A Convoluted Fascist Revival

Burgwyn, H. James

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-76189-3_3

H. James Burgwyn⁴

Part of the book series: Italian and Italian American Studies ((IIAS))

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Abstract

Mussolini’s inexperienced government suffered many vicissitudes in his early days in office. While staffing the new Salò government and contriving a refurbished identity, Mussolini and the camarilla surrounding him sought to broaden popular support. However, debilitating internal rivalries and general popular indifference stifled their efforts in fleshing out the new administration and establishing a credible legitimacy. Moderate Fascists aimed at providing continuity, while radicals were determined to fascistize the state. Although all factions were united in the belief that Mussolini would lift the nation from national humiliation and shield the homeland from the “furor teutonicus,” the regime ended up looking like a polyarchy. Eventually, religious idolatry of the patria and the pro-Nazi attitude of the puri e duri assumed the upper hand and Fascism took a radical turn.

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Notes

1.
Cited in Avagliano and Palmieri , L’Italia di Salò, p. 268.
2.
General Taylor had direct experience dealing with this kind of power void. Sent by his military command to Rome on the night of 7 September to prepare for a parachute drop to chase the German and Italian troops out of the city, he discovered that Badoglio had gone to bed, while the commander of the armed forces, General Ambrosio, was in Turin with his family. Aga Rossi, Una nazione allo sbando, p. 125.
3.
Marco Borghi, Tra Fascio Littorio e senso dello stato: funzionari, apparati, ministeri nella Repubblica Sociale Italiana, 1943–1945 (Padua: CLUEP, 2002), p. 87,
4.
Ibid., p. 89.
5.
Marco Borghi, “Personale civile e burocrazia,” in Sergio Bugiardini, ed., Violenza, tragedia e memoria della Repubblica sociale italiana (Rome: Carocci, 2006), pp. 340–41.
6.
Massimo Legnani, “Potere, società, ed. economia della RSI,” in Pier Piaggio Poggio, ed., La Repubbica sociale italiana 1943–45 (Atti del Convegno, Bresia 4–5 ottobre 1965) (Brescia: Fondazione Luigi Micheletti, 1986), pp. 229–61.
7.
Cited in Bocca , La Repubblica, p. 93.
8.
Cited in Tamaro , Due anni di storia, II: 5.
9.
Tamaro , Due anni di storia, II: 214–15.
10.
Ibid., p. 5.
11.
Bocca , Storia dell’Italia partigiana, pp. 123–24.
12.
Perticone, La repubblica di Salò, p. 92.
13.
Ivone Kirkpatrick, Mussolini: A Study in Power (New York, NY: Avon Books, 1964), p. 577.
14.
Giovanni Gentile , “Ricostruire,” Il Corriere della sera, 28 December 1943.
15.
Parlato, Fascisti senza Mussolini, p. 15.
16.
Bolla, Perché a Salò, p. 100; De Felice , Mussolini l’alleato, II: 66.
17.
Vivarelli , La fine di una stagione, pp. 23–24.
18.
Alberto Pirelli , Taccuini: 1922–1943 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1984), p. 437.
19.
Umberto Eco , Sette anni di desideri (Milan: Bombiani, 1983), p. 123.
20.
Amicucci , I 600 giorni di Mussolini, p. 122.
21.
Osti Guerrazzi, Storia della Repubblica sociale italiana, pp. 70–79.
22.
Numerous articles were published in the Salò press against the old hierarchs, who, after 25 July, had dropped out of sight or, worse, had actually written Badoglio asking for employment in his new government. Thus did these articles brand this breed of Fascist with the headline “Gerarcone, dove sei?” (“Gerarcone, Where Are You?”) For example, in Brigata Nera Aldo Resega, 27 January 1945.
23.
Daniella Gagliani , “Biografie di ‘repubblichini ,’“in Violenza, tragedia e memoria della Repubblica sociale italiana, pp. 205–13.
24.
