Stresa Revived - an Allied Mussolini TL
- Thread starter Onkel Willie
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Chapter XVIII: The Decline and Fall of Fascism, 1973-1979.
The reworked and, I assume, ASB free version of the last chapter.
After a tense peace in the Middle East after the Suez Crisis and the Six Day War in 1967, conflict erupted again in 1973. Iraq had become a republic and a dictatorship under the Arab Socialist Baath party, ending British influence in the region by the late 1960s. Egypt, Iraq and Syria banded together and in 1973 launched a surprise attack against Israel to destroy it once and for all, the so-called Yom Kippur War. Israel was under the threat of being defeated, so it invoked a military pact with Italy signed in 1957, which guaranteed that one would support the other if it was the victim of Egyptian aggression.
Ciano was a bit reluctant to uphold his end of the deal, since he couldn’t use an enflamed Arab public opinion against him now that he also was fighting in Africa and had that entire continent riled up. He nonetheless supported Israel since backstabbing the Israelis would undoubtedly backfire on Italy in terms of Western sympathy. The Egyptian offensive into the Sinai stopped within range of its own anti-aircraft defences; the IDF couldn’t push them back, but the Egyptians didn’t advance any further. The reason for that was that Egypt came under air attack from the Regia Aeronautica while an armoured division moved to Sidi Barrani, a fairly tame military intervention on Italy’s part considering what it was capable of. It was enough for Israel to grind the Syrians and the Iraqis to a standstill at Karmiel, preventing a breakout toward Haifa just 25 kilometres away. Arab forces were driven back into the Golan Heights, but there they managed to hold a defensive line under the cover of SAMs provided by the Soviet Union, which prevented Israel from gaining air superiority.
The war ended through American as well as Soviet mediation, allowing Syria and Iraq to get away with a status quo ante bellum peace, apart from small war reparations, while Egypt and Israel agreed to a referendum on the Sinai’s future to be held in 1974 under UN supervision. The Arabs walked away fairly unscathed and they had been fairly successful militarily, unlike in 1948, 1956 and 1967, but the outcome was still widely perceived as a failure because nothing was achieved for the Palestinian cause (many of them remained stuck in surrounding countries, particularly in Jordan). The OPEC initiated an oil embargo against Israel and its Western backers, but the effects were mitigated by the effect that the competing PESA continued to sell oil to the affected countries. With greatly diminished oil supply, oil prices did rise and Italy made a lot of money, while other Western states suffered from stagflation in the 1970s. The Arab League cut off diplomatic ties with Israel and Italy.
The fascist bloc, however, was showing cracks. Portuguese Prime Minister Caetano was fundamentally an authoritarian, but he did make some efforts to open up the regime. Soon after taking power, he renamed the regime as the “Social State,” and slightly increased freedom of speech and the press and conducted an emancipation program in the colonies (the latter had been effective, and by 1975 the colonial war had become rather low-key). These measures did not go nearly far enough for a significant element of the population who had no memory of the instability which preceded Salazar. The people were also disappointed that Caetano was unwilling to open up the electoral system; the 1969 and 1973 elections saw the National Union – renamed People's National Action – sweep every seat, as before. However, even these small reforms had to be wrung out of the hardliners in the regime – most notably Thomaz, who was not nearly as content to give Caetano the free rein he had given Salazar. By 1973, the hardliners were pressuring Caetano to end his reform experiment, causing discontent to simmer among the people.
In Spain, King Juan Carlos I functioned as active head of state during periods of Franco’s temporary incapacity in 1974-’75 and in October 1975 Franco gave him full control, dying three weeks later on November 20th. His accession met with relatively little parliamentary resistance from the ruling “Movimiento Nacional” party. He, however, quickly initiated reforms that displeased conservative and Falangist elements, especially in the military, who had expected him to maintain the authoritarian state. In July 1976 he dismissed Prime Minister Carlos Arias Navarro who had been trying to continue Francoist policies in the face of the King’s reformist stance. Although recycled as a moderate during the final years of Franco’s rule, Navarro was in fact a hardliner who had been involved with the “White Terror,” signing thousands of death warrants in the 1936-1939 timeframe.
Navarro was replaced with Adolfo Suarez, a former leader of the Movimiento Nacional. Navarro being replaced by the King rather than becoming a new caudillo displeased Ciano, who disliked the precedent that a head of government could be replaced by his monarch. The Estado Novo regime was also displeased since it feared the effects of its Spanish neighbour’s democratization on the growing demand for reform in its own country. Their arguments against “bourgeois capitalist democracy,” however, fell on def ears with King Juan Carlos. In September 1976 Spain was confronted by 350.000 unarmed Moroccans brandishing Moroccan flags, portraits of King Hassan II and Korans. They’d been given permission by King Hassan II to march into the Spanish Sahara and they went unopposed by the Spanish Armed Forces on the King’s orders. That was the final straw to the domestic opponents of Juan Carlos’s reforms as well his foreign opponents, particularly Italy and Portugal. Rome and Lisbon were alarmed by Spanish negotiations with Morocco concerning the surrender of the Spanish Sahara. They viewed possible Spanish concessions to an Arab state as a dangerous example to their own colonial peoples, who had just been pacified through combinations of force and moves toward emancipation.
On September 7th 1976 members of the “Guardia Civil” led by Lieutenant-Colonel Antonio Tejero seized control of parliament and placed Juan Carlos under house arrest as an “illegitimate usurper,” the rightful heir being his father. This was ironic since Franco had passed over Juan Carlos’s father as his successor because he was thought to be too liberal. Infante Juan was blackmailed into ascending the throne – with the threat that his son Juan Carlos would be tried for treason and face lifelong imprisonment, being spared execution only because he was a royal. He became a puppet ruler as King Juan III. The Spanish military reinstated Navarro as Prime Minister while Juan Carlos was sent into internal exile to a villa on the island of Formentera, just off the coast of Ibiza. The first thing Navarro and his military junta did was to break off negotiations with Morocco concerning the Spanish Sahara, and order riot police and soldiers to chase the Moroccan protestors back across the border with truncheons, rubber bullets and tear gas. The Spanish Army clashed with Moroccan troops sent by Hassan II in response, and Spanish forces proved superior by far. Morocco and Spain found themselves in a shooting war. In the meantime, there was a major protest in Spain, but security forces broke it up and further protests were limited due to the rally to the flag effect. Besides that the separatist Basque ETA stepped up its terrorist activities, thereby legitimizing continued dictatorship.
In Italy itself the fascist regime remained fairly popular due to the wealth and the opportunities it provided, though there were some objections to it. Firstly, fascism appealed the most to the generation that had come of age between 1914 and the early 1950s: it appealed much less to the post-war generation, which had not experienced the Great War, the “mutilated victory,” post-war instability, the great depression, WW II and the reconstruction era. The generation that came of age post-1955 didn’t see the need for authoritarianism and uniformity as much as earlier generations. In the meantime, like his father, Galeazzo Ciano was not above extracting private profit from his public office, using his influence to depress a company’s stocks, after which he’d buy a controlling interest, then increase his wealth after the value rebounded. He introduced an element of mild corruption into the system, and power abuse by state and party officials was a serious annoyance to many Italians by the early 1970s. This was starkly contrasted against Mussolini’s incorruptibility, more so since the latter’s lifestyle had been fairly Spartan compared to Ciano’s taste for the finer things in life such as a bourgeois game of golf. He also never did have the clout of his illustrious predecessor since King Umberto II asserted himself after Mussolini’s death. Besides that, he had rivals like Pavolini waiting in the shadows for a moment of weakness to usurp his position. Ciano, however, still had the prestige of being Mussolini’s son-in-law going for him as well his status as a first generation fascist.
Nonetheless, Ciano felt the need to increase funding to Italy’s secret police to bolster his position: the OVRA (Organization for Vigilance and Repression of Antifascism – Organizzazione per la Vigilanza e la Repressione dell'Antifascismo). The OVRA’s powers were increased and along with it the definitions of what constituted anti-fascism, turning Italy into a more repressive society than before. Among the OVRA’s victims were feminists: in the late 1960s groups of women who rejected the gender roles imposed by the fascist state banded together, mostly inspired by liberal democratic, socialist or outright Marxist-Leninist ideas. Feminists were arrested by the OVRA and forced to follow re-education, which consisted of the following: memorizing and parroting quotes of Mussolini concerning the “natural roles” of men and women; psychological torture like sleep deprivation, humiliation, solitary confinement and fear; and physical torture when all else failed. All-in-all, corruption issues and increased repression made the populace rather apathetic, mildly supportive at best, while state propaganda seemed a bit hollow. Added to this was the fact that, for lack of reform, state officials continued to rely on existing procedures, producing the annoyance of bureaucratic red tape (the truth was that this already existed under Mussolini to an extent, but that his personality cult and popularity deflected blame to his underlings). The fiftieth anniversary of the March on Rome in October 1972, though it was grand, just didn’t have the Mussolinian patina to it of the fortieth, thirtieth and twenty-fifth anniversaries (even though his picture was everywhere one looked).
In the end antifascists could level accusations of conservatism, corruption, repression and red tape against the Italian state all they wanted, but combined those factors didn’t accumulate nearly enough resentment for a full-blown revolution. As late as 1973, the OVRA declared in a report that antifascist activities and sentiments were negligible and not a threat to national security. Many critics agreed that there should be reforms and relaxations of some kind, which had to do with zeitgeist as well: fascism was an ideology born in the interbellum and it appealed the most to the generation that had witnessed WW I, the post-war chaos, the mutilated victory, the golden years in the 1930s when Italy was mostly spared the consequences of the Depression, WW II and post-war reconstruction (i.e. the generation that had consciously experienced any significant part of the 1914-1952 timeframe). The generation that had come of age after 1958 had never experienced such crises and didn’t see why their country couldn’t become freer. However, as late as the mid 1970s only a select few argued that fascism was finished. Many of those were aging exiled Italian communists and socialists who repeated ad nauseam that fascism was doomed due to “the inexorable march forward to socialism dictated by iron Marxist laws, which would relegate fascism to the ash heap of history.” By the 1970s these surviving exiles, mostly members of Mussolini’s generation, were going extinct (besides that, their impact had always been negligible since they had always been ignored). Only in combination with external factors would internal issues precipitate the fall of fascism, but the “Second Duce” Ciano didn’t get to see that because he died of a major stroke in November 1977, aged 74. It was the culmination of a cardiovascular condition he’d been diagnosed with in 1971.
