The Rest Is History - The Fascist World Cup: Mussolini's Football Dictatorship

Episode Date: June 16, 2026

How did Benito Mussolini’s regime in the 1930s use sport to spread his ideology and prepare Italy for war? What infrastructure and propaganda strategies did he use to make the 1934 World Cup a showcase for fascism? And, did this form of propaganda actually work? In this brand new The Rest Is History Club mini series, Dominic is joined by Paul Rouse to talk about dictatorships’ connections to football World Cups. Join The Rest Is History Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to every series and live show tickets, a members-only newsletter, discounted books from the show, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at the⁠⁠restishistory.com⁠⁠. To read our new newsletter, sign up at: ⁠⁠therestishistory.com/newsletters⁠⁠ _______ Advertise with us: ⁠[e-mail]⁠ _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Video Editors: Jack Meek, Harry Swan + Adam Thornton Social Producer: Harry Balden Producers: Tabby Syrett & Aaliyah Akude Senior Producer: Callum Hill Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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have a brand new mini-series for you to mark the FIFA World Cup, which is happening in the United States, Canada and Mexico. So what we're going to be doing is looking at some of the history, the deep history of the World Cup, and in particular the story of how dictatorships have used football and used the World Cup in particular to bolster support for their regimes. So we're looking at propaganda, we're looking at the personalities of the dictators, we'll be looking at the stories of the tournaments and how they reflect public opinion and so on. some amazing stories. In future episodes, we'll be looking at the great Brazilian team of the 1960s and early 1970s. That's the team of Palais and Jezino and Jetson and all these great players. The team that won in 1970, people say the best team of all time. But this was a point when Brazil had a military dictatorship. So we'll be looking at the military dictatorship of Brazil from 1964 uses football. We'll be looking at arguably the most controversial World Cup of All, which is 1978 Argentina. Some of you may remember we did a series about Eva Perron, and this is effective with the sequel to that.

So we'll be looking at the military junta of the late 70s and how they used the 78 World Cup and the team of Mario Kempes, which won against the Dutch in the final. Big, big story in Argentina. But we'll be kicking off with Italy and with Mussolini's fascist regime and the World Cups of 1934 and 1938. So it's a really, really great subject.

Now, we love our listeners. So this is a special treat to mark the World Cup. Normally this episode would be a bonus episode purely for members of the Restis History Club. But because it is the summer of sport, we are making this first episode in the series with the brilliant Paul Rouse available to everybody. And if you want to hear the rest of the series,

which I hope you will, you merely have to go, you know the drill, to the rest is history.com to sign up and you'll get not only Paul's wisdom about Brazil in the 1960s and 70s and Argentina in 1978. But you'll get all the usual things, you'll get early access to series, you'll get bonus episodes,

and an unbelievable range of supplementary benefits. So what's not to like? If you're not interested in football, don't worry, the history will very much be uppermost. A great subject needs a great guest. We have the greatest. We have the goat, as we like to call him, the self-styled Irish national treasure.

No. I'm a professor of history. at University College, Dublin. Paul Rouse. Paul, welcome back to the rest of history. It's great to have you on. Thanks, William, Dominic. Because it's a football story,

we've chosen this lovely location. Thanks to Chelsea Football Club, we're here at Stamford Bridge overlooking the pitch. And with perfect timing, impeccable timing, Chelsea have decided today to rip up the pitch and do loads of building work on the stadium.

So, Paul, you will be competing with reversing vehicles, diggers, bulldozers, general men in kind of yellow vests. But you're pumped for that, right? I'm ready. You're ready. Brilliant.

So, Paul, you were masquerading as a historian of Ireland in the last few series that we did. But this really is your home turf, isn't it? Because you're a historian of sport. Is that right? That's what I spend most of my time teaching and working on in University of College Dublin is the history of sport. Yeah. Nationally in Ireland, but also internationally, I teach a second year module on the global history of sport. Yeah.

Across the last 250 years in particular. Lots to talk about here. And obviously it's very much in the news at the moment, the World Cup and politics. because the World Cup is being held in the US. Donald Trump has tried to take ownership of it. There have been a number of scandals. The Iran players had to move their base from the US to Mexico, business with a referee not being allowed in this time.

Do you think this is something new, or an example of how football has always been politicised and used by political leaders of one kind or another? The idea of soccer being politicised is nothing at all new. What is new is the precise manner in which it's revealed, itself. In the case of America, I suppose, the Trumpist focus on immigration and on the projection of America first. And that is in collision with the expressed hashtag, if you look at Gianni Infantino, the head of FIFA's Instagram page, he seems to be unable to post without putting the hashtag

football unites the world. And unfortunately, you cannot say that football unites the world if at the same time you're denying entry into your country of people because of where they come from and including in that a referee of the competition but again this is not new the whole way through from 1930 and like this is a political story

the whole way through the relationship and there was a president of FIFA an English man in the 50s and 60s Stanley Rouse no relation he'd know he in his name he had this whole notion that sport and politics and soccer and politics in particular should not be put into the same wheelhouse

but they've always been there. Yeah, so I agree with you. I think sport's always been political. It's always been used by, you know, going back to the Victorians, it's always been used by people in authority and power to project the values they want to project. Now, one thing I do notice is that you've used

a very controversial word a couple of times that some of our British listeners will already be bridling about, even though it's in origin, a British word. And that word is the dresser. I did word, soccer. So for our British and American listeners who are clearly going to be divided on this issue, you think it's fair to call football soccer, right?

