Mussolini made the trains run on time so well that each time I try to leave Pescara I was three hours late. His meddling with the rail lines both helped, and hurt the system - and it all depended on where you lived. Much like the majority of the country. The lasting impact of the Fascists and the trains pretty much sums up the entire regime, and how it still impacts Italy today.

##Quick Background##

As /u/Klesk_vs_Xaero went over, Fascism was popular during it's rule, mostly up into Italy's entry into World War II. Based on any conceivable metric, Italy became worse off as a country (especially for her populace) every year that the PNF was in charge. Consumption levels dropped ever year, the overall population decreased, inflation skyrocketed, the consumer price index shows the cost of goods spiraling out of control, and actual tangible living conditions either stayed the same or got worse. Bosworth's Mussolini's Italy: Life under the Dictatorship is probably the best English language source for the day to day life of somebody living under the PNF.

Yet the Fascists remained popular. Why? Because they made Italians feel good to be Italian. The modus operandi of the PNF was to emphasize the natural superiority of Italians over any other 'ethnic' group. That Italy was filled with multiple, actual, ethnicities did not matter: above all else you were Italian and thus the Fascists could claim that the Italian race was the superior race because the Italian had 'made themselves.' Reams of propaganda were spent on this notion of the superiority of Italians, especially in tying the 'new' Italian identity to that of the old Roman empire.

A lot of the 'public works' projects engaged by the Fascists were around this concept of tying Fascist Italy to the old Roman Empire. Mussolini personally directed an sizable chunk of money to be dedicated to archeology specifically to uncover Roman ruins. Money was also directed to projects to 'make Italy great again' as it were, as the First World War had scarred not just the people, but the Italian infrastructure itself. The two places we see this attempt at 'making Italy remain great' play at, and it's long term effects, is in trains and sport.

##So why were the trains so bad?

So the trains are generally used to absolve Mussolini and the Fascists from most of their idiocy in popular culture. Italy may have led one of the most inept invasions in modern warfare, and basically left the country in literal ruin but at least the trains ran on time. Right?

Wrong.

We need to back up to the Risorgimento to get an idea of where this myth even comes about. The disparity between the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was pronounced, at still influences Italian culture and politics today. While actual studies and historical data state that the new 'south' of Italy wasn't as poor as Sardinia propagandists made it out to be, the infrastructure was literal miles behind that of the north. Even with investment now being poured in, there are accusations that the Northern state conspired to keep the southern states poor. 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'). Franco Ferrarotti, one of the most famous sociologists in Italy, has stated that Italy still has yet to go through the Industrial Revolution 'in the mind.' People in Italy simply weren't moving into the cities from the farms. Compare:

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. Side note: the Fascists even passed laws in attempts to strengthen the power of landowners over the peasantry and keep them tied to the land. This had the effect of ensuring that the southern states by and large remained poor - and that improvements to the South would remain not priority.

Back to the unification, 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 most of the line not operating at profit, there was little reason for the companies to invest in them. An 1875 attempt by Parliament to unify these lines failed and ultimately brought that particular government down. An 1884 attempt by the government to subsidize the rail lines and improve their quality and amount failed. The larger companies and smaller companies both pocketed most of the subsidies to pay for their previous losses. 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.

Then World War One happened and Italy had to cannibalize most of their rail lines for the war effort, effectively erasing any work done over the past ten year. Which brings us to the Fascists.

Mussolini wanted 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. That should be a clue.

While 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 train 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 knew the power of propaganda. 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."

This, actually, is still the case in Italy today. Don't ever expect to be anywhere on time by taking a train from a smaller city to a larger one. Take the bus.

Yes, you may hear that... In fairness though, especially in modern times, that is very often meant as a joke - which is not to imply that no revisionism existed pointing out the goods (or supposed goods) of the fascist rule, or that nobody ever sayd so seriously. But, even fascist revisionist - or true to the letter "neo-fascists" would mostly refrain to use that as an argument as it had been parodied since the early 50s. The first instance I can find right now is in the 1956 movie La banda degli onesti. To give some context, this is a comedy where the actor Peppino de Filippo plays a typographic who starts to print fake money to make ends meet. His children, noticing that he is always out at night confront him and he retorts by saying that he is indeed working on some shady dangerous stuff justifying himself with the fact that “… in the past... that guy... there were good things, and trains were on time!”. Which shows that already back then people were making fun of the fact that fascist nostalgia resorted to the 'trains' argument when they had nothing better to say.

