Legacy and Post-War Memory

For adults with Crohn's disisease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters Tromphia offers self injection or intravenous infusion from the start Trmphia is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self inject trmphia, proper training is required Tremphia is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease, and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis, serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them, and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection flu like symptoms or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tmphayia today. Call one eight hundred five two six seven seven three six to learn more. or visit trmphayiaradio. com Hi everybody, Welcome to the Rest is History. So we have a brand new minieries for you to mark the FIFA World Cup, which is happening in the United States Canada And Mexico. So what we're going to be doing is looking at some of the history, the deep history of the World Cup and in particular ' the story of how dictatorships have used football and used the World Cup in particular to bolster support for their regimes. So we're looking at propaganda, we're looking at the personalities of the dictators. We'll be looking at the stories of the tournaments and how they reflect public opinion and so on. someome amazing stories. In future episodes, we'll be looking at the great Brazilian team of the nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies team Helle and Jazino and Jess and and all these great players. team that won in nineteen seventy, people say the best team of all time This was a point when Brazil had a military dictatorship. so we'll be looking at how the military dictatorship of Brazil from nineteen sixty four uses football We'll be looking at arguably the most controversial World Cup of all, which is nineteen seventy eight, Argentina. Some of you may remember we did a series about Ava Peron And this is effectively the sequel to that. So we're looking at the military juunnta of the late seventies and how they used seventy eight World Cup and the team of Mario Kempez which won against the Dutch in the final big story in Argentina But we'll be kicking off with Italy And with Muscline in his fascist regime and the World Cups of nineteen thirty four and nineteen thirty eight. So it's a really, really great subject. Now, we love our listeners. So this is a special treat to mark the World Cup. Normally, this episode would be a bonus episode purely for members of the Rest' History Club, but because it is the summer of sport, we are making this first episode in the series brilliant Paul Rouse available to everybody. And if you want to hear the rest of the series, which I hope you will You merely have to go, you know the drill. To the restest ishistory dot com to sign up and you'll get not only Paul's wisdom about Brazil in the nineteen sixties and seventies and Argentina in nineteen seventy eight, but you'll get all the usual things. you'll get early acccess to series, you'll get bonus episodes and an unbelievable range of supplementary benefits. So what's not to like? If you're not interested in football, don't worry. the history will very much be uppermost A great subject needs a great guest. We have the greatest. We have the goat, as we like to call him the self styled Irish National treasure. No 'm a prorofessor of history at University College, Dublin. Paul Rouse. Paul welcome back to the restest is History. It's great to have you on. Thanks toilli Dick. Because it's a football story, we've chosen this lovely location. Thankks to Chelsea Football Club. We're here at Stanford Bridge overlooking the pitch. And with perfect timing,beccable timing, Chelsea have decided today to rip up the pitch and do loads of building work on the stadium. said, Paul, you will be competing with reversing vehicles, diggers, bulldozers, general men in kind of yellow vests, but you're pumped for that, right? I'm ready. You' ready, Brilliant. So Paul, you were masquerading as a historian of Ireland in the last few series that we did. But this really is your home turf, isn't it? becausecause you're a historian of sport. Is that right? That's what I spend most of my time teaching and working on in University, colloege, Dublin is the history of sport. Yeah, Nationally in Ireland, but also internationally, I teach a second year module on The global history of sport Yeah, across the last two hundred and fifty years in particular. lotots to talk about here. and obviously, it's very much in the news at the moment politics becausecause the World Cup is being held in the US. Donald Trump has tried to take ownership of it. There' been a number of scandals. The Iran players had to move their base from the U.S to Mexico. This is with a referee not being allowed in this time. Do you think this is something new or an example of how football has always been politicized and used by you know, political leaders of one kind or another The idea of soccer being politicized is nothing at all new. What is new is the precise manner in which it's revealing itself in the case of America, I suppose the drumpest focus on immigration and on the projection of America first and That is in collision. with the expressed hashtag if you look at Janny Infantino, the head of FIFA's Instagram page. He seems to be unable to post without putulling the hashtag football unites the world and unfortunately you cannot say that football unites the world If at the same time you're denying entry into your country of people because of where they come from And including in that a referee of the competition. But again, this is this is not new the whole way through from nineteen thirty. like this is a political story the whole way through the relationship and there was a president of FIFA An English man in the fifties and sixties, Stanley Rouse, no relation. He'd no E in his name. He had this whole notion that sport and politics and soccer and politics in particular should not be put into the same wheelhouse, but they've always been there. Yeah. So I agree with you. I think sport hass always been political. It's always been used by You know, going back to the Victorians, it's always been used by people in authority and power to project values they want to project. Now one thing I do notice is that you've used a very controversial word a couple of times that some of our British listeners will already be bridling about, even though it's in origin, a British word. And that word is the dreaded word soccer So for our British and American listeners who are clearly going to be divided on this issue You think it's fair to call football soccer, right? Well, in my world, it's logical to do it. And you're right, there is an amazing internet fight or people running around the internet with pitchfks. It is quite remarkable. But if you look at the word, the word comes from England, was used in England from the eighteen nineties onwards all the way through to the nineteen eighties in research for this series, I went back and I looked at preview shows of the World Cup and nineteen seventy eight preview show, Kevin Keeegan refers to soccer in