From Caporetto to Garibaldiland: interventionist war culture as a culture of defeat

Abstract

This article traces the evolution of interventionist war culture during the period beginning with the defeat of Caporetto and ending with the occupation of Fiume. As a result of the invasion of Italy, interventionists were subject to a cultural crisis concerning the meaning of the war. It is argued here that this cultural crisis may be conceptualised as a culture of defeat. Understanding culture as fluid and existing in a state of tension with itself, the article shows how the intersection of interventionists' war culture with military and political events produced cultural phases allowing interventionists to understand and respond to their volatile experience.

Keywords:

• culture of defeat
• war culture
• interventionism
• Mussolini 1917–1919
• Caporetto
• Arditi
• Fiume

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to John Horne, Jenny Macleod and Vanda Wilcox for sharing work with me before publication. This article developed from a paper presented at a Graduate conference ‘New Political History in Transnational Perspective’, held at the European University Institute, 15–16 February 2008. My thanks to all of the participants and especially Roger Chickering, who commented on the earlier paper. I should also like to thank Heinz-Gerhard Haupt for his supervision and Niall Whelehan with whom I shared the panel.

Notes

 1. Horne, State, Society and Mobilization in Europe during the First World War.

 2. Schivelbusch, Die Kultur der Niederlage. , Defeat and Memory.

 3. For an exception see Wilcox, “From Heroic Defeat to Mutilated Victory: the myth of Caporetto in Fascist Italy.”

 4. Today Rijeka. I have used the Italian term because of its greater familiarity to the readership.

 5. On Il Popolo d'Italia see Bosworth, Mussolini, 117–18.

 6. Procacci, “From Interventionism to Fascism, 1917–1919,” 161.

 7. O'Brien, Mussolini in the First World War, 179. Also Isnenghi, Giornali di trincea 1915–1918, 244.

 8. The concept of medialisierung or medialisation refers to the representation and transformation of events through forms of media. See Bösch and Frei, Medialisierung und Demokratie. Bösch and Borutta, Die Massen bewegen. On the textual invention of Mussolini during the First World War see O'Brien, Mussolini in the First World War.

 9. Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning, 5.

10. Gentile, Il culto del littorio: la sacralizzazione della politica nell'Italia fascista.

11. The classic starting point is De Felice, Mussolini il rivoluzionario. For a recent review See O'Brien, Mussolini in the First World War, 1–9.

12. Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction, 54–5. Wilcox, “From Heroic defeat to Mutilated Victory,” 69–70.

13. Il Popolo d'Italia, October 26, 1917, October 28, 1917, November 7, 1917.

14. Neiburg, “Revisiting the Myths: New Approaches to the Great War.”

15. Horne, State, Society and Mobilization in Europe during the First World War. Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities.

16. Corner, Fascism in Ferrara, 36.

17. O'Brien, Mussolini in the First World War, 55.

18. Bosworth, Mussolini, 117.

19. Rusconi, L'Azzardo del 1915. See also: Isnenghi, Il mito della Grande Guerra. D'Annunzio, Per la più grande Italia, Orazioni e messaggi.

20. Cit. O'Brien, Mussolini, 41. Mussolini's emphasis.

21. Rochat, Ufficiali e Soldati. L'esercito italiano dalla prima alla seconda guerra mondiale, Isnenghi, Il mito della Grande Guerra.

22. On interventionist intellectuals expectations of war see: Isnenghi, Il mito della Grande Guerra.

23. Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction, 53.

24. A total of 400,000 left the invaded zone and a further 200,000 fled from areas close to the new front. See Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction, note 78, 355. On Italian civilian refugees after Caporetto see: Ceschin, Gli esuli di Caporetto: i profughi in Italia durante la Grande guerra.

25. Hindenburg was expecting the imminent collapse of the Italian front in December 1917 and drew up a list of German demands including Italian forced labour for the German economy, reparations and the German takeover of the Italian colonies. Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction, 61.

