History UsefulNotes / FascistItaly

Mussolini also engaged in some rather bizarre practices. He's one of the few leaders to have been photographed, willingly, [[ShirtlessScene with his shirt off]] (others include VladimirPutin, with BarackObama [[{{Paparazzi}} papped shirtless]]and let's not talk about the Czech Prime Minister caught more-than-shirtless at Silvio Berlusconi's party...), trying to make himself out to be a highly virile Italian. He, like AdolfHitler, encouraged Italian women to have lots of kids and tried to get them to dress modestly, while still liking to see scantily-clad women in movies.

and engaged in some rather bizarre practices. He's one of the few leaders to have been photographed, willingly, [[ShirtlessScene with his shirt off]] (others include VladimirPutin, with BarackObama [[{{Paparazzi}} papped shirtless]]...and let's not talk about the Czech Prime Minister caught more-than-shirtless at Silvio Berlusconi's party...), trying to make himself out to be a highly virile Italian. He, like AdolfHitler, encouraged Italian women to have lots of kids and tried to get them to dress modestly, while still liking to see scantily-clad women in movies.

however, Mussolini's administration soon faced another crisis. In 1921, Italy was invited by the League of Nations to oversee the boundary dispute between Greece and Albania; two years later, four Italian officers were murdered by unknown assaillants while in Greek territory. Mussolini promptly sent an ultimatum demanding an official apology, compensations and capital punishment for the gulty; the Greek government accepted most of the requests; Mussolini, however, was not satisfied and decided to occupy Corfu until greece had accepted his conditions. The whole matter was settled afterwards by the League of Nations.

In that same year, Mussolini's government passed a new electoral law which - needless to say - favoured the Fascist Party and its allies; in addiction to all this, the Italian electorate was "pressured" by the Blackshirts to vote for Mussolini who, unsurprisingly, won the elections. In 1924 Italy - by virtue of the Treaty of Rome (which it had signed along with Yugoslavia) - acquired the city of Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia), which was populated mainly by Italian-speaking people. And Mussolini showed his true face.

A socialist MP, Giacomo Matteotti, publicly denounced Mussolini's crimes (suppression of civil liberties, repression of opposition groups and the like). Mussolini was not pleased and had him kidnapped, beaten up and then stabbed... to add insult to injury, he even ''acknowledged'' his involvement into the murder. In front of the whole Parliament. The socialist MPs, disgusted, left the Parliament as an act protest (as they had no real power anymore) but in doing so they let Mussolini and his croonies alone in Parliament, where they would later pass the so-called ''leggi fascistissime'' ("very-Fascist laws") which, among the other things, '''allowed only one party''' (guess which one?); '''gave''' (a lot) '''more power to the Head of the Government''' (who remained some sort of a PM, as the King was never removed from power); created the '''Grand Council of Fascism''', which was the main body of government; forbade strikes, protests and the like;

A socialist MP, Giacomo Matteotti, publicly denounced Mussolini's crimes (suppression of civil liberties, repression of opposition groups and the like). Mussolini was not pleased and had him kidnapped, beaten up and then stabbed... to add insult to injury, he even ''acknowledged'' his involvement into the murder. In front of the whole Parliament. The socialist MPs protested and leaved the Parliament in protest.

The ''Duce'' remained PM throughout his rule - the King was never removed from power - and engaged in some rather bizarre practices. He's one of the few leaders to have been photographed, willingly, [[ShirtlessScene with his shirt off]] (others include VladimirPutin, with BarackObama [[{{Paparazzi}} papped shirtless]]...and let's not talk about the Czech Prime Minister caught more-than-shirtless at Silvio Berlusconi's party...), trying to make himself out to be a highly virile Italian. He, like AdolfHitler, encouraged Italian women to have lots of kids and tried to get them to dress modestly, while still liking to see scantily-clad women in movies.

In that same year, Mussolini's government passed a new electoral law which - needless to say - favoured the Fascist Party and its allies; in addiction to all this, the Italian electorate was "pressured" by the Blackshirts to vote for Mussolini who, unsurprisingly, won the elections. In 1924 Italy - by virtue of the Treaty of Rome (which it had signed along with Yugoslavia) - acquired the city of Fiume 8now rijeka), which was populated mainly by Italian-speaking people.

