‘Make every Italian family a fortress’: Consumption, family and constructing the ‘home front’ in Venice during the Ethiopian War

Abstract

18 December 1935, in Venice as throughout the Italian peninsula, was decreed a national holiday and nominated the Giornata della fede. On this day, exactly one month after the League of Nation’s imposition of economic sanctions on Italy as punishment for the invasion of fellow member state Abyssinia, the women of Venice were called upon to follow the lead of Queen Elena and donate their wedding rings to the patria. As women were encouraged to give up those symbols which marked them as wives and mothers, so too were Venetian men asked to donate gifts emblematic of the principal role accorded them by the regime; their war medals and decorations. In ceremonies which repeatedly highlighted the values of militarism, self-sacrifice and death so highly prized by the fascist regime, Venetian women gathered at Ca’ Littorio, the Venetian fascist party headquarters on the Grand Canal and in the local sestiere branches, to place their rings into an upturned helmet, and to receive in its place a replacement steel ring, presented by the bereaved mother or widow of a fallen soldier. By the end of the day, 24,173 wedding rings had been collected (from a city with a total population of just under 170,000); indeed, it was reported that stocks of replacement rings at Ca’ Littorio were running low within just two hours.¹