26. Hull, Absolute Destruction.

27. Mussolini, “Disciplina di guerra,” Il Popolo d'Italia, 9 November 1917, “TUTTA LA NAZIONE DEVE ESSERE MILITARIZZATA.” Capitals in the original.

28. Il Popolo d'Italia, November 8, 1917.

29. Geyer, “Insurrectionary Warfare: The German Debate about a Levée en Masse in October 1918.”

30. Il Popolo d'Italia, November 7, 1917. “The Urgent, Imperious necessity of the hour” is emphasised in the original.

31. Il Popolo d'Italia, November 17, 1917.

32. Mussolini, Il Popolo d'Italia, January 2, 1918.

33. Mussolini, “Trincerocrazia,” Il Popolo d'Italia, December 15, 1917.

34. Mussolini, “Wilson, Dittatore,” Il Popolo d'Italia, May 23, 1918.

35. Rochat, Ufficiali e Soldati. L'esercito italiano dalla prima alla seconda guerra mondiale, 62.

36. Schivelbusch, Die Kultur der Niederlage, 46. For claims to difference between the Arditi and the Sturmtruppen citation of Paolo Guidici, Rochat, Gli Arditi, 20–1.

37. Kramer, Dynamic. 128. Rochat, Gli Arditi, 32.

38. Rochat, Gli Arditi, 95ff.

39. Rochat makes the same point, Gli Arditi, 74.

40. Bartov, Murder in our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing and Representation, esp. chapters 1 and 2.

41. Palieri, Gli Arditi, Glorie e Sacrifizi degli Assaltatori. Also Rochat, Gli Arditi, 84ff.

42. Giuliana, Gli Arditi, Breve Storia dei reparti D'Assalto della Terza Armata. On Jünger see King, Writing and Rewriting the First World War: Ernst Jünger and the Crisis of the Conservative Imagination, 1914–25.

43. P. Giudici, Reparto d'assalto, 19–23, cited in Rochat, Gli Arditi, 31.

44. Relazioni della reale Commissione D'Inchiesta sulle Violazioni del Diritto delle Genti Commesse dal Nemico .

45. Fortunati, “Voices of the combatants,” Il Popolo d'Italia, January 10, 1919.

46. Mussolini, Il Popolo d'Italia, October 30, 1917.

47. Il Popolo d'Italia, November 30, 1917.

48. Casser, The Forgotten Front; The British Campaign in Italy, 1917–1918.

49. Neiburg, “Revisiting the Myths: New Approaches to the Great War,” 508–9.

50. See examples: “The strong faith of the French Command,” Il Popolo d'Italia, June 22, 1918. “The applause of the Allies,” Il Popolo d'Italia, June 26, 1918. “Speech of Lloyd George,” Il Popolo d'Italia, March 27, 1918.

51. “Italian flags will fly on the fields of France,” Il Popolo d'Italia, April 19, 1918.

52. Il Popolo d'Italia, 26 October 1917.

53. Mussolini, “Passion,” Il Popolo d'Italia, March 29, 1918.

54. Mussolini, Il Popolo d'Italia, June 18, 1918.

55. See Chickering, Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914–1918, 178.

56. Il Popolo d'Italia, March 27, 1918, March 28, 1918, March 29, 1918.

57. See Il Popolo d'Italia, March 1918.

58. Mussolini, Il Popolo d'Italia, March 24, 1918, “Honour to the English,” March 25, 1918.

59. Schivelbusch, Die Kultur der Niederlage, 78ff.

60. See for example; Mussolini, “Uncle Sam in war,” Il Popolo d'Italia, December 5, 1917.

61. Il Popolo d'Italia, December 9, 1918.

62. See Il Poplo d'Italia, 4 July, 1918, July 5, 1918, July 6, 1918.

63. For example; Mussolini, “Can America do that?” Il Popolo d'Italia, May 5, 1918. “Baker gives advance notice of the arrival of American troops on our front,” Mussolini, “The Americans in Italy,” Il Popolo d'Italia, May 28, 1918.

