明治政経 2007 I

In the middle of the 19th century, two national causes above all others excited the enthusiasm of European liberals: the unification of Italy and the unification of Germany. These unions duly came to pass――the one as a joke, the other as a nightmare.

But maybe we should be careful about smiling too indulgently ( 1 ) Italy under the fascist regime run by Benito Mussolini from 1922 to 1943. Of course that despotism was mild compared to its contemporaries in Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany perhaps in part because of an Italian tendency not to take politics too seriously and a certain indifference to politicians, democratic or despotic. We should not exaggerate the Italians' lovable "national character" or simply think of them as a "nice people" since plenty of meanness and brutality was brought out ( 2 ) fascism, but it never turned as nasty as other versions elsewhere.

Although fascism, with its glorification of the state and the leader, is meant to be right-wing, it had obvious features in common ( 3 ) supposedly left-wing forms of totalitarianism: Hitler called himself a National Socialist, and Mussolini indeed began as a socialist of the hard left. The new movement took its name from fascio, the Italian word for a group of people, and many organizations used the term before Mussolini came to power.

As in Russia, the crisis of war provided an opportunity for the rapid destruction of lawful government. Despite Italy's apparent position as one of the winners of World War I, victory gave little strength to Italian democracy, and the country's parliamentary government collapsed at the first sharp push from Mussolini in 1922. Much like Germans in 1933, Italians rushed to join what had now become the National Fascist Party.

And yet Italian fascism was always more rhetoric than reality. It was no accident that Mussolini was a journalist, one who had once commented extensively on international affairs and remained ever-ready "with an opinion on anything." Italy was a backward country when he took power, and for all the propaganda, Italy remained backward under fascism. Even by 1940, there were only a million radios in Italy and half a million telephones, for a population ( 4 ) some 44 million.

What now seems to us the most unlikely part of the story of Italian fascism is the part played by many Jews in the early fascist government. But then the small, prosperous Jewish community was more integrated in Italy than in any other European country; before 1914 it had already produced prime ministers, senators, and generals. Mussolini insisted early on that fascism was not anti-Semitic, and even toward the dismal end of his life, he had no enthusiasm for the murderous terror visited on the European Jews.

In the end, the failures of Mussolini's regime were an indirect credit to the Italian people. While Hitler succeeded all too well in making many Germans into a nation of conquerors and killers, the Italians quite ignored Mussolini's attempt to do the same thing to them. Indeed, maybe Hitler should have the last word: The "decadent Italians," he said, had never had their hearts in fascism, and they lacked the hardness necessary for conquest since "the excessive warmth of family relations there overwhelms all the rest." Has a greater compliment ever been paid to any people?