Between subversion and coup d'etat: military power and politics after the Great War (1919 – 1922)

Abstract

One of the chief accusations brought against the Italian army has been that between 1919 and 1922 it decided to exert its own political will, venturing to the bounds of subversion in its effort to reorganize the Italian state in a reactionary direction. But the participation of officers and soldiers in episodes of street fighting, in the name of a patriotic anti-Socialist mobilization, or the implication of generals in rumors of golpe, signals of a downhill trend in terms of military discipline, constituted merely the most visible and salient aspect of a much more complex process, rich in nuances, contradictions, and fractures – the process of politicization of the Italian military following the First World War. Really, various sectors of the postwar Italian army and navy clearly preferred to abandon the strong tradition of political neutrality for the prerogative and the privileges offered by the new model of civilian – military relations established by the wartime legislation of 1915. The postwar Italy represented a particular variant on the normalization of the role of the military in Europe, to such a degree that it would be more appropriate to speak of a ‘failure to demobilize wartime culture’ for the military officers themselves, which translated in the concrete terms of political action into the decision not to accept being cloistered once more in their barracks. With the so called Governatorati Militari in Dalmatia, Venezia Giulia and Trentino, the military authorities were licensed to wield practically absolute power, free not only of the normal chain of command but also uncontrolled by the Italian government. The politicization of the officer corps, suspicions concerning the loyalty to the institutions of many of that corps' commanders, the psychosis of the Soviet uprising of the troops, all converged to make the army an unreliable instrument in the eyes of the civilian leadership. A mistrust that would grow in the months to come, sharpening the power crisis of the liberal state and revealing itself fully at the time of that state's collapse, between the summer and the autumn of 1922.     

General Roatta's war against the partisans in Yugoslavia: 1942

During General Mario Roatta's tenure as commander of the Italian 2nd Army in Yugoslavia, he faced a mounting Communist insurgency. To defeat the partisan forces of Tito, he resorted to proactive politics and a strategy of counter-insurgency. Owing to Italian military weakness and his army's lack of training in guerrilla warfare, Roatta was not averse to enlisting the services of Orthodox Serbs in Croatia, who the previous year had asked for Italian protection after a fearful massacre had been unleashed against them by Mussolini's handpicked ruler in Zagreb, the Croatian Usta?a leader Ante Paveli?. Against the wishes of the Fascist government in Rome, Roatta armed Serbs (called ?etniks) because they agreed to assist the Italian legions in fighting the partisans, their common ideological foe. But as Yugoslavia descended into civil war – one triggered by the Axis invasion – Roatta paid a price for his freelance pro-Serb politicking by alienating Zagreb, irritating the Germans, and dismaying his superiors in Rome. Italian policy was reduced to a tug-of-war between the Fascist empire-builders surrounding Mussolini and the military command in Yugoslavia, and Roatta became enmeshed in a cobweb of intrigues involving Croats, ?etniks and Germans. Apart from political manoeuvring, Roatta, in the ineluctable necessity of defeating the partisans, devised a detailed strategy of counter-insurgency. On 1 March 1942, he circulated a pamphlet entitled ‘3C’ among his commanders that spelled out military reform and draconian measures to intimidate the Slav populations into silence by means of summary executions, hostage-taking, reprisals, internments and the burning of houses and villages. By his reckoning, military necessity knew no choice, and law required only lip service. Roatta's merciless suppression of partisan insurgency was not mitigated by his having saved the lives of both Serbs and Jews from the persecution of Italy's allies Germany and Croatia. Under his watch, the 2nd Army's record of violence against the Yugoslav population easily matched the German. Tantamount to a declaration of war on civilians, Roatta's ‘3C’ pamphlet involved him in war crimes.     

