Editing Fascist Italy (section)

==Backstory==

In the aftermath of [[The Great War]] much of Europe was an utter mess. Those areas which were not devastated by the fighting or caught up in the Russian Civil War were hit hard by economic collapse. Governments had racked up massive debt, agriculture had declined, millions of people had been killed or maimed, there were shortages of everything and in a lot of places social order had broken down. The Russian Empire had collapsed into civil war after 1917 and the German and Austrian Empires were disintegrating even before they were abolished by the Entente. There was a lot of uncertainty about the future, nationalist sentiment that had been riled up in the war was left sloshing about to fester without a target, communist and socialist agitation was on the rise across the continent, and the Red Scare was in full effect. 

But not Italy. Oh, no. Things in Italy were much worse. But to understand why we're gonna have to rewind a bit.

After the fall of Rome, Italy took an entirely different path from the rest of the empire, splintering into a motley collection of city-states theoretically loyal to the Holy Roman Emperor. Because of the warmer climate, fertile soils, and coastal cities, Dark Age feudalism never really got established in the region the way it did elsewhere. Italy also bore the worst of the Black Death, so the working-class population who survived enjoyed more power, enough to make merchant republics (sometimes with princes) the norm rather than feudal kingdoms. A good chunk of the region was also controlled by the Pope as his personal stomping ground, the Papal States. And they liked to fight with each other. A lot.

Protected from the northern powers by the Alps, the Italians were free to focus on killing each other over supporting the Pope (Guelphs) vs the Holy Roman Emperor (Ghibellines). But these weren't really wars. They were more like town-vs-town raiding parties, and eventually were more about revenge and pride than a serious dispute over who Italy should unite behind. Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet is set in this period. This went on for LITERALLY CENTURIES until one day a short Corsican with a French army plowed his way through the Alps and told Italy to get with the times.

Between 1829 and 1871, Italy was slowly united, as Italian nationalists pushed one duchy after another to bend the knee to the House of Savoy and took all the land away from the Papal States until they only had a fortified hill in Rome left. This didn't mean that the Italians stopped killing each other, though; far from it. With widespread poverty, unemployment, homelessness, the papacy being salty over losing most of their private demesne and stirring up trouble, and at best marginal success on the industrialization front, Italy in the back half of the 19th century was a shitshow of brigandry, civil war, and familial revenge murder.

What? You've seen "The Godfather" haven't you? You think they just came over to America and started doing all that shit just because?

Now, this is where things really start to heat up: as a unified country, Italy became a player on the European scene. [[Grimdark|Like all other European countries, it sought to expand its wealth and influence through colonies.]] The French decided to immediately cock-block them by bitch-slapping them away from Tunis just to show them who was boss. The English remained prudent but they were wary about anyone with the capacity and will to lay down warships; and the ''Reggia Marina'', while not the size of the English fleet, could simply not be ignored in the case of any conflict with Italy (we'll return to this point a bit later). On the other side, though, Otto von Bismarck reached a hand out to Italy and eventually they signed the Triple Entente: a mutual aid assistance between Germany, Austro-Hungary and Italy should any of them get attacked.

But this situation satisfied no-one: both Austro-Hungary and Germany doubted (and eventually would be proven correct about) Italy's enthusiasm about the pact, while Italy remained frustrated about being unable to expand as they wanted. Thus when WWI started, the Italian government decided to rethink their relations with Germany. ([[Rules Lawyer|On the technicity they'd only promised to get involved if Germany was attacked and they saw Germany as (defending) the aggressor. Romania invoked the exact same excuse.]]) When the lightning-quick war devolved into the worst possible meat grinder people couldn't have imagined at the time, both sides started looking for allies to break the stalemate and both started to court so-far neutral Italy. Both promised some post-war goodies - Germany offered them parts of France (mainly Savoy and Provence), while Britain did the same with Austrian South Tyrol, Albania (then Austrian-dominated) and parts of the Ottoman Empire.

Now, considering Italy's situation in 1915, 'Albania and parts of the Ottoman empire' just sounded way better. Sure, it still wasn't the raw income from colonies, but it would allow Italy pretty much uncontested control of the Adriatic sea and a strong presence in the Mediterranean, with all the benefits thereof. So they joined the Entente in 1915, hoping to quickly get what they wanted.

'''They failed.''' While the occupation of Albania was a definite victory, the Italian theater quickly became one of the least successful fronts in the war. To get the right kind of picture, they couldn't push into Austria-Hungary, a country that couldn't completely liberate Galicia from Russian armies for three years, even as their senior partner Germany battered their way into France against the best and the most that the British and the French could throw at them. In fact, at one point they almost lost Venice to an Austrian offensive.

As rotten icing on the shitcake, their 'allies' ended up reneging on the deal negotiated three years before and what little they managed to get was soon retaken by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's now reorganized resistance. [[skub|To what point it was premeditated is a discussion for another place and time, but Britain's unfair treatment of the island possessions crushed the Italian's dreams of Mediterranean domination. (As mentioned earlier, Britain was big on sea domination themselves so they gladly took the opportunity to curb-stomp a potential rival when presented with one.)]] In the end Italy got absolutely nothing, which led to them referring to their victory as the ''Vittoria Mutilata'' (Mutilated Victory).