Agents of the "Revolution": Younger-Generation Fascists in Mussolini's Police

It is generally acknowledged that the Italian police were spared from subjection to far-reaching ideological control by the fascist regime.  This was largely thanks to the privileged relationship of the ‘opportunistically fascist’ Chief of Police, Arturo Bocchini, with Benito Mussolini.  Research I have recently undertaken reveals that the police nevertheless underwent an official alignment to the ideology of the regime, which in practice allowed a measure of accommodation of fascist positions within the police. This saw the adoption of fascist rituals and iconography, ideological elaborations in training manuals and journals, as well as the presence of committed fascists among personnel. This paper focuses on the lives and careers of the younger generations of fascists who joined the Interior Ministry Police during the 1930s.  Based on analysis of articles they published in the official journal of the fascist police, Il magistrato dell’ordine, and an examination of their personal files, the paper considers how these individuals experienced the police profession in the context of their education as fascists.  It stresses their apparent desire to challenge the official ideological conformity of the police in favour of a more thorough process of ‘fascistization’, and the frustrations related to this.  The case of these fascist commissioners serves to illustrate that whilst protecting the police from the direct encroachments of the Fascist Party, Bocchini tolerated ideological positions which often surpassed the formal requirements of conformity to fascism and questioned the soundness of the institution he had created. Thus, more generally, on a practical level (i.e. of the police station or training school) the extent to which police environments were ‘fascistized’ partly depended on the attitudes and conduct of individual officers and officials.