The Fallen Soldier as Fascist Exemplar: Military Cemeteries and Dead Heroes in Mussolini’s Italy

This article aims to dissect the nature of exemplarity in Italian Fascism. The social and political structures that emerged in Fascist Italy were highly reliant on a sense of morality, largely because of the degree of violence inherent in those structures. Under Fascism, morality was founded on concrete examples rather than on abstract principles. Exemplars were idealized sources of moral strength, and figures with the capacity to inspire or persuade. In particular, the fallen soldier and those who died for the nation constituted a major category of Fascist exemplars. Thus, soldiers who fell in the First World War were awarded exemplary status in order to encourage behaviors favorable to the regime. With the goal to demonstrate the importance awarded to exemplars, this paper focuses on a group of ossuaries, or bone depositaries, that were built under Mussolini’s dictatorship, and within which the regime reburied the remains of soldiers who fell in the First World War. The main purpose of the ossuaries was to present the dead as role models that might boost support for a program of nationalism, militarism, and imperialism. Thus, while their creation drew on factors such as Romantic literature and Italy’s religious and political traditions, the ossuaries represent an ideal case study of how Fascist morality was aided by and expressed through the use of exemplars.

Giorgio Pisanò — u źródeł neofaszystowskiego rewizjonizmu

The present paper analyses the way Benito Mussolini’s racist policy were interpreted by Giorgio Pisano, a neo-fascist journalist and columnist. According to Pisano, the fascist regime should not be considered racist. Moreover, leggi razziali of 1938 were much milder than the Nuremberg race laws. The neo-fascist journalist tried to argue that Italian fascism did not follow the policy of extermination of Jews and, consequently should not be blamed for the Holocaust. Finally, Pisanò’s rhetoric of national betrayal as applied to anti-fascist resistance movement — whose activity led to the outbreak of the 1943 civil war in Italy — should be considered yet another case for Mussolini’s racist policy affirmation.

Religion and Dictatorship in Europe

This chapter explores the intersection of religion and dictatorship after the First World War. It examines the question of institutional relations between church and state, and seeks to explore how these relations shed light on the ideological relationship between religious traditions and fascism in particular. It does this by considering comparative perspectives across Europe, especially with regard to church–state relations but also in terms of politics, ideology, and culture. It goes on to explore the cases of Italian fascism and German Nazism, demonstrating how these regimes have typically been understood, as well as how they perpetuated a distinctive religious politics.

Totalitarianism and the Violation of Human Rights in Education. The Case of Slovenia

Slovenian schools were victims of the totalitarianism of Italian Fascism from the advent of fascist rule in 1922 until the capitulation of Italy in 1943 and of German Nazism during World War II (1941–1945). However, the question remains whether schools in Slovenia were victims of totalitarianism after the war, too. The answer depends on whether the socialist regime was merely undemocratic or also totalitarian. But even if the state at that time was not totalitarian, it violated human rights also in the field of education. According to the European Court of Human Rights, the State is forbidden to pursue an aim of indoctrination in public schools – as was the case in Slovenia – because indoctrination is considered to not respect parents’ religious and philosophical convictions. In this paper it will be shown that the state also violated two other human rights of their citizens which are in close connection to this parents’ right, namely, the right of parents to choose private schools based on specific moral, religious or secular values; and (if there are not such schools) the right to establish them. Both of these rights were violated because private schools, except religious schools for the education of priests, were forbidden. These rights were violated in the socialist republic of Slovenia even though ex-Yugoslavia (one of whose constitutive parts was at that time Slovenia) signed and ratified these international documents on human rights.

O poder de polícia e a administração da Justiça: Estado e partido na Alemanha nazista e na Itália fascista

The aim of this article is to discuss the differences and similarities between the police and legal systems shaped during the Fascist dictatorships of Italy and Germany and their implications on the collapse of Fascism in 1943 and the survival of Naziism until 1945. The article also discusses the police and legal culture created under these regimes and its survival in the later period, with the consequent democratic deficit. The backdrop to this is a discussion on the relationship between police officers, judges, and militiamen within the regimes of Italian Fascism and Nazi Germany and the broader subject of the relationship between State and party in these regimes. As “case-control studies”, the examples of Spain, Brazil, and Japan will also be discussed.

Collecting Mussolini: The Case of the Susmel–Bargellini Collection

Heritage Studies has dealt with Italian Fascism in different ways but paying little attention to the movable items linked to the regime, such as paintings, sculptures and memorabilia. Over the last decade, private collections linked to the Mussolini iconography have emerged, owing to a renewed social acceptance of it and more items of Mussoliniana being readily available. Due to the reluctance of experts to confront this issue and the expansion of private museums in Italy, spontaneous initiatives have sprung up including a permanent exhibition of Mussolini iconography as part of the MAGI’900 Museum in Pieve di Cento, which consists of approximately 250 portraits of the Duce in different media. The nucleus of the original collection once belonged to the historian Duilio Susmel and was part of a large documentary collection put together during the 1960s and 1970s. Susmel hoped it would become a museum or a centre for Fascist studies, but ultimately it remained in his private villa near Florence until the 1990s. The archive is now split between Rome and Salò, and the Mussoliniana was purchased by Bargellini, who added busts, paintings and knick-knacks. Since 2009 it has been on display in a section of Bargellini’s museum entitled Arte del Ventennio. Therefore, the Italian State tolerates its existence but sadly it is ignored by most experts, despite the study opportunities it offers.