Journal of Contemporary History

This article presents a statistical analysis of a sample of 440 squadristi from Bologna and Florence, from which emerge useful data regarding who the squadristi were and what was attractive about squadrismo. The myth of squadrismo grew up during the period of squadra activity and consisted of a palingenetic vision of politics which is also to be found at the heart of fascist totalitarianism. The ‘new man’ represented by the squadrista is revealed by studying some of the ways in which the myth was diffused: in novels and the worship of fascist martyrs. Finally, the reburial of the martyrs of Florence in Santa Croce in 1934 and the Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution in 1942 exemplify in different ways and with different purposes the regime's use of this myth.

This article analyses the development of a fascist organization abroad in the 1920s. The National Fascist Party established the Fasci all'Estero hoping to extend its grip on the direction of foreign affairs: the Fasci's relentless war on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs lasted until their incorporation in the New State in 1928, illustrating the dynamic balance between revolutionary and conservative forces that produced Mussolini's personal dictatorship. In 1925, the organization promoted the idea of a Fascist International, hoping to expand the fascist revolution beyond Italy's borders. Like the attempt to take over the direction of foreign policy, the campaign for a worldwide expansion of fascism ended in failure: by the end of the decade the Fasci were firmly subordinated to Mussolini's regime and had practically vanished from the political scene.

This article centres on a critique of Zeev Sternhell's influential account of the intellectual antecedents of Italian fascism in The Birth of Fascist Ideology, published in English translation in 1994. Although he shows the import of that ideology and pinpoints the key antecedents, Sternhell does not convincingly explain the emergence of fascist ideas, nor does he take advantage of his evidence to illuminate the peculiar dynamic of the fascist experiment, with its disastrous outcome. Probing the inadequacies of Sternhell's approach not only points the way to a more fruitful alternative, but also helps us understand the very different limits in a recent body of scholarship that, while taking Italian fascism seriously anew, plays down ideology and articulated ideas in favour of spectacle, ritual, rhetoric and the body.

Great Power efforts to control arms trafficking began in the late nineteenth century, but were applied only to colonial territories and were motivated by concerns for the stability of European empires. The first world war altered the international consensus that the arms trade was essentially free, and the 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain tried to impose new restrictions on arms trading. Though Saint-Germain was never ratified, the League of Nations continued its efforts to control the arms trade at a conference in Geneva in 1925. The League's efforts had the endorsement of the major arms-producing powers and even the USA, which had refused to join the League. The Geneva conference made clear, however, that smaller, non-producing states saw free trade in arms as essential to their security, and resisted what they saw as infringements on their sovereignty and security. The compromise Geneva Convention did not assuage small states, and, like its predecessor, was never ratified. The League's force of moral example, however, did produce long-term changes in state policies on arms trading. This suggests that the League's legacy should be judged not just by its failure to avert the second world war, but by its success in establishing norms of international behaviour. Also, smaller states, not just Great Powers, had the ability to block League initiatives.

In March 1948, Sir Percy Sillitoe, Director-General of M15, flew to Australia to inform its Prime Minister, J.B. Chifley, that a spy ring had been detected operating out of the Soviet embassy in Canberra. The details Sillitoe produced were vague and no suspect could be arrested. Then chaos broke out. The Pentagon banned all information flowing to Australia: Australian/British/US relations became strained: the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) was established under the aegis of M15, but it failed to placate the USA; and the Chifley government lost the subsequent elections. What was behind these espionage sensations? The defection of the KGB man in Canberra, Vladimir Petrov, in 1954 was expected to produce the insider's exposé on local spying and although suspected spies were paraded, nothing happened. Then in 1996, everything was made clear. The US National Security Agency (NSA) released the Australian Venona papers, comprising the decrypted Soviet cables detailing the operation of this 1940s spy ring. They had been sealed in the NSA's most secret archives for 50 years to avoid compromising all Sigint (Signal intelligence) work. The exploration of these events by Australian historians has hitherto been handicapped by a lack of knowledge about the detail of this missing intelligence dimension. The revealing of that secret now provides the opportunity for these disjointed events to be viewed in their proper Cold War perspective. This article analyses the events from the aspect of what was known before the Venona releases and what can now be known of those same events.

Covert action — the clandestine manipulation of affairs in foreign countries — has been a unique aspect of the USA's postwar international conduct and a practice that has done much to define the image of the Central Intelligence Agency. Despite efforts to give the concept a venerable lineage, it is primarily a product of the early Cold War years. Faced with the prospect of Soviet subversion in unstable western Europe, President Truman, Secretaries Marshall and Forrestal, and their advisers concluded that the USA needed a similar capacity. The idea was effectively articulated and put in place by George Kennan and implemented by OSS veterans in the newly-created CIA. Its seeming success in influencing the 1948 Italian elections made covert action a growth industry for the CIA as the Cold War intensified. Over time, the policy-makers who instituted covert action as a tool of statecraft had second thoughts about its development, while the abrupt and unanticipated end of the Cold War with the fall of the Soviet Union has raised questions about its overall utility and effectiveness. Such questions remain controversial, but they must be seriously addressed as the Cold War fades into history.

The Congress for Cultural Freedom, formed in 1950 and lasting until 1979, was a major international institution based in Paris and dedicated to freedom of the intellect in the arts and sciences. However, since the late 1960s, revelations about its close links with the CIA have clouded its position within post-war cultural history. Yet, without an appreciation of its cultural origins its relevance becomes reduced to being merely a major example of intellectual fraud. This article attempts to reassess parts of the cultural dimension to its creation and raison d'être, largely through the figure of one of its principal founders, Melvin J. Lasky.

Viktor Frankl gained international recognition based upon his heroic survival of Auschwitz and his subsequent claim to have founded the third Viennese school of psychotherapy — logotherapy. This article revises this traditional view of Frankl by examining how logotherapy was actually developed under the auspices of the nazi-sponsored Goering Institute in the 1930s. In addition, his survival of Auschwitz is problematized by the questionable medical experimentation he performed in 1940–42 on Jews who had committed suicide in order to avoid deportation, and his limited (three-day) experience in Auschwitz. This new contextualization explains the mass appeal of Viktor Frankl as both a peculiar case of the Austrian burial of the ‘ambiguous past’ and the longing amongst Americans for an uplifting version of the Holocaust.