Mussolini came to power after the so-called ''March on Rome''; some tens of thousands of threatening, poorly-equipped {{Black Shirt}}s successfully pressured '''Vittorio Emanuele III''' (the King of Italy) into making '''Benito Mussolini''' Prime Minister despite the fact that the Army was completely loyal and would have beaten them every day of the week - easily. But the King and his advisors (with the notable exception of the then-Prime Minister, Luigi Facta, who urged the King to crush the Blackshirts) were afraid. Not of Mussolini, mind you: they were afraid that a socialist revolution was just around the corner, considering the fact that workers and peasants had been striking, revolting and taking over factories up and down Italy for the previous two years (1919 and 1920) during the so-called '''Biennio Rosso''' (the "Two Red Years"). Mussolini promised to rule with an iron fist and that such things would never happen again under his rule. That was good enough for the King, who sacked Facta and appointed the soon-to-be ''Duce'' in his place.

Anyway, his administration soon faced another crisis. In 1921, Italy was invited by the League of Nations to oversee the boundary dispute between Greece and Albania; two years later, four Italian officers were murdered
by unknown assaillants while in Greek territory. Mussolini promptly sent an ultimatum demanding an official apology, compensations and capital punishment for the gulty; the Greek government accepted most of the requests; Mussolini, however, was not satisfied and decided to occupy Corfu until greece had accepted his conditions. The whole matter was settled afterwards by the League of Nations.

In that same year, Mussolini's government passed a new electoral law which - needless to say - favoured the Fascist Party and its allies...

Anyway, his administration soon faced another crisis. In 1921, Italy was asked by the League of Nations to oversee the boundary dispute between Greece and Albania and two years later, some Italian officers were massacred in the Greek island of Corfu.

Mussolini came to power after the so-called ''March on Rome''; some tens of thousands of threatening, poorly-equipped {{Black Shirt}}s successfully pressured '''Vittorio Emanuele III''' (the King of Italy) into making '''Benito Mussolini''' Prime Minister despite the fact that the Army was completely loyal and would have beaten them every day of the week - easily. But the King and his advisors (with the notable exception of the then-Prime Minister, Luigi Facta, who urged the King to crush the Blackshirts) were afraid. Not of Mussolini, mind you: they were afraid that a socialist revolution was just around the corner, considering the fact that workers and peasants had been striking, revolting and taking over factories up and down Italy for the previous two years (1919 and 1920) during the so-called '''Biennio Rosso''' (the "Two Red Years"). Mussolini promised to rule with an iron fist and repress the rebellious workers. That was good enough for the King, who sacked Facta and appointed the soon-to-be ''Duce'' in his place.

Mussolini came to power after the so-called ''March on Rome'' (28 October, 1922). Some tens of thousands of threatening, poorly-equipped {{Black Shirt}}s successfully made Vittorio Emanuele III (the King of Italy) make Mussolini Prime Minister despite the fact that the army was completely loyal and would have beaten them every day of the week - easily. But the King and his advisors (with the notable exception of the then-Prime Minister, Luigi Facta, who urged the King to crush the Blackshirts) were afraid. Not of Mussolini, mind you: they were afraid that a socialist revolution was just around the corner, considering the fact that workers and peasants had been striking, revolting and taking over factories up and down Italy for the previous two years (1919 and 1920) during the so-called "Biennio Rosso" (the "Two Red Years"). Mussolini promised to rule with an iron fist and repress the rebellious workers. That was good enough for the King, who sacked Facta and appointed the soon-to-be ''Duce'' in his place.

Mussolini came to power after the so-called ''March on Rome'' (28 October, 1922). Some tens of thousands of threatening, poorly-equipped {{Black Shirt}}s successfully made Vittorio Emanuele III (the King of Italy) make Mussolini Prime Minister despite the fact that the army was completely loyal and would have beaten them every day of the week - easily. But the King and his advisers were afraid. Not of Mussolini, mind you: they were afraid that a socialist revolution was just around the corner, considering the fact that workers and peasants had been striking, revolting and taking over factories up and down Italy for the previous two years (1919 and 1920) during the so-called "Biennio Rosso" (the "Two Red Years"). Mussolini promised to rule with an iron fist and put the rebellious workers in their place. That was good enough for the King, and Mussolini got the job.

* Fascist Italy is also one of the playable factions in the HeartsofIron series.

