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ABSTRACT
The formation of Fascist Italy's international imaginary in the 1930s tells a fascinating story of growing global political ambition, of constant recalibration in the face of seismic geopolitical shifts and, in the end, a (frustrated) pursuit of symbolic primacy. Kallis discusses two different Fascist projects underpinned by this imaginary: first, the political project of internationalization promoted through instruments such as the Fasci Italiani all'Estero (Italian Fasci Abroad) and especially the Comitati d'Azione per l'Universalità di Roma (CAUR), as well as through direct diplomatic and political ties with an expanding circle of regimes in Europe and overseas; and, second, the pursuit of a deeper sense of historic-cultural primacy, linked to the idea of ‘Roman universality, which became the discursive lynchpin of the ill-fated plan to host a 1942 world’s fair in Rome (EUR/E42). The transformation of Fascism from a hyper-nationalist phenomenon into a force actively seeking international diffusion and finally ‘universality’ can be understood as a reflexive adjustment of Fascism’s ideological-political horizon, driven as much by new geopolitical opportunities and frustrations as by conquering ambition and ideological continuity. In fact, Italian Fascism’s trajectory from CAUR in the 1930s to EUR/E42 in the war-torn 1940s, unfolding against a backdrop of growing antagonism between Italy and Nazi Germany for global influence, retained a primary symbolic point of reference: the ideological, political and cultural-historic estate of the ‘myth of Rome’ as a symbolic discourse of trans-temporal and -spatial primacy.
Notes
1 Italo Balbo, Dall’Italia a Brasile (Milan: Mondadori 1931); Ugo Rampelli, Crociera atlantica Italia–Brasile (1930–1931): Conseguenze e sviluppi (Modena: S.T.E.M. Mucchi 1981).
2 Marja Härmänmaa, ‘Il pilota futurista: Marinetti, il futurismo e l‘aviazione negli anni Trenta’, Trasparenze, vol. 31–2, 2007, 109–18. On Futurism/Fascism and aviation in general, see Fernando Esposito, Fascism, Aviation and Mythical Modernity (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2015); and Günther Berghaus (ed.), Futurism and the Technological Imagination (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi 2009).
3 Claudio G. Segré, Italo Balbo: A Fascist Life (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1990), 215–19. For ‘futural’, see Gregory Maertz, ‘Modernist art in the service of Nazi culture: Baldur von Schirach and the Junge Kunst im Deutschen Reich exhibition’, n11, in these pages.
4 Alfredo Strano, Lo sguardo e la memoria: diario di un emigrato in Australia (Cosenza: Pellegrini 2001), 49.
5 Robert Wohl, The Spectacle of Flight: Aviation and the Western Imagination, 1920–1950 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 2005), 69.
6 Alessandro Secciani, I gerarchi: gli uomini del Duce (Novara: Editoriale Nuova 2007), 85; João Fábio Bertonha, O fascismo e os imigrantes italianos no Brasil (Porto Alegre: edipucrs 2001), 121–3.
7 Federico Finchelstein, Transatlantic Fascism: Ideology, Violence, and the Sacred in Argentina and Italy, 1919–1945 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2010), 85; Emilio Gentile, ‘L’emigrazione italiana in Argentina nella politica di espansione del nazionalismo e del fascismo’, Storia Contemporanea, vol. 17, no. 3, 1986, 355–96.
8 Angelo Trento, ‘“Dovunque è un italiano, là è il tricolore”: la penetrazione del fascismo tra gli immigrati in Brasile’, in Eugenia Scarzanella (ed.), Fascisti in Sud America (Florence: Le Lettere 2005), 3–54.
9 Wohl, The Spectacle of Flight, 76.
10 See, for example, Mario Gianturco, ‘Funzione internazionale della corporazione’, Critica Fascista, vol. 11, no. 21, 1933, 406–8 (408).
11 Benito Mussolini, ‘Message for year IX’, 27 October 1930 (emphasis added), in Benito Mussolini, Opera Omnia. 24. Dagli Accordi del Laterano al dodicesimo anniversario della fondazione dei Fasci. 12 febbraio 1929–23 marzo 1931, ed. Edoardo and Duilio Susmel (Florence: La Fenice 1958), 283. Translations from the Italian, unless otherwise stated, are by the author.
