Religion, race, and the nation inLa Tradotta del Fronte Giulio, 1942–1943

Abstract

This paper examines intersections and divergences between Catholic universalism and Fascist ethno-nationalism in the pages ofLa Tradotta del Fronte Giulio, a satirical weekly newspaper for Italian military personnel in occupied Yugoslavia during the Second World War. Military propagandists appealed to grassroots Catholicism to motivate demoralised Italian soldiers in the last year of war against the communist-led Yugoslav partisan movement. Their use of Catholic themes revealed overlapping values but also apparent incongruities between Christianity, Fascism, and Italian military culture that had been evident throughout theventennio. While Catholic anti-communism blended relatively seamlessly with nationalist-Fascist anti-Slavism to depict the partisan enemy as a dehumanised Other, the use of conventional piety and Christian humanitarianism in the army’s propaganda contradicted Fascist and military concepts of the ideal Italian ‘new man’. In the process, military propagandists sowed the seeds for thebrava gentemyth that dominated postwar memory and national identity in Italy.