In 1977, there were only two first generation fascists left who were big enough to possibly succeed Ciano: there was Pavolini, but he’d been exiled to the Dodecanese years ago, and there was the 82 year-old Dino Grandi who reluctantly accepted the position of Duce out of a sense of duty, though he styled himself Prime Minister since he believed “Mussolini was and is the Duce of Fascism.” He was old and lacked the energy as well as ambition for the office bestowed upon him, allowing corruption to become ubiquitous. He soon faced a foreign policy crisis that dragged the country into another war.
Portugal still owned the exclaves of Goa, Daman and Diu which together constituted Portuguese India. On February 27th 1950, the Indian government asked the Portuguese government to open negotiations about the future of Portuguese colonies in India. Portugal asserted that its territory on the Indian subcontinent was not a colony but part of metropolitan Portugal and hence its transfer was non-negotiable; and that India had no rights to this territory because the Republic of India did not exist at the time when Goa came under Portuguese rule. When the Portuguese Government refused to respond to subsequent aide-mémoires in this regard, the Indian government, on June 11th 1953, withdrew its diplomatic mission from Lisbon. By 1954, the Republic of India instituted visa restrictions on travel from Goa to India which paralysed transport between Goa and other exclaves like Daman, Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli. Meanwhile, the Indian Union of Dockers had, in 1954, instituted a boycott on shipping to Portuguese India. Between July 22nd and August 2nd 1954, armed activists attacked and forced the surrender of Portuguese forces stationed in Dadra and Nagar Haveli (the latter two were ceded in 1954). On August 15th 1955, 3.000-5.000 unarmed Indian activists attempted to enter Goa at six locations and were violently repulsed by Portuguese police officers, resulting in the deaths of between 21 and 30 people. The news of the massacre built public opinion in India against the presence of the Portuguese in Goa and on September 1st 1955, India closed its consulate in Goa. Foreign mediation failed to produce any tangible results and Lisbon felt confident by the firm support of Rome.
In 1956, Mussolini attacked Egypt and the Indian ambassador was told by Ciano, then still Foreign Minister, that India could expect the same treatment as Egypt if it invaded Portuguese possessions, possibly with the support of Italy’s allies if need be. Nehru was intimidated, certainly because these words were backed up by precedent. He couldn’t think of any reason why Italy would back off rather than giving India the Egyptian treatment. Leaving an Indian annexation of Goa unopposed would be a major loss of face for the entire fascist bloc. The entire matter was shelved indefinitely when Italy tested its first atomic bomb in 1958 since Nehru was unsure as to whether Mussolini would go that far (his use of mustard gas on the Ethiopians in 1935, however, spoke volumes and there was no indication that Mussolini viewed atomic bombs as anything more than big explosives). India limited itself to peaceful means, such as a total economic embargo against Portuguese possessions, but for the sake of national pride Portugal wouldn’t give up even though holding on to these exclaves meant haemorrhaging money. Much of it was spent on heavily fortifying these exclaves with defence in depth consisting of pillboxes, casemates, trenches, barbed wire, anti-tank ditches, Czech hedgehogs, barbed wire, mine fields, artillery batteries and machine gun nests with overlapping fields of fire. By the 1970s Goa, Daman and Diu were among the most fortified places in the world.
India strengthened its relations with the USSR in response and got Soviet aid for its nuclear weapons program, conducting an 8 kiloton test codenamed “Smiling Buddha” in May 1972. By late 1977 India had seven weapons available to it and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, feeling strengthened, tried to reopen negotiations with Portugal concerning the status of Portuguese India. The technocratic Prime Minister Marcelo Caetano reiterated that Portugal’s territories on the Indian subcontinent were 1) an integral part of metropolitan Portugal and 2) that India had no rights to this territory since it had come under Portuguese rule long before India even existed as a country. Its status wasn’t negotiable. Indira Gandhi responded by ordering a naval blockade of Goa, Daman and Diu, escalating the crisis to the point where backing down would mean major loss of face. Frantic arbitration by the United States and the Soviet Union tried to steer the world away from a conflict between two nuclear powers; the US suggested a referendum and the Soviets were generous enough to suggest a five-year transition period. Even the Vatican’s mediation had no effect, even though Pope Paul VI had been directly involved. Heightened tensions, stubbornness, pride, conviction, miscommunication, lack of empathy, fear of losing face and underestimation of their adversary on both sides ensured that diplomatic efforts came to naught. In the end Prime Minister Gandhi ordered Operation Vijay to commence on December 10th 1977, upon which 40.000 Indian troops assaulted Portuguese defences. She hoped to vindicate her rule by decree with a military victory against a reviled colonial power. Despite their numerical superiority, the tenacious Portuguese defence initially held them back.
Caetano immediately invoked an emergency teleconference of the San Remo Pact powers and got Italian support, with Grandi issuing an ultimatum to India to cease and desist within 24 hours or face war. Frantic negotiations by the US and the USSR had no results since both parties rejected compromise, and the spectre of nuclear war loomed. Under the mistaken assumption that the Soviets would actively support them, the Indian government allowed the ultimatum to expire and incurred the wrath of Mussolini’s ghost. US Forces went to DEFCON 3 while Soviet forces were put on a similar state of alert. In the meantime, a naval taskforce centred on guided missile battleships Impero and Roma, aircraft carrier Falco and guided missile cruisers Gorizia and Fiume appeared off the Indian west coast to provide fire and air support to ground troops, also firing cruise missiles at targets deep inside India. Unbeknownst to the Indians they carried a small number of nuclear shells. Italian elite forces were deployed to assist their allies, the Portuguese defenders. By the end of January Portuguese defences buckled under sheer weight of numbers and their positions were overrun. Under heavy cover fire from Italian 15 inch naval guns, Portuguese and Italian defenders were evacuated. Dino Grandi threatened nuclear war, but lacked the stomach for it and as a face saving measures ultimately accepted an American proposal to have India “buy” these exclaves from Portugal. Lisbon agreed to “sell” for a sum of 1.5 billion dollars.
Anti-war sentiments aroused by this pointless and costly war combined with frustration about the administration’s rigidity, sluggishness, repression, political corruption and economic nepotism. Massive student protests erupted in Rome in March 1978 demanding reforms from the fascist regime: such as the abolition of obsolete bureaucratic procedures; more anti-corruption efforts; an end to the nepotistic favouritism in the career ladder for the sons of big party officials; change to the repressive gender roles still imposed by the state to a certain extent, even though universities had opened their doors for women; an end to extra-legal arrests and the use of torture by the OVRA to extract confessions. Above all, however, they demanded an end to the Italian involvement in postcolonial and neo-colonial conflicts in the Third World, especially in Ethiopia. The prospect of being drafted and sent to Ethiopia and other places was particularly resented by college students in Rome and elsewhere in Italy.
Grandi simply ordered the riot police to break up the students camping on the Piazza Venezia, using truncheons and teargas. A battle erupted between the students and the police and rioting erupted all across Rome, upon which Grandi ordered soldiers, including armoured vehicles, to occupy the city. Martial law was declared and a curfew was put in place, after which things seemed to quiet down, but only for a few days. Soon protests erupted across Italy, which quickly devolved into riots and looting since the response of the authorities was the same everywhere: truncheons and teargas. The protests gained a new dimension in May 1978 with the dramatic death of a 32 year-old communist named Mario Moretti, who was beaten to death by the riot police with their batons. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets, but now they demanded not reform but free elections, with the moral support of the Holy See. Pope Paul VI, who was lingering on death’s door at this point, asked both sides to end the violence and to enter a dialogue.
Grandi didn’t want to open the can of worms of ordering soldiers to open fire on crowds of protestors. He saw which way the wind was blowing and instead put forward a motion in the Grand Council of Fascism to restore to the King his full constitutional prerogatives, which was accepted by a slight majority. King Umberto II issued elections which would take place in July 1979, and up until then Minister of the Interior Giorgio Almirante would serve as interim Prime Minister. He also announced the withdrawal of Italian ground troops from Ethiopia. After those announcements things quieted down and everybody went back to school and to work. Fascism ended with a whimper rather than a bang.
Chapter XVIII: The Decline and Fall of Fascism, 1973-1979.
After a tense peace in the Middle East after the Suez Crisis and the Six Day War in 1967, conflict erupted again in 1973. Iraq had become a republic and a dictatorship under the Arab Socialist Baath party, ending British influence in the region by the late 1960s. Egypt, Iraq and Syria banded together and in 1973 launched a surprise attack against Israel to destroy it once and for all, the so-called Yom Kippur War. Israel was under the threat of being defeated, so it invoked a military pact with Italy signed in 1957, which guaranteed that one would support the other if it was the victim of Egyptian aggression.
Ciano was a bit reluctant to uphold his end of the deal, since he couldn’t use an enflamed Arab public opinion against him now that he also was fighting in Africa and had that entire continent riled up. He nonetheless supported Israel since backstabbing the Israelis would undoubtedly backfire on Italy in terms of Western sympathy. The Egyptian offensive into the Sinai stopped within range of its own anti-aircraft defences; the IDF couldn’t push them back, but the Egyptians didn’t advance any further. The reason for that was that Egypt came under air attack from the Regia Aeronautica while an armoured division moved to Sidi Barrani, a fairly tame military intervention on Italy’s part considering what it was capable of. It was enough for Israel to grind the Syrians and the Iraqis to a standstill at Karmiel, preventing a breakout toward Haifa just 25 kilometres away. Arab forces were driven back into the Golan Heights, but there they managed to hold a defensive line under the cover of SAMs provided by the Soviet Union, which prevented Israel from gaining air superiority.
The war ended through American as well as Soviet mediation, allowing Syria and Iraq to get away with a status quo ante bellum peace, apart from small war reparations, while Egypt and Israel agreed to a referendum on the Sinai’s future to be held in 1974 under UN supervision. The Arabs walked away fairly unscathed and they had been fairly successful militarily, unlike in 1948, 1956 and 1967, but the outcome was still widely perceived as a failure because nothing was achieved for the Palestinian cause (many of them remained stuck in surrounding countries, particularly in Jordan). The OPEC initiated an oil embargo against Israel and its Western backers, but the effects were mitigated by the effect that the competing PESA continued to sell oil to the affected countries. With greatly diminished oil supply, oil prices did rise and Italy made a lot of money, while other Western states suffered from stagflation in the 1970s. The Arab League cut off diplomatic ties with Israel and Italy.
