Epilogue: From Great Adventure to Great Catastrophe

The last chapter analyzes fascist foreign policy and its desire to dominate territories that again led the Italians into war. It also analyzes the not linear relations with nazism until 1939. Before joining the nazi ally in the European war on June 10, 1940, Fascist Italy ventured into other wars. First there was the conquest of Ethiopia, then the invasion of Albania in the spring of 1939, and meanwhile fascist Italy's strong engagement in the Spanish Civil War on the nationalist side. The Italian fascist intervention on Spanish soil lasted from autumn 1936 to late spring 1939. An estimate of about 75,000 Italian soldiers took part as “volunteer” in the Spanish Civil War. The term “volunteer” cleared the Fascist government of any international accusations of interference in Spanish affairs. Undoubtedly, a small number of departing warriors left for ideological reasons, believing in the cause of the Spanish insurgents. However, many “volunteers” were drafted with the promise of pay and support for families left at home. Often, they did not know their destination, which could have been Africa or Spain. The fascist wars in Ethiopia, in Spain, and in Albania became an antidote to unemployment. Faced with the regime’s broken promises and its inability to realize the model of the “new settler” at home, the fascist only solution remained financially supporting the export of surplus workers to Africa and Europe. These missions responded to concrete economic needs and renewed popular consensus by maintaining the expectation of military success. This project continued to be pursued until the extreme consequences of entering World War II. The entry of the United States into the war in December 1941 also gave many Italians not only the horrible certainty that they had entered a world war but also that they would certainly lose it. Resilience on the home front dissolved even before the summer 1943. The country had been living at the limit of its needs for years, the south began to feel hunger—especially in cities like Naples where popular demonstrations became daily. On July 25, 1943, Mussolini’s arrest appeared to be a liberating moment for a large part of the Italian population, but the history of fascism would not end there, however, but in a far more dramatic fashion with the brutality of German military occupation and the subsequent bloody confrontation among Italians.