Dan Snow's History Hit - Hitler and Mussolini

Episode Date: January 17, 2023

Just over 100 years ago, in October 1922, Mussolini and 30,000 Blackshirts marched on Rome. It was a mass demonstration that would see his National Fascist Party take power in the Kingdom of Italy. However, the advent of Italian fascism has always been overshadowed by that of its infamous German counterpart, the Nazi Party. But what actually happened during Mussolini’s time in power? And why do we remember Mussolini’s dictatorship on more forgiving terms than that of Hitler? Dan is joined by Christian Goeschel, historian of modern European history and author of Mussolini and Hitler: The Forging of the Fascist Alliance, to lay bare the realities of Mussolini’s Italy.Produced by James Hickmann. Edited by Dougal Patmore.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download the History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download the History Hit app from the Apple Store.

Hey everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. 100 years ago folks, big anniversary, the centenary of Benito Mussolini becoming Prime Minister of Italy. In late October 1922, following the march of 30,000 fascist black shirts on Rome, the Liberal Prime Minister resigned and a fascist government was put into place by King Victor Emmanuel III. government was put into place by King Victor Emmanuel III. Mussolini, former radical socialist, opponent of the First World War, turned First World veteran, terribly injured in the trenches, and radicalized, perhaps traumatized, into a far-right extremist. Within a year, Mussolini had sent troops to bombard and occupy the Greek island of Corfu and would press Italian colonisation of Libya with lethal, perhaps genocidal determination. It's strange, given the prominence in our syllabus, in our popular

imagination of German fascism in the 1930s and onwards, that we've sort of forgotten to mark the rise of fascism in Italy. I think it's important to do that. And I've got the right guy on the pod to talk about the rise of fascism in Italy. He is the very brilliant Dr. Christian Göschel. He's a reader in modern European history at the University of Manchester. No one knows more about the rise of fascism in the 1920s and 30s than him. It's an important time to have this conversation, folks. Sadly, I don't tell you why. You'll hear enough about the renewal of the far right at the moment on this and other podcasts. Let's hear from Dr. Christian Goschel about the original, strutting,ting insecure absurd fascist

t-minus 10 atomic bombs dropped on hiroshima god save the king no black white unity till there is first and black unity never to go to war with one another again and lift off and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Christian, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Thank you, Dan, for having me. It's great to speak to you. We are sort of wrestling at the moment in the world with the rise of a far-right nationalist nativist movement, which ironically is very internationally plugged in. Is that true also of the 1920s? How important is the international development to the rise of these authoritarian states in Europe?

We think of fascism, we think of Nazism as ultra-nationalist movements, as ultra-nationalist regimes. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany are perhaps the most ultra-national regimes of the interwar period. But both regimes were connected internationally. Both regimes influenced each other. So there was in the interwar period a definite international dimension to fascism, which sounds paradoxical because fascism preaches an ultra-nationalist ideology. It preaches war. It preaches violence. It stands for war and violence,

but at the same time, fascist movements and fascist regimes, especially those in Italy and in Germany, they influenced each other. Which may sound bizarre, but we will not be able to understand the gist of fascism in the interwar period if we do not pay attention to this international dimension. And think about it, we are speaking in early November 2022, almost exactly 100 years ago, on 28th of October 1922, the fascists marched on Rome and one day later, Benito Mussolini, the fascist leader, was appointed Prime Minister of Italy by the Italian king. He was the first fascist to reach government. Let's start with the grievances, I suppose. We think of nationalism and nativism as very grievance-based. They radicalise, they mobilise their followers. We think a lot about German fascism and, of course, the Great Depression. But as you're so rightly pointing out,

Italian fascism, 1922, that's a long time before the Great Depression. Are they influenced by the same grievances among peoples? Or is this kind of high art and culture? Is this arguments being developed, borrowed, improved on, tweaked between wannabe fascist leaders? We think of a fascist Italy as a somehow mild regime. We think of fascist Italy as a benign regime. We think of fascist Italy as a regime that cherished modern art. We think of Nazi Germany certainly not as a benign regime. We think of it quite rightly so as the most aggressive anti-Semitic and genocidal regime of that period. But the grievances in Italy when fascism came to power were not entirely dissimilar from the grievances of Germans when the Nazis came to power. There was one fundamental difference. There was hardly any popular support for fascism in Italy in the

