Abstract
Motorsport has been overlooked in studies of Italian Fascism. There are several books on sport, which mention motor racing, and recognize it as one of the most important sporting events under the regime, but only two monographs in Italian exist on the subject. Only one of these focuses exclusively on the Fascist era. This book is the first English-language monograph that explores the close convergence of motor racing and Fascist ideology. Beginning with a discussion of the success of the Alfa Romeo Grand Prix team in the mid-1920s, and how it coincided with the rise of the Fascist dictatorship, the chapter goes on to introduce the main themes of the book. The book’s main argument is that motorsport became the ideal sport for promoting Fascist values and expressing a Fascist culture of speed and martyrdom. In turn, Fascism’s support of motor racing in the 1920s helped promote the sport at a time when its existence was threatened.
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Notes
- 1.
Automobile Club de France. The race was more commonly known as the French Grand Prix .
- 2.
In 1919, 24 sports magazines and newspapers circulated in Italy, up from only 10 in 1914. See Paolo Facchinetti, La Stampa Sportiva in Italia (Bologna: Edizioni Alfa, 1966), 54.
- 3.
The link between automobility and the role it played in preparing Europeans for war in 1914 has been noted. See Kurt Möser, “The Dark Side of ‘Automobilism’, 1900-30: Violence, war and the motor car,” The Journal of Transport History, vol. 24, no. 2 (2003): 238–258.
- 4.
Arnaldo Fraccaroli, “Vetture e piloti italiani vittoriosi nel secondo Gran Premio d’Europa,” Corriere della Sera, 4 agosto 1924, 1–2.
- 5.
Felice Fabrizio, Sport e Fascismo. La politica sportive del regime (Firenze: Guaraldi Editore, 1976), 160.
- 6.
Pirelli ad. Il Popolo d’Italia, 5 agosto 1924, 2.
- 7.
Tartaglia, “Il figlio del mio portiere,” L’Illustrazione Italiana, anno LI, n. 32 (10 agosto 1924): 154.
- 8.
Tartaglia, 154.
- 9.
Tartaglia, 154.
- 10.
Daphné Bolz, “Sport and Fascism,” in Alan Bairner, John Kelly, and Jung Woo Lee, eds. Routledge Handbook of Sport and Politics (London: Routledge, 2020), 55.
- 11.
Adrian Lyttelton, The Seizure of Power: Fascism in Italy, 1919-1929 (New York: Routledge, 2004), 196–222. Lyttelton’s work is still the best English-language account of the events surrounding the Matteotti Crisis and its role in launching the Fascist dictatorship.
- 12.
Patrizia Dogliani, “Sport and Fascism,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies, vol. 5, no. 3 (2000): 329.
- 13.
Tim Edensor, “Automobility and National Identity: Representation, Geography and Driving Practice,” Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 21, no. 101 (2004): 103.
- 14.
Rudy Koshar, “Cars and Nations: Anglo-German Perspectives on Automobility between the World Wars,” Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 21, no. 121 (2004): 122.
- 15.
David Owen, Alfa Romeo: Ninety Years of Success on Road and Track (Sparkford, Somerset: Patrick Stephens Limited, 1993), 22–23.
- 16.
Griffith Borgeson, The Alfa Romeo Tradition (Automobile Quarterly, 1990), 68–93.
- 17.
David Roberts, Fascist Interactions: Proposals for a New Approach to Fascism and its Era (Berghahn Books, 2016).
- 18.
George Monkhouse, Grand Prix Racing: Facts and Figures (London: G. T. Foules & Co., 1950), 9–10.
- 19.
One hundred and fourteen races were run in Italy in this period. These statistics were compiled using the excellent Golden Era of Grand Prix Racing database compiled by Leif Snellman. It can be found here: http://www.kolumbus.fi/leif.snellman/main.htm.
- 20.
Fernando Esposito, Fascism, Aviation and Mythical Modernity (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
- 21.
Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
- 22.
Roger Griffin, Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 61.
- 23.
Bolz, “Sport and Fascism,” 64.
- 24.
Felice Fabrizio, “Introduzione,” in Cannella and Giuntini, 10.
- 25.
Simon Martin, Football and Fascism: The National Game under Mussolini (Oxford: Berg, 2004), 213–214.
- 26.
Fabrizio Sport e Fascismo, 51.
- 27.
Simon Martin, “In Praise of Fascist Beauty?” Sport in History, vol. 28, no. 1 (March 2008): 69.
- 28.
Enrico Landoni, Gli atleti del Duce. La politica sportiva del Fascismo, 1919-1939 (Milano: Mimesis, 2016), 11.
- 29.
Dogliani, “Fascism and Sport,” 341.
- 30.