Well, in my world, it's logical to do it. And you're right, there is an amazing internet fight or people running around the internet with pitchforks. It is quite remarkable. But if you look at the word, the word comes from England that was used in England from the 1890s onwards, all the way through to the 1980s, in research. for this series, I went back and I looked at preview shows of the World Cup and 1978 preview show, Kevin Keegan refers to soccer in his ITV punditry. On the title page of Matt Busby's autobiography from 1973, soccer and football is used interchangeably. This is something that changed

in the 1990s, but in a world where we consider that there are sports which exist beyond this island, the island on which we are filming, there are other forms. football games. So as shorthand, I call association football soccer but in the town I'm from, Tullamore and awfully, football is Gaelic football. I'm sure as people have loads of infuriated

comments about this one way or another, so we'll let them argue about it. But let's get into our story. So today's episode is about Italy and the 1930s in particular and Mussolini. So if we start with Mussolini in Italian fascism, Mussolini

comes to power in October 1922. They've had march on Rome, which, of course, Mussolini wasn't, you know, he sits and watches the march on Rome. And then he's come to power. It's a backlash against the sort of the red years, or whatever they are in the early 1920s, so labor unrest, there's the scars of the First World War, there are a lot of disaffected veterans and so on. Manliness, virility, national unity, these are all parts of Mussolini's agenda, aren't they? How much of Mussolini and fascism? How much of the appeal of that you think comes down to kind of an aura of masculinity, I guess. Well, Mussolini was promising a new world and he looked for a distinction from what he

considered the failed regime. This is a Trident-tested technique across the world from regimes who seek to start anew. They present the old world as being failed. They present it as being a dying country full of people who were just weak. And Mussolini to an almost cartoonish extent, tried to project virility, tried to project energy and dynamism and discipline and health. And this was in contradistinction to what had been there previously. And it led to when you see the footage now of Mussolini or you see the photographs of him, it's almost, it's almost cartoonish in its exaggerated nature in the histrionics were there. But it must never be forgotten the extent to which he was a cruel and brutal individual, truly ruthless in what he wished to do

and the fact that almost from the beginning he wanted war. But sport was part of the whole projection of what he was trying to do in creating, as he saw it and knew Italy. So there are sort of two elements to that, aren't there, I think. One is, I mean, you mentioned health. So the idea of the health of the nation reviving what is a sick and dying country under democracy, failed democracies, and sport becomes a projection or a reflection of the health of society, but also sport is training for war, that sport is training you in the discipline and the competitiveness and the aggression that you need to attack Abyssinia or Greece or whoever it might be.

The way they did it was twofold, it was threefold, really. The projection of Mussolini himself as the country's greatest sportsman, this imagery of him out skiing bare-chested and out riding horses and there's images of him. He looks terrible on a bicycle, but there's a brilliant photograph of him standing on a balcony with loads of Italian cyclists

waving their bikes in the air. It's an incredible image. And the truth of it is, he was anything but athletic. He was a small, fat man when it comes down to it. And he was not... Nothing wrong with that, Paul.

No, no. He was athletic in no modern sense of the word that you would consider, although he wanted to project the idea that he was. But he went for practical policies around it. And you look at the building of sports fields through the late 20s into the 30s, an extra 3,000 sports fields built around Italy in the world. Because he was looking for mass participation in sport. But he also put gyms and sports halls in villages and in towns around the place. So this was a vast, ultimately fascist project to create men. And it was directed towards men or there were women involved in sport who would be able to people, an army. And then the third layer was. the development of a kind of an elite sporting world in which there would be elite sport within Italy,

but really that the best Italian sports people would be able to compete in cycling and in boxing and ultimately in soccer and in the Olympic Games when they went outside the country. So just a question before we move on about this. How much of this do you think is reflecting a new kind of dictatorship? So there have been dictatorships before, but in the 1920s and 1930s, what you see in the USSR in Italy, obviously in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, is the development of what we'd call totalitarianism. So the idea that top-down politics will invade every aspect of life and leisure and recreation are absolutely central parts of this. If you've got a new sports hall in your village or you've got a new running track or a cycling track or whatever, You know, how much do you think that is, it's simply what governments do? It's part of national welfare that's promoted everywhere in the 20th century.

And how much is it distinctively, well, either totalitarian or distinctively fascist? I think the scale of it makes it distinct. And you're right. It's an attempt to push into every aspect of life. And what better way, if you want to look at the hours between when people are working and sleeping or in school and sleeping, if you take that chunk of time for a lot of people, it's an engagement in sport? It's both an opportunity to channel people in certain directions, but also an opportunity to channel their behavior as well.

So you got in the case of Italy the development of mass sporting movements, which happened in two ways. First of all, it's the suppression and the destruction or the colonization of organizations that were run by the communists in Italy or by the Catholic Church and their identification with the new regime. And then the creation of a youth sports movement, Sport and Leisure Movement, more broadly, on an adult one, which attempted to draw Italians in, to not just develop the body in a certain way, but to get them to identify with the regime

which was there being constructed by Mussolini. And one element of this actually, I know from your notes, and it actually runs through all three of the stories we'll do is involvement in the Army, because the Army in Italy are training physical instructors, aren't they? in Brazil. I mean, actually the Brazilian football manager in the 1970s, Claudio Coutinho was a captain in the Brazilian army.

And then obviously the army in Argentina using the 1978 victory. So do you think there's an obviously militaristic side to this? And would that have been obvious to Italians in 1930 or something? Well, the teachers who were being trained were being trained by army instructors

who were brought in and you can see by these army officers who trained the, physical fitness instructors who are going around the place produced by 1936, there were 14,000 such instructors produced from these army academies. And I think it's interesting. We'll see this later on. But you look at the Argentinian, in particular, with Perron, he was in Italy in these years. He saw what was happening and he adopted this broader, sporting, approach to sport and the engagement with the army that he had witnessed in Italy during these years.

That's so interesting. So much of it comes back to this model, doesn't it, the kind of Italian fascist model that is then copied in South America in the post-war years. It's not as discredited as it is in Europe, maybe, I guess. No, but when we go through this later on, you can see these ideas that were replicated. I mean, what happened in Italy in the 20s and 30s? These notions expanded, and sport is part, or they were exported, I mean, and part of that is what happened in South America after the war. Now, you talked about one big element of this. It's not just about internal stuff, but it's about the projection of Italian fascism abroad, using sport to project it.