12 Benito Mussolini, ‘La dottrina del fascismo’, 1932, in Benito Mussolini, Opera Omnia. 34. Il mio diario di guerra, 1915–1917. La dottrina del fascismo, 1932. Vita di Arnaldo, 1932. Parlo con Bruno, 1941. Pensieri pontini e sardi, 1943. Storia di un anno, 1944, ed. Edoardo and Duilio Susmel (Florence: La Fenice 1961), 131.
13 Ugo Spirito, Il corporativismo come liberalismo assoluto e socialismo assoluto (Rome: Pacini Mariotti 1933), 13–15.
14 For example, Giuseppe Bottai, ‘Latinità e germanesimo’, Primato, vol. 2, no. 1, 1941, 2–3.
15 On the ‘lure’ of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, see Dietrich Orlow, The Lure of Fascism in Western Europe: German Nazis, Dutch and French Fascists, 1933–1939 (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2009).
16 Fulvia Zega, ‘“Italiani alta la testa!” La presenza del fascismo a São Paulo, 1920–1940’, PhD thesis, Università degli studi Roma Tre, Rome, 2009, available online at http://dspace-roma3.caspur.it/bitstream/2307/465/1/tesidottorato.pdf (viewed 11 August 2016).
17 O Globo, 6 January 1931; see also Salvatore Lupo, Il fascismo: la politica di un regime totalitario (Rome: Donzelli 2000), 238.
18 Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (New York: St Martin's Press 1991), 36–8; Stanley G. Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914–1945 (London: UCL Press 1997), 464.
19 Benito Mussolini, Opera Omnia. 14. Dalla Marcia di Ronchi al secondo Congresso dei Fasci. 14 set. 1919–25 maggio 1920, ed. Edoardo and Duilio Susmel (Florence: La Fenice 1954), 59.
20 Benito Mussolini, speech delivered at Naples, 24 October 1922, in Benito Mussolini, Opera Omnia. 18. Dalla Conferenza di Cannes alla Marcia su Roma. 14 gennaio 1922–30 ottobre 1922, ed. Edoardo and Duilio Susmel (Florence: La Fenice 1954), 457.
21 Cornelia Navari, Internationalism and the State in the Twentieth Century (London and New York: Routledge 2000), 354.
22 Marla Stone, ‘A flexible Rome: Fascism and the cult of romanità’, in Catharine Edwards (ed.), Roman Presences: Receptions of Rome in European Culture, 1789–1945 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press 1999), 205–20 (207); Patricia Ann Gilson, ‘Rituals of a Nation's Identity: Archaeology and Genealogy in Antiquities Museums of Rome’, PhD thesis, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 2009, 143.
23 David D. Roberts, The Totalitarian Experiment in Twentieth-Century Europe: Understanding the Poverty of Great Politics (New York and London: Routledge 2005), esp. 79–91.
24 Stefano Santoro, L’Italia e l’Europa orientale: diplomazia culturale e propaganda 1918–1943 (Milan: FrancoAngeli 2005), 173.
25 Didier Musiedlak (ed.), Les Expériences corporatives dans l’aire latine (Bern: Peter Lang 2010), esp. Francesco Perfetti, ‘La discussione sul corporativismo in Italia’, 103–16.
26 Giuseppe Bottai, ‘Der italienische Faschismus', 1926, in Carl Landauer and Hans Honegger (eds), Internationaler Faschismus (Karlsruhe: G. Braun 1928), 1– 19 (17–18).
27 See Stanislav Andreski, ‘Fascists as moderates', in Stein Ugelvik Larsen, Bernt Hagtvet and Jan Petter Myklebust (eds), Who Were the Fascists: Social Roots of European Fascism (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget 1981), 52–6.
28 For example, Cornelio di Marzio, Il fascismo all’estero (Milan: Imperia 1923); Gherardo Casini, ‘La politica internazionale e le masse lavoratrici’, Critica Fascista, vol. 7, no. 6, 1929, 113. In general, Michael A. Ledeen, Universal Fascism: The Theory and Practice of the Fascist International, 1928–1936 (New York: H. Fertig 1972), 90–3.
29 A. James Gregor, Mussolini's Intellectuals: Fascist Social and Political Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2005), esp. the chapter on Pellizzi, 165–90.
