Were Italy's trains regarded as bad by Italians before Mussolini seized control? Were they seen as proverbially unreliable elsewhere in Europe? Who was travelling on these trains anyway?
And I guess the other question - did Mussolini actually make the trains better, and if so, how?
As yes, il Duce and the trains. The one thing that helps to absolve the man from most of his idiocy in popular culture. Hey, he might have led one of the most inept invasions in modern warfare and basically destroyed his country but at least the trains ran on time. Right?
Not quite.
##What were the trains like before the Fascists?
Backing up all the way to the Risorgimento allows us to view the disparity which was already in place between the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. While much of the study of the Risorgimento post-Fascism has led to the belief that the Mezzogiorno was not as poor as Sardinia propagandists made it out to be, the infrastructure was literal miles behind that of the north. Even with more being invested in the intervening years, the Northern states at times conspired to keep the southern states poor. Indeed, quite famously, there were areas in the south where it was quite common for peasants to live in either thatched houses or cave dwellings until well into the 1960s.
Why? Because the industrial revolution didn't occur in Italy the same way that it did in the rest of Europe (and some historians and economists will point to the 1960s as when Italy finally had it's true 'industrial revolution'). While throughout Europe industry was booming in major cities as citizens flocked to new factories, Italians tended to remain outside of the cities working the land until well after the first World War. Compare the growth of Rome to Hamburg:
| Year | Rome | Hamburg |
|---|---|---|
| 1871 | 212,432 | 240,251 |
| 1921/1925 | 660,235 | 1,079,126 |
Thus Italy occupied a quasi feudal society all the way until World War II - especially in the South. One of the methods that the Fascists undertook in ensuring that they would have the backing of land owners was to make it impossible for the peasantry to move to new areas without the permission of the land owners. As the land owners themselves had little use for letting the workers leave their land, this effectively kept them tied in place, and poor.
Doubly, this had the effect of ensuring that the southern states by and large remained poor. Compare the rail lines of Italy in 1861 with that of 1870. You will notice the intricacies of the rail lines in the northern states, versus the south. At the time of unification Piedmont itself has 850 km of rail, while the Two Sicilies had 128 km. The development of rail travel in the South itself would stagnate, as the demand simply wasn't there.
Another factor going against Italy's rail lines were that from unification until 1905 the administration of all the lines were by private companies. With little of the lines operation at a profit, it did not behoove the companies to vastly invest in them. An 1875 attempt by Parliament to unify these lines, however, failed and ultimately brought that particular government down. An 1884 attempt by the government to subsidize the rail lines and improve not only their quality, but their amount similarly brought failure due to the corruption of the larger companies, while the smaller companies pocketed the subsidies to pay for the massive profit losses of their already existing lines.
Finally, in 1905 the Italian government stepped in and bought out the remaining private companies to form the Ferrovie dello Stato - the State Railways. Massive amounts of money were poured in to not only modernize the rail cars (the great majority of which had been in operation for over 30 years by this point), but in also modernizing the entire rail system itself so as to encourage tourism and transportation.
Unfortunately World War One occurred and devastated not just the Italian economy, but the rail system itself.
##Which brings us to the Fascists.
One of the major feathers in his cap that Mussolini wanted was to expand Italy's infrastructure through any means necessary. One of the best ways that he could do that was by using the rail system to help "construct Fascism." You would think that if Mussolini (and thus the Fascists) had been able to make this legendary ability come to pass that he would have mentioned it in his autobiography.
He did not. Which is important to note because he also admitted in his autobiography to getting rid of critical newspaper editors and politicians.
It is important to note that while the rail system had been in a state of proto-ruin thanks to the First World War and that the Fascists invested heavily in improving the lines they did not literally make the trains run on time. This myth constantly propagates itself and some highly respected historians have mistakingly parroted it in some of their writings. Some even tell of Mussolini himself threatening to shoot the train engineers if they didn't watch the clock.
Writes Denis Mack Smith,
“...the Italian railway system had been run down during WW1, but had been much improved between the Wars. The claim was advanced that Italian trains were the envy of Europe. This was an exaggeration by Mussolini who did his best to make the train service into a symbol of fascist efficiency and managed to conceal much that had been done before 1922 (before he became Prime Minister). His propaganda was very successful, yet some travellers reported that the celebrated trains running universally on time, were to some extent a convenient myth."
Even writers from the time period do not concur with the myth of the trains being on time. Investigative journalist George Seldes wrote in 1936,
“[That] the trains always run on time, was parroted as an answer to all criticisms, including lack of editorial freedom or justice. The fascist regime made this claim to portray a country in which law and order prevailed. An investigation covering two weeks revealed several derailments leading to serious delays....it is true that the majority of big expresses run on time - those carrying eye-witness tourists - but on smaller lines, bad rail and roadbed conditions frequently caused delays. The Belgian Foreign Minister said we were always kept waiting at level crossings for more than a quarter of an hour, because the trains were never there at the times they should have been passing”.
Smith's research further showed that even with the amount of time, money, and blood put by the Fascists into the rail lines, it still wasn't enough. Writing,
"Only two of the nine railroads through the Alps had been provided with double tracks and their capacity was estimated as equal to little more than a quarter of Italy's peacetime needs."
##So where does this myth come from?
Of course the Fascists never let a little thing like facts get in the way of great propaganda. On of the benefits of being a totalitarian state is that you have complete control over the press - all of it. This includes not just your internal papers, but foreign correspondents as well. Seldes himself had previously been expelled from the country due to reporting that Mussolini may have been personally connected to the murder of Giacomo Matteotti.
However Mussolini came from the press himself and knew the power of propaganda. So thus the Fascists had every government official and rail worker extoll the virtues of the rail line to everybody that would listen, while their schedules were closely monitored and carefully manipulated (even if sometimes this failed, as referred to above).
Writes Seldes,
"It is true that the majority of big expresses, those carrying eye-witnessing tourists, are usually put through to time, but on the smaller lines rail and road-bed conditions frequently cause delays."
But with the Fascists controlling the press (and routinely censoring both internal and foreign writers), it was impossible to break through this idea that the regime had somehow been able to turn around the mess of the Italian rail system into one that ran on time, everywhere. This myth, however, has an amusing coda that plays into how inept Mussolini and the Fascists conducted their affairs in World War Two. With most of Italy's coal usually arriving by sea, after their entry in the war it would need to come overland. It failed to meet demand, as the tracks were not big enough, the trains strong enough, and the rail system developed enough.
Writes Smith,
"As the trains running on time had become one of the accepted myths of Fascism, and as Mussolini had never charged anyone with the task of planning communications in the event of war, the matter had gone by default.'
At the end, even the Fascists fell for their own propaganda.
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