That claim more often refers to a general perception of effectiveness and order under the Fascist rule, as compared with the lackadaisical attitude of some republican governments... but, I would not give it much thought as a serious argument in itself. More interesting is to determine if such perception was actually widespread during the Fascist rule and if it was justified to some extent.

Also I always had the perception that this mostly resonated with foreign observers, as a remark on how the Fascist rule was able to straighten up even the Italians – a point of view that would be hard to fit to the narrative of fascist apologists; I'm not really familiar with foreign sources on this matter and I'd really appreciate if someone could contribute to this point.

Well, Fascism was actually popular enough during its 20 years rule - with some figures being more liked; Mussolini obviously at the forefront of popularity - and others almost openly mocked even during the Fascist rule - as Achille Starace, the enforcer of such policies as the use of formal voi instead of lei, the use of black trousers instead of gray striped ones (the "English" ones), the refusal to lift your hat when meeting an acquaintance, etc.

Despite the common perception that some of the formal "innovations" of Fascism were downright silly – and lent hand to parody almost immediately after the fall of the regime; overall the reaction of the population was of positive or neutral acceptance.

 

To say that this was due to a rational evaluation of the accomplishments of the regime would nonetheless be a mistake. A first aspect that it is easy to overlook is the fact that one of the main criticism against fascism under a contemporary point of view – namely its anti-democratic nature and its suppression of private and political rights – was not a major concern for many of the contemporaries. If you take a “brief” look at italian publicism in the late 19th century and early 20th you can discover a remarkable number of political programs involving authoritarian solutions and prefiguring the idea of a strong leadership; furthermore many tend to emphasize the importance of building a National Identity, over and regardless of individual rights, where individualism is valued as a measure of strength and self-affirmation is the result of struggle, something to be conquered by each and not to be granted from above. In this mindset, things like freedom of speech or the right to vote are conquests reserved for the elite of society or simply expressions of a system that has made its course and needs now to be replaced.

If we look back further we reach a time were political participation of the Italian masses was an absolute novelty – misunderstood by the Liberal establishment and the masses themselves, if for different reasons. Sidney Sonnino (a right wing Liberal), addressing the Chamber in 1881 remarked that the majority of Italians feels absolutely extraneous to our institutions; sees themselves as subject to the state and bound to serve it with blood and money but does not feel to be a living and organic part of it and takes no interest whatsoever it its existence and development.

The overall italian situation – which was actually improving under many regards as far as practical matters were concerned – appeared to many observers to be in a quite dramatic political conjuncture. G. Ferrero (from a conservative point of view) wrote in 1905: Dissatisfaction, mistrust, rivalry, hidden hatreds and a general and vague but widespread anger are dissolving the institutions, the parties, the classes. The radical party is dissolving, the socialist party is split, infighting, weakened: but on the other hand the army is losing its discipline... the conscripts go to their regiment yelling “viva il socialismo!”, small bureaucrats are in revolt and threatens to cross in mass to those parties that ever had been enemies of the State.

G. Prezzolini (a Nationalist and founder of the influent paper La Voce) wrote in 1904 that For us the heart of the national life is not in the old pontifical palace where our five hundred and eight representatives spend a lot of time to put together mediocre laws...That is the weak and debilitated part of the Nation, the bourgesy which only knows how to talk and spend... the life of Italy is in those brave entrepreneurs... in those land workers... in those farmers... And over this true life of facts, there is the life of words. Over the factory of machines of Legnano^1, there is the factory of words of Montecitorio. And more: Here are the classes most truly opposed than proletarians and capitalists: An Italy of facts and and Italy of words; one of action, the other of sleepishness and small talk; one of factories and another of living rooms; one that creates, the other that soaks up; one that walks, the other that stands in the way

Later Luigi Einaudi (who would become Presidente della Repubblica in 1948) wrote that the true bourgeois were not the bureaucrats [but] the factory owners and farmers who struggle for the progress of industry and agriculture... [among whom he hoped would rise the] savage men like the ones who made great their countries, the new leaders to put in place of the contemporary political class