64. Mussolini, “Uncle Sam,” Il Popolo d'Italia, June 14, 1918.

65. Neiburg, 509.

66. Schivelbusch, Die Kultur der Niederlage, 21.

67. Gentile, Storia del Partito Fascista 1919–1922. Movimenti e Milizia, 145.

68. For an example of this kind of argument see Fraccaroli, Italia ha vinto.

69. Corner, Fascism in Ferrara, Chapter 3, “The Defeat of the Interventionists.”

70. On social protest see Bianchi, Bocci-bocci: i tumulti annonari nella Toscana del 1919.

71. Bosworth, Mussolini's Italy, 99.

72. Bosworth, Mussolini's Italy, 94.

73. Vecchi, Arditismo Civile.

74. Moeller van der Bruck, Das Dritte Reich.

75. Rochat, Gli Arditi, 124.

76. Rochat, Gli Arditi.

77. Theweleit, Male Fantasies. A detailed comparison of Theleweit's problematic but suggestive concept of the red flood in Weimar Germany with the red year in postwar Italy awaits completion.

78. Chiara, La Vita di Gabriele d'Annunzio, 311. Also: Jones, “Cultures of violence in Europe after the First World War: The case of anti-French riots in Fiume, 2–6 July 1919.”

79. Schivelbusch, Die Kultur der Niederlage, 27.

80. For recent introductions to Garibaldi see: Pick, Rome or Death, The Obsessions of General Garibaldi, Riall, Garibaldi. The Invention of a Hero. The figure of Anita was so powerful that in 1932, a half a century after his death, her body was brought back to Rome were it was interned in a specially constructed monument on the Gianicolo, scene of Garibaldi's last resistance before fleeing Rome.

81. Chiara, La Vita di Gabriele d'Annunzio. See also: Woodhouse, Gabriele D'Annunzio: defiant archangel.

82. On medievalism and the Great War see Goebbel, The Great War and Medieval Memory. Also: Schnürer, ‘“But in death he has found victory’ – The funeral ceremonies for the ‘Knights of the Sky’ during World War I as Transnational Media Events.”

83. La Nazione cited in Apih, Italia Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, 105. Vecchi, Arditismo Civile, 38.

84. Cited in Moscati, Le Cinque Giornate di Fiume, 9. Emphasis in the original.

85. On Fiume see: Susmel, La Città di passione. Fuime negli anni 1914–1920, Errera, Italiani e Slavi nella Venezia Giulia, Moscati, Le Cinque Giornate di Fiume, Ledeen, The First Duce.

86. Waite, Vanguard of Nazism.

87. On the politicisation of the Italian Army see: Mondini, “Between subversion and coup d'état: military power and politics after the Great War (1919–1922).”

88. See Bosworth Mussolini's Italy, 110–15.

89. Italo Bablo described his squads as an “army of arditi commanded by arditi” (January 1, 1922) and also wrote that “We adore Fiume” (March 4, 1922), Diario 1922. See also: Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, Albanese, Alle Origini del Fascismo, Corner, Fascism in Ferrara, 1915–1925, Snowden, The Fascist Revolution in Tuscany, Segrè, Italo Balbo.

90. On the humiliation of the Prussian Monarch in 1807 see Clarke, Iron Kingdom, 308–9.

91. Schivelbusch, 11.

92. Hahn, “Ohne Jena kein Sedan.” Die Erfahrung der Niederlage von 1806 und ihre Bedeutung für die deutsche Politik und Erinnerungskultur des 19. Jahrhunderts, Clarke, “The Wars of Liberation in Prussian Memory: Reflections on the Memorialization of War in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany,” Kirstin Anne Schäfer, “Die Völkerschlacht.”

93. Wilcox, “From Heroic Defeat to Mutilated Victory: the myth of Caporetto in Fascist Italy.”

94. Horne, “Defeat and Memory since the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.”