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Political Violence in Italy and Germany after the First World War

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Political Violence and Democracy in Western Europe, 1918–1940

Abstract

On 4 November 1918, many Italians celebrated victory in the First World War. With total fatalities estimated at around 600,000, the price of victory was tremendous.1 Nevertheless, when the defeat of Austria was completed, even some opponents of Italy’s entry to the war in May 1915 expressed delight. Turin’s La Stampa newspaper announced that victory amounted to the realisation of the ‘dreams of the poets, the hopes of the martyrs, and the burning desires of the entire Italian soul’.2 Victory tasted equally fine to the war’s most ardent supporters. One of their leading spokesmen, Benito Mussolini, the future Duce, wrote ‘now that the Patria is no longer mutilated, the light of victory opens the eyes of the blind and the injured no longer feel their wounds, while mothers bless the sacrifice of their fallen sons’.3 In Rome, Turin, Pisa, Genoa and elsewhere, these patriotic discourses were matched by the formation of small crowds that celebrated in the streets. They included refugees from the territories of Northeast Italy that had been lost and regained during the final year of the war, as well as natives of the terra irredenta — those parts of the defeated Austro-Hungarian Empire that were, in the eyes of Italian nationalists, about to be reunited with their Italian motherland.4

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Notes

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Authors
  1. Mark Jones
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Swansea University, UK

    Chris Millington

  2. Cardiff University, UK

    Kevin Passmore

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© 2015 Mark Jones

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Jones, M. (2015). Political Violence in Italy and Germany after the First World War. In: Millington, C., Passmore, K. (eds) Political Violence and Democracy in Western Europe, 1918–1940. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137515957_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137515957_2

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-56920-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-51595-7

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

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