early 1920s. In the parliamentary elections of 1921, the fascist party scored less than 2%. When we look at Germany in 1932, national elections, parliamentary elections, the Nazis score around 40%. That is a huge difference. In both countries, in nationalist circles, there was a strong dissatisfaction with the outcome of the Great War. There was the idea that Italy had suffered from a mutilated victory. There was the idea that Italy had been treated roughly by the French, by the British, and by the Americans at Versailles. But then when we zoom in on Italy itself, what was it like in Italy in the early 1920s? The first term that comes to my mind is that of a spectacular, of a profound crisis. The crisis where many Italians thought this state does not have any legitimacy. This state is unable to deal

with socialist uprisings. The years 1919 and 1920 are often known as the Bienio Rosso, as the two red years. So there was a lack of state authority. There was a lack of direction of where the country was going. But we also need to say there was absolutely no majority among the Italian people for a fascist regime. But in a nutshell, then, we are looking at dissatisfaction with the outcome of the war. We look at a new generation of politicians, those who are not so obsessed with ideology, they're really obsessed with practice. What is this practice about? It's about violence. It's about violence as a legitimate means of political debate. Rather than having a parliamentary

debate, if you're a fascist, you beat up your opponents, you sometimes kill your opponents. But grievances were there, but there was nothing inevitable about the fascists coming to power in 1922. And this new generation of men who were happy to use violence, I'm guessing the First World War is important in this story. We can't psychoanalyse them from this distance, but do you think these are men traumatised, brutalised, men of violence? Without the First World War, there wouldn't have been fascism in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. We are talking about a young generation of politicians who become fascists, a young generation of veterans, mostly from middle class backgrounds,

mostly from officer backgrounds. They come home in 1918 and they think that the old political system in Italy, which has survived the First World War, is completely unfit for purpose. The First World War has extremely polarized the Italian population. The First World War has led to the belief that violence and brutality can be a legitimate means of politics. So we cannot psychoanalyze people who became fascists, but a sociological profile of a typical fascist would be male, middle class, from an officer background, someone who's extremely dissatisfied, someone, you know, who is often very educated. We are also looking at university graduates who want Italy to become a dynamic power, a dynamic country that can punch above its weight.

They want a regime that can complete the unification of Italy and the Mediterranean will be il mare nostrum, it'll be our sphere of influence. And just as today, I find it fascinating where on social media platforms you see language that seems to have been practiced, improved, perfected, almost like it's some sort of political strategy, a process of putting messages out to test audiences. You see the same kind of talk about immigrants, the same talk about invasions and securing borders and that kind of thing spread from the American rights to the British and European rights. What are the mechanisms in the 1920s by which the fascists across Europe are kind of talking to each other,

talking to themselves, learning from each other? There is, of course, far less migration into European countries in the 1920s than there is now. So immigration is not a very big deal, but there is a very strong deal of xenophobic racism. If you think of how fascists in Italy deal with Slavic minorities in northeastern Italy, for example, if you think how the Nazis in Germany talk about the Jews, if you think how the Nazis in Germany talk about Polish-speaking people who live in Eastern Germany. The rhetoric fascists use at the time is quite similar to the rhetoric people on the far right use today. There is always the idea that the nation, in that case Italy or Germany,

is threatened by an enemy, by the enemy within, that is in the case of Italy, the socialists, that is the political left, or by outside enemies, which can be other political powers, other countries such as Britain and France. So fascism and right-wing authoritarianism today relies on a rhetoric of the nation versus the enemy, an internal and an external enemy. It is a very simplistic way of saying it's us versus them and only we fascists have the will of the people behind us, only we understand what the people really want. We are the only ones, fascists proclaim, who know how to unite the nation so that we can fight against the internal and external enemies.

How are they learning from each other? Is it newspapers? Is it film reels? Is it audio? Are they sharing speeches? We have social media. How are they honing these messages and sharing them? How do fascists learn from each other? How do fascists know what is going on in another country? Let me talk about Italy and Germany here. Mussolini is the first fascist leader of any country in the world. He comes into office in 1922. In 1923, Adolf Hitler, at that time a relatively unknown leader of the far-right Nazi party in Germany, stages a beer hall putsch in Munich, 9th of November 1923, 99 years ago almost. So how does Hitler know what Mussolini is doing in Italy? His information relies almost entirely on fascist

propaganda coming from Italy. It relies on hearsay. Then in the years between 1922 and 1929, the fascist regime in Italy consolidates itself. Many people, including in Britain and in the United States, are fascinated by the consolidation of the fascist regime. Italy becomes a dictatorship in 1925. Legislation against opponents of the regime is tightened up. In 1929, the regime signs a treaty with the Catholic Church, the so-called Lateran Treaties. By 1929, it seems the fascist regime has consolidated itself. So it's fascinating for people on the far right across Europe, including Hitler, to learn from the fascists how one consolidates power. And there is a twofold strategy, which the fascists use in Italy that becomes very influential for the Nazis in Germany in the 1930s.