The fascist bloc, however, was showing cracks. Portuguese Prime Minister Caetano was fundamentally an authoritarian, but he did make some efforts to open up the regime. Soon after taking power, he renamed the regime as the “Social State,” and slightly increased freedom of speech and the press and conducted an emancipation program in the colonies (the latter had been effective, and by 1975 the colonial war had become rather low-key). These measures did not go nearly far enough for a significant element of the population who had no memory of the instability which preceded Salazar. The people were also disappointed that Caetano was unwilling to open up the electoral system; the 1969 and 1973 elections saw the National Union – renamed People's National Action – sweep every seat, as before. However, even these small reforms had to be wrung out of the hardliners in the regime – most notably Thomaz, who was not nearly as content to give Caetano the free rein he had given Salazar. By 1973, the hardliners were pressuring Caetano to end his reform experiment, causing discontent to simmer among the people.
In Spain, King Juan Carlos I functioned as active head of state during periods of Franco’s temporary incapacity in 1974-’75 and in October 1975 Franco gave him full control, dying three weeks later on November 20th. His accession met with relatively little parliamentary resistance from the ruling “Movimiento Nacional” party. He, however, quickly initiated reforms that displeased conservative and Falangist elements, especially in the military, who had expected him to maintain the authoritarian state. In July 1976 he dismissed Prime Minister Carlos Arias Navarro who had been trying to continue Francoist policies in the face of the King’s reformist stance. Although recycled as a moderate during the final years of Franco’s rule, Navarro was in fact a hardliner who had been involved with the “White Terror,” signing thousands of death warrants in the 1936-1939 timeframe.
Navarro was replaced with Adolfo Suarez, a former leader of the Movimiento Nacional. Navarro being replaced by the King rather than becoming a new caudillo displeased Ciano, who disliked the precedent that a head of government could be replaced by his monarch. The Estado Novo regime was also displeased since it feared the effects of its Spanish neighbour’s democratization on the growing demand for reform in its own country. Their arguments against “bourgeois capitalist democracy,” however, fell on def ears with King Juan Carlos. In September 1976 Spain was confronted by 350.000 unarmed Moroccans brandishing Moroccan flags, portraits of King Hassan II and Korans. They’d been given permission by King Hassan II to march into the Spanish Sahara and they went unopposed by the Spanish Armed Forces on the King’s orders. That was the final straw to the domestic opponents of Juan Carlos’s reforms as well his foreign opponents, particularly Italy and Portugal. Rome and Lisbon were alarmed by Spanish negotiations with Morocco concerning the surrender of the Spanish Sahara. They viewed possible Spanish concessions to an Arab state as a dangerous example to their own colonial peoples, who had just been pacified through combinations of force and moves toward emancipation.
On September 7th 1976 members of the “Guardia Civil” led by Lieutenant-Colonel Antonio Tejero seized control of parliament and placed Juan Carlos under house arrest as an “illegitimate usurper,” the rightful heir being his father. This was ironic since Franco had passed over Juan Carlos’s father as his successor because he was thought to be too liberal. Infante Juan was blackmailed into ascending the throne – with the threat that his son Juan Carlos would be tried for treason and face lifelong imprisonment, being spared execution only because he was a royal. He became a puppet ruler as King Juan III. The Spanish military reinstated Navarro as Prime Minister while Juan Carlos was sent into internal exile to a villa on the island of Formentera, just off the coast of Ibiza. The first thing Navarro and his military junta did was to break off negotiations with Morocco concerning the Spanish Sahara, and order riot police and soldiers to chase the Moroccan protestors back across the border with truncheons, rubber bullets and tear gas. The Spanish Army clashed with Moroccan troops sent by Hassan II in response, and Spanish forces proved superior by far. Morocco and Spain found themselves in a shooting war. In the meantime, there was a major protest in Spain, but security forces broke it up and further protests were limited due to the rally to the flag effect. Besides that the separatist Basque ETA stepped up its terrorist activities, thereby legitimizing continued dictatorship.
In Italy itself the fascist regime remained fairly popular due to the wealth and the opportunities it provided, though there were some objections to it. Firstly, fascism appealed the most to the generation that had come of age between 1914 and the early 1950s: it appealed much less to the post-war generation, which had not experienced the Great War, the “mutilated victory,” post-war instability, the great depression, WW II and the reconstruction era. The generation that came of age post-1955 didn’t see the need for authoritarianism and uniformity as much as earlier generations. In the meantime, like his father, Galeazzo Ciano was not above extracting private profit from his public office, using his influence to depress a company’s stocks, after which he’d buy a controlling interest, then increase his wealth after the value rebounded. He introduced an element of mild corruption into the system, and power abuse by state and party officials was a serious annoyance to many Italians by the early 1970s. This was starkly contrasted against Mussolini’s incorruptibility, more so since the latter’s lifestyle had been fairly Spartan compared to Ciano’s taste for the finer things in life such as a bourgeois game of golf. He also never did have the clout of his illustrious predecessor since King Umberto II asserted himself after Mussolini’s death. Besides that, he had rivals like Pavolini waiting in the shadows for a moment of weakness to usurp his position. Ciano, however, still had the prestige of being Mussolini’s son-in-law going for him as well his status as a first generation fascist.
Nonetheless, Ciano felt the need to increase funding to Italy’s secret police to bolster his position: the OVRA (Organization for Vigilance and Repression of Antifascism – Organizzazione per la Vigilanza e la Repressione dell'Antifascismo). The OVRA’s powers were increased and along with it the definitions of what constituted anti-fascism, turning Italy into a more repressive society than before. Among the OVRA’s victims were feminists: in the late 1960s groups of women who rejected the gender roles imposed by the fascist state banded together, mostly inspired by liberal democratic, socialist or outright Marxist-Leninist ideas. Feminists were arrested by the OVRA and forced to follow re-education, which consisted of the following: memorizing and parroting quotes of Mussolini concerning the “natural roles” of men and women; psychological torture like sleep deprivation, humiliation, solitary confinement and fear; and physical torture when all else failed. All-in-all, corruption issues and increased repression made the populace rather apathetic, mildly supportive at best, while state propaganda seemed a bit hollow. Added to this was the fact that, for lack of reform, state officials continued to rely on existing procedures, producing the annoyance of bureaucratic red tape (the truth was that this already existed under Mussolini to an extent, but that his personality cult and popularity deflected blame to his underlings). The fiftieth anniversary of the March on Rome in October 1972, though it was grand, just didn’t have the Mussolinian patina to it of the fortieth, thirtieth and twenty-fifth anniversaries (even though his picture was everywhere one looked).
In the end antifascists could level accusations of conservatism, corruption, repression and red tape against the Italian state all they wanted, but combined those factors didn’t accumulate nearly enough resentment for a full-blown revolution. As late as 1973, the OVRA declared in a report that antifascist activities and sentiments were negligible and not a threat to national security. Many critics agreed that there should be reforms and relaxations of some kind, which had to do with zeitgeist as well: fascism was an ideology born in the interbellum and it appealed the most to the generation that had witnessed WW I, the post-war chaos, the mutilated victory, the golden years in the 1930s when Italy was mostly spared the consequences of the Depression, WW II and post-war reconstruction (i.e. the generation that had consciously experienced any significant part of the 1914-1952 timeframe). The generation that had come of age after 1958 had never experienced such crises and didn’t see why their country couldn’t become freer. However, as late as the mid 1970s only a select few argued that fascism was finished. Many of those were aging exiled Italian communists and socialists who repeated ad nauseam that fascism was doomed due to “the inexorable march forward to socialism dictated by iron Marxist laws, which would relegate fascism to the ash heap of history.” By the 1970s these surviving exiles, mostly members of Mussolini’s generation, were going extinct (besides that, their impact had always been negligible since they had always been ignored). Only in combination with external factors would internal issues precipitate the fall of fascism, but the “Second Duce” Ciano didn’t get to see that because he died of a major stroke in November 1977, aged 74. It was the culmination of a cardiovascular condition he’d been diagnosed with in 1971.
In 1977, there were only two first generation fascists left who were big enough to possibly succeed Ciano: there was Pavolini, but he’d been exiled to the Dodecanese years ago, and there was the 82 year-old Dino Grandi who reluctantly accepted the position of Duce out of a sense of duty, though he styled himself Prime Minister since he believed “Mussolini was and is the Duce of Fascism.” He was old and lacked the energy as well as ambition for the office bestowed upon him, allowing corruption to become ubiquitous. He soon faced a foreign policy crisis that dragged the country into another war.
Portugal still owned the exclaves of Goa, Daman and Diu which together constituted Portuguese India. On February 27th 1950, the Indian government asked the Portuguese government to open negotiations about the future of Portuguese colonies in India. Portugal asserted that its territory on the Indian subcontinent was not a colony but part of metropolitan Portugal and hence its transfer was non-negotiable; and that India had no rights to this territory because the Republic of India did not exist at the time when Goa came under Portuguese rule. When the Portuguese Government refused to respond to subsequent aide-mémoires in this regard, the Indian government, on June 11th 1953, withdrew its diplomatic mission from Lisbon. By 1954, the Republic of India instituted visa restrictions on travel from Goa to India which paralysed transport between Goa and other exclaves like Daman, Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli. Meanwhile, the Indian Union of Dockers had, in 1954, instituted a boycott on shipping to Portuguese India. Between July 22nd and August 2nd 1954, armed activists attacked and forced the surrender of Portuguese forces stationed in Dadra and Nagar Haveli (the latter two were ceded in 1954). On August 15th 1955, 3.000-5.000 unarmed Indian activists attempted to enter Goa at six locations and were violently repulsed by Portuguese police officers, resulting in the deaths of between 21 and 30 people. The news of the massacre built public opinion in India against the presence of the Portuguese in Goa and on September 1st 1955, India closed its consulate in Goa. Foreign mediation failed to produce any tangible results and Lisbon felt confident by the firm support of Rome.