his ITV punditry. on the title page of Matt Busby's autobiography from nineteen seventy three. soccer and football is used interchangeably. This is something that changed in the nineteen nineties, but in a world where we consider that there are sports which exist beyond this island, the island on which we are filming, There are other football games. So as shorthand I call Association football, soccer in this, but in the town I'm from in Tolamor in offfully, football is gaelic football. I'm sure lot people have loads of infuriated comments about this one way or another, so we'll let them argue about it But let's get into our story. So today's episode is about Italy and the nineteen thirties in particular and mussolini. So if we start with muscesolini and Italian fascism Musliny comes to P in october, nineteen twenty two. they've had the march on Rome, which of course Muslly wasn't You know, he sits and watches the mart on Rome And then he's come to power. It's a backlash against the sort of the red years or whatever they are in the early nineteen twenties. So labor unrest, there's the scars of the First World War. There are a lot of disaffected veterans and so on mananliness, virility National unity. these are all parts of Mussolini's agenda, aren't they? How much of Mussolini and fascism? How much of the appeal of that, do you think comes down to kind of an aur of masculinity, I guess? Well, Mussolini was promising a new world and He looked for a distinction from what he considered the failed regime. This is a trident tested technique across the world from regimes who seek to start anew, They present the old world as being failed They present it as being a dying country full of people who are just weak and Mussolini to an almost cartoonish extent tried to project virility, tried to project energy and dynamism and discipline and health And this was in contradistinction to to what had been there previously and It led to when you see the footage now of Mussolini or you see the photographs of them, it's almost It's almost cartoonish and it and it's exaggerated Nature in the historyomics where they are good It must never be forgotten the extent to which he was a cruel and brutal individual truly ruthless in what he wished to do and the fact that almost in the beginning he wanted war. But sport was part of the whole projection of what he was trying to do in creating Y he saw it and knew Italy. So there's sort of two elements to that aren't there, I think. One is, I mean you mentioned health So the idea of the health of the nation reviving what is a sick and dying country under democracy, fail democracies and sport becomes a projection or reflection. of the health of society But also sport is training for war, that sport is training you in the discipline and the competitiveness and the aggression that you need to attack Abyssinia or Greece or whoever it might be. The way they did it was twofold. was threefold really. There' the projection of Mussolini himself as the country's greatest sportsman, this imagery of him out skiing bare chested I riding horses and there's images of him, he looks terrible on a bicycle, but there's a brilliant photograph of him standing on a balcony with loads of Italian cyclists waving their bikes in the air. It's an incredible image. And the truth of it is he was anything but athletic. He was a small fat man when it comes down to it, and he was not nothing wrong with that po? No He was Athletic in no modern sense of the word that you would consider, although he wanted to project the idea that he was But he went for practical policies around it a you look at the building of sports fields Th the late twenties into the thirties an extra three thousand sports fields built around. Italy ins because he was looking for mass participation in sport. But he also put gyms and sports halls in villages and in towns around the place. So this was a vast ultimately fascist project. to create Men And it was directed towards men or there were women involved in sport who would be able to people an army. And then the third layer was the development of a kind of an elite sporting world in which There would be elite sport within Italy but really the best Italian sports people. would be able to compete in cycling and in boxing and ultimately in soccer and in the Olympic games when they went outside the country. So just question before we move on about this, how much of this What do you think is reflecting a new kind of dictatorship So they've been dictats shhips before, but in the nineteen twenties nineteen thirties what you see in the USSR in Italy Obviously in Nazi Germany in the nineteen thirties is the development of what we'd call totalitarianism. So the idea that top down politics will invade every aspect of life and leisure and recreation absolutely central parts of this. know, if you've got a new sports hall in your village or you've got a new running track or a cycling track or whatever You know, how much do you think that is? It's simply what governments do. It's part of national welfare that's promoted everywhere in the twentieth century. And how much is it distinctively well, either totalitarian or distinctively fascist? I think the scale of it makes it distinct. And you're right, it's an attempt to push into every aspect of life. And what better way, if you want to look at the hours between when people are working and sleeping or in school and sleeping, if you take that chunk of time for a lot of people it' an engagement in sport. It's b an opportunity to channel people in certain directions, but also an opportunity to channel their behavior as well. So you got in the case of Italy the development of mass sporting movements Which happened in two ways. First of all, it's the suppression and the either the destruction or the colonization of organizations that were run by the communists in Italy or by the Catholic Church and their identification with the new regime. And then the creation of a youth youth sports movement, sport and leisure movement, more broadly, and an adult one which attempted to draw Italians in, to not just develop the body in a certain way, but to I get them to identify with the regime which was there. being constructed by Mussolini. And one element of this actually I note from your notes and it's actually runs through all three of the storiess we'll do' involvement in the Army Because the Amy in Italy are training physical instructors, aren't they in Brazil, I mean actually the Brazilian football manager in the nineteen seventies, Claudio Cutino, was a captain in the Brazilian army. And then obviously the army in Argentina using the nineteen seventy eight victory. But Do you think there's an obviously militaristic side to this? And would that have been obvious to Italians in nineteen thirty or something? Well the teachers who were being trained were being trained by army instructors who were brought in and you can see by these army officers who trained the physical fitness instructors who were going around the place, produced. By nineteen thirty six, there were fourteen thousand such instructors produced from these Amy academies. And I think it's interesting we'll