Just after Badoglio had sent representatives to Lisbon to negotiate with the Allies an Italian departure from the war “with honor,” they answered with a new bombardment of Rome on 13 August that inflicted serious damage on San Lorenzo. Between 7 and 17 August, the Allies hit Naples, Genoa, Milan, and Turin in powerful raids directed against heavy concentrations of civilians rather than industrial targets in the belief that the Italian longing for peace, intensified by waves of bombs falling from the air, would leave Badoglio no choice but to ask for an armistice. Claudia Baldoli and Andrew Knapp, Forgotten Blitzes: France and Italy under Allied Air Attack, 1940–1945 (London: Continuum, 2012), pp. 22, 39. During the same period Allied planes destroyed or seriously damaged 80 percent of Milan’s historical center, which indicated a message to convince Badoglio that the alternative to unconditional surrender would be total war. Anthony Majanlahti and Amedeo Osti Guerrazzi, Roma occupata 1943–1944 (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 2010), p. 59.
25.
At first, uncertain how to react to the news of Mussolini’s fall, the Allies briefly suspended the air raids. But in the belief that the Badoglio regime could be forced to seek peace terms by a resumption of the bombing campaign against Rome and Naples, they broke the four-day respite on 31 July. Richard Overy, The Bombing War: Europe 1939–1945 (London: Penguin Books, 2013), p. 527. There was to be no let-up. On 10 March 1944, the police chief of Arezzo reported to the Fascist head that Allied bombings had “disintegrated” civil life in the city. Cited in Vitoria C. Belco, War, Massacre, and Recovery in Central Italy 1943–1948 (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 2010), p. 7.
26.
Gagliani , “Biografie di ‘repubblichini ,” in Violenza, tragedia, e memoria della Repubblica sociale italiana, p. 211.
27.
Mario Isnenghi , “L’esposizione della morte,” in Gabrielle Ranzato, ed., Guerre fratricide. Le guerre civili in età contemporanea (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1994), pp. 336–37.
28.
OO, XXXII: 4.
29.
Bocca , La Repubblica di Mussolini, pp. 14, 25.
30.
Fioravanzo, Mussolini e Hitler, p. 55; Giovanni Dolfin, Con Mussolini nella tragedia (Milan: Garzanti, 1949), pp. 26–27.
31.
Benito Mussolini, Storia di un anno. Il tempo del bastone e della carota (Milan: Mondadori, 1944), pp. 60–61.
32.
Dolfin, Con Mussolini nella tragedia, p. 27.
33.
OO, XXXII: 260.
34.
Dolfin, Con Mussolini nella tragedia, p. 54.
35.
Goebbels, however, records: “The Duce is still somewhat hesitant about taking this action as he is of course aware of the strong ties between the Italian people and the royal house, and knows that these ties cannot be severed lightly.” The Goebbels Diaries, p. 519.
36.
Roberto D’Angeli, Storia Del Partito Fascista Repubblicano (Rome: Castelvecchi, 2016), pp. 29–34.
37.
Amedeo Osti Guerrazzi, “Fascisti repubblicani a Roma,” in Violenza, tragedia e memoria della Repubblica sociale italiana, pp. 172–73.
38.
For particulars, see De Felice , Mussolini l’alleato, II: 388–423.
39.
OO, XXXII: 6.
40.
Cited in Tamaro , Due anni di storia, II: 215.
41.
Rahn claims that he had succeeded in watering down the socialist tendencies in the declaration in order to relieve the anxieties of Italian business producing war materials. Cospito and Neulen, Salò-Berlin: L’alleanza difficile, p. 62.
42.
The original record of the debate can be found in the ACS, SPD, RSI, Carteggio riservato, b. 70. The text has been published by Marino Viganò, Il Congresso di Verona (14 novembre 1943): Una antologia di documenti e testimonianze (Rome: Settimo Sigillo, 1994).
43.
Lepre, La storia della Repubblica di Mussolini, pp. 116–17.
44.
Anfuso, Da Palazzo Venezia al lago di Garda, p. 418.
45.
At the Council of Ministers of 18 December, a constituent assembly was once again considered, but, for the same reasons, unceremoniously dropped. Maria Romana Scardaccione, ed., Verbali del Consiglio dei Ministri della Repubblica Sociale Italiana. Settembre 1943-aprile 1945 (Rome: Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali. Direzione generale degli archivi, 2002), p. 162.
46.
