Abstract
Mussolini believed that the transformation of Italy into a great and imperial power depended on a growing population and the central role of the family. Demographic policy, the “Battle of Births,” provided the road to revolution, fascist style: Italy must be prolific in order to assert itself among the nations of Europe and beyond. He declared: “The birth rate is not simply an index of the progressive power of the nation; it is not simply, as Spengler suggests, Italy’s only weapon’; it is also an index of vitality and the will to pass on this vitality over the centuries. If we do not succeed in reversing this trend, all that the Fascist revolution has accomplished and will accomplish in the future will be perfectly useless, as at a certain point in time fields, schools, barracks, ships, and workshops will be empty.”1
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Notes
Diane Ghirardo, “Città Fascista: Surveillance and Spectacle,” Journal of Contemporary History 31 (1996): 349.
Quoted in Alessandro Portelli, The Order Has Been Carried Out: History Memory, and Meaning of a Nazi Massacre in Rome ( New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003 ): 62.
Giuseppe Aldo Rossi, Monte Mario, Profilo storico, artistico e ambientale dal colle più alta di Roma ( Rome: Montimer, 1996 ): 154.
John Agnew, Rome ( New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1995 ): 64.
Mostre delle Abitazioni, ‘LIstituto per le Case dei Dipendenti del Governatorato,’ Capitolium (1929): 532–537.
Sepp Schüller, Das Rom Mussolinis, Rom als Moderne Haupstadt (Dusseldorf: Mosella-Verlag, 1943): 10 [Text in both German and Italian].
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© 2005 Borden Painter
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Painter, B.W. (2005). Population, Neighborhoods, and Housing. In: Mussolini’s Rome. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403976918_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403976918_5
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