So how does that work? So, for example, this is the era of the Olympic Games are taking Ruth and whatnot. The Italians, I mean, they're wearing black shirts at the Olympic Games, things like that. There's an obviously fascistic element to this and there's an element that we're, even in the 20s, Mussolini is trying to use

sporting triumphs abroad to bolster his regime at home. It's not that Mussolini arrived in 1922 when there was the immediate creation of a fascist state. This was change that happened, a lot of change, but it happened through the 20s. So you have by the end of the 1920, 1928, Landreau Ferretti, who is the head of the Italian Olympic Committee, talked about this idea of using the movement to create courageous soldiers in wartime. By 32, the Italians are parading at the Olympic Games in

LA wearing black shirts, and they did really well. They came second in the medals table, which is a huge step forward. And even in 36 in Berlin, the Italians came forth. So this is a movement that is really gathering momentum in terms of Italian prestige on the world's sporting stage. Probably the most famous person in the world in the 1930s was the world heavyweight champion, whoever that was at a particular year. And Primo Carnera, the Italian boxer, won the world heavyweight championship in 1933. And his fame was promoted through newsreels and through radio, which was then beginning to broadcast live fights and disperse them across.

the population reaching into people's homes as well as in squares. And of course, in cycling, you had the Giro, the Italia. Cycling was the biggest sport in Italy in the 1930s. And the Giro was hugely important. So you have between that and the modern sport of motorcar racing where Italian drivers, Italy isn't just staging races. It's sending out some of the best drivers in the world. So you see the whole creation of an international sporting presence for Italy,

which had not previously been the case. So you've talked about boxing, cycling. I mean, they're very emblematic sports of the 1920s and 1930s, but not yet, as you would call it, soccer. I mean, the great irony, of course, is that Mussolini does not himself like football, but he's very good at using it. Is that because it's already very popular and very well established in Italy, or is the development of football in Italy something... I mean, obviously, football has been spread by the British in the late 19th century, sailors, railwaymen, you know, the classic story, the sons of industrialists who went to... public schools and then just did a few, you know, a few months in Montseverdeo and took a ball with them or whatever. How well established is football in Italy in this point in the 20s?

The story of the game on European soil is the story of incredible explosion across much of Europe in the 20s and in the 30s. It was hugely popular, we'll say, in Hungary, in Austria. But in Italy, it took off in the 1920s. Now, there had been soccer played from the 1890s and your right is the story of expats and traders and soldiers and sailors bringing it wherever they went, but it's also the story of Italians who went to work in England. So you see some of the main people will see it with Pazzo, the great Italian manager of the 30s. He loved the game and he got it because he was sent by his family textile trade to work in the north of England. He ended up befriending Mansi United players and managers. But that connection of commerce and of finance of trade

is important and you get an anglophilia of people who just think England is the most modern country in the world will adopt the game and then there's the joy of playing. So you had the first clubs in the 1890s and before the war you had Italian clubs being established playing games with each other

hugely influenced by England but after the 1920s you had an explosion of interest in the game. You get the broader commercialisation with the building of grounds because such was the interest in people, not just playing, but also now watching others play.

And crucially, the identification of clubs with areas and with towns and with cities. And it became a matter of civic pride to have a decent team to represent you, to compete in the championship. And what Mussolini did was to oversee, through his men, who were out into various organizations,

was to essentially take control of Italian soccer by organising the establishment in no particular order of the amalgamation of some clubs in some city so they would have a really strong presence. Number two, the establishment of an Italian league. Number three, the devotion of greater focus to the Italian national team. And number four, the acceptance, though not the outward acknowledgments of professionalism. It said that you could have non-amateurs playing in your clubs. So this is the shift from amateurism to professionalism, all of which took place in the 1920s. So interesting.

And a couple of elements of this I think are really interesting. So one is the teams that we now regard as the canonical Italian teams, some of these are Mussolini-era creations. They are the one thing that football fans now hate is inauthentic. They are made-up teams, contrived teams, you know, the authorities have forced different clubs to amalgamy. So I was astounded to Fiorentina, Roma, Napoli, these are all basically

made up clubs in the 1920s and 30s. Top down. Top down. And it could have gone either ways. Like you look at what happened to Welsh rugby after clubs were forced together

in the wake of professionalism in the middle of the 1990s and the struggles of Welsh rugby to drive itself forward again. The complete opposite was experienced in Italy where clubs were forcibly merged under fascist leadership,

but they provided a spectacle that was only in the making at that stage. You must remember that that world of the 1920s, it's not like there was generational devotion to a particular club. What this is is a new world which has been forged at that world of commercial sport, based around associational culture as well

where people are joining clubs, and it becomes more of a modern thing to do in the 1930s, in particular from the early 1930s onwards with the establishment. of the Italian League and Cup, and the fact that there was a rail system which allowed people to travel the country,

both to play games and to support the teams that were representing their city. You know, infrastructure promotes the act of supporting, doesn't it? You can't support your team home and away unless you can get to Napoli or Florence or wherever. And I guess that, without that, that wouldn't have been possible. Without it, you just couldn't do it.

And look, the birth of modern sport, the construction of all of these things is made possible by the modern technologies of transport and international sport is not possible without the steamship and then the airplane but it's also about new media technologies so it's newspapers and the dedication now of the sporting press in Italy

which advertises these games, reports on them, creates that celebrity culture around the best sport so people can read the preview, read the report, get the creation of stars and identify during the week

with the team which they see play at the weekend. That's so interesting. Because actually when I think even about how I experienced football growing up in the 70s and 80s, I didn't go to games. There weren't that many games on TV. For me, it was actually, this is a weird thing to say about football. It was a reading experience. I read about games in the newspaper and I followed the narrative every day.

And it was a kind of continuous textual narrative rather than something that I... To see a game on TV was very exciting because they weren't on very often. And presumably you had the comic books as well. it's Roy the Rovers and everything that that goes with that. And Roy of the Rovers famously the most unlucky man in sport. Yeah. So many plane crashes. So many playing crashes.