Sender,those who have not returned: Carlo Salsa and his ‘Trenches’

Abstract

Carlo Salsa’s book ‘Trenches: A foot-soldier’s tales’ (Trincee. Confidenze di un fante, 1924) was one of many published in Italy after the end of the First World War. It describes the facts of the war as they were lived by officers and soldiers on the Italian front line. The article tries to compare the book with the contemporary war literature in Italy and in Europe, without forgetting the use of the international historiography on the matter. Thus, it is analysed the way an Italian author described to his readers the brutal carnage of the war in years when Fascism was the rising star in Italian policy and the censorship was becoming the more and more a thornily factor for every writer of those days. From this analysis it is possible to note the quality of the volume both from the literary point of view, and its historical value as a reliable testimony of the facts, stepping up our knowledge of what the war literature was for the Italian public opinion after the 1918. As it is possible to note, the book puts under test our notions of the role played by this kind of literature in shaping the Italian political life at the end of the 1910s and at the start of 1920s, when Italy was becoming a country lead by the Fascist regime.     

The foreign policy of First Republic Italy: new approaches

This introductory article deals with the most recent contributions by Italian historians on the Italian Republic's international role. It aims mainly to demonstrate that a new generation of younger Italian historians is successfully offering new views and interpretations on First Republic Italy's role in the international system, and is also focusing on aspects such as the culture of Italy's political parties, the economic dimension, the role of public opinion, and the influence of external actors on domestic Italian politics – in short, that there has been a turn away from traditional diplomatic history based upon the archives of the Foreign Ministry.     

Italian fashion: yesterday,today and tomorrow

The article considers Gianna Manzini's ‘La moda e una cosa seria’ (La Donna, 1935, July, 36–37) as a forerunner of current scholarly approaches to fashion in general and Italian fashion in particular, for three reasons. First, it asserts the importance of a gendered history of fashion; second, it argues for the importance of boundaries and lines of demarcation in the study of fashion that do not pertain solely to time but also to fields, disciplines and the other arts, as well as social and political domains; third, it raises the question of the relationship between fashion and nation. In examining how and when to establish the beginning or the origin of Italian fashion, the article argues for a long history of Italian fashion that stretches as far back as early modernity, thus reframing a number of historiographical questions. The article goes on to signal the difficulty involved in establishing neat points of ruptures and origins, and continuities in any historical or cultural spectrum in view of the porosity of national boundaries; and makes the case for considering fashion, both today's and that of yesteryear, in both its national and transnational dimensions.     

Italian political culture in historical perspective

This article examines Austrian policy towards the Italian states from the Congress of Vienna to the revolutions of 1848. It argues that the paramount concern of Habsburg policy was not revolution, but rather the maintenance of a hegemonic position in the peninsula against threats from the Habsburgs’ traditional enemy ‐ the French. Revolution caused significant concern only because it might provide the French with a pretext for intervention in the peninsula. Consequently a number of strategies were adopted both to forestall insurrection (vigorous policing, encouraging moderate reform programmes, armed intervention), and to retain influence over the peninsula's rulers (diplomatic pressure, dynastic and military alliances, promises of assistance against unrest). However, by the 1830s the Austrians were faced by increasing challenges to their position of dominance. This was in part because of the personal ambitions of individual Italian rulers, but it also reflected the changing situation in Paris after the July Revolution, and in Vienna after the death of Francis I.     

A colpi di cuore. Storie del sessantotto

This article attempts to tackle the problem of how a colonial culture that was elaborated through the written word may have impacted on an Italian society that was significantly more ‘backward’ than its western European counterparts. The Prima Guerra d'Africa (1885-96) has often been seen as a military campaign desired exclusively by an isolated Italian government in a society that was incapable of using the occasion to develop cultural themes that impacted on the desires and aspirations of the ‘real’ Italy. This supposed societal dysfunction meant that Italy failed to create a ‘culture of imperialism’ in the years of the Scramble for Africa in a way that has now come to be considered of such central importance for the histories of France, Britain or even Germany.