A particular economic policy, the ''autarchia'' (self-sufficiency), was Mussolini's legacy to North Korea, which calls it 'Juche' (economic self-reliance); these two policies have their origins in national pride (and foreign embargoes) rather than economic common sense. Italy's self-sufficiency in grain, for instance, came at the cost of other crops, vineyards and pasture; bread cost much the same, but the diet of the average Italian became very bland. Mussolini considered economics a zero-sum game and accordingly saw economy as a means to its own end, through warfare: industry equips the armed forces, the military conquers new territory, the new territory provides more raw materials for industry to expand. [[hottip:*:This fails for three reasons: 1) war is ridiculously expensive; 2) keeping a hostile, conquered population in line, let alone getting them to do any work for you, is expensive and ''hard''; and 3) if you go around conquering territories, you'll eventually [[AwakeningTheSleepingGiant piss off someone more powerful than you.]]

* The fourth and fifth volumes of SpikeMilligan's war autobiography are set in Italy. ''{{Mussolini - His Part in My Downfall}}'' deals with Milligan's war in Italy, and his being wounded in the opening overs of Monte Cassino. subsequent volumes deal with his posting away from the front lines and a career in Army entertainment, and his first great romance with an Italian ballerina, in which he learns how ordinary Italians lived under and after Mussolini.

Mussolini came to power after the so-called ''March on Rome'' (28 October 1922). Some tens of thousands of threatening, poorly-equipped {{Black Shirt}}s successfully made Vittorio Emanuele III (the King of Italy) make Mussolini Prime Minister despite the fact that the army was completely loyal and would have beaten them every day of the week - easily. But the King and his advisers were afraid. Not of Mussolini, mind you: they were afraid that a socialist revolution was just around the corner, considering the fact that workers and peasants had been striking, revolting and taking over factories up and down Italy for the previous two years (1919 and 1920) during the so-called "Biennio Rosso" (the "Two Red Years"). Mussolini promised to rule with an iron fist and put the rebellious workers in their place. That was good enough for the King, and Mussolini got the job.

The Fascist regime had a better humanitarian record than NaziGermany: anti-Semitic laws were enacted in 1938 (before that year, anti-semitism wasn't part of the Fascist ideology; Mussolini himself had a Jewish mistress - Margherita Sarfatti - who subscribed the ''Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals'' while Italian Jews were even allowed to join the Fascist party), but no deportation of Jews until after the fall of Mussolini and the subsequent German occupation. An exception was the invasion of Ethiopia (then known as Abyssinia) in 1935, where the Italians used mustard gas on military and civilians alike, with the sole purpose being a colonial land-grab; another was the imprisonment in concentration camps of the Slovene and Croat civil populations in parts of Yugoslavia annexed by Italy; at the Arbe (Rab) Concentration Camp (opened in 1942 under the infamous Generals Roatta and Robotti), between 1,500 and 4000 people died. Albania was also occupied in 1939, though much like the 'occupation' of Bosnia by Austria-Hungary some three decades earlier this was simply the formal recognition of a practical reality - Italy ran Albania in all but name up until that time.

Additionally, over the course of Fascism at least hundreds of Italians were outright murdered by the Blackshirts (which formed the so-called ''squadracce'') and by the ''O.V.R.A.'' and ''M.V.S.N.'' secret polices, who opted for Mafia-style assassinations of their victims rather than formally executing them, with only 10 people receiving official executions between 1927 and 1940. Furthermore, thousands of dissidents and targeted groups in Italy itself were imprisoned in brutally administered penal colonies spread through the Medditerranean islands; so, while the Fascist Italy the Allies faced on the battlefield was felt as non-threatening, Mussolini's domestic leadership was ''considerably'' less of a comical display.

A particular economic policy, the ''autarchia'' (self-sufficiency), was Mussolini's legacy: North Korea calls it 'Juche' (economic self-reliance); these two policies have their origins in national pride (and foreign embargoes) rather than economic common sense. Italy's self-sufficiency in grain, for instance, came at the cost of other crops, vineyards and pasture; bread cost much the same, but the diet of the average Italian became very bland. Mussolini considered economics a zero-sum game and accordingly saw economy as a means to its own end, through warfare: industry equips the armed forces, the military conquers new territory, the new territory provides more raw materials for industry to expand. [[hottip:*:This fails for three reasons: 1) war is ridiculously expensive; 2) keeping a hostile, conquered population in line, let alone getting them to do any work for you, is expensive and ''hard''; and 3) if you go around conquering territories, you'll eventually [[AwakeningTheSleepingGiant piss off someone more powerful than you.]]