And they could not go on a South American tour without arriving to see that there was a new Hoon place in the... There was been kidnapped. They just, it was really difficult. And then to lose a leg in a bomb explosion was for a soccer player quite challenging. Exactly. Now, actually, you mentioned steamships and international travel. One aspect of this, I'm slightly jumping ahead. Does the Italian League have foreign players in the 1930s?

Yes, it does. And the story of how this happened is, I suppose, it's the birth of an international transfer market in a significant way. The president of Torino, FC, Enrico Maroni, who was a very wealthy businessman, was in Argentina on a business trip, and he saw a player called Julio Libanati, who was the son of Italian immigrants, and he went and he said,

I'm bringing this guy back to my club. He had played for Argentina, won the Cup of Sudamerica for what became the Cup of America for Argentina, and he won the Italian championship for Torino by virtue of his performances. So what you then had was between 1929 and the early 1940s, more than 100 South Americans, arrive, well, that's like they decided to go. They were head hunted from, not just from Argentina, but also from Uruguay and Brazil and Paraguay. And they were

brought in to do this. And these were the sons of Italian emigrants. Because of Italian emigration to South America had been enormous at the end of the 19th century in the early 20th century. So these were brought in. These were the Rimpatriati. this sun. So this way, so you have a problem in, if you're a fascist in Italy, because you're talking about the blood, you're talking about the importance of a kind of an Italy first to project backwards from America, this idea that the Italian nation must be preserved and developed and rendered more dynamic. So how do you square that with the bringing in of people from abroad? And what you do is you find the children of Italian immigrants and you bring them home and

they're acceptable. Yeah. Because their parents are Italian. Now, I know it's risky asking this of an Irishman who must have supported Jack Charlton's Island team in the 1990s, which of course was full of Englishmen. But are they inventing Italian ancestry for these people, Tony Cascarino style? Because that's what you guys did with Tony Cascarino. I think that's, Tony Cascarino's autobiography made that claim. But I think it subsequently was proven afterwards that he did actually have the entitlement to a passport. Now, it is absolutely true that the Irish FAA Football Association of Ireland courted. foreigners.

A creative not foreigners, but people born to the diaspora who may not have had a deep connection. A creative attitude to genealogy,

I think is. Which in fair, but like, so I'm not going to be defensive on this because there is not a country in the world that doesn't do this. Look at the English cricket

and rugby teams that have produced people over the last one. I wish Tom was here to defend what happened in cricket. All right. So let's get to the World Cup. Italy didn't play in the first. World Cup, which is in 1930. The First World Cup is held in Uruguay. We did an episode about it in 2022,

where we talked about the origins of the World Cup. At that point, it's not obvious. It's going to become a massive international event. People are traveling by steamboats cross the Atlantic. England, of course, don't go. Argentina and Uruguay play out the first final, which Uruguay wins in Monte Valle. There's the famous stories about people crossing the river plate on chips. And getting lost in the fog and not making the game. Exactly. But 1934 is going to be held in Italy. And from the start, the fascist authorities see this as a, this is their equivalent, I suppose, in some ways, something we'll talk about in a little bit, which is the 1936 Olympics. This is going to be a showcase for fascism. Basically, they want to ensure that Italy win, right? So how do they go about doing that? So they do a range of different things. If we look, first of all, at the purpose of it. of the competition.

So Giorgio Vaccaro, who was the head of the Football of Federation in Italy, said that the World Cup was a chance to show the organizational efficiency of fascist sport in general and football in particular.

And he talked about this opportunity to display also Italian manhood on the world stage. So the Italian newspapers who covered it, they put it on their front pages because they were instructed to do so by the propaganda ministry and the Italian diplomatic corps went into overdrive around the world,

trying to get newspapers around the world to do the same. Secondly, new stadiums were constructed. I lived in Florence for a couple of years, about 25 years ago, and played soccer on the fields right beside in Cocherno and beside the Fjantina, the Stadio Comenale in Fiorantina. And that stadium still stood, but that was built at the time. The one in Bologna had a statue of Mussolini on. horse at the back of the stadium looking down across everything. They did a third thing.

They wanted people to come and to see what Italy was like. So they basically invented tourist packages for people to come to the World Cup and subsidise travel to Italy and between the cities on the rail within Italy. They arranged this brilliant radio infrastructure. So radio was pushing into people's homes by the early 1930s. But the Italians had more than that. They erected loudspeakers on poles in the main squares of villages and towns and in cities and in their suburbs. And the games were also relayed to 12 competing countries around the place.

So the technology was only developing in terms of international relay, but for European countries, it was straightforward. The fascist symbol was everywhere. It was put on tickets. And the tickets were designed and printed to a really high standard. so the people could bring them home with them. So this is the construction of a memorabilia, this iconography of the World Cup, and the Italians were right at the heart,

this kind of idea of sporting merch or souvenirs to bring away with them. And of course, Mussolini put himself at the center of the imagery of this. He kind of ordered the construction of the artis, the fabrication of the Copa del Duce, this trophy that was six times bigger than the trophy that was to be given to the World Cup winner. So the Copa del Ducci will be presented to the winners alongside the World Cup.

So that's a bit like Donald Trump's FIFA Peace Prize. Yes. Right. One of the most ironically titled awards in history. Yeah. So let's get to the finals themselves. Again, England don't go. They turn it down.

Interestingly, you don't, we were talking beforehand, you don't think this is a sign of, I mean, the characteristic thing that people say now in a sort of self-flagellating way that we love to do is, oh, this was a sign of insularity and arrogance. You don't necessarily think that? I think that it would be a fool who would argue that there wasn't a certain element of insularity and arrogance in it. There was a belief in the power still of British football, of the importance of the home international championship played every year.

