‘Fascism repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it. The Fascist conceives of life as duty and struggle and conquest.’
By the time Benito Mussolini wrote these words in 1932, he had been in power for less than a decade. In that short time, however, he’d both expanded Italy’s armed forces and established a cult of militarism at the heart of national life.