You use political violence, you smash up your opponents, you kill them. But then that doesn't bring you into power. You need to appeal to conservative elites. You need to appeal to people in power, in the army, in the bureaucracy. In the case of Italy, of course, you need to have the support of the king. So this twofold fascist strategy of seizing power consists of violence and of appealing to conservative elites. But Hitler and the Nazis, they find out about what is going on in Italy. They find out about it from German media. They find out about it from newspapers.

And they also find out about it from newsreels. Mussolini is one of the first leaders at the time in the 1920s who makes effective use of photography, who makes effective use of newsreels. At the time, people didn't find Mussolini ridiculous at all. Sometimes when we see a newsreel from the 1920s, say on British Pathé, we think, oh, Mussolini looks like a bumbling buffoon. But at the time, few people would have found him to be a bumbling buffoon. They thought he was deadly serious. Think of the photograph when he is posing with a lion, for example. Would these people have met and shared ideas, had conferences? Hitler is desperately trying to organise a meeting with Mussolini in the 1920s

because Hitler thinks, if I can jump on the bandwagon of fascist Italy, if I can jump on the bandwagon of being seen, of being photographed with a seemingly successful fascist dictator, the only one in Europe, Mussolini, that will be beneficial for the success of the Nazis in elections. Mussolini is a statesman and a fascist leader. As a statesman, he simply cannot entertain Hitler in a woodshed. He cannot touch him with a barge pole, because as a foreign statesman, you're not allowed to mess with the domestic politics of another country. But Hitler is desperately, desperately trying to have an

audience with Mussolini. Mussolini refuses until 1934, when Hitler's already in power. But from 1930 onwards, that's the year when the Nazis really score well in German national elections. Mussolini and Hitler correspond with each other via a secret emissary, an obscure army major, an Italian army major. There were conferences of fascists and Nazis. There was an attempt by Mussolini, when Hitler was becoming more and more influential in the early 1930s, to retain the copyright to European fascism, to retain the status as the leading fascist in Europe. So there was a fascist international that was created by Mussolini in the 1930s to make sure that Italy, not Germany, would remain the leading fascist country in Europe. This all sounds totally

bizarre. We are talking about ultra-nationalists in Italy, in Germany, in other European countries. They really want their countries to lead Europe. They want their countries to lead the world. But at the same time, they meet internationally. So there was something which sounds paradoxical to our ears. There was an idea of a fascist international. It didn't get anywhere, but there was this idea, at least among fascist and Nazi intellectuals. Listen to Dan Snow's history. We're talking about Italian fascism, 100 years on.

More coming up. We try to bring you cold, hard facts on Gone Medieval, but January is all about mysteries. Impossible riddles from medieval history that defy efforts to solve them. How did the presence of a mysterious saviour from the east turn into devastation? What secrets does a book written in an unknown code hide? Did kings and princes really die when history has assumed they did? I'm Matt Lewis, and in January, we'll see how close we can get to answering the unanswerable and ask how these mysteries might be solved in the future.

I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes,

who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. And for lots of people listening, they'll be so surprised that Mussolini, for much of the 20s, all of the 20s, was seen as very much the senior partner of this relationship, the man who

