Si tratta di un lavoro corale che non analizza solo la sua vita privata, ma anche la costruzione della sua straordinaria fortuna finanziaria, il complesso rapporto con il padre naturale e con il suocero, «padre padrone», Mussolini, la storia d’amore con Edda, intessuta di tradimenti reciproci ma basata su un’infrangibile, quasi fraterna, solidarietà, le tante avventure sessuali che gli guadagnarono la fama, del tutto meritata, di compulsivo seduttore seriale.
Questo libro è anche una biografia dell’Italia del Ventennio nero, delle sue classi dirigenti fasciste o fascistizzate, degli intrighi e delle lotte di potere condotti all’interno del Partito Fascista, nei saloni del Quirinale, nelle segrete stanze della Santa Sede, nei circoli affaristici del regime e nei Palazzi della grande industria e dalla grande finanza. L’autore approfondisce poi, la strategia
internazionale del nostro Paese che, per la prima volta, dal 1935 al 1943, s’illuse di potersi presentare sul palcoscenico della storia nelle vesti di Grande Potenza, per poi rimanere stritolata, dopo il giugno 1940, nella morsa stretta attorno a essa da un malfido alleato, la Germania hitleriana, e dai veri Major Powers: Inghilterra, Stati Uniti, Russia.
La vera novità di questo testo consiste, però, nell’aver dimostrato, per la prima volta, in maniera compiuta, la sostanziale inautenticità del Diario di Ciano finora ritenuto fonte veridica per tracciare la storia del fascismo e del secondo conflitto mondiale. Quel documento, invece, si rivela, grazie a una più attenta analisi, una semplice deposizione a discolpa, redatta a uso dei contemporanei e dei posteri.

Fissare l’effimerità della voce in una forma permanente è una possibilità portata in dote dalle tecnologie del suono che l’Italia coglie in netto ritardo rispetto agli altri paesi europei, inaugurando la costruzione del “patrimonio fonico nazionale” soltanto nei tardi anni Venti del Novecento. Attraverso uno spoglio documenti originali e periodici dell’epoca, Voci d’archivio ripercorre l’istituzionalizzazione della fonografia a mezzo archivistico soffermandosi da un lato sulle vicende e sui dibattiti che portarono alla fondazione della Discoteca di Stato e dall’altro sui modi diversi in cui le potenzialità del nuovo medium vennero concepite e messe in opera dalle parti in causa. Uno sguardo ravvicinato a discorsi e pratiche che guidarono le prime applicazioni della fonografia, utile a riconoscere la natura tecnologicamente e culturalmente mediata di quella che chiamiamo memoria sonora.

A biography of intellectual emigration and exile from Fascist Italy, with photos, maps and timeline of movements, emigrated family members, reference and support networks http://intellettualinfuga.fupress.com/scheda/calabresi-massimo/347,
in the bilingual website "Intellectuals Displaced from Fascist Italy. Migrants, Exiles and Refugees Fleeing for Political and Racial Reasons" http://intellettualinfuga.fupress.com/en.

A biography of intellectual emigration and exile from Fascist Italy, with photos, maps and timeline of movements, emigrated family members, reference and support networks http://intellettualinfuga.fupress.com/scheda/calabresi-massimo/347,
in the bilingual website "Intellectuals Displaced from Fascist Italy. Migrants, Exiles and Refugees Fleeing for Political and Racial Reasons" http://intellettualinfuga.fupress.com/en.
Legato a Salvemini e allievo di un indesiderabile al regime, nel 1927 andò a Milano a fare l’assistente universitario volontario, cioè non pagato, pur di cambia r aria e costruirsi una carriera come cardiologo. Dispensato dal servizio nel 1938, a 35 anni con un eccellente curriculum, moglie e due bambini, la decisione di andarsene oltre oceano fu quasi ovvia.
Caduto il fascismo, qual era la scelta giusta da fare? Tornare indietro o restare negli Stati Uniti? Insegnava alla Yale University ma fece istanza per essere reintegrato all’università di Milano: era suo diritto, riconobbe il rettore. Ma non tornò.