In 1956, Mussolini attacked Egypt and the Indian ambassador was told by Ciano, then still Foreign Minister, that India could expect the same treatment as Egypt if it invaded Portuguese possessions, possibly with the support of Italy’s allies if need be. Nehru was intimidated, certainly because these words were backed up by precedent. He couldn’t think of any reason why Italy would back off rather than giving India the Egyptian treatment. Leaving an Indian annexation of Goa unopposed would be a major loss of face for the entire fascist bloc. The entire matter was shelved indefinitely when Italy tested its first atomic bomb in 1958 since Nehru was unsure as to whether Mussolini would go that far (his use of mustard gas on the Ethiopians in 1935, however, spoke volumes and there was no indication that Mussolini viewed atomic bombs as anything more than big explosives). India limited itself to peaceful means, such as a total economic embargo against Portuguese possessions, but for the sake of national pride Portugal wouldn’t give up even though holding on to these exclaves meant haemorrhaging money. Much of it was spent on heavily fortifying these exclaves with defence in depth consisting of pillboxes, casemates, trenches, barbed wire, anti-tank ditches, Czech hedgehogs, barbed wire, mine fields, artillery batteries and machine gun nests with overlapping fields of fire. By the 1970s Goa, Daman and Diu were among the most fortified places in the world.
India strengthened its relations with the USSR in response and got Soviet aid for its nuclear weapons program, conducting an 8 kiloton test codenamed “Smiling Buddha” in May 1972. By late 1977 India had seven weapons available to it and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, feeling strengthened, tried to reopen negotiations with Portugal concerning the status of Portuguese India. The technocratic Prime Minister Marcelo Caetano reiterated that Portugal’s territories on the Indian subcontinent were 1) an integral part of metropolitan Portugal and 2) that India had no rights to this territory since it had come under Portuguese rule long before India even existed as a country. Its status wasn’t negotiable. Indira Gandhi responded by ordering a naval blockade of Goa, Daman and Diu, escalating the crisis to the point where backing down would mean major loss of face. Frantic arbitration by the United States and the Soviet Union tried to steer the world away from a conflict between two nuclear powers; the US suggested a referendum and the Soviets were generous enough to suggest a five-year transition period. Even the Vatican’s mediation had no effect, even though Pope Paul VI had been directly involved. Heightened tensions, stubbornness, pride, conviction, miscommunication, lack of empathy, fear of losing face and underestimation of their adversary on both sides ensured that diplomatic efforts came to naught. In the end Prime Minister Gandhi ordered Operation Vijay to commence on December 10th 1977, upon which 40.000 Indian troops assaulted Portuguese defences. She hoped to vindicate her rule by decree with a military victory against a reviled colonial power. Despite their numerical superiority, the tenacious Portuguese defence initially held them back.
Caetano immediately invoked an emergency teleconference of the San Remo Pact powers and got Italian support, with Grandi issuing an ultimatum to India to cease and desist within 24 hours or face war. Frantic negotiations by the US and the USSR had no results since both parties rejected compromise, and the spectre of nuclear war loomed. Under the mistaken assumption that the Soviets would actively support them, the Indian government allowed the ultimatum to expire and incurred the wrath of Mussolini’s ghost. US Forces went to DEFCON 3 while Soviet forces were put on a similar state of alert. In the meantime, a naval taskforce centred on guided missile battleships Impero and Roma, aircraft carrier Falco and guided missile cruisers Gorizia and Fiume appeared off the Indian west coast to provide fire and air support to ground troops, also firing cruise missiles at targets deep inside India. Unbeknownst to the Indians they carried a small number of nuclear shells. Italian elite forces were deployed to assist their allies, the Portuguese defenders. By the end of January Portuguese defences buckled under sheer weight of numbers and their positions were overrun. Under heavy cover fire from Italian 15 inch naval guns, Portuguese and Italian defenders were evacuated. Dino Grandi threatened nuclear war, but lacked the stomach for it and as a face saving measures ultimately accepted an American proposal to have India “buy” these exclaves from Portugal. Lisbon agreed to “sell” for a sum of 1.5 billion dollars.
Anti-war sentiments aroused by this pointless and costly war combined with frustration about the administration’s rigidity, sluggishness, repression, political corruption and economic nepotism. Massive student protests erupted in Rome in March 1978 demanding reforms from the fascist regime: such as the abolition of obsolete bureaucratic procedures; more anti-corruption efforts; an end to the nepotistic favouritism in the career ladder for the sons of big party officials; change to the repressive gender roles still imposed by the state to a certain extent, even though universities had opened their doors for women; an end to extra-legal arrests and the use of torture by the OVRA to extract confessions. Above all, however, they demanded an end to the Italian involvement in postcolonial and neo-colonial conflicts in the Third World, especially in Ethiopia. The prospect of being drafted and sent to Ethiopia and other places was particularly resented by college students in Rome and elsewhere in Italy.
Grandi simply ordered the riot police to break up the students camping on the Piazza Venezia, using truncheons and teargas. A battle erupted between the students and the police and rioting erupted all across Rome, upon which Grandi ordered soldiers, including armoured vehicles, to occupy the city. Martial law was declared and a curfew was put in place, after which things seemed to quiet down, but only for a few days. Soon protests erupted across Italy, which quickly devolved into riots and looting since the response of the authorities was the same everywhere: truncheons and teargas. The protests gained a new dimension in May 1978 with the dramatic death of a 32 year-old communist named Mario Moretti, who was beaten to death by the riot police with their batons. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets, but now they demanded not reform but free elections, with the moral support of the Holy See. Pope Paul VI, who was lingering on death’s door at this point, asked both sides to end the violence and to enter a dialogue.
Grandi didn’t want to open the can of worms of ordering soldiers to open fire on crowds of protestors. He saw which way the wind was blowing and instead put forward a motion in the Grand Council of Fascism to restore to the King his full constitutional prerogatives, which was accepted by a slight majority. King Umberto II issued elections which would take place in July 1979, and up until then Minister of the Interior Giorgio Almirante would serve as interim Prime Minister. He also announced the withdrawal of Italian ground troops from Ethiopia. After those announcements things quieted down and everybody went back to school and to work. Fascism ended with a whimper rather than a bang.
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The revised version is a bit more realistic (note: you forgot to expunge one of Berlusconi references).
The price paid by India for the Portuguese enclaves is staggering: IOTL Portuguese GDP in 1970 was 8.1 billion USD, and here they would get practically the same amount from the sale? TTL Portugal might have arguably been more successful on the economic side, but even if the OTL GDP is doubled the pay-out would still be close to 50% GDP (and India would pay something like 12% of their own GDP). I'd say that something in the order of 1-1.5 billion USD would be more reasonable and still a handsome payment.
I'm also quite skeptic about the chances for Pavolini becoming duce in 1976, since he had been effectively sidelined and let to rot in a backwater for 20 years or so. It would be much more reasonable to have Grandi (who was quite old and never a hard-liner) to read the writing on the wall and put forward himself a motion at the Grand Council, announcing his resignation and the restoration of the Constitutional prerogatives for the king. Fascism ends with a whimper and not with a bang, and I would say it's quite reasonable. The reference of De Gaulle's resignation in 1968 is quite applicable.
Final comment: the Elba island would never ever be chosen by an Italian government to stash away a sensitive political person.It's too big, too populated and too close to mainland. Ponza or Ventotene (which are much smaller islands and more distant from mainland) were used by the Fascists to exile dissidents in the 1930s, and would have been chosen for Pavolini too.
However I'm more leaning toward sending him abroad in a semi-voluntary exile (probably South America).
The price paid by India for the Portuguese enclaves is staggering: IOTL Portuguese GDP in 1970 was 8.1 billion USD, and here they would get practically the same amount from the sale? TTL Portugal might have arguably been more successful on the economic side, but even if the OTL GDP is doubled the pay-out would still be close to 50% GDP (and India would pay something like 12% of their own GDP). I'd say that something in the order of 1-1.5 billion USD would be more reasonable and still a handsome payment.
I'm also quite skeptic about the chances for Pavolini becoming duce in 1976, since he had been effectively sidelined and let to rot in a backwater for 20 years or so. It would be much more reasonable to have Grandi (who was quite old and never a hard-liner) to read the writing on the wall and put forward himself a motion at the Grand Council, announcing his resignation and the restoration of the Constitutional prerogatives for the king. Fascism ends with a whimper and not with a bang, and I would say it's quite reasonable. The reference of De Gaulle's resignation in 1968 is quite applicable.
Final comment: the Elba island would never ever be chosen by an Italian government to stash away a sensitive political person.It's too big, too populated and too close to mainland. Ponza or Ventotene (which are much smaller islands and more distant from mainland) were used by the Fascists to exile dissidents in the 1930s, and would have been chosen for Pavolini too.
However I'm more leaning toward sending him abroad in a semi-voluntary exile (probably South America).
As an Italian, I smile reading this TL and see it as a possible thing...
So the Regno D'Italia (Italy's Kingdom) has survived here... this version of Guareschi would have been happy for it...
... I hope that his works on the Don Camillo survived the butterflyes.
So the Regno D'Italia (Italy's Kingdom) has survived here... this version of Guareschi would have been happy for it...
... I hope that his works on the Don Camillo survived the butterflyes.
I don't know, Guareschi while a monarchist it was not really a fascist and with his...let's say not really tamed character it will be a troublemaker...and while i always liked his work, frankly the idea of Peppone as a podestà make me want to scream heresy or better: FASSSISTIIIIIII (Gino Cervi was a great actor
)** For non italians: one of the most iconic and remembered scene of the Don Camillo series of movie it's one where Peppone now a senator suddenly wake up during a session of the senate (he had falling asleep during the debate) and seeing all the senators screaming and shouting he immediately start to do that himself, crying: FASSSISSTIIII (with an heavy emilian accent)
Chapter XIX: Il Secolo Fascista, 1979-2015.
I present to you the final chapter of fascism.
The Grand Council of Fascism and the cabinet formed an interim government which abolished many of the restrictions and limitations imposed by the fascist state. In the meantime, these events had their effects on the other authoritarian regimes on the Mediterranean, who underwent what became known as the Revolutions of 1978-’79. Iran notably escaped that fate since the Shah’s cancer diagnosis in 1972 forced him to take a more hands-off approach, allowing the country to grow into constitutional monarchy. Soviet propaganda cackled triumphantly about the fall of fascism as it had been “predicted” by Marxist-Leninist teachings, not realizing that they’d been given a preview of what would happen to them. In the meantime, parliamentary elections were held in Italy where the “Partito Nazionale Fascista,” which was allowed to run, got competition from the “Partito Socialista Italiano,” the “Democrazia Cristiania” which was a centrist Catholic catch-all party, and the “Partito Comunista Italiano”.