Adolf Hitler wanted to emulate and look up to, which is so surprising given what would happen in the 1940s. In the 1920s, nobody knows that the Nazis will come to power. Hitler himself is, of course, imprisoned after the Beer Hall Putsch, 1923. He's released from prison in 1925. And then he realizes violence alone, as the Beer Hall Putsch had shown in its utter failure, will not bring the Nazis into power. So copying this strategy from Mussolini that you combine political violence with, you know, an appeal to playing the system of parliamentary politics, that will really bring you into power. But in the 1920s, there is an international cult of Mussolini. Also in the 1930s, he is made Man of the Year by Time magazine. Politicians here in Britain really think that Mussolini is a successful example of a politician who smashes the left,

who makes sure that there are no strikes, who allegedly makes the trains run on time. Figures like Winston Churchill in the 1930s, for example, greatly admire Mussolini. But people like Churchill, one of the most gifted politicians of the time, he does not realize that all his knowledge of Mussolini is so much made by fascist propaganda. Many British newspapers at the time, even newspapers from the left, like the Daily Herald, they regularly report about what is going on in Italy. Of course, Italy is a holiday destination for middle class Brits. So people who go to Italy, they have a glimpse of what life under a fascist dictatorship is like. But of course, these people don't necessarily realize the full extent of fascist repression and terror against the political opposition. So in the 1920s,

the great man of the European right is Mussolini, certainly not Hitler. Hitler is still very much a nobody until 1930. Let's talk a little bit more about some of those myths of Italian fascism, because there is a sense in Britain where it brought up to either just laugh at Italian fascism or assume that it was lip service, that it was only Mussolini and perhaps a thin cadre of people at the top of Italy. What is the reality? You mentioned the violent repression of opposition. I mean, was life in fascist Italy rather more like life in Nazi Germany? Life in fascist Italy, life in Nazi Germanyany was probably for the vast majority of the population not that fundamentally different from life of most ordinary brits at the time most people including in britain including in fascist italy and in nazi germany could often be

fairly indifferent to high-level politics but But the difference between a liberal democracy like Britain on the one hand and a regime like fascist Italy on the other hand was, of course, that in Britain there was political choice. People could express their opinion freely without fear of reprisals. In fascist Italy, they couldn't. So in fascist Italy, people had to engage with the political system, even if they weren't particularly political. Millions of Italians didn't only pay lip service to Mussolini. That's one of the greatest myths about fascist Italy. How is it possible that a regime that lasts for 21 years from 1922 to 1943 is only made up of people who pay lip service to the regime? I do not buy that. Millions of Italians became members of the fascist party. Millions of

Italians became members of the fascist party's organizations, such as the fascist after-work organization, such as fascist youth organization. So people were drawn, they were sucked into the system. And the idea that people were only paying lip service is a myth. There was at times great enthusiasm for Mussolini and for the regime. The regime wasn't made up of people who were simply giving orders. Ordinary Italians also made up what we could call the fascist project. when the Lateran Treaty with the Vatican was signed in 1929 that recognized the Catholic Church's Italy state religion, that recognized the sovereignty of the Vatican state, Mussolini was riding a wave of popularity in Italy because Italians thought he is the first statesman who has made a workable

agreement with the Catholic Church. When Italy attacks Ethiopia in 1935, a brutal genocidal war where Italy uses poison gas, Italians are admiring Mussolini greatly for his toughness and for the fact that he has turned Italy into a great imperial power. In 1936, the king of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III, a slightly ridiculous figure, proclaims himself emperor of Ethiopia. At that time, Mussolini really is riding a wave of popularity. And the idea that Italians are simply playing lip service is wrong. Of course, if you live under a fascist dictatorship, the notion of support is a tricky one because people do not have political choices. People have to engage with the system.

If they speak up against the political system, if they speak up against Mussolini, they have to fear reprisals. There wasn't as much terror as in Nazi Germany, but reprisals could be fairly tough. You could lose your job. You could be ostracized by colleagues. could lose your job, you could be ostracized by colleagues. And thousands and thousands of people were handed extremely lengthy prison sentences for making remarks that were critical of the regime, and they were sent off, they were packed off to remote islands off the coast of southern Italy. This certainly was not like being on holiday. People were totally removed from their families, and they had to live in extremely grim conditions.

And as you just pointed out there, the astonishing, some say genocidal campaign against the Libyans throughout the whole of the 1920s, vast numbers of people killed, chemical weapons used. I mean, that does feel recognizably the kind of thing that we perhaps would associate more with their northern fascist neighbors. The idea that, you know, fascist Italy was a benign regime is wrong, as I've just said. But when we look at fascist Italy's imperial projects in Libya throughout the 1920s, and then in Ethiopia in the 1930s, we have to realise that this is an extremely brutal regime, that this is a regime that uses poison gas, that massacres entire populations, that this is a regime that is

fascist at its heart. This kind of colonialism is different from 19th century style, British, French, or Belgian colonialism, however brutal these types of colonialism could be. colonialism, however brutal these types of colonialism could be. Fascist Italian colonialism is at an entirely different level because it includes this idea to destroy and annihilate, which you don't see with non-fascist colonialisms. And this is really an area, you know, the idea that fascist Italy wanted to be an imperial power that shows the true character of the regime. And I guess that takes us on to the kind of final point, which is what happens to Italian fascism? On this podcast, I've talked to many people who talked about the de-Nazification of Germany and the complicity of the judiciary and failing to hunt out true believers. Germany and the rest of the world is agonized around the process of de-Nazification.