As a preliminary contribution to the little-studied history of anthropology during the Fascist period, this study attempts to interpret a microcosmic situation -- the abrogation in 1937 of the charters of both the Roman and the Florentine Societies of Anthropology, and the subsequent transformations of leadership and activities of those societies. The results illuminate the history of anthropology, and the differences that had developed between schools of thought represented at those two Societies. They also illuminate the hlstory of Fascism, whose effects on anthropology, and uses of anthropology, seem more closely related to expediencies of the moment and changes in individual Ministers of Education than to any continuous, coherent philosophical mission. [From: "Antropologia Contemporanea" / Italian Journal of Anthropology, v. 11 pp. 45-58 (1988).]

The main purpose of this study is to discuss several Romanian collective visits to Fascist Italy and assess their efficacy as instruments of the latter's foreign propaganda efforts towards Bucharest. In this sense, I selected three such trips as case studies, each of them being representative of a different type of Romanian public that showed interest in exploring the Fascist experiment taking place in interwar Italy. The case study concerns a students' visit from 1929; a journalists' trip made in 1933; and a trip made by 1500 Fascist enthusiasts from the Romanian Comitati d'Azione per l'Universalità di Roma/Action Committees for the Universality of Rome in 1938. The study argues that while these visits were planned and advertised in Bucharest and regarded mostly as Romanian initiatives of foreign propaganda directed at Italy or as an initiative aimed at the cultural rapprochement between the two countries; they were in fact encouraged and attentively monitored by Rome. Essentially, these trips constituted ideological pilgrimages at the service of Fascist Italy. Moreover, at a closer look, they were indicative of the widespread favorable image of Mussolini's dictatorship among large segments of the Romanian society and establishment.

Intervento incentrato sulle modalità di rappresentazione degli Africani nelle fotografie dell'antropologo Lidio Cipriani. L'intervento si concentrò sulle modalità di circolazione delle immagini fotografiche in diversi momenti della carriera dell'antropologo, fra pubblicazioni scientifiche, opere divulgative, archivi museali e album fotografici personali.
23-24 gennaio 2020.
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Paper focused on the ways in which Africans are represented in the photographs of the anthropologist Lidio Cipriani. The talk focused on how photographic images circulate at different moments in the anthropologist's career, including scientific publications, popular works, museum archives and personal photo albums.
January 23-24, 2020.

Between an Honorable Exile and Ostracism. Interior and Foreign Political Circumstances in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes - the Context of Ante Pavelić's Departure Abroad in January 1929