30 Renzo Santinon, Fasci italiani all’estero (Rome: Edizione Settimo Sigillo 1991); Emilio Franzina and Matteo Sanfilippo (eds), La parabola dei Fasci italiani all’estero (1920–1943) (Rome and Bari: Laterza 2003); Emilio Gentile, ‘La politica estera del partito fascista: ideologia e organizzazione dei Fasci italiani all’estero (1920–1930)’, Storia Contemporanea, vol. 24, no. 6, 1995, 897–955.
31 Luca de Caprariis, ‘“Fascism for export”? The rise and eclipse of the Fasci Italiani all’Estero’, Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 35, no. 2, 2000, 151–83 (167).
32 De Caprariis, ‘Fascism for export?’, 175–83; Santoro, L’Italia e l’Europa orientale.
33 Jerzy W. Borejsza, Il fascismo e l’Europa orientale: dalla propaganda all’aggressione (Bari and Rome: Laterza 1981), 121.
34 Matteo Pretelli, ‘Fasci italiani e la comunità italo-americane: un rapporto difficile (1921–29)’, in Matteo Sanfilippo (ed.), Emigrazione e storia d’Italia (Cosenza: Pellegrini 2003), 209–42 (235–41).
35 Luca La Rovere, Storia dei GUF: organizzazione, politica e miti della gioventù universitaria fascista 1919 – 1943 (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri 2003).
36 Lorenzo Medici, Dalla propaganda alla cooperazione: la diplomazia culturale italiana nel secondo dopoguerra (1944–1950) (Padua: CEDAM 2009), 11–12.
37 Marco Cuzzi, L’internazionale delle camicie nere: i CAUR, Comitati d’Azione per l’Universalità di Roma, 1933–1939 (Milan: Mursia 2005), 54–5.
38 Monica Fioravanzo, ‘Mussolini, il fascismo e “l’idea dell’Europa”: alle origini di un dibattito’, Italia contemporanea, vol. 63, no. 262, 2011, 7–27 (12).
39 Claudio Fogu, The Historic Imaginary: Politics of History in Fascist Italy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2003), 134–64.
40 Speech by Mussolini in Milan, 25 October 1932, in Benito Mussolini, Opera Omnia. 25. Dal dodicesimo anniversario della fondazione dei fasci al Patto a Quattro, 24 marzo 1931–7 giugno 1933, ed. Duilio Susmel (Florence: La Fenice 1958), 147–8.
41 Aristotle Kallis, Fascist Ideology: Territory and Expansionism in Italy and Germany, 1922–1945 (London and New York: Routledge 2000), 138–58.
42 Joshua Arthurs, Excavating Modernity: The Roman Past in Fascist Italy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2012), 1–9; Aristotle Kallis, The Third Rome, 1922–1943: The Making of the Fascist Capital (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2014), 73–105.
43 Cuzzi, L’internazionale delle Camicie Nere, 85; Beate Scholz, ‘Italienischer Faschismus als “Export”-Artikel (1927–1935): ideologische und organisatorische Ansätze zur Verbreitung des Faschismus im Ausland’, PhD Thesis, University of Trier, 2001, 287.
44 Sergio Panunzio, ‘Fatti ed idee’, Il Popolo d’Italia, 25 September 1930 (emphasis added).
45 ‘Il Reich fascista’, Il Messaggero, 7 March 1933, 1.
46 Simona Giustibelli, ‘L’Europa nella riflessione del convegno della Fondazione Volta (Roma, 16–20 novembre 1932)’, Dimensioni e Problemi della Ricerca Storica, no. 1, 2002, 181–234 (210–17); Fioravanzo, ‘Mussolini, il fascismo e “l’idea dell’Europa”’, 19–26.
47 See, in general, Aaron Gillette, Racial Theories in Fascist Italy (London and New York: Routledge 2002).
48 Comités d’Action pour l’Universalité de Rome, Réunion de Montreux, 16–17 Decembre 1934 (Rome: Bureau de Presse des CAUR 1935), 28–42.
49 Benito Mussolini, ‘La missione universale di Roma’, Gerarchia, vol. 12, 1932, 801–9.
50 Information to prefects about the formation of the CAUR, 11 May 1933: Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome (hereafter ACS), Presidenza dei Consiglio dei Ministri (hereafter PCM), 1937–1939, 1/1-8-3.