see this later on, but you look at the Argentinans in particular with Perron He was in Italy in these years. He saw what was happening and he adopted this broader sporting approach to sport and the engagement with the army that he had witnessed in Italy during these years. That's so interesting. So much of it comes back to this This model, doesn't it? the kind of Italian fascist model that is then copied in South America in the post war years, It's not as discredited as it is in Europe, maybe, I guess. No, But when we go through this later on, you can see these ideas that were replicated. I mean, what happened in Italy in the twenties and thirties, theseese notions expanded and the sport is part or they were exported, of that is what happened in South America after the war. Now you talked about one big element of this. It's not just about internal stuff But it's about the projection of Italian fascism abroad, using sport to project it So How does that work? So for example, this is the era of the Olympic games are taking root and whatnot The Italians, I mean, they're wearing black shirts at the Olympic games, things like that. There's an obviously fascistic element to this and there's an element that even in the twenties, Mussolini is trying to use sporting triumphps abroad to bolster his regime at home. It's not that Mussolini arrived in nineteen twenty two and there was the immediate creation of a fascist state. This was change that happened, a lot of change, but it happened through the twenties So you have by the end of the nineteen In twenty nineteen twenty eight Landro Ferti, who is the head of the Italian Olympic Committee talked about this idea of using the movement to create courageous soldiers in wartime. By thirty two, the Italians are parading at the Olympic games in L.A wearing black shirts and they did really well. They came second in the medals table, which is a huge step forwardty six Berlin, the Italians came forth. So this is a movement that is really gathering momentum in terms of Italian prestige on the world sporting stage Probably the most famous person in the world in the nineteen thirties was the world heavyweight champion whooever that was at a particular year. And Primo Carera, the Italian boxer won the worldld heavyweight Championship in nineteen thirty three. And his fame was promoted through newsreels and through radio, which was then beginning to broadcast live fights and disperersse them across the population reaching into people's homes as well as in squares and of course, In cycling, you had the Italia cycling was the biggest sport in Italy in the nineteen thirties and the erro was hugely important. So you have between that and the modern sport of motorc racing where Italian drivers, Italy isn't just staging races, it's sending out some of the best drivers in the world. So you see the whole creation of an international sport presence for Italy which had not previously been the case. So you've talked about boxing, cycling. I mean, they're very emblematic sports of the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, but not yet as you would call it soccer. I mean, the great irony of course is that Mussolini does not himself like football but he's very good at using it. Is that because it's already very popular and very well established in Italy? orr is the development of football in Italy something, I mean, obviously football has been spread by the British. In the late nineteenth century, sailors, railwmen, you know the classic story, the sons of industrialists who went to public schools and then just did a few You know, a fewths and months of a day and took a ball with them or whatever How well established is football in Italy at this point in the twies? The story of the game on European soil is the story of incredible explosion Cross much of Europe in the twenties and in the thirties h it was hugely popular, we'll say in Hungary and Austria And But in Italy it took off in the nineteen twenties. Now there had been soccer played from the eighteen nineties and you're right, it is the story of expats and traders and soldiers and sailors bringing it wherever they went. But it's also the story of Italians who went to work in England. So you see some of the main people will see it with Puzzo, the great Italian manager parties. He loved the game and he got it because he was sent by his family textile trade to work in the North of England. He ended up befriending Mance United players and managers, but that connection of commerce and of finance of trade is important and you get an anglophilia People who just think England is the most modern country in the world. will' adopt the game and then there's the joy of playing So You had the first clubs in the eighteen nineties and before the war, you had Italian clubs being established playing games with each other, hugely influenced by England, but after the nineteen twenties you had an explosion of interest in the game. You get the broader commercialization with the building of grounds because such was the interest in people not just playing but also now watching others play. and crucially the identification of clubs with areas and with towns and with cities and It became a matter of civic pride to have a decent team to represent you to compete in the championship. And what Mussolini did was to oversee through his men who were out into various organizations was to essentially take control of Italian soccer by organizing the establishment in no particular order of The amalgamation of some clubs in some cities so they would have a really strong presence. Number two, the establishment of an Italian league, numberber three, the devotion of greater focus to the Italian national team. and number four, the acceptance, though not the outward acknowledgements of professionalism, it said that you could have non amateurs playing in your clubs. So this is the shift from amateurism to professionalism, all of which took place in the nineteen twenties. So interesting. And a couple of elements of this I think are really interesting. is The teams that we now regard as the canonical Italian teams Some of these are mussolini era creations. They are the one thing that football fans now hate as inauthentic. They are made up teams, contrived teams, you know, the authorities have forced different clubs to amalgamy. So I was astounded to re Forentina Roma, Napoli These are all basically made up clubs in the nineteen twenties and thirties, top down down and it could have gone either wayays. likeike you look at what happened to Welsh rugby A clubs were forced together in the wake of professionalism in the middle of the nineteen nineties and the struggles of Welsh rugby to drive itself forward again, the complete opposite was experienced in in Italy where clubs were forcibly merged under fascist leadership, but They provided a spectacle that was only in the making at that stage You must remember that that world of the nineteen twenties, it's not like there was generational devotion to a particular club. What this is is a new world which is being forged, that world of commercial sport, based around associational culture as well where people are joining