Fascist Voices: An Intimate History of Mussolini’s Italy
Christopher Duggan
Vintage Books, 2013
xxiii + 501 pages
When examining political regimes of the past, historians must eventually tackle one very hard question. To wit, how much support did the regime enjoy? There are several reasons why this is such a stumper. These are a few that spring to mind:
a) If the regime was long-lasting, did support change over time?
b) What constitutes support: rabid adherence, resigned indifference?
c) If there were no uprisings or rebellions, was this due to support or fear of punishment?
When it comes to totalitarian regimes, the historian’s job becomes even more difficult. In the Soviet Union, Maoist China or National Socialist Germany going against the regime in any way would likely mean death or the slave labour camp. People, if they made any public utterances at all, would be pro-regime simply to stay alive or avoid imprisonment. Moreover, few people living under these regimes wrote down their thoughts, again, for self-preservation. Indeed, very few even spoke about them because that could easily lead to a one-way ticket to a slave labour camp.
Fortunately for us, Mussolini’s Italy was never totalitarian despite the Duce’s pretensions to the contrary. Yes, there was a secret-police, and vocal opponents of the regime could end up with a few years of confino (internal exile) or occasionally death. Yes, letters might get into the hands of the censors, and yes snooping family members could get their hands on one’s diary. Yet, the “Old Italy” with its regionalism, clientelism, corruption, etc. still existed under fascism. The point is that the Fascist state was not all powerful and did not penetrate all walks of Italian life. Many Italians were not terrorised into complete self-censorship. Moreover, among the tens of millions of Italians who supported the regime in one way or another, millions wrote letters of support to their Duce. Finally, historians have access to secret police files that reported on public support during the regime. Ultimately, there is a comparative treasure trove of information about the amount of support Mussolini enjoyed from the March on Rome (1922) to his death by machine gun (1945). After providing the reader with several caveats about using such sources, Christopher Duggan proves that these primary sources can still tell us a lot about what was happening at the “ground level” in Fascist Italy.
And so, I thank Duggan for writing this book. He has done tremendous spade work in sifting through the historical material. He’s opened a window into the past that has been closed to the English reader.
Within his broad narrative of Mussolini’s Italy, the author typically follows a simple formula which the lay reader will appreciate, especially if he is new to the topic. He first grounds his chapters in a brief survey (e.g., foreign policy in the 1930s) and then delves into the thoughts, feelings and experiences of average Italians. Duggan’s skill as a writer means that the transition from historical overview to individual stories is seamless. This is particularly impressive given the book’s nature. Duggan must let the sources speak for themselves as much as possible. If he paraphrases too much, the individual stories are lost through his filter. On the other hand, an unskilled historian might just quote letter after letter. Such a book would be a dry, dull chronicle. At no point does Fascist Voices threaten to fall into this trap.
Is there an argument lurking in Duggan’s journey through a near quarter-century of fascism? There is. Despite the many failures of Italian fascism (economic, social, cultural) the regime enjoyed mass support almost until the very end. Why? Because the Duce, with all his charisma and promises of glory, galvanised support for the regime. There were also successes, always inflated, that bolstered support. The most spectacular, for Italians, was the conquest of Abyssinia and the founding of the Italian Empire. This was for me the most interesting chapter in the book. It wasn’t the war itself, but rather Italians’ reaction to war. Support for the invasion was near absolute. Even the “Church provided overwhelming backing for the war, with seven cardinals, twenty-nine archbishops and seventy-five bishops offering public endorsements in the press.” (p. 253) University students also called on their Duce to use any means to destroy those Abyssinian savages:
WE WANT AN OFFENSIVE AERIAL WAR. CHEMICAL WEAPONS SHOULD BE USED ON A LARGE SCALE AS MODERN WAR DEMANDS…Duce, we are not impetuous or blood-thirsty. We are Italians and we want to keep our sacrifice to a minimum, especially when it is a question of fighting animals like the Abyssinians. (p. 254)
Duggan admits that there were a few pockets of scepticism over the adventure, but it was nothing “amid the near universal acclaim for a war that it was widely believed would provide opportunities for mass settlement and at last make Italy wealthy.” (p. 255)
What of the Abyssinians who posed no threat to Italy and were simply defending their country from Italian aggression? This is what I found so fascinating about this chapter. The masses didn’t care. Abyssinia was simply theirs…for reasons. The Abyssinians were savages…for reasons. They, therefore, deserved to be conquered and civilised. Reading between the lines of some sources, I also got the impression that Italians felt shame for losing to the Abyssinians in 1896. How dare those wogs defend their own country! What this says about Italians in the 1930s is not flattering. Even Hitler had to convince Germans they were the victims of aggression from Poland.
I could go on; the above is but one of the dozens of insights the reader will gain from Fascist Voices. This book would make a great companion to R.J.B. Bosworth’s biography on Mussolini.
