Non solo propaganda: il modello fascista all'estero

Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 was a fundamental litmus test for the Fascist regime. It represented a challenge, insofar as it showed that most of the ideals and political practices developed in Italy could also be applied to another political context, while confirming the importance of the message developed through the Italian experience. This chapter will analyse the impact of Italian Fascism in western Europe during the interwar period, up to the mid-1930s, when the development of an alliance with Nazi Germany changed the geopolitical context. It will explore how, from the very beginning, the impact of Italian Fascism was an effect both of the attention devoted to Fascism by foreign elites, and of the efforts made by Italian and foreign agents in contact with Mussolini or fascinated by his movement. The chapter will also deal with the institutionalisation of Fascist diplomacy and propaganda between the 1920s and the mid-1930s, and with the tensions to which this process gave rise. In so doing, the chapter will discuss how this development can partly explain the difficulty for Italian and international historiography to assess the transnational and global weight of the Italian Fascist experience. Ultimately, it will try to build a new framework to interpret how the rise of Italian Fascism changed Europe.