clubs. And it becomes more of a modern thing to do in the nineteen thirties, and particularly from the early nineteen thirties onwards with the establishment of the Italian League Cup The fact that there was a rail system which allowed people to travel the country both to play games and to support the teams that were representing their city. infrastructure promotes the act of supporting, doesn't it? You can't support your team of home in a away unless you can get to Napoli or Florence or wherever And I guess that without that, that wouldn't have been possible. Without it, you just couldn't do it. And look, the birth of modern sport, the construction of all of these things is made possible by the modern technologies of transport. international sport is not possible without the steamship and then the airplane, but it's also about new media technologies. So it's newspapers and the dedication now of sporting press in Italy which advertises these games, reports on them, creates that celebrity culture around the best sports. So people can read the preview, read the report, get the creation of stars and identify during the week with the team which they see play at the weekend. That's so interesting. because actually when I think even about how I experienced football growing up in the seventies natives I didn't go to games There weren't that many games on TV. For me, it was actually this is a weird thing to say about football It was a kind of It It was a reading experience. I read about games in the newspaper and I followed the narrative every day and it was a kind of continuous textual narrative rather than something that to see a game on TV was very exciting because they weren't on very often Presumably you had the comic books as well. It's Ry of the Ro and everything that goes with that. and Roy Ro is famously the most unlucky man in sport so many plane crashes. so many plane crashes and they could not go on a South American tour without arriving to see that there was a new junta in place that had been kidnapped. kidnapped. just it was really difficult. And then to lose a leg in a bomb explosion was for a soccer player quite challenging Exactly. now A you mentioned steamships and international travel. One aspect of this, I'm slightly jumping ahead Does the Italian have foreign players in the nineteen thirties? Yes, it does. And the story of how this happened is, I suppose it's the birth of an international transfer market in a significant way. The president of Torino FC, Enrico Maroni who was a very wealthy businessman, was in Argentina on a business trip and he saw a player called Julio Libonati who was the son of Italian immigrants, and he went and he said, I'm bringing this guy back to my club. He had played for Argentina, won the Cup of Souit America for what became the Cup of America for Argentina. and he won the Italian championship for Torino by virtue of his his performances. So what you then had was between nineteen twenty nine and the early nineteen forties, more than one hundred South Americans Arrive Well, that's like they decided to go. They were head hunted from not just from Argentina, but also from Uruguay and Brazil and Paraguay. and they were brought in to do this. and these were the sons of Italian immigrants because of course, Italian imigration to South America had been enormous at the end of the nineteenth century in the early twentieth century. So these were brought in, these were the Rimatriati s so this way, so you have a problem if you're a fascist in Italy because you're talking about the blood, you're talking about the importance of a kind of an Italy first to project backwards from America, this idea that the Italian nation must be preserved and developed and rendered more dynamic. So how do you square that with the bringing in of people from abroad? And what you do is you find the children of Italian immigrants and you bring them home and they're acceptable Yeah because their parents are Italian. Now I know it's risky asking this of an Irishman who must have supported Jack Charallton's Isreland team in the nineteen nineties, which of course was full of Englishmen. But are they inventing Italian ancestry for these people? Tony Cascarino style That's what you guys did with Tony Cascarino, I think that' Tony Cascarino'siograph orthobiography made that claim, but I think it subsequently was proven afterwards that he did actually have the entitlement to a passport. Now, it is absolutely true thatish the Irish FA Football Association of Ireland courted foreigners creative not foreigners, but people born to the Diaspora who may not have had a deep connection. A creative attitude genealogy, I think Which inair so I'm not going to be defensive on this because there is not a country in the world that doesn't do this. Look at the English cricket and rugby teams from people over the last while. I was Thomas here to defend what happened in cricket. All right, so let's get to the World Cup. Italy didn't play in the first World Cup, which is in nineteen thirty. The First World Cup is held in Uruguay. We did an episode about it in twenty twenty two where we talked about the origins of the World Cup. At that point, it's not obvious it's going to become a massive international event People are traveling by steamboats across the Atlantic. England, of course, don't go Argina and Uruguay play out the first final, which Uruguay wins in Montevideo. There' the famous stories about people crossing the river plates on chips and last in the fog and not micaking the game. Exactly. nineteen thirty four is going to be held in Italy and From the start The fascist authorities see this as a this is their equivalent, I suppose, in some ways of something we'll talk about in a little bit, which is the nineteen thirty six Olympics. This is going to be a showcase for for fascism. It's basically they want to ensure that Italy win, right So how do they go about doing that So they do a range of different things If we look first of all at the purpose of it, of the competition So Giorgio Vicaro who is the head of the Football of Federation in Italy, said that the World Cup was a chance to show the organizational efficiency of fascist sport in general and football in particular And he talked about this opportunity to display also Italian manhood on the world stage So The Italian newspapers covered it They put it on their front pages because they were instructed to do so by the propaganda ministry and the Italian diplomatic Corps wented to overdrive around the world trying to get newspapers around the world to do the same. Secondly, new stadiums were constructed. I lived in Florence for a couple of years about twenty five years ago and played soccer on the fields right beside cover Channel and beside Forenta the Stadio Caminale in Fiorentina. and that stadium still stood, but that was built at the time. The one in Bologna had a statue of mussolini on a horse at the back back of the stadium looking down across everything. They did a third thing. They wanted people to come. to see what Italy was like. So they basically invented tourist packages for people to come to the World Cup and subsidize travel to Italy and