Through an analysis of the role played by primary schools in Italian culture in these years, this article attempts to reverse this view, arguing that even taking into consideration Italy's ‘backwardness’ there was not only a great awareness of what Italy was supposedly doing in Africa but also a serious attempt to load the events that occured there with a meaning that had a much more intimate relationship with Italy's population. Although defeat in Africa meant a major setback in this process, imperialism as a cultural phenomenon continued to be of fundamental importance to the progress of nation building and the development of nationalism in Italy and, Finaldi argues, it should therefore be assigned a place in Italian culture that is much more on a par to that which culture and imperialism are deemed to have held for other European nation-states.     

Does It Even Work? A Theoretical and Practical Evaluation of the War Powers Resolution

The War Powers Resolution of 1973 represents a policy that attempts to fill a procedural gap in the Constitution, that is, a clear process by which the use of military force is authorized. Based on what is arguably a misinterpretation of the Constitution, it fails to achieve its objective: to constrain the president's discretion in employing military force unilaterally.

This article addresses the WPR in four sections. First, it examines the law's theoretical underpinnings. Next, it summarizes the law's provisions, its application, and several direct and indirect approaches that have been applied in studying the use of military force and the WPR. Third, using quantitative analysis, the article seeks to answer three basic questions: 1) Has the WPR had any effect on the U.S. president's decision to employ military force?

2) Has the WPR had any effect on the magnitude of force employed in a conflict?

3) Has the WPR had any effect on the duration of conflicts in which the president has employed military force?

Findings indicate that the War Powers Resolution is not a significant factor in presidents' decisions to use military force. Once the president decides to employ force in a given scenario, it also fails to be a significant factor in affecting the magnitude of force that is used. It appears that the law may have an effect on the duration of conflicts involving the U.S. military, but weaknesses in the statistical model leave this question open to further research to confirm or deny this verdict.     

A Most Unmanly War: British Military Masculinity in Macedonia,Mesopotamia and Palestine, 1914–18

This article argues that the most severe crisis of masculinity among British and Dominion soldiers in the First World War did not take place on the Western Front. Instead, British and Dominion soldiers serving on the war's sideshows in Macedonia, Mesopotamia and Palestine believed most acutely that their manliness was in question. Unlike soldiers on the Western Front, they were not battling the main German Army, they were not fighting to liberate occupied France and Belgium, and their war was not to preserve the rights of small nations and the inviolability of international law. This article explores how military masculinity played out much differently on the war's peripheral fronts in two ways. First, it suggests that where a soldier fought mattered more to military masculinity than a soldier's method of enlistment or any other variable. British and Dominion soldiers were fully aware that the home front only considered France and Flanders as the real war, and they actively argued against this misconception to loved ones and in their memoirs. Second, this article demonstrates an additional crisis of masculinity on the war's peripheral fronts: the lack, or more often effacement, of non‐white colonial (Eastern Mediterranean and Arab) women. Not only was British and Dominion military masculinity under assault on the war's peripheral fronts, heteronormative sexual relations were also being transformed in a world where few, if any, racially acceptable women were available.     

‘Suppose They were to Do It in Mexico’: The Spanish Embargo and Its Influence on Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy

The US arms embargo during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) can play a key role in our understanding of the transformation of American strategic thought in the late 1930s. The embargo's most well-documented causes are isolationist sentiment, the influence of the Catholic vote in the New Deal coalition and the forceful diplomatic leadership of Britain's Foreign Office in European affairs. Less well known is the importance of Latin America, which was considered throughout the conflict in the debates about lifting the Spanish embargo. This article examines the Spanish embargo and the reasons behind it. It also analyzes the Latin American dimension of Roosevelt's Spanish policy. By doing so it reveals how the perceived threat of Fascist penetration in Latin America influenced US diplomacy regarding Spain. Since that threat was first perceived, Washington began to fear the consequences of a Francoist military victory. It considered that the success of German and Italian military interventions in Spain could encourage similar initiatives in Latin America. The lessons learned in Spain reinforced Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy in Latin America and, at the same time, also provided a subtle reasoning for abandoning continental isolationism.     