And there was a certain arrogance involved in that. But I don't think that's the defining reason. I don't think that's the beginning and end of the conversation. because it's that classic thing that we do in history. We see an event the way it is now and we project its importance backwards. But in 1930, 1934, in the 1930s in general, the World Cup was very much in the making.

FIFA was an organisation, which was still relatively speaking, an amateur organisation, which was only beginning to gather power. It wasn't clear who else was going to play, what really was involved in qualifying, or were you just invited to come? So I think it's wrong to say

that this is simply a mark of virgins and insularity. Some good teams do go. I guess the best team, the most obviously, you might have said the obvious favourites. Consider the best team, certainly the best European team of the 1930s, Austria, the Wunda team, as they were called. They were famous for something I think called the Whirl. I don't exactly know what that is, but basically,

they moved the ball very quickly, and they were a great team. Their manager, legendary figure called Hugo Meisel. They beat Scotland 5-0 in 1931, and Scotland were not nothing in those days. so impressive, but they obviously don't win it because we know that Austria have never won the World Cup. Italy win it. Italy's route to the final.

There are a couple of incidents, aren't there? I mean, if we'll actually just go to the semi-final against the Austrians, Austria are the favorites. Would I be being too harsh in saying, now obviously there's an issue here, which is that we can't watch the game, so we're reliant on reports. But as far as we can tell,

would I be too harsh in saying that Italy kicked their way to victory? in a game that was dubiously refereed. One of the, I suppose, enduring threads of the World Cup and its history is the claim that almost every country who got there did so by either having accommodating referees on their side, having opponents who had been bought off, or having kicked the tower out of anyone who got in their way. And of course, the truth of it is that every successful international team

has a really good administeral of people beside them who make sure or push to get a game played in a particular place with a particular referee. That's understood. It is also the case that physical fitness and physical strength was absolutely, it is not possible to win a World Cup without being physically ready.

And we'll see that when it comes to the Brazilian teams of the 60s and 70s and the Argentinian teams later on. So what was it particularly that allowed Italy win? There is no doubt that Austria and Hungary, were more technically capable than Italy. Austrian and Hungarian coaches were coming to Italy to coach the players in Italy, but no foreign players beyond the Argentine or the South Americans were allowed play in the Italian competition.

So what did the Italians do? Well, they boasted their squad with five Rimpatriati. Oh, South Americans into the Italian team who were brilliant players. And that was crucial. So they had a technical ability that was outstanding. second of all, they had themselves a brilliant coach in Puzzo who had devoted themselves to the construction of the teams. And although Puzo wrote a letter after the semi-final to the best Austrian player Sindler, who does seem to have been kicked around the place during that game, a letter of apology to him,

the reality of it was he did what he needed to do to win, which was to make it a really physical game against Austria and to squeeze out a 1-0 victory. and there's been all sorts of comment about Eklund, the Swedish referee, who also reft in the 38th and 1950 finals, it should be said, as well. So this was a man who is devoted to soccer. There's a whole world of difference between pushing to have a referee who suits your style referee in the final and buying off that referee on the wayhands. And this is like so many of the supposed bribery stories in the World Cup or there's so many stories of chicanery. it remains case unproven and probably unprovable. Yeah, it's so interesting, isn't it?

We were talking about this before we started recording that so many of the so-called scandals associated with the World Cup, so many of the allegations of bribery, corruption, match fixing and so on, when you trace them back, there's often a single source, much late, long after the game has taken place,

which is then amplified by subsequent reports, and it becomes, it's kind of like an urban legend that crosses the line into historical fact because sports historians and journalists and whatnot and websites love to repeat it. And do you think that's a little bit the case with Italy in in 1934 that perhaps it's an old thing to say about a fascist team that's winning for Mussolini? Perhaps they've been a little bit hard done by by posterity? So first of all, it's a knockout competition.

So they're only playing four games. We have no video footage worthy of the name that survives. The accounts that have been handed down are partial. they are fragmentary and they're utterly unconvincing in their claims of chicanery that are involved in it. Did they do everything they could

to try and win? Yes, is it more than that? The evidence just simply doesn't stack up. I think there's two essential points that you made there that I agree with. First of all, the sources of these stories that are repeated time and again, I'm a big believer in oral history,

but I like a bit more than one single source. And it's not just that the idea of there being conspiracies is something that's part of the human. condition, it's most easier to imagine that your team has lost because of a conspiracy against it, as against the fact that they're simply not good enough. Yeah. So they get to the final.

They play Czechoslovakia, of course, not yet dismembered by the Munich Agreement. And the Czechs actually went one nil up. So we're 20 bad 20 minutes to go. And hit the post. And hit the post. But then Orsi, who is actually one of the South Americans, right? Yeah, he's Argentinian. He beats a couple of men and scores a great goal.

and then it goes to extra time. The first World Cup Final to go to Extra Time and a guy called Skiyavio hits the winner. 2-1. Bingo, they've done it. Harrah for Mussolini, hurrah for Italy. Jules Rimei, the founder of the World Cup, gives them the trophy.

Mussolini gives them his Donald Trump trophy. And the Italian press go absolutely berserk, and they? And this proved this to them is not just a sporting triumph, but a moral and political triumph? Gazeta de la Sporal. goes, Italy is at the heart of the sports world. So this is evidence of the greatness of the

Italian male when it comes to the world stage. And you also have Il Bargelo coming out and saying that victory was the affirmation of an entire people, an indication of its virile and moral strength. So this is a projection which goes way beyond just a sporting success into the success of a nation. Mussolini delighted, the regime delighted. The obvious question, though, which may have occurred to some listeners already, I mean, most people don't go to the games, right, because you can only fit 60,000 people into a stadium or whatever.