The PNF still held a large sway, particular over the generation of people that had experienced the heyday of fascism in the 1950s and early 60s. A major boost to the PNF was that Romano Mussolini, son of the Duce, was among the candidates running for a seat in parliament. He was not the party leader, though he played a big role in the propaganda campaign preceding the elections (during which the PNF, as the ruling party, had the advantage that they could still use state-owned media). He used his status as the son of Benito Mussolini, who was still held in high regard, as well as his popularity as a jazz musician to get votes (he had in fact only entered politics in the 1970s when he witnessed his father’s legacy of revolutionism wither away). The leader of the PNF was the 65 year-old and second generation fascist (meaning he had not participated on the March on Rome, but had partaken in WW II) Giorgio Almirante, former Governor-General of Libya. After a promising start in the fascist party’s ranks in the mid/late 1930s, WW II rolled around and he enlisted voluntarily, after which the now 32 year-old Almirante retired from the military in 1946 with the rank of Major. In 1951 he became mayor of his hometown, the spa town of Salsomaggiore Terme, and later chose for a career in the booming “Fourth Shore,” i.e. Libya.
Anyway, the Fascist Party got 22% of the popular vote, but the DC got 30%, the PSI got 25% and the PCI got 11% (the rest of the vote was taken by liberals and single issue parties; colonial parties did not participate in Italy, but competed for their own colonial councils in Tripoli, Asmara and Mogadishu respectively). After months of difficult negotiations, the Christian Democrats and the PSI formed a governing coalition in January 1980, and the governing fascist party overnight became an opposition party for the first time in almost sixty years, ending the one-party state.
Regime change didn’t mean that Italy’s foreign policy saw dramatic change. The San Remo Pact was held together by three things: 1) friendly ties between its members weren’t fundamentally affected by democratization since Italian dominance was never experienced as an occupation, quite unlike Soviet domination of the Warsaw Pact. 2) Anti-communism remained a core element of the foreign policies of these countries, and Italy provided a convenient nuclear umbrella (though Spain continued the nuclear programme initiated by the Francoist regime and finally tested a device in the Spanish Sahara in 1982). 3) These countries had a vested interest in maintaining their shielded, protectionist Mediterranean economic zone rather than joining the European Community and embracing its free trade philosophy.
One major conflict of the 1980s was the Soviet-Afghan War. From the early 1970s Fascist Italy had begun supporting the regime of Mohammed Daoud Khan, which had applied for membership of the San Remo Pact in 1975 and became an observer state. His pseudo-fascist regime saw major improvements to living standards, particularly during the Helmand Valley Project in southern Afghanistan, and tentative steps were taken to the emancipation of women. In April 1978, however, the communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan supported by the army staged a coup for fear of being eliminated by Daoud Khan’s regime. Khan, his wife Princess Zamina Begum and some of their children fled the country, but many members of Khan’s family were killed in the revolution. With a thirst for vengeance Khan returned in 1979 and organized armed resistance in southern, Pashtun dominated, Afghanistan. Though he didn’t really want to, he reconciled with his cousin King Zahir Shah under Italian and Iranian pressure. Zahir Shah formed a government-in-exile in Rome and Khan was put in charge of its military component, comprised of elements of the Afghan Army loyal to Khan combined with moderate Islamist groups who engaged the communist regime in a guerrilla (Pakistan, following the logic that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” supported the same groups that Italy and Iran did).
Support from the San Remo Pact, and in particular from Italy and Iran, remained unaffected by the Revolutions of 1978-’79. Italy (together with the USA) helped supply the resistance with weapons and ammunition such the brand-new Beretta M9 pistol and Italian license produced versions of the Stinger missile. The result was that the Soviet Army was getting drained more and more and eventually withdrew in 1991, although the communist regime continued to fight another three years (besides that, there was the distraction posed by Solidarity in Poland, which had provoked a Soviet invasion in 1981 and precipitated a persistent guerrilla against the Soviet occupation). By 1994 Daoud Khan had died of natural causes, but King Zahir Shah was still alive and with overwhelming popular support regained his throne.
Campaigns like this aimed at the rollback of communism had major effects. In 1991 the last of the neo-Stalinist leaders, Lazar Kaganovich, died aged 97. By then the USSR was a poor, underdeveloped country with a bloated military-industrial complex and it was thoroughly disliked by its own people, who were desperate for change. When a conservative pawn Grigoriy Romanov was put forward as Kaganovich’s successor, massive peaceful protests erupted in Moscow and spread across the country. The events were eerily similar to what had happened in 1978 in Italy and then a mutiny erupted in garrisons in Poland, which still under de facto Soviet occupation and ruled by puppets. Romanov withdrew troops from the Warsaw Pact states to suppress dissent at home, but that was a mistake. Neither the soldiers nor the politburo had the stomach for it, so in 1992 he was deposed by the same politburo that had put him in charge. In the meantime, the Revolutions of 1992 ended the communist regimes in Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union was reformed by its new leader Gorbachev into a much looser federation and semi-free elections were held in 1993 on local and regional levels. The New Union Treaty reformed the country into the Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics (which coincidentally also abbreviated to USSR). The impoverished Eastern European countries became new democracies overnight, thereby vindicating among other things the fascist legacy of virulent anti-communism.
In the meantime, the democracy that emerged in Italy from 1980 struggled to renew Italian society, and in hindsight their difficulties were unsurprising. Fascism had had nearly six decades time to pervade all layers of society and during that time it had influenced the way of thinking of entire generations. There were still plenty of people around who had consciously experienced the golden years of fascism in the 1930s, which were renewed in the 1950s and early 1960s. Mussolini was still viewed positively and not even the new government dared to touch him, unlike his successors who were blamed for all the failings of Fascist Italy. One historian said that “Mussolini was fascism and fascism was Mussolini. It was what he wanted it to be, which is why it began to falter after his death. He merely left his successors guidelines rather than the ‘how to’ of fascism they would have liked.”
In the meantime, Italian democracy provided greater freedom than had ever been known under fascism, leaving room for experimentation. Later than in other Western countries women became serious participants in the economy and in politics, gaining both the passive and the active vote from 1978. Liberalizations went further. Behaviour deemed sexually deviant under fascism, such as homosexuality, prostitution and pornography was decriminalized overnight, though not outright legalized due to objections from the Christian Democrats. Milan received the doubtful honour of being named the “capital of Europorn” because the government was apprehensive when it came to enforcing already lax censorship laws. By 1984 they had already lost two lawsuits in which the judiciary called government bans on two pornographic films a violation of the freedom of expression, and leftwing media slandered them as “fascist” to boot. Veronica Lario, born Miriam Raffealla Bartolini, harassed by the fascist authorities in the 1970s for being a sex-positive feminist, became a major name in the porn industry in the 1980s, beginning her career in 1982 aged 26. She put active starring on the backburner and turned more to directing and producing in the early 1990s; the final productions in which she starred as a pornographic actress were produced in 1999.
Liberty and equality were valued greatly, but the democratic government struggled with the economic recession of the 1980s, unable to rely on oil money to mitigate it since oil prices were low. Economic liberalization increased in Italy as much as it did in the rest of the developed world and manufacturing industry relocated to Thailand, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan and China. The economies of Japan and West Germany were the most notable in the West that continued to enjoy strong economic growth. The Italian economy didn’t shrink in the 1980s, but average annual growth was less than 0.7%, which was even less than the average normal growth of the Western world, which was about 1.5-2%. Growth in the 1980s paled in comparison to “Il Glorioso Venti,” the roughly twenty year period starting in 1947 that saw exceptional economic growth (on average 7% a year, and growth up to 10% in the early and mid 1950s), which largely coincided with Mussolini’s tenure. Even the somewhat slower 1970s saw the Italian people maintain their standard of living, subsidized by the high oil prices of those years.
In the 1980s the government decided to sharply cut interest rates to stimulate growth, deciding that inflation was a secondary concern. It was the standard macroeconomic prescription, but it instead caused stagflation and unemployment instead. The first democratic government of Italy fell in 1982 because the Christian Democrats wanted to privatize many state-owned companies as part of austerity measures meant to curb inflation. Ever since the 1930s the IRI, the Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale, had controlled ~ 17% of the economy through government-linked companies. Their socialist coalition partners disagreed because it would undoubtedly produce unemployment and instead wanted to use the IRI to rescue, restructure and finance banks and companies that threatened to go bankrupt to prevent a credit crunch (it was ironic that they looked to the IRI since it was a remnant of fascism). Halfway through its four year term the coalition imploded and new elections were issued, something that became a recurring theme. The PSI replaced the DC as the largest party and formed a coalition with the PCI and pushed through its programme, which curbed unemployment and momentarily spared purchasing power but it increased inflation. This precipitated a wage-price spiral, which was not improved by austerity measures from a DC led government after that party regained power in 1983.
In March 1983 Umberto II died at age 78, coincidentally the same age his father had reached. His successor, the then 46 year-old King Victor Emmanuel IV, was faced by an unprecedented economic crisis, but he lacked the moral authority and air of incorruptibility of his parents, who had been devout Catholics (and had markedly improved relations between the otherwise anticlerical house of Savoy and the Vatican). The Queen Mother, Marie José of Belgium, remained celibate and never married again and died of lung cancer in 2001 at age 94. Her son, however, continued a longstanding affair. In 1963, then Crown Prince Victor Emmanuel had become engaged to Infanta Margarita of Spain (who was two years his junior) and they married in 1964. They had a crown prince named Victor Emmanuel born in 1965, two other sons named Umberto and Giovanni born in 1967 and 1974 respectively, as well as two daughters named Yolanda and Elena born in 1970 and 1976. But it was an arranged marriage and Victor Emmanuel stuck with it for appearances only, quite like the loveless marriage of his parents, albeit for public relations and not out of religious piety.
He continued his relationship, dating back to 1960, with water ski champion Marina Ricolfi Doria, who became a regular visitor of the Quirinal Palace. By the early 1980s, without heavy fascist censorship clamping down on the press, his adultery became a public secret. That didn’t kill his mediocre popularity, but in 1988 the press discovered a carefully guarded secret: in 1965 he had fathered an illegitimate son named Gianni. The issue tore his family apart since in public he denied that Gianni was his son, upon which the indignant young man demanded recognition and a paternity test. Unlike in other countries, members of the royal family were not immune thanks to a series of Duces eroding the position of the royals. Gianni Ricolfi Doria refused financial compensation and after four years of litigation the court demanded a DNA test, but the King gave notice of appeal, which would have led to more trials. His cousin Uberto, who had racked up serious debts with bad investments, agreed to a DNA test for money and got rich from interviews. The result proved Gianni had been telling the truth all along and it completely discredited his father who abdicated in 1990 (which enabled him to divorce Margarita and finally marry his long-time mistress). His son was left with the burden of being King at age 25, becoming King Victor Emmanuel V. He improved the image of the House of Savoy and remains King of Italy until the present day, while his father has withdrawn from public life.
