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Authors: Mark Thompson
Tags: General, History; Military, History, Military, War, Europe, European History, Military History, War & defence operations, Italy, World War I, 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000, Military - World War I, 1914-1918, Italy - History, Europe - Italy, First World War
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the dynasties and the capitalists of all countries – we are ready for battle! When this effort failed, he and others founded the breakaway Italian Union of Labour and borrowed anti-imperialist language to try to stir the masses.
‘This is not a dynastic war’, he bellowed at the thousands who packed into the cathedral square in Florence on 10 May,
… it is not a war to save a ruling house, it is a war of liberty and revolution, a war of the people. And the Italian people, once the old men in Rome have stopped delaying and called it to arms, shall not sheathe its sword before the Austrians have been hunted all the way across the Alps.
He took care to add that this was not a war of hatred against the German and Austrian people. After the war, the masses would have to rejoin the class struggle. For the time being, this struggle was best served in uniform. In fact, politics as such should be suspended. ‘For now, there is only one party: Italy. Only one programme: action. Because Italy’s salvation means the salvation of every party.’
Mussolini warmed to this millenarian rhetoric. He trailed Corridoni on his later appearances around the country, sometimes joining him on the platform. He was slower to emulate him when war came: Corridoni volunteered at once, whereas Mussolini waited to be called up. In 1933, Mussolini’s regime built a monument on the Carso where Corridoni died in October 1915. If the Duce never stopped exaggerating the other man’s significance – turning him into a Fascist martyr – it was because he had shown him how to argue that not he but the Socialist Party had betrayed its ideals.
Italy’s part in the Great War obsessed Mussolini for the rest of his life. After 1922, he used his dictatorial power to mould and polish a mythical version of events, with intervention marking Italy’s birth as a dynamic, self-confident state. Maintaining this version involved much censorship and distortion, yet the Duce was not incapable of uttering blunt truths about the war.
At five o’clock one Saturday afternoon in July 1943, the Fascist Grand Council convened in Rome. Italy had reached a turning point: Allied forces were overrunning Sicily; an attack on the mainland could not be long in coming; and Hitler refused to send more troops. The previous weekend, Allied bombers had struck Rome for the first time. High-level dissatisfaction with Mussolini was growing, and Italy’s dithering king – still Victor Emanuel III – was for once not inclined to stand by him: he foresaw his dynasty being dragged into oblivion along with the regime. Mussolini had ignored rumours that a momentous challenge was brewing, so was taken aback when the meeting passed directly to a proposal that the King should replace him as commander-in- chief and prime minister. When someone blamed him for the unpopularity of the war, he saw an opening. ‘The people’s heart is never in any war,’ he protested. ‘Was the people’s heart in the 1915–1918 war, by any chance? Not in the least. The people were dragged into that war by a minority … Three men launched the movement – Corridoni, D’Annunzio and myself.’ Far from being bound in sacred unity, Italy in 1915 was divided ‘in an atmosphere of civil war’. Not even the defeat at Caporetto in 1917 had healed this rift. ‘Was the people’s heart in a war that produced 535,000 deserters?’ he asked. 3 ‘It is a law of history that when there are two contrary currents of opinion in a nation, one wanting war and the other peace, the latter party is invariably defeated even when, as always happens, it represents the numerical majority.’
He could have added a second law of history: in Italy, the pro-war minority takes no serious interest in the military calculus (tasks-to-resources) that determines actual performance on the battlefield. It was a law that General Cadorna learned the hard way in 1915.
Source Notes
THREE Free Spirits
1 ‘ For almost
‘This is not a dynastic war’, he bellowed at the thousands who packed into the cathedral square in Florence on 10 May,
… it is not a war to save a ruling house, it is a war of liberty and revolution, a war of the people. And the Italian people, once the old men in Rome have stopped delaying and called it to arms, shall not sheathe its sword before the Austrians have been hunted all the way across the Alps.
He took care to add that this was not a war of hatred against the German and Austrian people. After the war, the masses would have to rejoin the class struggle. For the time being, this struggle was best served in uniform. In fact, politics as such should be suspended. ‘For now, there is only one party: Italy. Only one programme: action. Because Italy’s salvation means the salvation of every party.’
Mussolini warmed to this millenarian rhetoric. He trailed Corridoni on his later appearances around the country, sometimes joining him on the platform. He was slower to emulate him when war came: Corridoni volunteered at once, whereas Mussolini waited to be called up. In 1933, Mussolini’s regime built a monument on the Carso where Corridoni died in October 1915. If the Duce never stopped exaggerating the other man’s significance – turning him into a Fascist martyr – it was because he had shown him how to argue that not he but the Socialist Party had betrayed its ideals.
Italy’s part in the Great War obsessed Mussolini for the rest of his life. After 1922, he used his dictatorial power to mould and polish a mythical version of events, with intervention marking Italy’s birth as a dynamic, self-confident state. Maintaining this version involved much censorship and distortion, yet the Duce was not incapable of uttering blunt truths about the war.
At five o’clock one Saturday afternoon in July 1943, the Fascist Grand Council convened in Rome. Italy had reached a turning point: Allied forces were overrunning Sicily; an attack on the mainland could not be long in coming; and Hitler refused to send more troops. The previous weekend, Allied bombers had struck Rome for the first time. High-level dissatisfaction with Mussolini was growing, and Italy’s dithering king – still Victor Emanuel III – was for once not inclined to stand by him: he foresaw his dynasty being dragged into oblivion along with the regime. Mussolini had ignored rumours that a momentous challenge was brewing, so was taken aback when the meeting passed directly to a proposal that the King should replace him as commander-in- chief and prime minister. When someone blamed him for the unpopularity of the war, he saw an opening. ‘The people’s heart is never in any war,’ he protested. ‘Was the people’s heart in the 1915–1918 war, by any chance? Not in the least. The people were dragged into that war by a minority … Three men launched the movement – Corridoni, D’Annunzio and myself.’ Far from being bound in sacred unity, Italy in 1915 was divided ‘in an atmosphere of civil war’. Not even the defeat at Caporetto in 1917 had healed this rift. ‘Was the people’s heart in a war that produced 535,000 deserters?’ he asked. 3 ‘It is a law of history that when there are two contrary currents of opinion in a nation, one wanting war and the other peace, the latter party is invariably defeated even when, as always happens, it represents the numerical majority.’
He could have added a second law of history: in Italy, the pro-war minority takes no serious interest in the military calculus (tasks-to-resources) that determines actual performance on the battlefield. It was a law that General Cadorna learned the hard way in 1915.
Source Notes
THREE Free Spirits
1 ‘ For almost
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