This was the interpretation offered by journalist Giuseppe Morelli in the Corriere della Sera, cited in Amicucci , I 600 giorni di Mussolini, pp. 56–57.
47.
Bertoldi , Salò, p. 28.
48.
Cited in Innocenti , Mussolini a Salò, p. 32.
49.
Cited in Osti Guerrazzi, “Fascisti repubblicani a Roma,” p. 172.
50.
Rahn’s report to Berlin, in Cospito and Neulen, Salò-Berlino, p. 63.
51.
Mario Cuzzi, “Presupposti sociali ed. organizzativi della R.S.I,” in Romain H. Rainero, ed., L’Italia in Guerra: Il quarto anno-1943 (Rome: Comissione italiana di storia militare, 1994), p. 496.
52.
Kirkpatrick, Mussolini, p. 578.
53.
Cited in Borghi, Tra Fascio Littorio e senso dello stato, p. 42.
54.
Dolfin, Con Mussolini nella tragedia, p. 96.
55.
Ibid., p. 100.
56.
Bocca , La Repubblica di Mussolini, pp. 95–96; Dolfin, Con Mussolini nella tragedia, p. 97.
57.
Dolfin, Con Mussolini nella tragedia, p. 55, on 25 October 1943.
58.
Since these prerequisites never materialized, the Duce finally buried the idea of a constituent assembly for good in Milan at the Lyric Theater in December 1944. The full text of Mussolini’s discourse can be found in OO, XXXII: 126–38.
59.
Archivio Centrale dello Stato, SPD, RSI, Carteggio riservato, busta 22, telegramma di Mussolini a tutti i capi delle provincie del 6 dicembre 1943.
60.
Cited in Amicucci , I 600 giorni di Mussolini, p. 111.
61.
OO, XXXII: 234–35.
62.
My thanks to Spencer Di Scala for bringing this point, which is not well known in English-language historiography, to my attention.
63.
ACS, RSI, SPD, b.59, f. 147.
64.
Dolfin, Con Mussolini nella tragedia, p. 179.
65.
Cited in De Felice , Mussolini l’alleato, II: 543.
66.
Giorgio Pini, Itinerario tragico (1943–1945) (Milan: Edizioni Giachini, 1950), pp. 85–86.
67.
Amicucci , I 600 giorni di Mussolini, p. 124.
68.
Pino Romualdi , Fascismo repubblicano (Carnago Varese: SugarCo, 1992), p. 56.
69.
Dolfin, Con Mussolini nella tragedia, p. 179.
70.
Amicucci , I 600 giorni di Mussolini, p. 88.
71.
Ibid., p. 86.
72.
R.J.B. Bosworth, Claretta: Mussolini’s Last Lover (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2017), p. 190.
73.
Dolfin, Con Mussolini nella tragedia, p. 115.
74.
Ibid., p. 32.
75.
Dollmann, Roma Nazista, pp. 407–08.
76.
Dolfin, Con Mussolini nella tragedia, p. 114.
77.
Ibid., p. 59.
78.
Ricciotti Lazzero, Il sacco d’Italia (Milan: Mondadori, 1994), p. 22. Mimmo Franzinelli , in his L’arma segreta del Duce: La vera storia del carteggio Churchill Mussolini (Kindle Edition, 2010), locations 5245 and 5509, n. 20, suspects that Lazzero reproduced apocryphal material provided him by Wolff.
79.
Lazzero, Il sacco d’Italia, pp. 22–23.
80.
Dolfin, Con Mussolini nella tragedia, p. 181.
81.
Ibid., p. 189.
82.
Renzo Montagna , in Mussolini e il processo di Verona (Milan: Omnia, 1946), claimed, as one of the judges, that he was opposed to the death penalty but was constrained by his colleagues on the judicial bench to vote in favor of Ciano’s death by firing squad as well as the deaths of the other “plotters” of 25 July.
83.
Cited in Lepre, La storia della Repubblica di Mussolini, p. 128.
84.
Anfuso’s report dated 17 January 1944 cited in Deakin , The Six Hundred Days of Mussolini, p. 133.
85.
Cited in Amicucci , I 600 giorni di Mussolini, p. 120.
86.
Dolfin, Con Mussolini nella tragedia, p. 274.
87.
Guglielmo Salotti , Nicola Bombacci da Mosca a Salò (Rome: Bonacci, 1986), p. 191.
88.
Innocenti , Mussolini a Salò, p. 102.

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Department of History, West Chester University, Philadelphia, PA, USA
H. James Burgwyn

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Burgwyn, H.J. (2018). A Convoluted Fascist Revival. In: Mussolini and the Salò Republic, 1943–1945. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76189-3_3

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76189-3_3
Published: 01 June 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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