Italian Fascism and the Female Body

Sport, Submissive Women and Strong Mothers

Gigliola Gori

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135762735
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This is the first text to examine women and sport in Italy during the period 1861-1945. To qualify and quantify the impact of fascism on Italian Women's sport, the author first of all examines the pre-fascist period in terms of female physical culture. The text then describes how during the fascist era, women moved strictly within a framework designed by medicine and eugenics, religious and traditional education. The country aspired to emancipation, as promised by the fascist revolution but emancipation was hard to advance under the fascist regime because of male hegemonic trends in the country. This book shows how the engagement of women in some sporting activity did promote and support some gender emancipation. The conclusion of the book demonstrates how, in the post-war period, women found it hard to advance further on, for a number of reasons.

1

Fascism as a Cult of Virility and the Duce as its Political Athlete

If one considers Fascism to be a political movement of the right aiming at totalitarianism, undoubtedly it was established in Italy by Benito Mussolini. Founded in Milan on 23 March 1919, his movement took the name of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento. Within a few years the Fascist movement had gained power, as a consequence of the March on Rome of 28 October 1922, and very soon it took complete control of society under the government of the Duce (Leader) Mussolini.

In those years the rampant nationalism on which Italian Fascist ideology was based found fertile ground in every European country where the wounds of the First World War were still open, and especially in Germany, through Hitler’s Nazi ideology. All the regimes and movements of the right that arose in Europe between the two world wars may be seen as tributaries of Fascist Italy. Italy had initiated the first experiment since the French Revolution of 1789 in the institutionalisation of a new ‘secular’ religion in Europe,¹ and had already expressed all the leading ideas of subsequent versions of fascism, from the ‘nationalisation’ of the masses to the ‘religiosity’ of the symbols. The Italian Fascist plan included defence of the ‘race’, in which a massive cult of the body had an important part, as it contributed to forging the ‘new Italian’ on the basis of Fascist aesthetics and style. This new man had to coincide with the model embodied by the leader, Mussolini, with whom Italians were induced to identify, with more or less success.

As will be seen, in Italy the predominant ideologies came together in the Fascist revolution. Once power had been obtained Fascism built a mighty pyramidal organisation, structured by the Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF). The intention was to mobilise the masses according to the requirements of the regime, with an ideology based on a kind of civic religiosity. It very soon became a political religion, in which belief in myths, rites and symbols was linked to faith in Mussolini, the ‘man of destiny’. People were asked to ‘believe, obey, fight’ in the name of the Duce.

Care was taken to spread the ideology in order to obtain popular consensus on every political decision. In truth, of course, consensus was discontinued over the years. It reached its apex in 1936, as a consequence of Italy’s victory in its war with Ethiopia, when the myth of imperial Italy became a reality, but it was very soon reduced because of the excessive intrusiveness of the regime, increasingly becoming little more than a background for the regime’s self-celebration. The final blows to the maintenance of consensus came with Mussolini’s disastrous decisions on foreign policy, from Italy’s military failure in Spain to the tightening of the regime’s bonds with Nazi Germany, which entailed the imposition of racial laws on Italy and, finally, participation in Hitler’s war.²

The main aim of the Fascist educational plan was fascistizzare (to ‘fascistise’), that is, to transform Italians – traditionally perceived as individualistic and indolent – into a chosen race of strong ‘new men’. They had to be mindful of the glorious past of the Roman empire and be ready to imitate its grandeur, in order to found a new civilisation that was destined to last forever. Such a plan, which accompanied Fascism from its advent, deeply involved schools, employment, spare time, culture and the arts. The task was to forge the character of citizens in order to give birth to the ‘new Italian’, a virile, dynamic, bellicose individual. This plan was even a source of inspiration for Hitler, whose reorganisation of German people’s lives was inspired by the Italian model with the Duce, or Führer, as its spiritual guide.