Additionally, over the course of Fascism at least hundreds of Italians were outright murdered by the Blackshirts (which formed the so-called ''squadracce'') and by the O.V.R.A. secret police, who opted for Mafia-style assassinations of their victims rather than formally executing them, with only 10 people receiving official executions between 1927 and 1940. Furthermore, thousands of dissidents and targeted groups in Italy itself were imprisoned in brutally administered penal colonies spread throught the Medditerranean islands; so, while the Fascist Italy the Allies faced on the battlefield was felt as non-threatening, domestically Mussolini's leadership was considerably less of a comical display.

Italy eventually joined the Axis (1936) after some vacillation (The British even offered Mussolini large tracts of Egypt as a sweetener for him to come in the British side, or at the very least stay neutral. This was not a ridiculous proposition - Italy had been allied to the United Kingdom against Germany and Austria in WW1, and many Italians felt that a British alliance was a far more preferable alternative). However, the prospect of easy land-grabs at the expense of France and Britain caused Italian entry into WorldWarII (10 June 1940). This involved occupation of parts of southern France at the expense of a country already decisively beaten by Germany, and a sizable Royal Italian Air Force contingent was sent north to participate in the Battle of Britain. Mussolini had cause to regret this: first beaten up in humiliation by the Greeks, and then an army ten times the size of the British opposition was comprehensively defeated in North Africa. Thus the world's perception of the Royal Italian Army at war was one of endless columns of prisoners going into British captivity. Further humiliation followed: the Royal Italian Navy was caught in its home port of Taranto (1940) by British aircraft carriers, and sent to the bottom in an attack that was a precursor of Pearl Harbor (incidentally, Japanese observers took careful notes). This forced him to ask help by Nazi Germany and its Allies. This led the Germans to finally subdue them after the 1943 British and American invasions, first of Sicily and then of mainland Italy (see ''Literature/CatchTwentyTwo'' as an example of literature set at that time). Mussolini was couped, essentially became the Gauleiter of Lombardy and half the north-east directly annexed by Germany, was forced to flee and was captured by Communist partisans. The partisans then shot him and his mistress and hung their bodies in public. On meat-hooks. Upside down. At a gas station. While a large crowd cheered. This is what later persuaded Hitler to ask his henchmen to burn his body - he did not want to be put on display. While Italy joined the Axis as an equal partner with Japan and Germany, their military failures put them more and more under the thumb of the Germans, with them diverting their resources to help their bumbling ally. So, while the ''Duce'' had the support of his people for most of his reign, most Italians were against the Germans... not to mention making an alliance with Hitler.

With scarce, often antiquated and unreliable equipment (and very few supplies), an ill-led military fighting in a war it didn't want against an enemy it didn't want to have along an ally it didn't like to be associated with was bound to be mediocre. The Germans did praise the fighting skills and abilities of the Italian units, however, rating them at least equal to any unit in the AfrikaKorps. The ''Folgore'' parachute regiments were especially singled out for German praise. And, according to TheOtherWiki, by the British troops facing tham at El Alamein, where the units fought so honorably that the British singled them out for the honor of being allowed to surrender without the formality of a white flag or a display of disarmament. However, the Soviets knew ''exactly'' what they were doing at Stalingrad, where they refused combat with German troops and elected to break the Axis line by hitting Italian units.

Mussolini came to power after the ''March on Rome'' (28 October 1922). Some tens of thousands of threatening, poorly-equipped {{Black Shirt}}s successfully made Vittorio Emanuele III (the King of Italy) make Mussolini Prime Minister despite the fact that the army was completely loyal and would have beaten them every day of the week - easily. But the King and his advisers were afraid. Not of Mussolini, mind you: they were afraid that a socialist revolution was just around the corner, considering the fact that workers and peasants had been striking, revolting and taking over factories up and down Italy for the previous two years (1919 and 1920) during the so-called "Biennio Rosso" (the "Two Red Years"). Mussolini promised to rule with an iron fist and put the rebellious workers in their place. That was good enough for the King, and Mussolini got the job.

''Il Duce'' remained PM throughout his rule - the King was never removed from power - and engaged in some rather bizarre practices. He's one of the few leaders to have been photographed, willingly, [[ShirtlessScene with his shirt off]] (others include VladimirPutin, with BarackObama [[{{Paparazzi}} papped shirtless]]...and let's not talk about the Czech Prime Minister caught more-than-shirtless at Silvio Berlusconi's party...), trying to make himself out to be a highly virile Italian. He, like AdolfHitler, encouraged Italian women to have lots of kids and tried to get them to dress modestly, while still liking to see scantily-clad women in movies.

