Between subversion and coup d'etat: military power and politics after the Great War (1919 – 1922)

Abstract

One of the chief accusations brought against the Italian army has been that between 1919 and 1922 it decided to exert its own political will, venturing to the bounds of subversion in its effort to reorganize the Italian state in a reactionary direction. But the participation of officers and soldiers in episodes of street fighting, in the name of a patriotic anti-Socialist mobilization, or the implication of generals in rumors of golpe, signals of a downhill trend in terms of military discipline, constituted merely the most visible and salient aspect of a much more complex process, rich in nuances, contradictions, and fractures – the process of politicization of the Italian military following the First World War. Really, various sectors of the postwar Italian army and navy clearly preferred to abandon the strong tradition of political neutrality for the prerogative and the privileges offered by the new model of civilian – military relations established by the wartime legislation of 1915. The postwar Italy represented a particular variant on the normalization of the role of the military in Europe, to such a degree that it would be more appropriate to speak of a ‘failure to demobilize wartime culture’ for the military officers themselves, which translated in the concrete terms of political action into the decision not to accept being cloistered once more in their barracks. With the so called Governatorati Militari in Dalmatia, Venezia Giulia and Trentino, the military authorities were licensed to wield practically absolute power, free not only of the normal chain of command but also uncontrolled by the Italian government. The politicization of the officer corps, suspicions concerning the loyalty to the institutions of many of that corps' commanders, the psychosis of the Soviet uprising of the troops, all converged to make the army an unreliable instrument in the eyes of the civilian leadership. A mistrust that would grow in the months to come, sharpening the power crisis of the liberal state and revealing itself fully at the time of that state's collapse, between the summer and the autumn of 1922.