between the cities on the rail within Italy. They arranged this brilliant radio infrastructure. So so radio was pushing into people's homes by the early nineteen thirties But the Italian did more than that. they erected loud speakers poes in the main squares of villages and towns and in cities and in their suburbs games were also related to twelve repeating countries around the place. so the technology was only developing in terms of international really, but for European countries, it was straightforward The fascist symbol was everywhere. It was put on tickets and the tickets were designed and printed to a really high standard so that people could bring them home with them. So this is the construction of a memorabilia, this iconography of the World Cup the Italians were right at the heart this kind of idea of sporting merch or souvenirs to bring away with them. And of course, Mussini put himself up the center of the imagery of this. he ordered the construction of the fabrication of the Copa del Duce, this trophy that was six times bigger than the trophy that was to be given to the World Cup winnner. So the Copa del Duci would be presented to the winners alongside. So that's a bit like Donald Trump's FIFA Peace Prize. Yes, Right One of the most ironically titled awards in history. Yeah. So let's get to the finals themselves. Again England donon't go They turn it down Interestingly, you don't we were talking beforehand You don't think this is a sign of, I mean, the characteristic thing that people say now in a sort of self flagellating way that we love to do is, oh, this was a sign of insularity and arrogance. You don't necessarily think that? I think that It would be a fool who would argue that there wasn't a certain element of insularity and arrogance in it. There was a belief in the power still of British football of the importance of the home international championship played every year. There was a certain arrogance involved in that, but I don't think that's the defining reason. I don't think that's the been beginning and end of the conversation because it's that classic thing that we do in history. We see an event the way it is now and we project its importance backwards. But in nineteen thirty, nineteen thirty four, in the nineteen thirties in general, the World Cup was very much in the making. FIFA was an organization which was stillill relatively speaking an amateur organization, which was only beginning to gather power. It wasn't clear who else was going to play. What really was involved in qualifying or were you just invited to come? So I think it's wrong to say that this is simply a mark of arrogance and insularity. Some good teams do go I guess the best two, the most obviously, you you might have said the obvious favorites consonsidered the best team certainly the best European team of the nineteen thirttyies, Austria, The Wunda team, as they would call, they're famous something I think called the Wl. I don't exactly know what that is, but basically they move the ball very quickly and they were a great team. The manager legendary figure called Hugo Meisel Beat Scotland five nil In nineteen thirty one in Scotland were not nothing in those days, so impressive But They obviously don't win it because we know that Austria have never won the World Cup. Italy win it Italy is route to the final There are a couple of incidents, aren't there? I mean if we actually just go to the semifinal against the Austrians Austue the favorites Would I be being too harsh in saying, now obviously there's an issue here, which is that we can't sw the game. So we're reliant on reports But from as far as we can tell, would I be too harsh in saying Italy kicked their way to victory in a in a game that was dubiously refereed. One of the I suppose enduring threads of the World Cup and its history is the claim that almost every country who got there did so by either haaving accommodating referees on their side, having opponents who'd been bought off or having kicked a towar out of anyone who got in their way. of course But the truth of it is that every successful international team has a really good administrative people beside them who make sure or pushed to get a game played in a particular place with a particular referee, That's understood It is also the case that physical fitness and physical strength was absolutely, it is not possible to win a World Cup without being physically ready. and we'll see that when it comes to the Brazilian teams of the sixties and seventies and the Argentinian teams later on. So what was it particularly that allowed Italy win. There is no doubt that Austria and Hungary We're more technically capable than Italy Austrian and Hungarian caches were coming to Italy to cach players in Italy, but no foreign players beyond the Argenta, the South Americans were allowed to play in the Italian competition. So what did the Italians do? Well, they boolasted their squad with five Rimatriati South Americansouth Americans into the Italian team who were brilliant players. And that was crucial. So they had a technical ability that was outstanding Second of all, they had themselves a brilliant coach in Puzzo who had devoted themselves to the construction of the teams Although Pozzo wrote a letter after the semifinal to the b best Austrian player Cindalar, who does seem to have been kicked around the place during that game a letter of apology to him, the reality was he did what he needed to do to win, which was to make it a really physical game against Austria and to squeeze out a one nill victory. and there's been all sorts all sorts of comment about Eckland the Swedish referee who also left in the thirty eighth and nineteen fifty finals, it should be said as well. So this was a man who is devoted to soccer. There's a whole world of difference between pushing to have a referee who suits your style referee in the final and buying off that referee on the Whouse. And this is like so many of the supposed bribery stories in the World Cup are there so many stories of chicanery, it remains case unproven and probably unprovable. Yeah, it's so interesting, isn't it? And we were talking about this before we started recording that So many of the so called scandals associated with the World Cup, so many of the allegations of bribery, corruption, match fixing and so on. when you trace them back There's often a single source much l long after the game has taken place, which is then amplified by subsequent reports and it becomes It's kind of like an urban legend that crosses the line into historical fact because sports historians and journalists and whatnot and websites love to repeat it. And do you think that's a little bit the case with Italy in nineteen thirty four that perhaps it's an odd thing to say about a fascist team that's winning for Mussolini Perhaps they've been a little bit hard done by by posterity. So first of all, it's a knockout competition. So they're only playing four games. We have no video footage worthy of the name of that survives. The accounts that have been handed down are partial They are fragmentary and they're utterly unconvincing in their claims of chicanery that are involved in it. Did they