The ineffectuality of the democratic governments of the 1980s as well as the issues of the royal house opened the door for third generation fascists, which is to say fascists who had made their careers post-war. Among them was a certain Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi had been born in September 1936 in Milan, where he was raised by a middle class family and experienced the German occupation. After the war he went to a state run secondary school and in October 1954 the 18 year-old Berlusconi was drafted into the army for the compulsory two year stint, and he became a cello player and singer in a military band. Apart from basic training, life in the Regio Esercito proved fairly easy on the young Silvio and he decided to stay and see Italy’s overseas provinces while attending the military academy in Tripoli. In 1956, Berlusconi, now a sergeant major in command of his own platoon, saw action in the Suez Conflict and got shot in the left shoulder leading an assault on an entrenched Egyptian position, for which he received a medal. Afterwards he used his time mostly to get involved in the petroleum industry, gambling by spending his savings on Agip stocks, a gamble that paid off. By the time the 24 year-old Berlusconi retired from the army in 1960 with the rank of captain, commanding an infantry battalion, he had amassed a large amount of capital for someone his age.
After buying his way into the public service broadcaster RAI, owned by the Ministry of Communications, he became a propaganda-broadcasting TV/radio personality and moderately successful singer in the mid and late 1960s (recording three albums with a few top 40 hits on them). Using a combination of personal charm, competence and bribes he continued his meteoric rise and became Minister of Communications in 1972, a post he held until the end of the regime in 1980. In 1977 he also became Minister of Foreign Affairs since the aging Grandi was too tired to combine this function with the office of Prime Minister. Once considered promising, his political career was abruptly ended when the fascist regime was voted out of power in 1979 and finally handed over power in 1980 to the newly formed coalition. He used his personal wealth, his connections, his fame and his charm to climb up the ranks of the fascist party. He used his wealth to finance the PNF during its years in opposition and became its new face, replacing the gerontocracy of 60, 70 and 80 year-olds leading it until then.
In 1989, the now 53 year-old Berlusconi officially became the new party leader and his party continued the trend that had begun in the mid 1980s: increasing popularity. The latent popularity of fascism was demonstrated perfectly when broadcaster RAI organized a poll titled “the greatest Italian who has ever lived.” Benito Mussolini was voted the third greatest Italian who ever lived, behind Camillo Cavour and Giuseppe Garibaldi who held first and second place respectively. Capitalizing on this result, using propaganda Berlusconi kept reminding people of the golden years of fascism under Mussolini. In 1991 the PNF became the largest party in parliament and the young, inexperienced King appointed Berlusconi to the position of Prime Minister, ending 12 years in the opposition. He initiated wage and price controls to curb inflation; these policies weren’t very popular but they worked. Secondly, he used the IRI to help save and restructure ailing businesses and issued a stimulus package to the economy worth 120 billion dollars. Under his rule Italy entered a new period of economic growth in the 1990s, although it must be said that oil prices rose again in this period. Economists pointed this out, but it was ignored by the fascist propaganda machine and, with communism discredited, democratized Italian Fascism became the strongest alternative to neo-liberalism, which fascists considered “a socioeconomic and political disease.” Its dirigist economic policies gained traction in second and third world countries once again, while Western social-democratic parties adopted them too (though vehemently denied being inspired by fascism).
The 1990s saw 2-3% annual economic growth, which was high compared to the Western world (though nowhere near the heights of “Il Glorioso Venti”). Otherwise the decade remained uneventful. Then, on July 29th 2000, Mussolini’s birthday, Italy saw a terrorist attack on the subway in Rome with sarin nerve gas during the morning commute, killing hundreds of people. Berlusconi declared martial law and ruled by decree, reforming the OVRA to find the culprits by any means necessary. He also announced that Italy would retaliate to any use of weapons of mass destruction against it in kind. It legitimized fascist rule even further and it caused the people to accept stricter censorship laws and diminished privacy rights. Italy entered strong cooperation with the United States led by Clinton in his third term. America had also seen an attack for its continued support to Italy. The OVRA rapidly tracked down the suspects and took them to secret prisons on the islands of Ponza and Ventotene, which had been used as prisons for political opponents by Mussolini for decades. The OVRA interpreted “by any means necessary” as the right to use torture, which they did, and they learnt the radical Islamic Al-Qaeda group led by billionaire Osama Bin-Laden was behind it. He hated Italy for its continued rule over large numbers of Muslim Arabs and he despised American support for Israel.
An ultimatum was delivered to the government of Sudan that demanded: 1) the extradition of Osama Bin-Laden and known associates, 2) American and Italian inspections of military bases, training facilities and command facilities, 3) the closure of property owned by Al-Qaeda or Bin-Laden and 4) the arrest of all known members of this organization. The Sudanese government rejected these demands and instead proposed to bring Bin-Laden before a Sudanese court, a proposal rejected because in an Islamic country such a court would undoubtedly be biased in favour of the defendant.
US Navy ships appeared in the Red Sea and started pelting Sudan, the country which hosted Osama Bin-Laden, with cruise missiles while Italian guided missile battleships Littorio, Vittorio Veneto, Impero and Roma did the same, also using their 15 inch guns to pummel coastal defences and naval facilities. Italian tanks stationed in Eritrea spearheaded a land based offensive toward the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. Another spearhead advanced along the coast to ensure Bin-Laden didn’t escape by sea to his home country of Saudi Arabia. The Regia Aeronautica and the US Air Force made sure that an escape by air was impossible by taking air superiority. Berlusconi helped in that regard by making true on his words that a WMD attack on Italy would see a response in kind. Controversially, he deployed a 5 kiloton tactical nuclear warhead against Wadi Seidna Air Base, 22 kilometres away from Khartoum and Sudan’s most important air force base. The Italo-American military victory and the arrest of President Omar al-Bashir, who was shipped to The Hague and sentenced to life in prison, boosted Berlusconi’s popularity. Osama Bin-Laden, who was caught on the run, let himself get killed in a gun fight rather than surrender, and afterwards his organization in Sudan crumbled as the OVRA started to operate there.
Other Muslim countries were subsequently terrified of getting into Italy’s hair, more so since Italy had proven willing to use tactical nuclear weapons. Among them was Tunisia which crushed groups sympathizing with the cause of Islamic extremism. Tunisia, which continued to harbour an Italian community of 125.000, had always been wary of its neighbour. They tiptoed around Italian interests in their country and in terms of foreign policy had Finlandized themselves because the last thing they wanted was to provoke an Italian invasion. Saudi Arabia responded similarly, fearing the Shah’s Iran, which had the fifth strongest army in the world, would team up with Italy to expand its influence in the Persian Gulf and Middle East at the Saudis’ expense.
The new “Duce’s” popularity reached its zenith in the early 2000s. After four consecutive terms in office, between 1991 and 2007, however, Berlusconi was caught in a major corruption and infidelity scandal that severely damaged the PNF and saw fascism return to the opposition. Subsequently, the question is to what degree fascism, momentarily in power again as a junior coalition party, will define the 21st century. Fascist imagery, sometimes as simple as streets and piazzas named after Mussolini, remain ubiquitous and hundreds of thousands of tourists and supporters flock to his mausoleum in Predappio every year. Though the fascist dictatorship ended in 1980, its influence stretched much further and the twentieth century was indeed the fascist century. Mussolini had changed an entire nation and his legacy continues to affect Italy and the world. Whether the 21st will also be a fascist century remains to be seen.
Chapter XIX: Il Secolo Fascista, 1979-2015.
The Grand Council of Fascism and the cabinet formed an interim government which abolished many of the restrictions and limitations imposed by the fascist state. In the meantime, these events had their effects on the other authoritarian regimes on the Mediterranean, who underwent what became known as the Revolutions of 1978-’79. Iran notably escaped that fate since the Shah’s cancer diagnosis in 1972 forced him to take a more hands-off approach, allowing the country to grow into constitutional monarchy. Soviet propaganda cackled triumphantly about the fall of fascism as it had been “predicted” by Marxist-Leninist teachings, not realizing that they’d been given a preview of what would happen to them. In the meantime, parliamentary elections were held in Italy where the “Partito Nazionale Fascista,” which was allowed to run, got competition from the “Partito Socialista Italiano,” the “Democrazia Cristiania” which was a centrist Catholic catch-all party, and the “Partito Comunista Italiano”.
The PNF still held a large sway, particular over the generation of people that had experienced the heyday of fascism in the 1950s and early 60s. A major boost to the PNF was that Romano Mussolini, son of the Duce, was among the candidates running for a seat in parliament. He was not the party leader, though he played a big role in the propaganda campaign preceding the elections (during which the PNF, as the ruling party, had the advantage that they could still use state-owned media). He used his status as the son of Benito Mussolini, who was still held in high regard, as well as his popularity as a jazz musician to get votes (he had in fact only entered politics in the 1970s when he witnessed his father’s legacy of revolutionism wither away). The leader of the PNF was the 65 year-old and second generation fascist (meaning he had not participated on the March on Rome, but had partaken in WW II) Giorgio Almirante, former Governor-General of Libya. After a promising start in the fascist party’s ranks in the mid/late 1930s, WW II rolled around and he enlisted voluntarily, after which the now 32 year-old Almirante retired from the military in 1946 with the rank of Major. In 1951 he became mayor of his hometown, the spa town of Salsomaggiore Terme, and later chose for a career in the booming “Fourth Shore,” i.e. Libya.
Anyway, the Fascist Party got 22% of the popular vote, but the DC got 30%, the PSI got 25% and the PCI got 11% (the rest of the vote was taken by liberals and single issue parties; colonial parties did not participate in Italy, but competed for their own colonial councils in Tripoli, Asmara and Mogadishu respectively). After months of difficult negotiations, the Christian Democrats and the PSI formed a governing coalition in January 1980, and the governing fascist party overnight became an opposition party for the first time in almost sixty years, ending the one-party state.