Historical and Ideological Premises

The term ‘Fascism’ had its roots in Italian culture. It derives from the Latin fastis, a symbol comprising an axe and a bundle of rods that was linked to the cult of the ‘sacred fire’.³ Even before the constitution of the Fasti Italiani di Combattimento in 1919 the symbol had already been used by the interventionist movement known as the Fasti di Azione Rivoluzionaria, promoted by Mussolini in 1915 after he had left the Socialist Party.⁴ The symbol was also used by those members of the Futurist movement who formed the Fasti Futuristi. However, the fate of the symbol remained tied to Mussolini and the Fascist movement, which became the PNF in 1921, down to the fall of the regime in 1943.⁵

Within the Fasti Italiani di Combattimento there were dissatisfied veterans of the First World War – Arditi soldiers, irredentists, Futurists and Dannunziani, followers of Gabriele D’Annunzio⁶ – from a wide range of social backgrounds. They believed in the comradeship born of the war, in an ardent nationalistic spirit and in the need for radical change in society. As exponents of the Fascist truth they were firmly directed by their charismatic leader Mussolini, and were ready to engage in revolutionary adventure and impose their creed by force. The conquest of power in 1922 was a kind of coup d’etat which neither the government nor King Victor Emmanuel III could oppose; it was then widely considered as a temporary and necessary step to re-establish order in a nation in crisis. In fact, it was the first step towards the foundation of a dictatorial regime that lasted two decades.

The success of the Fascists, who considered themselves defenders of the country and regenerators of its morals, could be attributed mainly to their repetition of the theme of the ‘sacred Fatherland’ on which the civil and moral unity of Italians was built. This had been a successful ideological theme since the nineteenth century. From 1861, when the Kingdom of Italy had been established and had begun controlling most of the country (with such notable exceptions as Rome and Venetia), the problem of how to accomplish the moral regeneration of Italians had become fundamental. Italians had suffered domination and division, losing their identity as a people, for at least 14 centuries, since the fall of the western Roman empire. The Fatherland was seen as the ‘supreme corporate body’ and as the ‘first educator’, to which a ‘religious’ devotion, up to and including the sacrifice of one’s life, had to be given. It found its ideologist⁷ in Giuseppe Mazzini, and its convincing advocates among liberal businessmen and officials. Up to about the end of the nineteenth century the liberal government, having rejected the revolutionary and republican aspects of Mazzini’s creed, had endeavoured to educate citizens in the cult of the Fatherland and the formal ideal of liberty, overhauling the schools and military education,⁸ and emphasising the monarchic institution, the traditions of the Fatherland and the heroism of the fallen.

The ‘nationalisation’ of the masses by means of the exaltation of the cult of the Fatherland, by now diffused to a large extent throughout Europe, brought meagre results in Italy. The common people’s atavistic distrust of the aristocratic governing class worked against it. Rarely did any of the common people become involved in patriotic demonstrations, as the leading liberals feared not being able to control their strength. There was opposition from the Catholic Church, which, having been deprived of its remaining temporal powers in Italy after the seizure of Rome by Italian forces in 1870, opposed the new civic religion by any means available. The Church’s main purpose was to maintain at least its spiritual supremacy over the consciences of Italians.⁹

By the beginning of the twentieth century the twin themes of civil religion and moral regeneration of citizens had ceased to form a primary objective for the government, but they remained matters for further study and debate among intellectuals. As for the Church, it now had to face the new danger of socialist ideology, which was largely atheistic and materialist, as well as the threat of the nationalistic ‘pagan’ movement of Enrico Corradini, who drew inspiration from Japan.¹⁰ When the clearly anti-Bolshevik Fascist ideology gained power, the Church did not oppose it, considering Mussolini’s anticlericalism to be less dangerous than Marxist ideology.

The end of the First World War, in which Italy, though victorious, had sacrificed thousands of lives, left the fate of the city of Fiume and the region of Dalmatia unresolved. The Italian irredentists’ claims on these territories. as well as the diffuse state of effervescence caused by participation in the First World War, gave a new impulse both to the theme of civil religion – which was celebrated by means of the cult of martyrdom and heroes – and to the theme of revolutionary nationalism. These themes found authoritative voices in intellectuals of the time, such as Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the founder of Futurism, and the celebrated poet D’Annunzio.

The Futurist movement had been founded by Marinetti in 1909. It promoted such values as instinct, strength, courage, war, youth, sport, dynamism and speed, as exemplified in bicycles, motorcycles, cars and aeroplanes. In his Fondazione e Manifesto del Futurismo (Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism) Marinetti affirmed:

Up until now literature has exalted thoughtful immobility, ecstasy and sleep. We want to exalt aggressive movement, feverish insomnia, running footsteps, mortal jumping, slapping and fisticuffs.¹¹

Initially, Futurism was presented as a total ideology that incorporated art, customs, morals and politics in a revolutionary and nonconformist vision of life. It supported the Fascist movement, although after 1920 many Futurists detached themselves from Mussolini because they disagreed with the rightwing shift of Fascism. Futurism then abandoned any totalitarian intentions and survived as a literary and artistic school, finding followers and supporters in several European countries. Nevertheless, Futurism bequeathed a number of values to Fascism, such as the cult of anti-intellectualism, antagonism, virility, youth, speed and sport, and an innovative use of language in political propaganda. Other values, such as dynamism and individualism, were soon damped down in favour of the new Fascist order. Despite the declared friendship between Mussolini and Marinetti, the only intellectual Futurist who obtained a position in the government was Giuseppe Bottai.