do everything they could to try and win? Yes, is it more than that? the evidence just simply doesn't stack up I think there's two essential points that you made there that I agree with. First of all, the sources of these stories that are repeated time and again. I'm a big believer in oral history, but I like a bit more than one single source. And it's not just that the idea of there being conspiracies is something that's part of the human condition. It's much easier to imagine that your team has lost because of a conspiracy against it as against the fact that they're simply not good enough. Yeah. They gets the final They play Czechoslovakia, of course, not yet dismembered by the Munich aggreement And the checks actually went one they look. So we're twenty bad twenty minutes. hit the pulost and hit the post. But then Orsi, who is actually one of the South Americans Yeah He's Argentinian. He scores a great res a couple of men scores a great goal And then it goes to extra time. The first workout finals go to extra time. And a guy called Sciarvio hits the winner Two one, two one, Bingo, they've done it. Huraah for Mussolini, Huraah for Italy. Jul Rime, the founder of the World Cup gives them the trophy. Musceolini gives them his Donald Trump trophy. and the Italian press go absolutely bazerre. don't they? And it's proved this to them is not just a sporting triumph But a moral and political triumph eta Delaport goes, Italy is at the heart of the sports world. So this is This is evidence. of the greatness of the Italian mail R comes to the world stage. And you also have Eil Bargelo coming out and saying that victory was the affirmation of an entire people, an indication of its virile and moral strength So this is a projection which goes way beyond just a sporting success into the success of a nation Mas need delighted The regime delighted. The obvious question though, which may have ocurred some listeners already I mean, most people don't go to the games, right? becausecause you can only fit sixty thousand people into a stadium or whatever So how do make it's not clear either that the game sold out? Oh my gosh, which is which is really interesting because although Mussolini presented himself as queueing for a ticket before one of the games. broader public interest. a lot of people experience it on the radio are looking at news reels actually attending the game was limited in numbers and it's not clear that all the games sold out despite claims to the contrary Interesting. Well, this actuallyatch gets the heart of what I was going to say. How do most people experience this? Be you've already mentioned to seismic technological developments. So important in the politics of the early twentieth century and so vital to dictatorships in particular which are news reels and radio. So most people presumably experiencing this Well, actually three ways. They'll hear it on the radio. They'll see it at the cinema in an Issrael and then and they also have I' read about it in the newspaper in a magazine. Yes, that's and they will have seen the posters that are up the visual imagery these brilliant Italian Gandist posters that are putull up and identify and done with such clarity and skill The rise of radio. was so important because If you think about it It allowed the voice to reach into someone's kitchen and increasing numbers of Italians had radios By the mid nineteen thirties. I know radio was beginning to broadcast live sport. by the early nineteen twenties in America and then across Europe into twenty four and then across to Australia. But The reality of it was that mass radio ownership was really a product from the mid nineteen thirties onwards. So by thirty four In Italy, more and more Italians had radios and there is that Hobig Square broadcast so that be experienced Yeah. In a communal way in public squares by people as well who chose to do that. Before that, people used to congregate outside newspaper offices and wait for telegrams to come through with the It's like the old video printer on The stories that people did at the nineteen thirty World Cup in Buenos Aareres, they're so excited and they're kind of their face is dropping as a Uuquoi keep scoring goals. And the way they did it in nineteen thirty in Buenos Ares was The tap comes true, but they have a loudspeaker set up outside to project to the thousands of people who've gathered and just these stories of the tears that flowed after yourquire wind. Why are you laughing at the Argentinian sts going as part of us. People would think there was something wrong with me if I didn't allow for the Assce the nineteenth thirty Welcp final On the radio issue so so interesting That the commentator is called Nicolo Coroscio and he replaces English terms then current in Italy, goal kick forward and so on. The word Daisy cutter Yeah with Italian terminology because of the Italianization of the game, I guess. Yeah. This Italianization was really interesting as well. it's even the adoption of the word Calcio. So it's not football or it's not football as it became in South America, but Calcio takes on. And of course, there's this is an echo back to Calcio Forentina, the medieval game that was played or the early modern game in Florence still re enacted did now with new teams and how important was there was this construction of a mythology that that itself was a recreation of Harpeston the old Roman game. so this is Italy remaking in the thirties, what had been already there in the early modern period, which itself was an extension of the old Roman world. So it's not alone that we kind of we've been at this game for thousands of years We're not having the mere English with their words, right oming infecting. Yeah, yeah our commentary which is reaching into homes because this is about Italy Yeah, becauseuse if you're mussin in the mid nineteen thirties, you don't want people thinking, this is the game of Stany Baldwan and Nevill Chamberlain that we're tryphing out. You want them to think this is an ancient Roman game with the heirs to the Roman Empire You know, we are taking up the baton from our predecessorors monarch, which they have to be, I mean they' won the Worldup Yeah, foootball came home. Yeah, F. But that's what they'd say anyway. Although It's slightly more complicated, isn't it? Because There are some fascists who don't like football because it's English I mean, there's the issue of the fact that, you know You've got South American players in the team who are if you believe in blood and soil, Italian nationalism, it's a slight problem that some of your best players are not actually Italian Th then there's also There are also people who Are anti fascists, there's lot of anti fascists in Italy. How do they react to the nineteen thirty four World Cup? So even within fascism there's an ambiguity around soccer and you can see it by the invention of a game by the National Secretary of the fascist partarty, Augusto Turati, who set up a game which was loosely based around the rules of soccer, but which was called Volata. and it was to be that kind of aasc the fascist version of socer didn't kick off. sort of quiddch of. Yes exactly pretty without the broomstick as