So how do they... It's not clear either that the game sold out. Oh, my gosh. Which is really interesting because although Mussolini presented himself as queuing for a ticket before one of the games, broader public interest, a lot of people experienced it on the radio or looking at newsreels, but actually attending the game, was limited in numbers, and it's not clear that all the games sold out despite claims to the

contrary. Interesting. Well, this actually gets to the heart of what I was going to say. How do most people experience this? Because you've already mentioned two seismic technological developments so important in the politics of the early 20th century and so vital to dictatorships in particular, which are newsreels and radio. So most people presumably experiencing this, well, actually three ways. They'll hear it on. on the radio, they'll see it at the cinema in a newsreel, and then, and they'll also have, I've read about it in the newspaper and a magazine. Yes, that's, and they will have seen the posters that are up, the visual imagery, these brilliant Italian propagandist posters that are

put up and identified and done with such clarity and skill. But the rise of radio was, was so important because if you think about it, it allowed the voice to reach into someone's kitchen and increasing numbers of Italians had radios by the mid-1930s. I know radio was beginning to broadcast live sport by the early 1920s in America and then across Europe into 24

and then across to Australia. But the reality of it was that mass radio ownership was really a product from the mid-1930s onwards. So by 34 in Italy, more and more Italians, had radios and there is that public square broadcast so that it could be experienced in a communal way

in public squares by people as well who chose to do that. Before that, people used to congregate outside newspaper offices and wait for telegrams to come through with the, it's like the old video printer on. The stories of people doing at the 1930 World Cup in Buenos Aires, they're so excited and their face is dropping

as a Eurocoy keeps scoring goals. And the way they did it, in 1930 in Buenos Aires was the tap comes true, but they have a loudspeaker set up outside to project the thousands of people who've gathered and the just these stories of the tears that flowed after your quote. Why are you laughing at the Argentinians, Stan Lackens?

Go on, it's part of it. People would think there was something wrong with me if I didn't laugh at the Argentinians release in the 1930 World Cup final. On the radio issue, so so interesting that the commentator is, called Niccolo Corosio, and he replaces English terms then current in Italy, goal kick forward, and so on.

The word daisy cutter with Italian terminology because of the Italianization of the game, I guess. Yeah, and this Italianization was really interesting as well. It's even the adoption of the word Calcio. So it's not football or it's not football as it became in South America, but Calcio takes on. And of course, this is an echo back to Calcio Fiorentina, the medieval game that was played, or the early modern game in Florence still like reenacted now with new teams and how important was there. It was this construction of a mythology that that itself was a recreation of Harpest and the Old Roman game. So this is Italy remaking in the 30s what had been already there in the early modern period, which itself was an extension of. of the old Roman world.

So it's not alone that we kind of, we've been at this game for thousands of years, but we're not having the mere English with their words. Right. Coming, infecting how our commentary, which is reaching into homes, because this is about Italy. Yeah, because if you're Mussolini in the mid-1930s,

you don't want people thinking this is the game of Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain that we're trivying out. You want them to think this is an ancient Roman game with the heirs to the Roman Empire, you know, we are taking up the baton from our predecessors, which they have to be, I mean, they've won the World Cup. Yeah, football came home. Yeah, right.

But that's what they'd say anyway. Although, it's slightly more complicated, isn't it? Because there are some fascists who don't like football because it's English. I mean, there's the issue of the fact that, you know, they've got South American players in the team who are, if you believe in blood and soil, Italian nationalism, it's a slight problem that some of your best players are not actually Italian. Then there's also people who are anti-fascists. There's a lot of anti-fascists in Italy.

How do they react to the 1934 World Cup? So even within fascism, there's an ambiguity around soccer. And you can see it by the invention of a game by the National Secretary of the Fascist Party, Augusto Turati, who set up a game which was loosely based around. the rules of soccer, but which was called Volata, and it was to be the kind of a fascist, the fascist version of stock didn't kick off. Sort of quidditch of, yes, exactly, yeah.

Quidditch without the broomstick as you go wrong. And that just did not take off. So that's within the party itself. You then have that addition of the RIMPatriati, which of course is made really more difficult for those people who brought them in by the fact that some of those RIM patriotti disappeared from the country in 35 and then into 36. when the invasion of Ethiopia and everything that came like that

and there's military service on the way. So that creates a problem. And then you have the idea of Carlo Leverie writing in 1934, lamenting the fact that sport has now been used as propaganda, lamenting the fact that it's infantilizing a nation into acceptance of a regime which he utterly opposes and which he fought against. And I do think in all of this, you have to remember that it's a real, danger that you believe the propaganda. So that is to say we accept that there was propaganda,

but to move from that to say that the propaganda was successful is problematic. And you see it with, for example, Lucio Lombardo Redici, the celebrated mathematician and communist from the 1930s in Italy, he wrote later of those years saying he had been at the matches. He was at the final in which the checks were beaten. And he said of that he was disdainful. This is a communist who was disdainful of the idea that it was a fascist enterprise. He said, no one ever became fascist because they supported Vittorio Pozo's Italian team. And he went down, he went on and he questions it said, this words of opium for the masses or the corruption of consciousness and souls. And then he says, not at all. Please stop talking nonsense. So this is a really interesting thing. And I know you have a

strong view on this. The standard interpretation is that, Nasty regimes use sport and culture to brainwash the masses, and the masses duly fall into the line. They love bread and circuses, and that's just how it works. And this is basically this entire series that we're doing is quite a simple, top-down story of nasty generals using sport to control the public. And you think that's not correct, that it's more complicated than actually the public either are not interested in that they don't see the political angle. it's irrelevant, they're not interested, or they resist it, or they can, they simultaneously, that people are more complicated and people can support Argentina winning in 1978 while still hating their regime, let's say.

I suppose I don't like a history which is a mass ascription of either motivation or impact onto great swades of people within any country. That would be my starting point. Now it would be a fool who would argue that it had no impact. So I'm not trying to argue that in any shape or form. And what I argue for is a more tempered understanding and a more nuanced understanding of how this actually worked. And I think there are a series of questions that are worth asking in relation to this. So in what way would Italy and Italian society and fascism have behaved differently if the World Cup had not been played and won in 34 and in 36 or 38?

