Political Violence and Institutional Crisis in Interwar Southern Europe

In recent years, the discussion on the ‘brutalization of politics’ after the First World War has been a central theme in research on interwar Europe. This issue was highlighted for the first time by George Mosse before being developed by other scholars. In these studies, the origins of the ‘brutalization of politics’ were tied to the psychological and social impact of the use of modern weapons and to the effects of life in the trenches during the war, as well as to mass mobilization caused by the war.1 This kind of analysis had two major consequences: it gave a new start to the discussion on political violence and provided it with a space in the international historiographical agenda. Impetus was also given to the exploration of the relationship between the birth of fascism and the presence of languages and practices of violence during the interwar period.2