No Fascist Italy

Jlinker613

Banned
Let's suppose that Italy never becomes Fascist and remains an ally and member of the "Big Four" Nations.

Hypothetical changes to the timeline (along with a few of my own):

- Spanish Civil War ends with the country splitting in half with Catalan Regions (Catalonia, Aragon, Veracruz, and Balearics) splitting off as a Communist/Republic state
- Italy captures and annexes Axum to intimidate Ethiopia into its sphere of influence. Linking Eritrea and Italian Somaliland
- Italy, being Anti-Communist, captures the Balearics, Ceuta, and Melilla, and extends its own power
- Italy speeds up its Demographic settlement, sending some 3 million Italians to Libya, Eritrea, and Italian Somaliland
- Germany maintains its preference to China over Japan and is forced to find different allies. Hitler pushes off his military plans for some time in the future, especially until after plan Z is completed
 

Esopo

Banned
No fascist italy could easily butterly away hitler and franco--->no civil war.
But whitout italian fleet franco could never invade mainland spain. So spain remains republican and democratic, and we could have struggles between marxists and anarchists. Whitout Mussolini, the anschluss is very difficult.
 
Actually the anschluss is easier since there is no Italian prestige involved to keep Austria independent, perhaps there is even a 1934 anschluss
 

Esopo

Banned
Actually the anschluss is easier since there is no Italian prestige involved to keep Austria independent, perhaps there is even a 1934 anschluss

non fascist italy would care about keeping germany far from its border too.
 
A socialdemocratic Italy, which is likely in the 30s, could well support austrian socialists against Dolfuss ... It is true that socialist leader Turati supported a German union, but if Germany goes nazi or authoritarian, anschluß won't pass easily ...
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
A socialdemocratic Italy, which is likely in the 30s, could well support austrian socialists against Dolfuss ... It is true that socialist leader Turati supported a German union, but if Germany goes nazi or authoritarian, anschluß won't pass easily ...
Do you think VE3 would allow a socialist to become PM? The Italian political scene up-top was pretty virulently anti-Left.
 
Italy would probably still make Ethiopia into its colony.
It would also probably be sending more populations to mostly Libya and possibly Eritrea but not much more to Italian Somaliland.
With 3 million they could easily outpopulate the Eritreans and Arab Libyans but would probably focus more on Greater Italy with Libya and not Eritrea and Italian Somaliland.
 
No fascist Italy mean that the fascist march of Rome was a failure with the King risking in send the army against Benny and co so calling is bluff, arresting him and the other leader who are at the March like Balbo basically destroy the head of the movement who with all probability will descend in infight. Still there is the socialist problem, this mean that for a period there were still political violence and an old style authoritarian goverment, almost surely chosen by the king will lead Italy till the red are history; after that we can have a return to a normal situation, in the long term Italy will see a lot of weak goverment like France.
Internationally we can see a lot of butterfly; Hitler can have more problem in his quest for power without Mussolini example but he will probably still will, in general the right movement wave in Europe will goes without the previous italian takeover so it will be for them a lot more hard find credibility, and in general there will be a lot of estetic difference as was Benny at start the trends.
The Ethiopia war can be averted without Benny, but a more limited action is always a possibility as Abyssynia was very unstable and with a lot of independent warlords, so a series of border incident who get out of hand is a serious possibility, it will not be a full scale invasion but more probably a try to grab more territory possible to create a buffer.
Spain will get a lot less of italian aid here, something will still go as a red takeover will not be seen as a good thing but it will be probably a trickle compared to the fascist bonanza; in this case the Republican win and in the end there will be a reckoning between anarchist, socialist and communist; a communist victory can embold Stalin in try a more aggressive foreign politics and continue to support militant popular front.
Austria will be a sore point between Italy and Germany; Rome don't look at the inglobation of his northern neighbourh very well, as sharing a direct border with Adolf is a little unsettling. The italian government will try to get help from France and UK so we still get OTL situation untill there is consensus, if Italy is alone will probably back out as war is not a option.
The Nazi will probably try to create tension in South Tyrol and try to get a revision of the border.
 