In 36 with the Berlin Olympics when they won the soccer and 38 when they won the World Cup again. do we imagine because of that that Italy would not have gone into war with Germany and moved on? Would the non-staging of the Berlin Olympics in 36 really have altered the course of Nazi Germany? Similarly, the Brazilian military dictatorship, which oversaw the winning of the World Cup in 1970, by the end of the 70s, its power was in severe decline. And we'll talk about how that manifested South Dominic in the next episode. But equally, in 78, Argentina won the World Cup. the military dictatorship was gone. And this is the thing that must be remembered always about sport.

Sport, at its very best, is of the moment. It completely captures the emotions in the moment. But what does that mean beyond the moment? What is the legacy of that success? Is it eaten bread soon forgotten when it comes to sport? Sport is unbelievably protein in its aspect. It changes and turns all the time. It is always driving forward. And it is always about the next event, not the one that has just happened or very quickly becomes about the next to then. Now, I'm not saying that it doesn't facilitate identification, but it doesn't smother all other feelings. And it does not, you cannot deny the multiple identities of a human being when it comes to these things. I actually couldn't agree with you more. I think it's clearly the people who go to the games, they've got fascist

printed tickets, then fascist stadiums. There are lots of fascists there. But that doesn't mean that they're all complicit in the regime, although they have unthinkingly swallowed their propaganda. For me, that's a classy example of historians looking at a great mass of people who are not historians and saying, ultimately, they're easily brainwashed because they're all idiots. I think that's right. In a nutshell, that's it. Yeah. Okay, so you said sports about the next thing. So is this podcast. The next thing is the 1936 Olympics, which might seem an odd thing to introduce in the story of the World Cup. But Italy, as you said, they win the football gold medal at the 1936. Olympics. And for Mussolini, he takes this just as seriously as the World Cup, would you say?

I think the fact of going to Germany and that kind of developing relationship with Hitler, which comes after 36 onwards and everything that happens in the way Italian society is beginning to change and move closer to Germany, albeit with resistance from quite a number of Italian people who don't like this. They don't like this drift of Italian policy. So the 36 Olympic Games was played, there was a soccer competition, which was won by the Italians with a group of students. And again, this is looking forward. The Italians had staged the world student games twice under Mussolini. So this is about the creation of a new generation who are coming in imbued with these ideas that would not just be Italian students who are thinking these things, but also students who come

from around the world to come to Italy, to see the success of it and bring home to their countries, a benign understanding and indeed a kind of a certain awe of what has been created in this new Rome, which is shown on the newsreels that we see around the place. So he sends a team there, an Italian Olympic team that come forth, but they win the soccer and they play really, really well. And it is true, though, it's at a different level because the soccer in the World Cup by this point is restricted to amateurs, whereas the soccer in the Olympic Games is restricted to amateurs, whereas in the World Cup, it's professionals. So the next World Cup, 1938, this is held in France, final in Paris.

FIFA had chosen France over Germany to host the World Cup. I mean, I see it's an interesting alternative history, isn't it, where the World Cup 1938 is actually in Germany. But anyway, it's in France. France, for most of the 20th century, actually, well, indeed, for almost all the 20th century, France is not a big footballing nation at all. Bigger in rugby. Much rugby and cycling, I guess, France's sports.

I mean, some mad teams actually Cuba are there. The Dutch East Indies are there. Italy, of course, are there again. One of the big European teams, not there because it doesn't exist anymore, Austria. And you might say Germany will be brilliant in the 1938 World Cup because they've absorbed the Austrians. But actually, the Anceles turns out to be a sporting problem rather than an asset because it's very difficult for them to integrate the Austrians into the German team. Is that right?

Yeah, they try and basically take half of one team, put it with half of the other team, and anybody who's ever managed a sports team knows just how difficult that is, but it is so striking. The 36 Berlin Olympics final, Italy beat Austria 2-1, and Austria doesn't even exist by the time of the 38 World Cup when it comes to playing. They're absorbed into it. And this World Cup, this 38 World Cup is really interesting. It is, I think we have to say it's something of an afterthought from 34.

And it's interesting to look at it about what's going to come, about what comes next. And you can see Italian anti-fascist protesters booed the Italian team when they arrive into play their games in France. And I think that's a reminder. I think that no country is ever one thing or another at a particular time. And that although you may identify with the national team and how wins, you can also use it to display your displeasure as well as your pleasure. Yeah. But the Italians win again with a completely different thing.

Yeah, just two players left. From the... From 34. So that is a tribute to Vittorio Potser, the manager, who's obviously a genuinely, you know, for only people who might say, this is rigged, that's rigged. He's obviously a fantastic manager if he can create two teams that win these international tournaments. He seems to have had an extraordinary capacity to motivate people to play together in a unit and to play together for Italy.

and to try and win. And, you know, all this talk about, oh, the Brazilians were bought off in 38. They didn't play their best player Leonidas in the semifinal. He scored a hat-trick in 6-5. He's supposed to have had a calf injury there. So it's so easy to look backwards and say the reality of it is Italy

when the final 4-2, there were a really, really strong team. There's just a lack of specificity about the supposed chicanery that went on. Yeah, because again, there's a claim Hungary basically through, the claim is that Hungary went all the way to the final, then through the final, madly because they were hoping for Italian help

in revising the Treaty of Trianao, which just seems utterly implausible to me. I know the Treaty of Triennon is a big deal in Hungary because basically Hungary loses a lot of territory that thinks it's entitled to in Transylvania and stuff. But again, it's such an unspecific and vague claim that the players somehow miraculously scored goals but managed to throw the rest of the game.

