Feeling Political in Military Cemeteries: Commemoration Politics in Fascist Italy

Abstract

This chapter explores how Mussolini’s Fascist regime politicized the remembrance of the First World War by linking a narrative of heroism to specific notions of grief. It reveals that, given the scale of Italy’s losses in the war, commemoration of the fallen was a highly emotional issue, which provided the regime with a powerful means of political communication. As the Fascist authorities sought to exploit feelings towards the dead for the purpose of mobilizing the Italian population, emotions came to define the political agenda. In seeking a high degree of emotional control, the Italian dictatorship elaborated strategies of manipulation that were later imitated by other authoritarian powers, including Hitler’s Germany and Franco’s Spain. Ossuaries from the time offer evidence of the political intentions of the Fascist regime and the emotional responses that visitors were meant to feel. Architecture and its surrounding discourse thus acted as carriers of emotional messages with political intent.