you go along. and that just just did not take off. So that's within the party itself. You then have that addition of the Rim Patrioty, which of course is made really more difficult for those people who brought them in by the fact that some of those Rim Patriati disappeared from the country in thirty five and then into thirty six when the invasion of Ethiopia and everything that came like that and there was military service on the way so that creates a problem. And then you have the idea of C Carol Levy writing in nineteen thirty four lamenting the fact That sport is now being used as propaganda, lamenting the fact that it's infantalizing a nation into acceptance of a regime which he utterly opposes and which he fought against. And I do think in all of this, you have to remember that It's a real danger that you believe the propaganda So That is to say, we accept that there was propaganda But to move from that to say that the propaganda was successful is problematic. And you see it with, for example, Lucio Lombardo Redici, the celebrated mathematician and communist from the nineteen thirties in Italy. He wrote later of those years saying he had been at the matches. He was at the final in which the Czechs were beaten. and he said of that he was disdainful. This is a communist who was disdainful of the idea that it was a fascist enterprise. He said, no one ever became fascist because they supported Vittorio Pozzo's Italian team And he went on and he questionsed and says, this words of opium for the masses or the corruption of consciousness and souls. And then he says, not at all Please stop talking nonsense So this is a really interesting thing and I know You have a strong view on this the standard interpretation is that nasty regimes use sport and culture to brainwash the masses and the masses truly fallen into line. They love bread and circuses And that's just how it works. And this is a basically this entire series that we're doing is a quite a simple top down story of nasty generals using sport to control And you think that's not correct, that it's more complicated and actually the public either are not interested in they don't see the political angle It's irrelevant they're not interested, or they resist it, or they can they simultane that people are more complicated and people can support Argentina winning in nineteen seventy eight while still hating the regime, let's say. I suppose I don't like a history which is a mass ascription of either motivation or impact onto great swathes of people within any country. That would be my starting point. Now it would be a fool who would argue it had no impact. So I'm not trying to argue that in any shape or form. What I argue for is a more tempered understanding and a more nuanced understanding of how this actually worked. And I think there are a series of questions that are worth asking in relation to this So in what way W Italy and Italian society and fascism behave differently if the World Cup had not been played and won in thirty four and in thirty six or thirty eight thirty six or the Berlin Olympics when won the soccer thirty eight, when they won the World Cup again. Do we imagine because of that that Italy would not have gone into war with Germany and moved on? Would the non staging of the Berlin Olympics in thirty six really have altered the course of Nazi Germany? Similarly The Brazilian military dictatorship, which oversaw the winning of the World Cup in nineteen seventy By the end of the seventies, its power was in severe decline, and we'll talk about how that manifests itself Dominic in the next episode. But equally, in ' seventy eight, Argentina won the World Cup. By ' eighty two, the military dictatorship was gone, and this is the thing that must be remembered always about sport. Sport at its very best is of the moment. It completely captures the emotions in the moment But what does that mean beyond the moment? What is the legacy of that success? Is it eatating bread soon forgotten when it comes to sport? sport is unbelievably protein in its aspect. It changes and turns all the time. It is always driving forward. And it is always about the next event, not the one that has just happened or it very quickly becomes about the next event. Now I'm not saying that it doesn't facilitate identification, but it doesn't smother all other feelings. and it does not you cannot deny the multiple identities of a human being when it comes to these thingsents. I actually couldn't agree with you more. I think it's clearly lot people who go to the games, they've got fascist printed tickets, they're in fascist stadiums, there are lots of fascists there, but that doesn't mean that they're all implicit in the regime or they have unthinkingly swallowed the propaganda. For me, that's a classy example of historians looking at a great mass of people who are not historans and saying ultimately, they're easily brainwashed because they're all idiots And I think that's right.s in a nutshell, that's it. Yeah. Okay, so let's you said sports about the next thing So is this podcast. The next thing is the nineteen thirty six Olympics, which might seem an odd thing to introduce in their Story of the World Cup. But Italy win, as you said, they win the football gold medal the nineteen thirty six Olympics. And for Mussceolini, he takes this just as seriously as the World Cup, would you say? I think the fact of going to Germany and that kind of developing relationship with Hitler, which comes after thirty six onwards and everything that happens in the way Italian society is is beginning to change and move closer to Germany, albeit with resistance from quite a number of Italian people who don't like this. They don't like this drift of of Italian policy. So the thirty six Olympic Games was played It was a soccer competition, which was won by the Italians with a group of students Again, this is looking forward, the Italians had staged the worldld student games twice under Mussolini. So this is about the creation of a new generation who are coming in imbued with these ideas that would not just be Italian students who are thinking these things, but also students who come from around the world to Italy to see the success of it and bring home to their countries a benign understanding and indeed a kind of a certain now of what has been created in this new roome, which is shown on the news reels that we see around the place. So he sends a team they' an Italian Olympic team. they come forward, but they win the soccer and they play they play really, really well and It is true though It's at a different level because the soccer in the World Cup by this point is restricted to amateurs, whereereas the soccer in the Olympic games is restricted to amateurs, whereereas in the World Cup it's professionals. So the next World Cup nineteen thirty eight. U this is held in France F final in Paris FIA had chosen France over Germany. to host the Wor Cup I, that's' an interesting alternative history isn't it? where the World Cup in nineteen thirty eight is actually in Germany. But anyway, it's in France. France not for most the twentieth century actually, well indeed for almost all the twentieth century, France, not