The article, by constellation research, and on the basis of numerous unpublished but also published sources and literature, sheds light on the context of the departure of a prominent member of the Croatian Party of Rights and the future head of the Ustasha Independent State of Croatia, Ante Pavelic, from the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes / Yugoslavia in January 1929. This context is an essential indicator of the mutual relationships between various representatives of significant directions in Croatian politics at the crucial moments of Croatian history after the establishment of the 6th January Dictatorship by King Aleksandar Karađorđevic. The first section of the article deals with the internal political situation in Croatia in the period from the assassination of Stjepan Radić recognized as the political leader of the Croatian people in the National Assembly in Belgrade, to the diplomatic mission of the prominent Croatian politician Ante Trumbić abroad. This part of the paper emphasizes differences in political conceptions between prominent representatives of the Prečani opposition to the Belgrade regime, led by the Peasant Democratic Coalition, and few but influential Croatian politicians who supported the politics of the Belgrade regime. The article then deals with shedding light on the signs of a severe state crisis from the autumn of 1928 onwards. They were initially manifested in the conflicting goals of Trumbić’s diplomatic mission in Vienna, Paris and London from October to December, and King Alexandar’s diplomatic mission in Paris in November 1928. The results of the November council elections in Split, which showed a setback for the regime parties, were yet another sign of a state crisis that culminated in particularly violent demonstrations in Zagreb in December 1928. Special attention was then given to the activities of Pavelić’s potential foreign political allies in the fierce fight against the Belgrade regime. One of them was Bulgaria, which impacted the Yugoslav interior conditions through the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (VMRO), and Fascist Italy and Hungary also cooperated. The then connections between Croatian politicians and influential political circles of these countries are presented. These circles actively worked and collaboratedon the revision of the Versailles order in Europe, and thus became increasingly hostile to the Kingdom of SCS. The last part of the article describes the measures taken by the Belgrade regime in the preparation and the final declaration of the 6th January Dictatorship and the reactions of politicians to the increasingly heterogeneous Croatian political scene. Along with the existing rift between the Prečani opposition and Croatian politicians who now openly supported the dictatorship, a growing split deepened within the Prečani opposition itself. The legitimate prevalent current, led by the Peasant-Democratic Coalition, wanted to resolve the Croatian issue by relying on the Karađorđević dynasty, from which sincere and fair co-operation was expected. On the other hand, a minor group, to which the Croatian Party of Rights belonged, wanted to resolve the Croatian issue by a violent struggle against the ruling Yugoslav dynasty and Serbian hegemony to create a completely independent Croatia. Pavelić consistently acted within the framework of the second current, and therefore his emigration was not an honourable exile with the aim of heroic struggle for the liberation of a unified Croat people. On the contrary, it became ostracism so that his methods of political struggle would not compromise the Croatian people in the eyes of Western democracies.

in Francisco Javier Rodríguez Barberán, ed., Una Arquitectura para la Meurte. Actas del 1 Encuentro Internacional sobre los Cementerios Contemporaneos. Sevilla 4/7 junio 1991 (Seville: Consejeria de Obras Publicas y Transportes. Junta de Analucia, 1993). Bilingual texts, 177-189, 594-600. 

A modified version of this essay later was published as “The Space of Absence” (Chapter 7) in my book Symbolic Space: French Enlightenment Architecture and Its Legacy (University of Chicago Press, 1994, paperback 1996).

Bartók’s status as an antifascist hero is a myth of our age. To retrace its origins represents a way to discover the values that we associate with modernist music and to understand the reasons that justify the persistence of this myth today. In this article I focus on the “acute bartókitis” that affected Italian culture in the aftermath of the Second World War: a far reaching artistic movement that, perhaps for the first time, prioritised the political and moral values of Bartók’s music and elected his figure as a symbol of the anti-fascist resistance and the reconstruction of the Italian nation.
Although less studied in comparison with other contexts of reception, the Italian Bartókian Wave provides a deep insight into the nature of the Bartók myth by bonding together the faith in the political power of modernist music and the hope in the cultural resistance of the people against tyranny.

Under Mussolini's dictatorship, both the physical abuses of a misogynist state and the political power of female friendship were written in the sensory details of agricultural workers' everyday lives. This article uses archival and melodic evidence from the sensorial world of interwar Italy to explore four interlinked case studies, ultimately revealing what is at stake in women's work songs. First, written testimonials and transcriptions from oral interviews show that, for many mondine, as the women workers in the rice paddies were called, their first moment of class consciousness occurred in transit. In train cars and depots, rice weeders came to understand their bodies as under reform by their migrant agricultural work. Upon arrival in the rice paddies, they gathered straw for mattresses to sleep in horse stables. Next, anger and resistance bloomed through work songs that privileged communal, turn-taking formats. It was a way to practice for alternative styles of rule. Finally, with songs like "The Union" ("La Lega"), women articulated their vision of the future: through battle hymns like this, they would raise the flags of Socialism and Communism. By swelling the union ranks, women vowed to bring about an egalitarian future in direct defiance of Fascism's autocratic rule.