It is Mussolini's legacy that North Korea calls in its policies of 'Juche', economic self-reliance, policies which have their origins in national pride rather than economic common sense. Italy's self-sufficiency in grain, for instance, came at the cost of other crops, vineyards and pasture; bread cost much the same, but the diet of the average Italian became very bland. Mussolini considered economics a zero-sum game and accordingly saw economy as a means to its own end, through warfare: industry equips the armed forces, the military conquers new territory, the new territory provides more raw materials for industry to expand. [[hottip:*:This fails for three reasons: 1) war is ridiculously expensive; 2) keeping a hostile, conquered population in line, let alone getting them to do any work for you, is expensive and ''hard''; and 3) if you go around conquering territories, you'll eventually [[AwakeningTheSleepingGiant piss off someone more powerful than you.]]

The Fascist regime had a better humanitarian record than NaziGermany: anti-Semitic laws were enacted in 1938 (before that year, anti-semitism wasn't part of the Fascist ideology. Mussolini himself had a Jewish mistress - Margherita Sarfatti - who subscribed the ''Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals'' and Italian Jews were even allowed to join the Fascist party), but no deportation of Jews until after the fall of Mussolini and the subsequent German occupation. An exception was the invasion of Ethiopia (then known as Abyssinia) in 1935, where the Italians used mustard gas on military and civilians alike, with the sole purpose being a colonial land-grab; another was the imprisonment in concentration camps of the Slovene and Croat civil populations in parts of Yugoslavia annexed by Italy. Albania was also occupied in 1939, though much like the 'occupation' of Bosnia by Austria-Hungary some three decades earlier this was simply the formal recognition of a practical reality - Italy ran Albania in all but name up until that time.

Rab Concentration Camp, opened in 1942 under General Mario Roatta, caused the deaths of 2200 people alone. Additionally, over the course of fascism at least hundreds of Italians were outright murdered by the blackshirts and by the OVRA secret police, who opted for mafia-style assassinations of their victims rather than formally executing them, with only 10 people receiving official executions between 1927 and 1940. Furthermore,thousands of dissidents and targeted groups in Italy itself were imprisoned in brutally administered penal colonies spread throught the Medditerranean islands, so while the Fascist Italy the allies faced on the battlefield was distinctly non-threatening, domestically Mussolini's leadership was considerably less of a comical display.

Italy eventually joined the Axis (1936) after some vacillation (The British even offered Mussolini large tracts of Egypt as a sweetener for him to come in the British side, or at the very least stay neutral. This was not a ridiculous proposition - Italy had been allied to the United Kingdom against Germany and Austria in WW1, and many Italians felt that a British alliance was a far more preferable alternative). However, the prospect of easy land-grabs at the expense of France and Britain caused Italian entry into WorldWarII (10 June 1940). This involved occupation of parts of southern France at the expense of a country already decisively beaten by Germany, and a sizable Royal Italian Air Force contingent was sent north to participate in the Battle of Britain. Mussolini had cause to regret this: first beaten up in humiliation by the Greeks, and then an army ten times the size of the British opposition was comprehensively defeated in North Africa. Thus the world's perception of the Royal Italian Army at war was one of endless columns of prisoners going into British captivity. Further humiliation followed: the Royal Italian Navy was caught in its home port of Taranto (1940) by British aircraft carriers, and sent to the bottom in an attack that was a precursor of Pearl Harbor (incidentally, Japanese observers took careful notes). This forced him to ask help by Nazi Germany and its Allies. This led the Germans to finally subdue them after the 1943 British and American invasions, first of Sicily and then of mainland Italy (see ''{{Catch-22}}'' as an example of literature set at that time). Mussolini was couped, essentially became the Gauleiter of Lombardy and half the north-east directly annexed by Germany, was forced to flee and was captured by Communist partisans. The partisans then shot him and his mistress and hung their bodies in public. On meat-hooks. Upside down. At a gas station. While a large crowd cheered. This is what later persuaded Hitler to ask his henchmen to burn his body - he did not want to be put on display. While Italy joined the Axis as an equal partner with Japan and Germany, their military failures put them more and more under the thumb of the Germans, with them diverting their resources to help their bumbling ally. So, while the ''Duce'' had the support of his people for most of his reign, most Italians were against the Germans... not to mention making an alliance with Hitler.