Gabriele D’Annunzio, man of letters, poet, aesthete of great charm, military commander and sportsman,¹² placed his very refined art at the service of the religious myth of the Fatherland, proclaiming himself its Vate (high priest). He sought to restore the past greatness of ancient Rome, by that time forgotten, and to breathe new life into the political and religious ideologies of the preceding centuries. Through his attempt to seize Fiume for Italy by force, in 1919, D’Annunzio realised a fusion between oratorical art, patriotic mysticism and political activism.¹³ Together with his followers in the Fiume adventure, whom he called ‘legionaries’ in remembrance of ancient Rome, the Vate established an Italian government in Fiume, the Regency of Carnaro, and inspired the founding of the utopian League of Fiume, which aimed to galvanise all oppressed populations to revolt.¹⁴ The brief experience at Fiume ended with the abandonment of the city by order of the Italian government, but it notably enhanced the myth of D’Annunzio as the prototype of the ‘new man’, victorious in every enterprise and therefore capable of founding the new Italy.

Mussolini, who had rhetorically supported the occupation of Fiume, was considered a traitor by D’Annunzio’s followers for failing to participate in it. Nevertheless, the Fiume adventure in effect constituted the first step in a wider revolutionary plan agreed by Mussolini, which was to end with the March on Rome – an idea suggested by D’Annunzio – and the subsequent conquest of Italy.

In 1924 Fascism was tarnished by the assassination of the opposition deputy Giacomo Matteotti. Italy was deeply shaken and even the survival of Fascism itself was in grave danger. The scorn of many coagulated around the figure of D’Annunzio, who, with his charisma, seemed the only man capable of driving Italians on to the realisation of the new Italy. However, the initiative failed to find practical realisation and the poet decided to retire to his residence at Vittoriale near Lake Garda. There he withdrew into himself and became a disenchanted observer of subsequent events.¹⁵ The Duce wanted to maintain a certain friendly relationship with D’Annunzio, but this was always polluted by ambivalence and jealousy: Mussolini felt both admiration for the genial man of letters and a certain hostility towards the man himself, thus undermining the myth that fluttered about him. This passionate relationship, somewhere between love and hate, lasted until the poet’s death in 1938.

In conclusion, then, the ideologies of the first two decades of the twentieth century, having been interwoven with revolutionary appeals, nationalistic claims, youthful dynamism and political mysticism, favoured the Fascist movement, which appropriated them. Despite the numerous ‘punishment expeditions’ and the consequent violence committed by members of Fascist squads, Mussolini seized power after the March on Rome without shedding any blood. In Italy the climate of uncertainty and disorder, which seemed to have brought the country almost to the brink of civil war, suggested a prudent acquiescence by most people in the coup d’état. This had been arranged by Mussolini, who had been careful to secure the connivance, or at least the neutrality, of a number of powerful people. Indeed, the coup was a ‘telephone revolution’, as the irascible Fascist Italo Balbo called it when he realised that the March on Rome had been little more than a parade.¹⁶

The Myth of the ‘New Man’

In the years of the Fascist reg...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword
• Series Editor’s Foreword
• Preface
• 1. Fascism as a cult of virility and the Duce as its political athlete
• 2. Model women and physical training before the Fascist era
• 3. Fascist models of femininity
• 4. Sports medicine and female athleticism under the Fascist regime
• 5. The education system and the Fascist youth organisations
• 6. Girls and young women at health resorts
• 7. The Accademia Nazionale Femminile di Educazione Fisica
• 8. Spare-time activities in the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro
• 9. Sportswomen’s contests and displays
• 10. Fashion, aesthetics and the‘true woman’
• 11. Sportswomen of the Fascist era: biographies and interviews
• 12. Women’s emancipation through sport under Fascism and after
• Notes
• Index