A marriage,a battle,an honour: the career of Boniface of the Hucpoldings during Rudolf II's Italian reign, 924–26

This article investigates the events of Rudolf II's military campaign in Italy (922) and considers the political ramification of this, both immediately thereafter and subsequently during the rule of Rudolf. Particular attention is paid to the career of Boniface of the Hucpoldings: an Italian aristocrat who attained prominence thanks to his close relationship with Rudolf. The Hucpoldings belonged to the aristocratic elite of the Carolingian empire, came to Italy under Lothar I (c.847) and tried to settle there. Until now, scholars have underestimated their role in the wider context of the early medieval Italian kingdom. This study will stress how Boniface's career was a turning point in the lineage's development, and how his political achievements were essential for his kinship's further hegemony.     

Colonising Italians: Italian Imperialism and Agricultural ‘Colonies’ in Australia, 1881–1914

The historiography of Australian imperialism before the First World War has often neglected a context wider than the relationship with Great Britain. Yet this era also implicated non-British governments and their emigrants. Despite their small numbers, Italian settlers are significant for highlighting Italy's empire-building and Australia's struggles for national and imperial unity. Italy's foreign policies after 1901 opened commercial opportunities across its diasporic networks, which included subsidising agricultural ‘colonies’ in Australia. The contemporary discourses of sectarianism and racism voiced before Federation articulated political and popular resistance against Italian immigrants. The rhetoric shifted after Federation as state governments examined the issue of land tenure for closer settlements (small agricultural farms), appealing to an argument about serving unemployed Australians before approving foreign settler schemes. The history leading up to two Italian projects in Western Australia and Queensland in 1907 allows reflections on Italy's diaspora colonisation and Australian responses to foreign imperialism.     

Crisis in consciousness: The thought of Ernst Troeltsch

This article examines the ‘revolutionary liberal’ outlook expounded by the young Italian journalist and intellectual, Piero Gobetti, immediately following the First World War. It considers the historical evolution of his ‘agonistic’ liberalism according to which conflict rather than consensus serves as the basis of social and political renewal. The article traces the formation of Gobetti's thought from his idealist response to the crisis of the liberal state through to his endorsement of the communist revolutionaries in Turin and his denunciation of fascism as the continuation of Italy's failed tradition of compromise. Whilst Gobetti's views presently resonate with a growing interest in the agonistic dimension of politics, it is argued that his elitism and his understanding of liberalism as a ‘civic religion’ reveal challenging tensions in his thought.     

Towards a chequebook democracy? Business,parties and the funding of politics in Italy and the United States

This article seeks to establish to what extent Silvio Berlusconi's entry into electoral politics as leader of Forza Italia signals an ‘Americanization’ of Italian politics. It argues that Italian party democracy is moving in an ‘American’ direction in two ways. First, Italian party organizations are declining, leading to a more candidate-centred type of electoral politics. Second, the decline of parties is enhancing the ability of business to use its financial clout to tailor public policy to its own requirements. However, these trends do not have identical effects in Italy and the United States. This article will also show that this process of ‘Americanization’ interacts with the existing political praxis and institutional framework of Italian politics to produce an outcome which differs from both the traditional Western European model and the American model of party democracy. It will be concluded that this outcome seriously undermines representative democracy in Italy.     

Review Article: Technology and Culture during the First Climacteric

In 1953 Israel abandoned the ‘defensive–offensive’ military strategy that it had adopted four years earlier, in the wake of the First Arab–Israeli War, in favor of an ‘offensive–defensive’ military strategy that, to a large extent, persists until this day. This paper, which employs previously untapped Israeli official documents, personal interviews, memoirs, biographies, and secondary sources, casts new light on this critical juncture in the history of Israel and the Arab–Israeli conflict. The paper challenges existing works by showing when and how Israel's ‘offensive–defensive’ military strategy was adopted. More specifically, the authors argue that it was the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), especially its planning bodies - and not the Prime Minister and Defense Minister, David Ben Gurion, or the IDF's Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Moshe Dayan - that initiated this change, and that the new strategy met no objection when it was discussed and approved by the Israeli government. The authors also inquire about the possible implications of this change for Israel and the Arab–Israeli conflict, and ask how this case informs general debates regarding the origins of military strategies.     