There have been some excellent monographs and essay collections that have come out in recent years on cycling and soccer. See Mimmo Franzinelli, Il Giro d’Italia. Dai pionieri agli anni d’oro (Milano: Feltrinelli, 2017); Gianni Silei, ed. Giro d’Italia e la società italiana (Rome: Piero Lacaita Editore, 2010); John Foot, Pedalare! Pedalare! A History of Italian Cycling (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014); John Foot, Winning at all Costs: A Scandalous History of Italian Soccer (New York: Nation Books, 2007); and Simon Martin, Football and Fascism: The National Game under Mussolini (Oxford: Berg, 2004).
- 31.
Daniele Marchesini, Cuori e Motori. Storia della Mille Miglia (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001); Enrico Azzini, Bolidi Rossi & Camicie Nere. Storia delle competizioni automobilistiche durante il Fascismo (Roma: IBN Editore, 2011).
- 32.
Simon Martin, Sport Italia: The Italian Love Affair with Sport (London: I. B. Taurus, 2011), 7. In fairness to Martin, his book pays a great deal more attention to motorsport than most other sports history books.
- 33.
Daryl Adair, “Spectacles of Speed and Endurance: The Formative Years of Motor Racing in Europe,” in David Thoms, Len Holden, and Tim Claydon, eds. The Motor Car and Popular Culture in the 20th Century (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998), 132.
- 34.
After World War I, FIAT became Italy’s third largest corporation after the two steel manufacturers, Ilva and Ansaldo. James J. Fink, The Automobile Age (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), 75–76.
- 35.
Edensor, “Automobility and National Identity,” 103–104.
- 36.
Giovanni Canestrini, Mille Miglia (Rome: Automobile Club d’Italia, 1967), 11–14.
- 37.
Massimo Moraglio, Driving Modernity: Technology, Experts, Politics, and Fascist Motorways, 1922-1943, Erin O’Loughlin, trans. (Berghahn Books, 2017).
- 38.
The term “sports car” is generally vague and its origins are unclear. It is possible to discern its development in the 1920s as what one automotive historian called a “hybrid” of the racing car and the family sedan. See T. R. Nicholson, Sports Cars, 1928-1939 (London: Blandford Press, 1969), 1.
- 39.
Möser, “The Dark Side of ‘Automobilism,’” 240.
- 40.
Adair, “Spectacles of Speed and Endurance,” 123.
- 41.
This included the “folk hero” of Italian racing, Tazio Nuvolari, who came from a wealthy, landowning family in the Po Valley. Dogliani, “Sport and Fascism,” 344.
- 42.
Fabrizio, Sport e Fascismo, 51.
- 43.
Adair, “Spectacles of Speed and Endurance,” 128.
- 44.
Daniele Marchesini, Cuori e motori, 10.
- 45.
In 1930, there were 31,000 vehicles registered in Italy compared to the 3 million in the United States, 225,000 in the United Kingdom, and 97,000 in Germany. Source: Enzo Angelucci and Alberto Bellucci, Le automobile. 1000 modelli di tutto il mondo dalle origini ad oggi con dati tecnici (Milano: Mondadori, 1974), 257.
- 46.
Ian Boutle, ‘“Speed Lies in the Lap of the English’: Motor Records, Masculinity, and the Nation, 1907-14,” Twentieth Century British History, vol. 23, no. 4 (2012): 452.
- 47.
Fabrizio, Sport e Fascismo, 23. On the building of soccer stadiums under Fascism, see Martin, Football and Fascism, 88–91.
- 48.
“Introduction,” in Mark D. Howell and John D. Miller, eds. Motorsports and American Culture: From Demolition Derbies to NASCAR (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), viii.
- 49.
Marchesini, Cuori e Motori, 9.
- 50.
John Bale, Landscapes of Modern Sport (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1994), 14.
- 51.
Enrico Azzini, Bolidi rossi, 7–8.
- 52.
Patrizia Dogliani, “Roundtable,” in Canella and Giuntini, 480.
- 53.
Jeff Daniels, Driving Force: The Evolution of the Car Engine (Somerset, UK: Haynes Publishing, 2002), 59.
- 54.
The aviator as folk hero and even as a kind of Messianic figure can be seen in the response to Charles Lindbergh’s epic flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927. See Robert Wohl, The Spectacle of Flight: Aviation and the Western Imagination, 1920-1950 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005).
- 55.
Of the 49 drivers killed in racing accidents between 1922 and 1939, 16 were Italian. Source: Monkhouse, Grand Prix Racing, 291–292.
- 56.
Emilio Gentile, Il culto del littorio (Bari: Laterza, 1993), 35–54.
- 57.
