Abstract
When it comes to the relationship between the Italian armed forces and the regime during the fascist era, the traditional Italian historiographical position has been that, apart from the Regia Aeronautica (Royal Air Force), a new and peculiar institution which was considered fascist par excellence, the military had managed to maintain a high degree of independence from the regime, remaining faithful to the nation and to the crown rather than Mussolini. Between the Regio Esercito (Royal Army) and the Regia Marina (Royal Navy), the latter is usually considered the most staunchly monarchical, and hence the one which most stubbornly defended its autonomy from the regime’s totalitarian aspirations.
Fabio De Ninno’s Fascisti Sul Mare (Fascists on the Sea) challenges such interpretations. The author expands his previous research on the submarines of Fascism adopting an approach that goes beyond an analysis of the navy as a closed institution. Instead, he uses its relationship with Mussolini as a tool to investigate the nature of the regime itself, reminding us that, for the Duce, foreign policy and most of all war were the final test of politics. De Ninno’s thesis is that the Regia Marina, permeated by nationalism, disappointed by a foreign policy perceived as weak if not even a betrayal of national interests, and incensed by limited support for naval expansion in post-war liberal Italy, agreed to a ‘pact’ with Mussolini from the beginning of fascist rule. At the base of this cooperation lay the fact that the admirals saw in the Duce someone who could enable them to reach the goals they had long dreamed of achieving. Admiral Thaon di Revel, future Minister of the Navy, supported the March on Rome and consequently already in November 1922 Mussolini stressed the importance of a strong navy. The entente between the navy and fascism had begun, and this relationship would survive, despite temporary hardships (with Revel resigning in 1925) for the next 20 years. While sympathy for fascism was far from rare in the institution, the agreement was, in the author’s words, ‘subordinated to the project of an expansive naval policy, in compliance with the Mussolinian idea of making Italy a Great Power’ (46). Furthermore, the ‘admirals believed that the regime could satisfy their geopolitical ambitions and tied themselves to fascism, opening the doors of the institution to it’ (234). Analysing the subsequent evolution of the institution, De Ninno claims that the consequence of the agreement was that, contrary to the common belief, the monarchy’s influence in the institution became limited. The navy described in the book is an institution that, during the process of totalitarization that the country went through, was far from the traditional image of an impermeable and exclusively monarchic institution.
The author argues that talking of a ‘fascist navy’ would be an exaggeration, for the regime had not completely fascistized the institution and its men. However, Mussolini managed, with the complicity of the admirals (men like Giuseppe Sirianni, undersecretary and then minister since 1930, and Domenico Cavagnari, chief of staff since 1934, who did not shy from political involvement), to decisively influence the navy’s military policy, creating a ‘navy of Mussolini’, which ‘at the same time differed from the one of the Liberal era’ (238). Mussolini’s influence affected the development of the navy in harmful ways: ‘the naval policy was progressively bended to the Duce’s military amateurism, first with the search for parity with France and then with the belief that the obsolete airplanes and submarines Italy had would be enough to face the British Empire’ (234). Furthermore, drawing a comparison with other European navies of the time, the author argues that the choice not to build aircraft carriers and other short-sighted decisions were not just the result of considerations of naval strategy, being rather the expression of an institutional and political context of the highly fascistized navy of the time. By allowing that, De Ninno concludes, the navy had contributed to the state of unpreparedness the Italian armed forces were in when Mussolini decided to enter the Second World War.
Thanks to his thorough treatment of the historiography, and drawing on a massive amount of primary source material, ranging from Italian and foreign archival documents to memoirs and magazine publications, De Ninno’s work offers an innovative and believable interpretation of the history of the Italian navy in the Second World War, one which is likely to fuel a lively debate. Further analysis on the relationship between the regime and the armed forces would indeed be a welcome contribution to our understanding of fascism.