51 Scholz, ‘Italienischer Faschismus als “Export”-Artikel (1927–1935)’, 298, 302.
52 CAUR Statuto, 25 March 1935: ACS, PCM, 1937–1939, 1/1-8-3.
53 Ledeen, Universal Fascism, 128; Cuzzi, L’internazionale delle Camicie Nere, 327–46; Gisella Longo, ‘I tentativi per la costituzione di un’internazionale fascista: gli incontri di Amsterdam e di Montreux attraverso i verbali delle riunioni’, Storia Contemporanea, vol. 27, no. 3, 475–567.
54 Europa svegliati! Mensile polemico internazionale dell’Espansione fascista nel Mondo, vol. 1, 1933, passim.
55 CAUR Manifesto, Campidoglio, Roma, 15 July 1933: ACS, PCM, 1937–1939, 1/1-8-3.
56 Alan Cassels, Ideology and International Relations in the Modern World (London and New York: Routledge 1996), 158.
57 Cuzzi, L’internazionale delle Camicie Nere, 146.
58 Claudia Baldoli, Exporting Fascism: Italian Fascists and Britain's Italians in the 1930s (Oxford and New York: Berg 2003), 56.
59 ‘Appunti su CAUR’, n.d.: ACS, Papers of the Ministero della Cultura Populare, Gabinetto, 93.
60 Gerhard Hirschfeld, Nazi Rule and Dutch Collaboration: The Netherlands under German Occupation, 1940–1945, trans. from the German by Louise Willmot (Oxford: Berg 1988), 254–5; Orlow, The Lure of Fascism in Western Europe.
61 Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses, Salazar, A Political Biography (New York: Enigma 2009), 170.
62 Report on Cabalzar's visit to Romania, 1934: ACS, MCP Gab, 13/155.
63 Michael Mann, Fascists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004), 38–43.
64 Gillette, Racial Theories in Fascist Italy, chap. 4.
65 Scholz, ‘Italienischer Faschismus als “Export”-Artikel (1927–1935)’, 342–6.
66 Cuzzi, L’internazionale delle camicie nere, 328–62.
67 Asvero Gravelli, Panfascismo (Rome: Nuova Europa 1935).
68 Scholz, ‘Italienischer Faschismus als “Export”-Artikel (1927–1935)’, 175.
69 Dan Stone, The Holocaust, Fascism and Memory: Essays in the History of Ideas (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2013), 6.
70 Speech by Mussolini in Milan, 25 October 1932, in Mussolini, Opera Omnia. 25.
71 Francesco Coppola, ‘Il Patto a Quattro: Roma e l’Europa’, Politica, vol. 15, no. 107–8, 1933, 253.
72 Bertonha, O fascismo e os imigrantes italianos no Brasil, 77.
73 Ricardo Seitenfus, ‘I rapporti fra Brasile e Italia negli anni 1918–39’, in Rovílio Costa, Luis Alberto De Boni and Angelo Trento (eds), La presenza italiana nella storia e nella cultura del Brasile (Turin: Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli 1990), 328–51 (343).
74 Leandro Pereira Gonçalves, ‘The integralism of Plínio Salgado: Luso-Brazilian relations’, Portuguese Studies, vol. 30, no. 1, 2014, 67–93 (784–5).
75 Santoro, L’Italia e l’Europa orientale, 320.
76 ‘Progetto di Massima per un Esposizione Universale di Roma’, April 1935: ACS, Segreteria Particolare del Duce, Carte Cini.
77 Quoted in Patrizia Ferrara, ‘L’EUR: un Ente per l’E42’, in T. Gregory and A. Tartaro (eds), E42. Utopia e scenario del regime: ideologia e programma dell’Olimpiade della Civiltà (Venice: Marsilio 1987), 73–83 (79).
78 Kallis, The Third Rome, 1922–1943, 244–58.
79 ‘Esposizione Universale di Roma: E42 Programma di Massima’, June 1937: ACS, Segreteria Particolare del Duce, 509.832.
80 Aristotle Kallis, ‘The “fascist effect”: on the dynamics of political hybridization in inter-war Europe’, in António Costa Pinto and Aristotle Kallis (eds), Rethinking Fascism and Dictatorship in Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2014), 13–41.
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Aristotle Kallis
Aristotle Kallis is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the School of Humanities, Keele University. He is the author of The Third Rome, 1922–1943: The Making of the Fascist Capital (Palgrave Macmillan 2014) and editor, together with António Costa Pinto, of Rethinking Fascism and Dictatorship (Palgrave Macmillan 2014). He is currently researching alternative genealogies of architecturally ‘rooted’ modernism in 1920s Rome.