Cook

Banned
If the other members of the Big Four had been willing to give Italy the port of Fiume, Orlando would probably have kept his credibility and the Fascist movement may have been still-born. As with many faults of the Paris Peace conference Wilson was responsible for this one too; Lloyd-George and Clemenceau were both inclined to acquiesce to the Italian territorial claim, while Wilson stubbornly opposed it for months, condemning it on idealistic grounds. That he finally gave in (but too late for Orlando) and he was willing to give in to the Japanese with respect to their claim to the wholly Chinese city of Tsingtao in return for their support for the League of Nations (and the dropping of Japan’s Equal Rights proposal for the League) is an indication of the real value of Wilson ideals when it came to the necessary trading to establish the League.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
When he came to the Throne, he was considered pretty progressive ...
Too bad his track record runs in the diametrically opposite direction. Part of me wants to pity VE3, but there is very little that I find at all likeable about the runt.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Italy would probably still make Ethiopia into its colony.
Why? The Italian invasion of Ethiopia was Mussolini looking for glory and a way to appease the radicals in the Party, though perhaps not in that order.
With 3 million they could easily outpopulate the Eritreans and Arab Libyans but would probably focus more on Greater Italy with Libya and not Eritrea and Italian Somaliland.
That's almost 10% of Italy's total population from 1931-1951. Shipping 1 in 10 people out to settle a sluggishly developing crust of coastline is much easier said than done.
 

Cook

Banned
Why? The Italian invasion of Ethiopia was Mussolini looking for glory and a way to appease the radicals in the Party, though perhaps not in that order.
Too true, they already knew there was nothing of value in Abyssinia. A democratic Italy, founding member of the League of Nations and one of its’ Security Council sitting members wouldn’t have seen any value in destroying the very framework of peace that it had helped establish and thereby outraging the other great powers.

In all likelihood a democratic Italy would have gone down the same path as France’s Third Republic. Economically struggling, politicly unstable with revolving door governments and consequently indecisive foreign and defence policies.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
In all likelihood a democratic Italy would have gone down the same path as France’s Third Republic. Economically struggling, politicly unstable with revolving door governments and consequently indecisive foreign and defence policies.
I think it'd be more unstable than the Third Republic. As polarized and awful as politics were in the Third Republic, the Left was viewed as legitimate by the State.

This was emphatically not the case in Italy, where weak liberal national governments often played second-fiddle to conservative local notables, and OTL's borderline-ASB embrace of Fascism by the Establishment shows how pretty anti-Left things were when times were (relatively) good.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
If there's further unrest or some sort of crisis that gets blamed on the Italian Left, I'd expect somebody like Armando Diaz to set up a dictatorship or strongman government of sorts, more akin to Franco's Spain or Interwar Greece than anything else.
 
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Cook

Banned
To be fair, it was the longest-lived regime France has had since the Revolution.
Yes, but not noted for its stability; France had thirteen Prime Minsters between 1900 and the start of the First World War, seven during four years of war and no less than thirty-three Prime Ministers in the twenty years between the wars. By the end, if you were a member of the French Parliament and you hadn’t been PM at least once there must have been something seriously wrong with you.
 
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Mmmh ... I don't think we were that doomed.

By the way, French ruling classes flirted with Authoritharianism, if not Fascism, for quite a long, before enthusiastically supporting Pètain ...

When VE3 came to power, he refused a brutal crackdown on the Left despite the killing of his father by an anarchist, and supported all the center-left governments by Giolitti.

Fascism came to prominence due to very bad mismanagement of the post-war years' tensions by the Socialist movement, and by the chronic shortisghtedness of the liberal elite.

To prevent it ... I don't know ! XD

If Fascism is butterflied away, however, chances are that Giolitti and Christian Democrats rule for the 20s, then in the 30s Christian Democrats and Socialists take joint power after the ruin of the old Liberal order. Since then, they take the traditional roles of left and right, with Liberals in the middle, maybe fragmented in different formations. As for the italian social and political dinamics in the 1919 and 1921 elections, I don't think we will go towards a fragmented French-like situation, as only Socialists and the People's Party had the organization to survive a proportional law in any sizeable manner. Wait for the moment the Liberals lose their control over peripheral bureaucracy and they are screwed, period ...
 
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