Under the Axe of Fascism

Gaetano Salvemini

sept 2018 · Pickle Partners Publishing

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THE “march on Rome” of October 28th, 1922, marked the advent to power of the Fascist Party in Italy under the leadership of Benito Mussolini. The seizure of the government through a coup d’état was justified by the claim that Italy had to be rescued from the imminent danger of a Bolshevist revolution. Before the eyes of a world horrified by the tragedy of Russia, Italian Fascism assumed the role of the knightly Saint George who had slain the red dragon of Communism. The legend appealed to the imaginations and soothed the fears of all the good people of Europe and America. It became the sacred myth around which was woven the early Fascist propaganda.

In the present book the reader will find hard facts, not vague legal formulæ; concrete realities, not abstract doctrines. Its purpose is to provide the English-speaking public with accurate information not about the whole economic, social, and political system of the Fascist dictatorship, but about one single phase of it, i.e. those institutions through which Fascism claims to have solved the problem of the relations between capital and labour.

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Gaetano Salvemini (September 8, 1873 - September 6, 1957) was an Italian anti-fascist politician, historian and writer. His historical studies on medieval Florence, the French Revolution and Giuseppe Mazzini established him as an acclaimed historian both in Italy and abroad, in particular in the U.S., after he was forced into exile by Mussolini’s Fascist regime.

Born into a family of modest means in Apulia, south of Italy, he completed his studies at the University of Florence in 1894. In 1901, after years of teaching in secondary schools, he was appointed as a professor in medieval and modern history at the University of Messina. He went on to teach history at the University of Pisa and in 1916 was appointed Professor of Modern History at the University of Florence.

Initially engaging with the Italian Socialist Party, Prof. Salvemini later adhered to an independent humanitarian socialism, while maintaining a commitment to radical political and social reform throughout his life. He offered significant leadership to political refugees in the United States, where he lived in exile for 20 years after he was dismissed from the University of Florence and his Italian citizenship was revoked in 1926. In 1934, he accepted to teach Italian civilization at Harvard University, where he remained until 1948. He then returned to Italy and was reinstated to his old post as Professor of Modern History at the University of Florence. He died in Sorrento, Italy, in 1957, aged 83.