Regime change didn’t mean that Italy’s foreign policy saw dramatic change. The San Remo Pact was held together by three things: 1) friendly ties between its members weren’t fundamentally affected by democratization since Italian dominance was never experienced as an occupation, quite unlike Soviet domination of the Warsaw Pact. 2) Anti-communism remained a core element of the foreign policies of these countries, and Italy provided a convenient nuclear umbrella (though Spain continued the nuclear programme initiated by the Francoist regime and finally tested a device in the Spanish Sahara in 1982). 3) These countries had a vested interest in maintaining their shielded, protectionist Mediterranean economic zone rather than joining the European Community and embracing its free trade philosophy.
One major conflict of the 1980s was the Soviet-Afghan War. From the early 1970s Fascist Italy had begun supporting the regime of Mohammed Daoud Khan, which had applied for membership of the San Remo Pact in 1975 and became an observer state. His pseudo-fascist regime saw major improvements to living standards, particularly during the Helmand Valley Project in southern Afghanistan, and tentative steps were taken to the emancipation of women. In April 1978, however, the communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan supported by the army staged a coup for fear of being eliminated by Daoud Khan’s regime. Khan, his wife Princess Zamina Begum and some of their children fled the country, but many members of Khan’s family were killed in the revolution. With a thirst for vengeance Khan returned in 1979 and organized armed resistance in southern, Pashtun dominated, Afghanistan. Though he didn’t really want to, he reconciled with his cousin King Zahir Shah under Italian and Iranian pressure. Zahir Shah formed a government-in-exile in Rome and Khan was put in charge of its military component, comprised of elements of the Afghan Army loyal to Khan combined with moderate Islamist groups who engaged the communist regime in a guerrilla (Pakistan, following the logic that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” supported the same groups that Italy and Iran did).
Support from the San Remo Pact, and in particular from Italy and Iran, remained unaffected by the Revolutions of 1978-’79. Italy (together with the USA) helped supply the resistance with weapons and ammunition such the brand-new Beretta M9 pistol and Italian license produced versions of the Stinger missile. The result was that the Soviet Army was getting drained more and more and eventually withdrew in 1991, although the communist regime continued to fight another three years (besides that, there was the distraction posed by Solidarity in Poland, which had provoked a Soviet invasion in 1981 and precipitated a persistent guerrilla against the Soviet occupation). By 1994 Daoud Khan had died of natural causes, but King Zahir Shah was still alive and with overwhelming popular support regained his throne.
Campaigns like this aimed at the rollback of communism had major effects. In 1991 the last of the neo-Stalinist leaders, Lazar Kaganovich, died aged 97. By then the USSR was a poor, underdeveloped country with a bloated military-industrial complex and it was thoroughly disliked by its own people, who were desperate for change. When a conservative pawn Grigoriy Romanov was put forward as Kaganovich’s successor, massive peaceful protests erupted in Moscow and spread across the country. The events were eerily similar to what had happened in 1978 in Italy and then a mutiny erupted in garrisons in Poland, which still under de facto Soviet occupation and ruled by puppets. Romanov withdrew troops from the Warsaw Pact states to suppress dissent at home, but that was a mistake. Neither the soldiers nor the politburo had the stomach for it, so in 1992 he was deposed by the same politburo that had put him in charge. In the meantime, the Revolutions of 1992 ended the communist regimes in Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union was reformed by its new leader Gorbachev into a much looser federation and semi-free elections were held in 1993 on local and regional levels. The New Union Treaty reformed the country into the Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics (which coincidentally also abbreviated to USSR). The impoverished Eastern European countries became new democracies overnight, thereby vindicating among other things the fascist legacy of virulent anti-communism.
In the meantime, the democracy that emerged in Italy from 1980 struggled to renew Italian society, and in hindsight their difficulties were unsurprising. Fascism had had nearly six decades time to pervade all layers of society and during that time it had influenced the way of thinking of entire generations. There were still plenty of people around who had consciously experienced the golden years of fascism in the 1930s, which were renewed in the 1950s and early 1960s. Mussolini was still viewed positively and not even the new government dared to touch him, unlike his successors who were blamed for all the failings of Fascist Italy. One historian said that “Mussolini was fascism and fascism was Mussolini. It was what he wanted it to be, which is why it began to falter after his death. He merely left his successors guidelines rather than the ‘how to’ of fascism they would have liked.”
In the meantime, Italian democracy provided greater freedom than had ever been known under fascism, leaving room for experimentation. Later than in other Western countries women became serious participants in the economy and in politics, gaining both the passive and the active vote from 1978. Liberalizations went further. Behaviour deemed sexually deviant under fascism, such as homosexuality, prostitution and pornography was decriminalized overnight, though not outright legalized due to objections from the Christian Democrats. Milan received the doubtful honour of being named the “capital of Europorn” because the government was apprehensive when it came to enforcing already lax censorship laws. By 1984 they had already lost two lawsuits in which the judiciary called government bans on two pornographic films a violation of the freedom of expression, and leftwing media slandered them as “fascist” to boot. Veronica Lario, born Miriam Raffealla Bartolini, harassed by the fascist authorities in the 1970s for being a sex-positive feminist, became a major name in the porn industry in the 1980s, beginning her career in 1982 aged 26. She put active starring on the backburner and turned more to directing and producing in the early 1990s; the final productions in which she starred as a pornographic actress were produced in 1999.
Liberty and equality were valued greatly, but the democratic government struggled with the economic recession of the 1980s, unable to rely on oil money to mitigate it since oil prices were low. Economic liberalization increased in Italy as much as it did in the rest of the developed world and manufacturing industry relocated to Thailand, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan and China. The economies of Japan and West Germany were the most notable in the West that continued to enjoy strong economic growth. The Italian economy didn’t shrink in the 1980s, but average annual growth was less than 0.7%, which was even less than the average normal growth of the Western world, which was about 1.5-2%. Growth in the 1980s paled in comparison to “Il Glorioso Venti,” the roughly twenty year period starting in 1947 that saw exceptional economic growth (on average 7% a year, and growth up to 10% in the early and mid 1950s), which largely coincided with Mussolini’s tenure. Even the somewhat slower 1970s saw the Italian people maintain their standard of living, subsidized by the high oil prices of those years.
In the 1980s the government decided to sharply cut interest rates to stimulate growth, deciding that inflation was a secondary concern. It was the standard macroeconomic prescription, but it instead caused stagflation and unemployment instead. The first democratic government of Italy fell in 1982 because the Christian Democrats wanted to privatize many state-owned companies as part of austerity measures meant to curb inflation. Ever since the 1930s the IRI, the Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale, had controlled ~ 17% of the economy through government-linked companies. Their socialist coalition partners disagreed because it would undoubtedly produce unemployment and instead wanted to use the IRI to rescue, restructure and finance banks and companies that threatened to go bankrupt to prevent a credit crunch (it was ironic that they looked to the IRI since it was a remnant of fascism). Halfway through its four year term the coalition imploded and new elections were issued, something that became a recurring theme. The PSI replaced the DC as the largest party and formed a coalition with the PCI and pushed through its programme, which curbed unemployment and momentarily spared purchasing power but it increased inflation. This precipitated a wage-price spiral, which was not improved by austerity measures from a DC led government after that party regained power in 1983.
In March 1983 Umberto II died at age 78, coincidentally the same age his father had reached. His successor, the then 46 year-old King Victor Emmanuel IV, was faced by an unprecedented economic crisis, but he lacked the moral authority and air of incorruptibility of his parents, who had been devout Catholics (and had markedly improved relations between the otherwise anticlerical house of Savoy and the Vatican). The Queen Mother, Marie José of Belgium, remained celibate and never married again and died of lung cancer in 2001 at age 94. Her son, however, continued a longstanding affair. In 1963, then Crown Prince Victor Emmanuel had become engaged to Infanta Margarita of Spain (who was two years his junior) and they married in 1964. They had a crown prince named Victor Emmanuel born in 1965, two other sons named Umberto and Giovanni born in 1967 and 1974 respectively, as well as two daughters named Yolanda and Elena born in 1970 and 1976. But it was an arranged marriage and Victor Emmanuel stuck with it for appearances only, quite like the loveless marriage of his parents, albeit for public relations and not out of religious piety.
He continued his relationship, dating back to 1960, with water ski champion Marina Ricolfi Doria, who became a regular visitor of the Quirinal Palace. By the early 1980s, without heavy fascist censorship clamping down on the press, his adultery became a public secret. That didn’t kill his mediocre popularity, but in 1988 the press discovered a carefully guarded secret: in 1965 he had fathered an illegitimate son named Gianni. The issue tore his family apart since in public he denied that Gianni was his son, upon which the indignant young man demanded recognition and a paternity test. Unlike in other countries, members of the royal family were not immune thanks to a series of Duces eroding the position of the royals. Gianni Ricolfi Doria refused financial compensation and after four years of litigation the court demanded a DNA test, but the King gave notice of appeal, which would have led to more trials. His cousin Uberto, who had racked up serious debts with bad investments, agreed to a DNA test for money and got rich from interviews. The result proved Gianni had been telling the truth all along and it completely discredited his father who abdicated in 1990 (which enabled him to divorce Margarita and finally marry his long-time mistress). His son was left with the burden of being King at age 25, becoming King Victor Emmanuel V. He improved the image of the House of Savoy and remains King of Italy until the present day, while his father has withdrawn from public life.
The ineffectuality of the democratic governments of the 1980s as well as the issues of the royal house opened the door for third generation fascists, which is to say fascists who had made their careers post-war. Among them was a certain Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi had been born in September 1936 in Milan, where he was raised by a middle class family and experienced the German occupation. After the war he went to a state run secondary school and in October 1954 the 18 year-old Berlusconi was drafted into the army for the compulsory two year stint, and he became a cello player and singer in a military band. Apart from basic training, life in the Regio Esercito proved fairly easy on the young Silvio and he decided to stay and see Italy’s overseas provinces while attending the military academy in Tripoli. In 1956, Berlusconi, now a sergeant major in command of his own platoon, saw action in the Suez Conflict and got shot in the left shoulder leading an assault on an entrenched Egyptian position, for which he received a medal. Afterwards he used his time mostly to get involved in the petroleum industry, gambling by spending his savings on Agip stocks, a gamble that paid off. By the time the 24 year-old Berlusconi retired from the army in 1960 with the rank of captain, commanding an infantry battalion, he had amassed a large amount of capital for someone his age.