It seems unlikely to me. It seems to me that it would be difficult to bring home that bribe if indeed you were being bought off on the strength of it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. If you're like the right back in the Hungarian team, you get home to Budapest and you say, well, bad news is we lost the final. The good news is I'm pretty confident that in a few years, the Italians will help us get

chance of pain you back. So it does seem very unlikely. Okay, so let's just before we, as we wrap up. How do the Italians end up remembering all this? Because obviously, in Italy, after the Second World War, there's not really the same kind of denatification process that you get in West Germany. So the Italians don't have a great bout of self-flagellation

and soul-searching. There's no sort of de-fascistification of Italy. They're happy to continue celebrating these World Cup wins. They didn't see them as at all, and inverted commas are problematic, do they? No, and it continued through to the, stage in the 1990 World Cup where you see Angelo Skiavio, who scored the winning goal in the 34 final. He gave an interview to Gazette de los sport before, where he said, before those finals,

where he said, I sincerely don't remember much of that day, the final that he's talking about. I actually learned the details I have forgotten only by reading the newspapers that talked about it. For example, that Mussolini was present. they said he was going to come but I hadn't noticed that from the field then the next day when we went to Palacio Palazzo Venezia where the

famous balcony is he said some of us stretched out our hand to shake his but this wasn't so good because Mussolini raised his hand in the air greeting us with the Romans it was me who had scored the decisive goal but I got no special compliment so that's how he remembers it

and he's put out there also Raiuno the main Italian television station in 1990. Six million people watched the documentary, sorry, a film that they made called Il Coloro de la Vittorio, which was the colour of victory about the 1934 World Cup. And it completely underplayed the fascistic context of the competition, as indeed does the National Football Museum in Covertiano in Florence.

So you, and Pozzo wrote an autobiography, it didn't really mention the fascist element of, of the success and of course, Jules Rimei himself, the president of FIFA, he himself after the war, was really keen to downplay the notion of connections between FIFA and Italian fascism. But just a last question on this. Is that them airbrushing history? Or is that reinforcing your point that maybe posterity overblows the fascistic nature of this? And actually, if you were a player, you might, you know, you're so fixated on you. I mean, we know sportsmen and women are always very, very single-minded.

Perhaps they, I mean, as mad as it might sound, perhaps they didn't really notice that it was being co-opted by the fascist regime. And therefore, it was a surprise to them later on when they were told, actually your victory has been tarnished by its association in Mussolini. Oh, yeah, but the gap between the obsessive nature of an elite sportsperson, there's a huge space between that and the wider context. So I think to ignore the wider context while focusing just on the obsessive nature

and elite sport misses the opportunity to render what is a kind of a much more interesting story which is neither just a fascist World Cup nor an elite sporting success but both happen in a kind of interlocking fragments. Okay, great. And very last question before we wrap up. Of course, next time we'll be talking about Brazil.

Callum, a producer, wants to know why Italy is so bad right now. Why haven't they qualified for the last three World Cups? It comes down, I think, to the collapse of the Italian League. Italy, even we'll all remember. We watched soccer in the 90s and into the 2000s, the strength of the Italian league, the strength of Italian club teams. So the collapse of serious, seriously competitive Italian teams,

the inability of the people, the clubs of Italy to attract the very best players in the world, has limited the success of the lead, has compressed it, and Italy simply does not produce enough good players themselves. Okay, fair enough. All right. So I really hope you enjoyed this first episode of the series. It's been a very exciting recording for us because right next door is the Belgian player, Eden Hazard.

When he looked through the window and he saw Paul Rouse, he's like, Jesus, it's Paul Rouse. And we had to actually keep him at bay because he was so overexcited. Anyway, if you've enjoyed this first episode, head to The Restis History.com and join Eden. in Hazard in The Rest is History Club. He will be listening to the next two episodes in this series, and I hope you will too. Hello, everybody. Now, as those of you who are good children will know, here in Britain,

on the 21st of June, it's Father's Day. But not just here in Britain. It's also Father's Day on the 21st of June in the United States, in Canada, and in the Republic of Ireland. So those are four countries that are united by dads who love to listen to the rest is history. And that is why we are offering an amazing 25% Father's Day discount on the subscription price to the Rest is History Club, because we are all heart. So treat the Peter the Great in your own life this Father's Day to early access to, full series. You get early access, that you get that with the membership. You get bonus episodes. You get ad-free listening. You get access to tickets for live shows. Basically, you get an entire host of supplementary benefits. And that, I think, is what a lot of patriarchs want, isn't it?

It absolutely is because I think nothing says, happy Father's Day, quite like the chance to listen to six solid hours ad-free about the First World War. Yeah, that's what most fathers want. So head to the rest is history.com and click on the word gifts. And that gift, membership of our much loved Rest is History Club, will land straight in your father's inbox on Father's Day itself. So if you want to give the best Father's Day gift there's ever been in history, ever, and we say this as the presenters of the rest of history, you know what to do.

Hello, everybody. Now, as those of you who are good children will know, here in Britain, on the 21st of June, it's Father's Day. But not just here in Britain. It's also Father's Day on the 21st of June in the United States, in Canada, and in the Republic of Ireland. So those are four countries that are united by dads who love to listen to the rest is history. And that is why we are offering an amazing 25% Father's Day discount on the subscription price to the rest is history club because we are all heart. So treat the Peter the Great in your own life this Father's Day to early access to full series. You get bonus episodes. You get ad-free listening. You get access to tickets for live shows.

Basically, you get an entire host of supplementary benefits. And that, I think, is what a lot of patriarchs want, isn't it? It absolutely is because I think nothing says happy Father's Day quite like the chance to listen to six solid hours, add free about the First World War. Yeah, that's what most fathers want. So head to the rest is history.com and click on the word gifts. And that gift, membership of our much-loved Restis History Club, will land straight in your father's inbox on Father's Day itself. So if you want to give the best Father's Day gift

that's ever been in history, ever, and we say this as the presenters of the Restis History, you know what to do. Finally, on day eight of the World Cup, England, play tonight. we've assembled a top team to work out how we win it. Harry McGuire and Micah Richards at the back, Georgia Stanway jinking in midfield, and it's Shearer and Lenica up top. Come and join us on The Rest is Football on Netflix.

Available right now.