1st Edition
The March on Rome Violence and the Rise of Italian Fascism
Acknowledgements
Preface
Abbreviations
1. The Coup d'État Policy
Seditious plans
The Fiume exploit
From Fiume to Rome?
2. Political violence
The struggle for the local hegemony
The anniversary policy
Strategies for violence and seizing power
The general strike and its aftermath
3. Towards the March
Talk of a coup
Organising the March
Defending the State
4. The March on Rome
"It’s pouring": the Fascist mobilisation
The revoking of the state of siege
The fascists in Bologna
The appointing of Mussolini
Demobilisation
5. The March after the March
Paper battles
A 'typically Italian revolution': Diplomacy and the March on Rome
The 'bivouac speech' and the parliamentary debate
Army reports
The first official representation
6. A Year of Fascist Domination
Violence and public order
The transformation of the State
Time to draw a balance
Conclusion
Index
Biography
Giulia Albanese is Associate Professor at the University of Padua. Her research focuses on the origins of Fascism, political violence and authoritarian cultures in the interwar years. Her previous books include Dittature mediterranee. Sovversioni fasciste e colpi di stato in Italia, Spagna, Portogallo (2016). With Roberta Pergher, she edited In the Society of Fascists: Acclamation, Acquiescence and Agency in Mussolini’s Italy (2012).
"It is all very well guffawing when Donald Trump is portrayed as Il Douche.
But the actual Duce, Benito Mussolini, was the first modern European dictator, the first fascist and the first totalitarian. His career is worth examining at least as seriously as that of his junior and sometime admirer, Adolf Hitler. How excellent, then, that we now have a solid translation of Giulia Albanese’s detailed study of Mussolini’s accession to power in the so-called March on Rome, part paramilitary coup and part politicians’ backstairs deal. What Albanese starkly underlines is how violent Fascists were from start to finish and therefore how likely it was that, once in office, Mussolini would establish a tyranny for a generation."
- R.J.B. Bosworth, Jesus College, Oxford.
"In this timely and important book, Giulia Albanese forces us to rethink the basis of Fascist rule. Mussolini was far from being simply a showman or a wily operator. The March on Rome demonstrates powerfully that Mussolini’s regime was a dictatorship, with violence at its core, from the very beginning."
- Roberta Pergher, Indiana University.