After buying his way into the public service broadcaster RAI, owned by the Ministry of Communications, he became a propaganda-broadcasting TV/radio personality and moderately successful singer in the mid and late 1960s (recording three albums with a few top 40 hits on them). Using a combination of personal charm, competence and bribes he continued his meteoric rise and became Minister of Communications in 1972, a post he held until the end of the regime in 1980. In 1977 he also became Minister of Foreign Affairs since the aging Grandi was too tired to combine this function with the office of Prime Minister. Once considered promising, his political career was abruptly ended when the fascist regime was voted out of power in 1979 and finally handed over power in 1980 to the newly formed coalition. He used his personal wealth, his connections, his fame and his charm to climb up the ranks of the fascist party. He used his wealth to finance the PNF during its years in opposition and became its new face, replacing the gerontocracy of 60, 70 and 80 year-olds leading it until then.
In 1989, the now 53 year-old Berlusconi officially became the new party leader and his party continued the trend that had begun in the mid 1980s: increasing popularity. The latent popularity of fascism was demonstrated perfectly when broadcaster RAI organized a poll titled “the greatest Italian who has ever lived.” Benito Mussolini was voted the third greatest Italian who ever lived, behind Camillo Cavour and Giuseppe Garibaldi who held first and second place respectively. Capitalizing on this result, using propaganda Berlusconi kept reminding people of the golden years of fascism under Mussolini. In 1991 the PNF became the largest party in parliament and the young, inexperienced King appointed Berlusconi to the position of Prime Minister, ending 12 years in the opposition. He initiated wage and price controls to curb inflation; these policies weren’t very popular but they worked. Secondly, he used the IRI to help save and restructure ailing businesses and issued a stimulus package to the economy worth 120 billion dollars. Under his rule Italy entered a new period of economic growth in the 1990s, although it must be said that oil prices rose again in this period. Economists pointed this out, but it was ignored by the fascist propaganda machine and, with communism discredited, democratized Italian Fascism became the strongest alternative to neo-liberalism, which fascists considered “a socioeconomic and political disease.” Its dirigist economic policies gained traction in second and third world countries once again, while Western social-democratic parties adopted them too (though vehemently denied being inspired by fascism).
The 1990s saw 2-3% annual economic growth, which was high compared to the Western world (though nowhere near the heights of “Il Glorioso Venti”). Otherwise the decade remained uneventful. Then, on July 29th 2000, Mussolini’s birthday, Italy saw a terrorist attack on the subway in Rome with sarin nerve gas during the morning commute, killing hundreds of people. Berlusconi declared martial law and ruled by decree, reforming the OVRA to find the culprits by any means necessary. He also announced that Italy would retaliate to any use of weapons of mass destruction against it in kind. It legitimized fascist rule even further and it caused the people to accept stricter censorship laws and diminished privacy rights. Italy entered strong cooperation with the United States led by Clinton in his third term. America had also seen an attack for its continued support to Italy. The OVRA rapidly tracked down the suspects and took them to secret prisons on the islands of Ponza and Ventotene, which had been used as prisons for political opponents by Mussolini for decades. The OVRA interpreted “by any means necessary” as the right to use torture, which they did, and they learnt the radical Islamic Al-Qaeda group led by billionaire Osama Bin-Laden was behind it. He hated Italy for its continued rule over large numbers of Muslim Arabs and he despised American support for Israel.
An ultimatum was delivered to the government of Sudan that demanded: 1) the extradition of Osama Bin-Laden and known associates, 2) American and Italian inspections of military bases, training facilities and command facilities, 3) the closure of property owned by Al-Qaeda or Bin-Laden and 4) the arrest of all known members of this organization. The Sudanese government rejected these demands and instead proposed to bring Bin-Laden before a Sudanese court, a proposal rejected because in an Islamic country such a court would undoubtedly be biased in favour of the defendant.
US Navy ships appeared in the Red Sea and started pelting Sudan, the country which hosted Osama Bin-Laden, with cruise missiles while Italian guided missile battleships Littorio, Vittorio Veneto, Impero and Roma did the same, also using their 15 inch guns to pummel coastal defences and naval facilities. Italian tanks stationed in Eritrea spearheaded a land based offensive toward the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. Another spearhead advanced along the coast to ensure Bin-Laden didn’t escape by sea to his home country of Saudi Arabia. The Regia Aeronautica and the US Air Force made sure that an escape by air was impossible by taking air superiority. Berlusconi helped in that regard by making true on his words that a WMD attack on Italy would see a response in kind. Controversially, he deployed a 5 kiloton tactical nuclear warhead against Wadi Seidna Air Base, 22 kilometres away from Khartoum and Sudan’s most important air force base. The Italo-American military victory and the arrest of President Omar al-Bashir, who was shipped to The Hague and sentenced to life in prison, boosted Berlusconi’s popularity. Osama Bin-Laden, who was caught on the run, let himself get killed in a gun fight rather than surrender, and afterwards his organization in Sudan crumbled as the OVRA started to operate there.
Other Muslim countries were subsequently terrified of getting into Italy’s hair, more so since Italy had proven willing to use tactical nuclear weapons. Among them was Tunisia which crushed groups sympathizing with the cause of Islamic extremism. Tunisia, which continued to harbour an Italian community of 125.000, had always been wary of its neighbour. They tiptoed around Italian interests in their country and in terms of foreign policy had Finlandized themselves because the last thing they wanted was to provoke an Italian invasion. Saudi Arabia responded similarly, fearing the Shah’s Iran, which had the fifth strongest army in the world, would team up with Italy to expand its influence in the Persian Gulf and Middle East at the Saudis’ expense.
The new “Duce’s” popularity reached its zenith in the early 2000s. After four consecutive terms in office, between 1991 and 2007, however, Berlusconi was caught in a major corruption and infidelity scandal that severely damaged the PNF and saw fascism return to the opposition. Subsequently, the question is to what degree fascism, momentarily in power again as a junior coalition party, will define the 21st century. Fascist imagery, sometimes as simple as streets and piazzas named after Mussolini, remain ubiquitous and hundreds of thousands of tourists and supporters flock to his mausoleum in Predappio every year. Though the fascist dictatorship ended in 1980, its influence stretched much further and the twentieth century was indeed the fascist century. Mussolini had changed an entire nation and his legacy continues to affect Italy and the world. Whether the 21st will also be a fascist century remains to be seen.
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Oh, incredible, a _GENERALLY_ COMPETENT Berlusconi!
Well, apart of the ending with corruption and infidelity, I hope that in this timeline he had go in prison...
Well, apart of the ending with corruption and infidelity, I hope that in this timeline he had go in prison...
The world is better, much better ITTL.
The USSR not collapsing and massively growing in a New Union Treaty is what is happening ITTL. Nice take there. Figure out, the USSR economy is the 3rd largest ITTL.
China is the largest, that's for sure. Especially after reunification in the 90s.
Mind if you give us a map?
The USSR not collapsing and massively growing in a New Union Treaty is what is happening ITTL. Nice take there. Figure out, the USSR economy is the 3rd largest ITTL.
China is the largest, that's for sure. Especially after reunification in the 90s.
Mind if you give us a map?
why doesnt the us have a two term limit in this timeline? how did the space race go, if it happened at all?
Yeah, but the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe still experienced 70 years of Neo-Stalinism under Molotov, Zhadanov, Kaganovich and all those clowns.
Not to mention the continuance of Apartheid, neo-colonialism and white minority rule in large swathes of Africa.
How is Communist North China (Manchuria) doing? Also, how was the Reza Pahlavi's son adjusted to being a mere constitutional monarch?
Penny for The Guy
Banned
Applause
All in, an interesting TL to have fascism survive as more than an epithet.
Also fascinating that fascism gets a second chance in the absence of "doctrine". (Benito's... or Giovanni Gentile's ... "Doctrine of Fascism" notwithstanding.)
All in, an interesting TL to have fascism survive as more than an epithet.
Also fascinating that fascism gets a second chance in the absence of "doctrine". (Benito's... or Giovanni Gentile's ... "Doctrine of Fascism" notwithstanding.)
I'm curious what the world map would look like too - between Italy and Portugal retaining their African holdings, South China and the newly-democratic USSR, it sounds like a very different place.
All in, an interesting TL to have fascism survive as more than an epithet.
Also fascinating that fascism gets a second chance in the absence of "doctrine". (Benito's... or Giovanni Gentile's ... "Doctrine of Fascism" notwithstanding.)
Fascism did have a doctrine: "slap cheesy nationalist rhetoric over anything, as long as that anything is something that would make the country's upper bourgeoisie happy".
So I've only read the first two pages and my ability to turn off my sense of disbelief is destroyed. In spite of there being new forces available in the form of the Italians, up to and including one of the biggest Air forces and navies ever and an entire theater that can be ripped from, both Norway AND France go down like a stack of cards.
This of course flies in the face of just how shoe-string both Norway and Sicklecut were. Norway relied on the transports getting lucky and getting aboard. A friendly med means the UK has more toys to play with in general. Top that off with an utter lack of good mountaineers since you'd need them to take on the Alpini Divisions Italy had, who happened to be pretty good and fighting in a region they were drilled for years on. It going about as planned is handwavium pura.
THEN France still collapses under Sicklecut, even though they can move divisions out from the Alps and, oh I don't know, form a reserve, the big thing they lacked most of all when faced with such an event. Even marginal boosts to the French would likely fuck the German's plans. Sure, I don't expect a wash where they lose their entire armored fist, but it'd wreck the mobile arm of the Wehrmacht. This also ignores Italian expeditions that may or may not occur to make Mussolini look good to his people and to the world. Handwavium Magna right there, even accounting for the French still fighting.
There's creating a narrative, and then there's what should realistically happen when circumstances come about.
This of course flies in the face of just how shoe-string both Norway and Sicklecut were. Norway relied on the transports getting lucky and getting aboard. A friendly med means the UK has more toys to play with in general. Top that off with an utter lack of good mountaineers since you'd need them to take on the Alpini Divisions Italy had, who happened to be pretty good and fighting in a region they were drilled for years on. It going about as planned is handwavium pura.
THEN France still collapses under Sicklecut, even though they can move divisions out from the Alps and, oh I don't know, form a reserve, the big thing they lacked most of all when faced with such an event. Even marginal boosts to the French would likely fuck the German's plans. Sure, I don't expect a wash where they lose their entire armored fist, but it'd wreck the mobile arm of the Wehrmacht. This also ignores Italian expeditions that may or may not occur to make Mussolini look good to his people and to the world. Handwavium Magna right there, even accounting for the French still fighting.
There's creating a narrative, and then there's what should realistically happen when circumstances come about.