The Contradictions of Veterans’ Associations? The Fascist Appropriation of the Legacy of World War I and the Failure of Demobilisation

Millan, Matteo

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-38915-8_5

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 8 publications

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“…Nonetheless, recruitment under Fascism drew heavily from a generation of men who had been too young to enlist in the First World War, and some of those recruits joined the Fascist squads to compensate for that missed experience. 114 Equally, the popularity of war literature in this period suggests that some men did fall under the spell of heroic exemplars. It is also the case that, in general, the narratives associated with exemplars varied because they were promoted by different bodies of the Fascist state, the Party, related associations, and the official and unofficial media.…”

Section: Religious Exemplarsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Malone

2022

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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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.

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Section: Religious Exemplarsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Malone

2022

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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Feeling Political in Military Cemeteries: Commemoration Politics in Fascist Italy

Malone

2022

Feeling Political

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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.

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The Contradictions of Veterans’ Associations? The Fascist Appropriation of the Legacy of World War I and the Failure of Demobilisation

Cited by 2 publications

References 8 publications

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

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

Feeling Political in Military Cemeteries: Commemoration Politics in Fascist Italy

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