Germany and the rest of the world is agonized around the process of denazification. And yet Italy, why has it been convenient for us just to say with the death of Mussolini, that was the end of Italian fascism? And this is something we're coming to terms with now, given the recent election of a far-right government. What we see in Italy now, where we have a far-right government in power for the first time since 1945, is the enormous amount of ignorance that many people, including in Italy, don't really know the full extent of fascist atrocities. They don't know about the brutality of the fascist regime in Italy. And the idea that, you know, fascism ends with Mussolini's death in 1945, with his squalid death in 1945. He's trying to flee with his lover, Clara Pitacci. He's trying to flee from the advancing Allies to Switzerland.

Detail is noteworthy. He's wearing a German army coat. So this is the squalid death of the man who wanted to bring Italy to national and international glory. What happens to fascists? What happens to fascism after the end of fascism? There are some reprisals at local levels and thousands of fascists are killed. That is something that is relatively understudied by historians. a general silencing of the fascist past in the immediate post-war area after 1945. Italian political elites, many of them have been deeply involved with fascism, they construct a story that Italians in the Second World War and before were naturally benign,

as opposed to the extremely brutal Germans. So you have these caricatures of the brutal German and of the good-natured Italian. And of course, if you compare what the fascists did, if you compare what any regime did, if you compare that to the mass atrocities of the Nazis, six million Jews murdered, many regimes appear to look as relatively soft and benign. But if we look at fascist Italy on its own terms, this is a brutal regime. This is a racist regime. This is a regime that terrorizes its own population. And, you know, if you go into any bookshop, we know so much more about Nazi Germany than we do about fascist Italy. In any bookshop, you can see 300 books on Nazi Germany. If you're lucky, you find five books on fascist Italy. Because compared to

Nazi Germany, fascist Italy looks like a relatively harmless regime. But if we stop this facile comparison, if we really look at fascist Italy on its own terms, then we realized that this is the first fascist regime in Europe. This is a regime that inspires the Nazis on their way to power. This is a regime that is allied with Nazi Germany from 1939 onwards. So this is not a benign regime. This is perhaps the most interesting of the two regimes we have been discussing today. I find fascist Italy increasingly more interesting than Nazi Germany, because it's simply a subject which hasn't been as heavily researched. And is that true, do you think, of Italian voters, young Italian people in schools?

In Germany, again, lots of thought is given to how to avoid mistakes of the past. The Germans deserve enormous praise for their reckoning, although incomplete and imperfect, of course, for their reckoning with what happened in the middle of the 20th century. Did that process not happen in Italy? Is that perhaps one reason why we're seeing lots of people prepared to vote for a party with fascist antecedents? The Italian state, the Italian Republic and its constitution from the post-war period are explicitly anti-fascist. The Italian Republic, the Italian state, is based on the idea of anti-fascism. It is illegal in Italy, as it is in Germany, to do, say, the fascist salute.

There is a lot of education in Italy about what fascism did, but the myth that most Italians were only paying lip service to Mussolini's regime, the myth that most Italians during the Second World War were actively resisting the fascist regime, that of course has cast a dark shadow over public knowledge of fascism in Italy, because it was a convenient myth to say, well, it was just a superficial regime. But there are so many wonderful Italian historians who have been working for decades on the history of fascist Italy. And there is public awareness of what fascism did to a certain extent.

There has never been as clear a reckoning with the past as there has been in post-war Germany. I'm not condemning this. I find it fascinating how the memory of these dictatorships was so different in Italy and in Germany. That was so interesting. Please tell everyone what your book is called. My book is called Mussolini and Hitler, the Forging of the Fascist Alliance. Thank you very much, Christian. That was fascinating stuff, particularly on this big anniversary. Thanks for coming on the podcast.

Thank you so much. you