Tripartite Naval relations have been analysed mainly from the Japanese and German perspectives. At least from 1937, Fascist Italy developed strategic expectations of naval cooperation with Japan that continued up to 1942. I discussed these topics in my paper "The Italian Navy and Japan: strategy and hopes (1937-1942)" at the annual conference of the Second World War Research Group (London 22-23 June 2017). Here is the Conference presentation related to my paper.

More info at https://www.swwresearch.com/events

Conference program at https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/077726_bc5fb78c9b6a4b21bf0add0a62b1d2d8.pdf

This paper explores a period of intense interaction between Fascist Italy and Romania by examining Prime minister Nicolae Iorga’s favourable standpoint towards Rome over his one-year-long stay in power (April 1931-June 1932). It argues that Iorga’s government, headed by such an Italophile intellectual as he was, represented the second best key moment for the Italian diplomacy’s cultural interests in Romania, after Alexandru Averescu’s premiership of 1926-1927. It is particularly concerned with the ways in which the renowned historian, right after taking office, was highly courted by the Fascist authorities and media, while being, in his turn, very keen and prompt to satisfy Rome’s main demand on the bilateral agenda: the mandatory teaching of Italian as a foreign language in the Romanian public secondary schoola. Thus, an increasing presence of the Italian language, regulated through the so-called ‘Iorga law’ of July 1931, seemed to have given impetus to the Fascist cultural propaganda in Romania. Still, in spite of Iorga’s stance favouring both Italy and Mussolini’s regime, Rome and Bucharest did not succed to improve their diplomatic relations accordingly.

Questo contributo intende analizzare l'attività mitopoietica a sostegno del processo di auto-rappresentazione religiosa del fascismo da parte di Mario Appelius, autore ben noto e famoso negli anni del regime, attraverso lo studio di un suo romanzo intitolato "Il cimitero degli elefanti".

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This paper aims to analyze the mythopoeic activity produced in order to legitimate the religious self-representation of fascism by Mario Appelius, fascist author well known and famous during the fascist regime, through the analysis of him novel titled "Il cimitero degli elefanti" (The cemetery of the elephants).

Between the World Wars French Jews looked upon Italy, despite it being in the hands of fascism, as the cradle of a true model for integration. However, the rise of perils elsewhere shattered all convictions and this ‘Italian moment’ gave way to the bitterest desillusion.


(View the Table of Contents)

Italy, trying to insert itself in the power vacuum created in Central
Europe after the end of the Great War, also used the financial means to
expand. The loans, and especially the military ones, had a special
importance also because without them the rearmament of the Hungarian
Army would not have been possible. Although military loans were the
organic result of Italian economic policy aimed at encouraging the export of
war materials, after having spoken for the first time in April 1928, the first
money arrived in Hungary only at the end of 1932. Simply because it still
needed to find the formula accepted by both parties in order to legally
resolve the illegal movement of money. The study shows how a series of
military loans arrived in the 1930s, how and why they were granted, and
who was to take advantage of them.

A biography of intellectual emigration and exile from Fascist Italy, with photos, maps and timeline of movements, emigrated family members, reference and support networks http://intellettualinfuga.fupress.com/en//scheda/giuseppe-josipmedshiboshski/1487,
in the bilingual website "Intellectuals Displaced from Fascist Italy. Migrants, Exiles and Refugees Fleeing for Political and Racial Reasons" http://intellettualinfuga.fupress.com/en.
A Russian Jew, a political exile for suspected anti-tsarist activities, he was among those who had been in Italy for twenty years when the race laws were published, which obliged foreign Jews to leave Italian territories if they had arrived after 1919. When, however, he was removed from the doctors' professional register, he waged a legal battle to continue to treat his patients. And he lost it, of course, even stung by the complaints of certain colleagues who felt damaged, they said, by «competition» from a Jew, who moreover had no Italian citizenship.
A cultured man, he taught Russian language and literature at the University of Florence. He did so free of charge, for over ten years, for the benefit of the young people of the country where he had chosen to live with his family.