| Italian General, Prime Minister, and Il Duce of the Partito Nazionale Fascista or PNF (“National Fascist Party”) Benito Mussolini (July 29, 1883 – April 28, 1945), is shown visiting Trieste, Italy, where he addressed a crowd of 180,000. The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini disembarked from the destroyer Camicia Nera to commence a week-long tour of the Tre Venezie that would take him to most of the major cities of the North East. Trieste was a city in deep crisis in 1938 and the regime was aware of this. On board the Camicia Nera, Mussolini’s son-in-law Count Galeazzo Ciano (March 18, 1903 – January 11, 1944) noted that Mussolini expected to be received by a city that was “depressed” by the Anschluss and the Nazi racial laws. The tour served many purposes including the inauguration of public works, the commemoration of the Great War in the region where most of the Italian front was located and an opportunity to make policy pronouncements on the racial laws and on the looming Sudeten crisis. The visit was intended as a reminder to Italians, Slavs and Germans that this frontier region, much of which belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire before 1918, was firmly Italian in the face of Nazi Germany’s possible reconstruction of Mitteleuropa. For at least 1 day, Trieste became the centre of Fascist Italy. Italian newspapers billed the speech in advance as 1 of international and national significance. Italian radio carried the speech to all the major cities of the peninsula on the grounds that Mussolini would be making major policy announcements, especially pertaining to the worsening international crisis over the Sudetenland. Promised as well was a discussion of the major national development of the day, the implementation of the racial laws 1st decreed the previous July. Mussolini addressed the 2 most important issues of the day – the Sudeten crisis and the racial laws. The racial laws, adopted by the regime that summer, promised to jolt the city since Trieste had 1 of Italy’s largest and most prosperous Jewish communities. In order to reassure the city on the implications of this policy, Mussolini insisted that the heaviest sections of the laws pertained to “foreign” Jews. Since the advent of the Nazi regime there had been a large influx of non-Italian Jews into Trieste looking for passage to the Middle East. Mussolini justified Nazi Germany’s ambitions of taking over the Sudetenland. In an acknowledgement of Trieste’s remote position in relation to the rest of Italy, Mussolini declared that “geography is not an opinion” – in other words Trieste’s belonging to Italy was not a matter of opinion but an objective truth. The speech ended with another geographical consideration when Mussolini assured his audience that Rome was not distant, in fact, “Rome is here.” Had Trieste been won over? To read the press coverage of the event leaves little doubt and the immediate evidence was that it had been. The ministry observers made it clear that the city was not a beacon of Fascist fervor despite the movement’s popularity in the early years. Since 1922, Fascism had become stagnant in Trieste not least because the movement’s success was dependent on the nationalism of Italians in the region, which predated the Fascist movement. Local Fascists blamed the Jews for the prevailing mood, accusing them of controlling the Triestine press. They also attacked the Jewish support of Fascism as opportunist. The “Fascist Revolution,” they claimed, had never been complete in Trieste because of the “Jewish and Masonic” conspiracy that hijacked it. The visit of 1938, the application of the racial laws and the person of the Duce was the antidote. According to the ministry, Trieste, once “timid” towards Fascism, was now firmly behind the “Mussolinian ideal” after the visit. Through an enactment of the cult of the Duce, the Fascist party in the region had been revived and fervor for the “revolution” reignited. While some saw Mussolini as a sort of shaman, others pointed out the more fallible characteristics of the Duce. Although Mussolini cut a “fable-like” figure in Trieste, the ministry also recorded some veiled criticisms of the dictator. The assertion that the city was “sincerely Fascist and Mussolinian” was mitigated by observations that Mussolini was “late in coming.” There was also some consternation at the extensive security arrangements made for the visit. Some asked: What was he afraid of? The regime even had the roads to Istria and Fiume blocked for the visit. There was wry commentary on Mussolini’s pace, with some claiming that he needed to move quickly to keep fit. For some, Mussolini seemed to be in a hurry to leave. Mussolini would never again set foot in Trieste but, on leaving the city, according to a Roman newspaper, he said “I’ll be back soon!” – a phrase that gave his hosts not so much the sense that they would be monitored from Rome as that they had succeeded in making a positive impression on the Duce. | |
| Image Filename | wwii1769.jpg |
| Image Size | 224.92 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 1600 x 2087 |
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| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | September 18, 1938 |
| Location | |
| City | Trieste |
| State or Province | Friuli-Venezia Giulia |
| Country | Italy |
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| Record Number | |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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