The Propagandistic Activities of Italian War Veterans, 1940-1943: Mobilising the Nation Through the Memory of the First World War (original) (raw)

During the Second World War, Mussolini’s Fascist dictatorship strove to mobilise the Italian nation for war. The associations of First World War veterans played a relevant role in this strategy, by producing and disseminating political propaganda. My proposed contribution studies the ways in which these associations’ propaganda evoked the First World War and thematically related developments, in the service of Fascism. Specifically, it critically examines the major instances in which ex-combatants employed Italy’s past to promote the regime’s war effort: • Lending authoritativeness to the dictatorship, by highlighting the military and political accomplishments which were achieved by the Fascists in the course of the First World War and the post-war years preceding Mussolini’s seizure of power. • Strengthening Italy’s alliance with the Axis, by highlighting historical parallels between Italy and Germany, in terms of martial traditions and military developments, taking place before and during the First World War. • Providing Italians with martial role models, by commemorating soldiers who had fallen in the course of the First World War. My enquiry shows that ex-combatants, by publicly recalling – and often exaggerating or distorting – past events, helped the regime come closer to various among its goals – such as motivating Italian soldiers to fight and developing diplomatic ties to Nazi Germany (by facilitating contacts between organisations of Italian and German former fighters). Furthermore, it highlights that the First World War remained a crucial symbolic resource for Fascism until the latter’s downfall.