L'esercito e la conquista fascista del potere

The military and the Fascist rise to power
The failure to produce a general outline of the relations between the military and the fascists, the actual connections between the military command and paramilitary Fascist squads, and the participation of regular officers in local fascist groups, has for a long time left a gap in the historical representation of Italy between 1918 and 1922. With the typical lack of sensibility that has marked Italian historiography for so long where the social and cultural aspects of the military issue were concerned, the scant literature dedicated to the army’s role following the Great War has scarcely gone beyond a mere technical analysis of the system, a description of its professional environment in its narrowest sense or of its doctrine. The details concerning the involvement of the regular military forces in the political struggle, the strength of military public opinion, and the expectations, of a psychological nature, instigated within the officer corps following the Victory, have often been overlooked or merely hinted at when referring to those few well known memorandums or journals that broach the issue. It is however very difficult to reach a complete understanding of the crisis that overtook Italy’s liberal movement without undertaking a painstaking reconstruction of the process that led to the parting of the ways between the political and military powers, a consequence of the gradual political manipulation of the armed forces, coupled with actions designed to throw discredit on the liberal leadership amongst the rank and file, that subsequently resulted in the military community essentially joining forces with the Fascist movement.