J. Brian Freeman, “’La Carrera de la Muerte’: Death, Driving, and Rituals of Modernization in 1950s Mexico,” Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, vol. 29 (2011): 2–23.
- 58.
The forerunner of the current Fédération Internationale d’Automobile—motorsport’s governing body headquartered in Paris.
- 59.
An example was the introduction of the Formula Libre regulations for 1928 that allowed engines of any capacity to be used in Grand Prix events. This allowed the venerable Alfa Romeo P2 to be dusted off and used for racing again.
- 60.
Michael Ledeen, D’Annunzio: The First Duce (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002). D’Annunzio not only gave Fascism its style and some of its slogans, he also contributed to the theme of redemption in Fascist ideology. See Han Ulrich Gumbrecht, “I redentori della vittoria: On Fiume’s Place in the Genealogy of Fascism,” Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 31, no. 2 (April 1996): 253–272.
- 61.
Tim Benton, “Dreams of Machines: Futurism and l’Esprit Nouveau,” Journal of Design History, vol. 3, no. 1 (1990): 25.
- 62.
Gigliola Gori, “Model of Masculinity: Mussolini, the ‘New Italian’ of the Fascist Era,” The International Journal of the History of Sport, vol. 16, no. 4 (1999): 27–61.
- 63.
Barbara Spackman, Fascist Virilities: Rhetoric, Ideology, and Social Fantasy in Italy (University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 1–33.
- 64.
Stephen Gundle, Mussolini’s Dream Factory: Film Stardom in Fascist Italy (New York: Berghahn, 2016).
- 65.
Glamor remains a defining characteristic of Formula 1 racing. The Monaco Grand Prix, first held in 1929, embodies this aspect of the sport, so much so that it explains why this anachronistic race is still kept on the racing calendar.
- 66.
Boutle, “Speed Lies in the Lap of the English,” 452.
- 67.
This has been expressed in numerous publications on Nuvolari but pop artist Lucio Dalla best expresses it in his song “Nuvolari.” It can be found on his 1976 album Automobili. In the song, Nuvolari is depicted as a muscular warrior who is adored by the crowds. Remo Bassetti, Storia e storie dello sport in Italia. Dall’Unità a oggi (Venezia: Marsilio Editori, 1999), 124.
- 68.
Benito Mussolini, “La Nuova Roma (31 dicembre 1925),” Benito Mussolini, Discorsi, Scritti e Articoli, accessed January 11, 2022, http://www.adamoli.org/benito-mussolini/pag0342-.htm.
- 69.
Paul Baxa, Roads and Ruins: The Symbolic Landscape of Fascist Rome (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010).
- 70.
Dogliani, “Sport and Fascism,” 333–334.
- 71.
Jeffrey Schnapp, Modernitalia (New York: Peter Lang, 2012), 1–22.
- 72.
Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology, accessed January 11, 2022, https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/foucault1.pdf.
- 73.
John Bale, “Sport and National Identity: A Geographical View,” The International Journal of the History of Sport, vol. 3, no. 1 (1986): 18–41.
- 74.
Alan Bairner, “National Sports and National Landscapes: In Defence of Primordialism,” National Identities, vol. 11, no. 3 (September 2009): 223–239.
- 75.
Martin, Sport Italia, 92.
- 76.
Eric Leed, The Mind of the Traveller: From Gilgamesh to Global Tourism (New York: Basic Books, 1991), 148.
- 77.
Ray Moore, Matthew Richardson, and Claire Corkill, “Identity in the ‘Road Racing Capital of the World’: Heritage, Geography and Contested Spaces,” Journal of Heritage Tourism, vol. 9, no. 3 (2014): 228–245.
- 78.
“Il comandamento del Duce: ‘Vivere pericolosamente per la difesa della Patria e del Fascismo!” Il Popolo d’Italia, 3 agosto 1924, 1.
- 79.
Ibid., 1.
- 80.
Maurizio Mondoni, “Sport e Fascismo a Cremona,” in Canella and Giuntini, Sport e Fascismo, 381–392.
- 81.
Landoni, Gli Atleti del Duce, 76.
- 82.
Fabrizio, Sport e fascismo, 126–127.
- 83.
Martin, “In Praise of Fascist Beauty?” 65.
- 84.
Amy Bass, “State of the Field: Sports History and the ‘Cultural Turn,’” The Journal of American History, Vol. 101, no. 1 (June 2014): 150.
- 85.
Jeffrey Hill, “Introduction: Sport and Politics,” Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 38, no. 3 (July 2003): 361.
- 86.
Remo Bassetti, Storia e storie dello Sport in Italia. Dall’Unità a oggi (Venezia: Marsilio, 1999), 81.
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Baxa, P. (2022). Introduction. In: Motorsport and Fascism. Global Culture and Sport Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97967-6_1
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