Spain’s Military Campaigns in Sardinia and Sicily (1717–1720) According to Jaime Miguel de Guzmán-Dávalos,Marquis of la Mina

The Colección de cuadros y planos sobre de Cerdeña y Sicilia en los anõs 1717, 1720 is an archive of military maps complementing the Memorias written by Jaime Miguel de Guzmán-Dávalos, second marquis of la Mina, who had participated in these campaigns. The Colección illustrates some of the most important events of the Italian campaigns against the Quadruple Alliance of Britain, France, Austria and the Dutch Republic (1717–1720). Comparison of the maps and other drawings with details in la Mina’s Memorias allows us to clarify his main objective in compiling the text, which was to record the operations faithfully for use in military education.     

Enlightenment and reform: an overview of culture and politics in Enlightenment Italy

This essay analyses the influence of the work of Franco Venturi on Italian studies of the eighteenth century over the last fifty years. Venturi's ‘model’ has certainly been of fundamental importance in stimulating new research on the connections between Enlightenment and reform in the eighteenth-century Italian states and is still an essential point of reference for all research in the field. But the direction of eighteenth-century studies in Italy has been shaped also by the contributions of many other scholars. Starting in the 1970s Italian historians became increasingly interested in new questions that were being posed by historians in France and Britain, which contributed to a more general shift away from the biographical focus on individuals characteristic of much of Venturi's work in favour of more collective topics, new types of sources and new ways of interpreting them. This article describes the different themes around which relations between culture and politics in eighteenth-century Italy have been studied, from civil, military and ecclesiastical institutions to the administrative and reform elites, the world of salons and sociability, publishing, religious beliefs, gender differences and science.     

The Field Artillery Revolution and the European Military Balance, 1890–1914

ABSTRACT

This article centres on the introduction of the French 75mm light field gun, and its impact on the European military balance in the two decades before the First World War. It argues that the 75mm (and particularly its new recoil-absorption mechanism) dramatically accelerated the rate of fire and gave France a major military advantage over Germany between c. 1899 and 1906. Subsequently the application of the new technology to howitzers and heavy artillery enabled Germany to redress the balance. On the eve of war, however, Germany's leaders feared a new round of French and Russian emulation, and this fear influenced their policy in the July 1914 crisis. The article also examines the failure to forestall the quick-firing revolution at the First Hague Peace Conference; the new technology's role in the First Moroccan Crisis; its dissemination across Europe and the Franco-German competition to amass reserves of shells.     

From Universalism to Nationalism: Italian Freemasonry and the Great War

Abstract

During the period from 1914 to 1915, prior to Italy’s entry into the First World War, Freemasonry was a powerful force in Italian public life with a strong presence in every part of the nation and in the most vital organs of the State (parliament, public administration, the armed forces). Between them, the Grand Orient and the Grand Lodge of Italy counted 25,000 members and more than 500 lodges. Freemasons played a critical role in the campaign to mobilize Italian public opinion and political parties in support of Italy’s intervention in the war as an ally of France and Great Britain. To do so, they abandoned the movement’s traditional cosmopolitan and pacifist stances and adopted instead the objectives of the nationalists, a shift that would be consolidated during the war. Nonetheless, from 1917 onwards Italian Freemasons joined their counterparts in other European countries to press for the creation of a League of Nations to promote a new post-war universal order premised on the peaceful coexistence of independent and democratic nations. In examining the initiatives taken by Italian Freemasons in this period, this article focuses on the principles that inspired them, the language they adopted and the forms of communication and mobilization they used.