With scarce, often antiquated and unreliable equipment (and very few supplies), an ill-led military fighting in a war it didn't want against an enemy it didn't want to have along an ally it didn't like to be associated with was bound to be mediocre. The Germans did praise the fighting skills and abilities of the Italian units, however, rating them at least equal to any unit in the AfrikaKorps. The ''Folgore'' parachute regiments were especially singled out for German praise. However, the Soviets knew ''exactly'' what they were doing at Stalingrad, where they refused combat with German troops and elected to break the Axis line by hitting Italian units.

* ''Lion of the Desert'' subverts the usual portrayal of Italians as inefficient bumblers. Mussolini's troops are seen committing horrendous atrocities (mass shootings, poison gas, concentration camps) against Libyan insurgents in the 1920s. Still, they're defeated in almost every engagement by Omar Mukhtar.

Mussolini's imperial escapades had grim consequences that few people remember-General Graziani's suppression of Omar Mukhtar's anticolonial revolt in Libya in 1929-1931 (after about two previous decades od fighting) resulted in as much as 40% of the population's death in concentration camps. Hundreds of thousands were killed by chemical warfare alone during the invasion of Ethiopia. Hundreds of thousands still were outright slaughtered during the attempted conquest of Greece and the partitioning of Yugoslavia, as the local populations were imprisoned in camps as part of an ethnic-cleansing program to reclaim territories that Mussolini claimed were historically Italian, targeting Slovenes and Croats. Rab Concentration Camp, opened in 1942 under General Mario Roatta, caused the deaths of 2200 people alone. Additionally, over the course of fascism at least hundreds of Italians were outright murdered by the blackshirts and by the OVRA secret police, who opted for mafia-style assassinations of their victims rather than formally executing them, with only 10 people receiving official executions between 1927 and 1940. Furthermore, hundreds of thousands of dissidents and targeted groups in Italy itself were imprisoned in brutally administered penal colonies spread throught the Medditerranean islands, so while the Fascist Italy the allies faced on the battlefield was distinctly non-threatening, domestically Mussolini's leadership was considerably less of a comical display.

* FrankSinatra vehicle ''Von Ryan's Express'' starts with Allied [=POWs=] in an Italian prison camp just as Italy officially surrenders. Then they try to make their way through German-occupied northern Italy to Switzerland and freedom. One Italian soldier (the former second-in-command of the prison) is portrayed sympathetically as their guide, the rest of the prison guards are portrayed as complete buffons, and most Italian civilians are avoided because they're potential Nazi collaborators. [[spoiler:One woman does indeed try to sell them out.]]

Italy from 1922 to 1943, under the rule of BenitoMussolini.
Colloquially known as "il Ventennio" ("the Twenty Years") in Italy.

The Fascist regime had a better humanitarian record than NaziGermany: anti-Semitic laws were enacted in 1938 (before that year, anti-semitism wasn't part of the Fascist ideology. Mussolini himself had a Jewish mistress - Margherita Sarfatti - who subscribed the ''Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals'' and Italian Jews were even allowed to join the Fascist party), but no deportation of Jews until after the fall of Mussolini and the subsequent German occupation. An exception was the invasion of Ethiopia (then known as Abyssinia) in 1935, where the Italians used mustard gas on military and civilians alike, with the sole purpose being a colonial land-grab; another was the imprisonment in concentration camps of the Slovene and Croat civil populations in parts of Yugoslavia annexed by Italy. Albania was also occupied in 1939, though much like the 'occupation' of Bosnia by Austria-Hungary some three decades earlier this was simply the formal recognition of a practical reality - Italy ran Albania in all but name up until that time.

The later performance of the Italian armed forces was never as bad as their fiasco in WW2, which led to the false perception that Italian flags came in white only, the red and the green bands being omitted for expediency.

* ''{{Amarcord}}'' is a semi-autobiographical example by FedericoFellini. When Mussolini visits the protagonist's town, a woman boasts that 99% of its residents are members of the Fascist Party. Of course, most of the townspeople are regularly portrayed as idiots.

* Alberto Moravia's 1951 novel ''TheConformist'', whose principal character is [[VillainProtagonist a member of Mussolini's secret police]].

** Also in ''TheConformist'', another Bertolucci film.