a big footboarding nation at all. Bigger in rugby. M yeah, much rugby and cycling I guess France is sports. I mean, some bad teams actually Cuba are there, the Dutch East Indies are there Italy, of course are there again. One of the big European teams, not there because it doesn't exist anymore. Austria And you might say Germany will be brilliant in the nineteen thirty eight Wor Cup because they've absorbed the Austrians. but actually The Angelus turns out to be a sporting problem rather than an asset because it's very difficult for them to integrate the Austrians into the German team, is that right Yeah, they try and basically takeake half of one team, put it with half of the other team and anybody who's ever managed a sports team knows just how difficult that is, but it is so striking. Party six Berlin Olympics final. Italy beat Austria to one And Austriet doesn't even exist by the time of the thirty eight World Cup when it comes to playing they're absorbed into it. and this World Cup This thirty eight World Cup is really interesting. It it is, I think we have to say it's something of an afterthought from thirty four. And it's interesting to look at it about what's going to come about what comes next and you can see Italian anti fascist protesters boy Italian team when they arrive into play their games in France. And I think that's That's a reminder I think that no country is ever one thing or another at a particular time and that although you may identify with the national team and hows you can also use it to display your displeasure as well as your pleasure. Yeah But the Italians win again with a completely different team. There just two players left. So that iss a tribute to Victoria Pootza, the manager who's obviously a genuinely, you know forly people people might say, this is rigged, that's rigged. He's obviously a fantastic manager. if He can create two teams that win these international tournaments. He seems to have had an extraordinary capacity to motivate people played together in the unit and and to play together for Italy and to try and win. And you know, all this talk about Oh, the Brazilians were bought off in thirty eight. they didn't play there player Leonidas in the in the in the semifinal who he' scored a hatrick in six five. He's supposed to have had a calf injury though. So it's so easy to look backwards and say the reality of it is Italy win the final four two there were really, really strong team. There's just a lack of specificity about the suppos it chanary that went on and because again there's a claim Hungary basically through the claim is that Hungary went all the way to the final, then through the final madly because they were hoping for Italian help in revising the Treaty of Triano It just seems utterly implausible to me. I know the Treated Jan was a big deal in Hungary because it basically Hungary loses a lot of territory that things it's entitled to in Transylvania and stuff But again, it's such an unspecific and vague claim that the players somehow miraculously score two goals but managed to throw the rest of the game It seems unlike it's It seems to me that it would be difficult to bring home that bribe if indeed you' been bought off on the strength of it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. you're like the right back and the Hungarian team, you get home to Budapest and you say, well, bad news is we lost the final. The good news is I'm pretty confident that in a few years The Italians will help us get Transylvania back. So it does seem very unlikely. Okay, so that's just before we as we wrap up. How do the Italians end up remembering all this? Because obviously In Italy after the Second World War, there's not really the same kind of denartification process that you get in West Germany So the Italians don't have a great about of self flagellation and soul searching There's no sort of de fascistification of Italy They're habit to continue celebrating these Wor Cup wins. They don't see them as at all and adverted comas problematic, do they No, and it continued through to the stage of the nineteen ninety World Cup where you see Angelos Schiaavio who scored the winning goal in the thirty four final. He gave an interview to Gazetta deelosport before where he said before those finals, where he said, I sincerely don't remember much of that day, the final that he's talking about. I actually learned the details I had forgotten only by reading the newspapers that talked about it For example Pon Mussolini was present They said he was going to come, but I hadn't noticed that from the field. Then the next day when we went to Palazzio Palazzo Venezia where the famous balcony is. he said some of us stretched out our hand to shake his, but this wasn't so good because Mussolini raised his hand in the air, greeting us with the Romans It was me who had scored the decisive goal, but I got no special compliment So that's how he remembers it and he's put out there. Also, Rayuno, the main Italian television station in nineteen ninety, six million people watched the documentary, sorry, a film that they made called Il Coloro Da Vittorio, which was the color victory about the nineteen thirty four World Cup and it completely underplayed. the fistic context of the competition, as indeed does the National football Museum in Cver Chano in Florence So and Puzzo wrote an autobiography it didn't really mention The fascest element of the success and of course Julge Reme himself President of FIFA. He himself after the war was really keen to played the notion of connections. between FIFA and Italian fascism. But just a last question on this Is that them airbrushing history Mmm is that reinforcing your point that maybe Posterity overblows the fascistic Nature of this. and actually if you were a player You might You know, you're so fixated on you. I mean, we know sportsmen and women are always very, very single minded Perhaps I mean, as mad as it might sound, perhaps they didn't really notice that it was being co opted by the fascist regime and therefore it was a surprise to them later on when they were told A your victory has been tarnished by its association of Mussolini. Oh yeah, but the gap between the obsessive nature of an elite sportsperson, there's a huge space between that and the wider context. So I think to ignore the wider context while focusing just O the obsessive nature of Lesport misses the opportunity to render What is a kind of a much more interesting story which is neither just a fascist World Cup nor an elite sporting success, but both happen in a kind of interlocking fragments. Okay. greatreat. And very last question before we wrap up. Of course, next time we'll be talking about Brazil. Callum, a producer, wants to know why Italy is so bad right now. Why haven't they qualified for the last three World Cups? It comes down, I think, to the collapse of the Italian Lague. Italy even we' all remember who watched soccer in the nineties and into the two thousands, the strength of the Italian League, the strength of Italian club teams. So the collapse of serious seriously competitive Italian teams, the inability of the people, the clubs of Italy to attract the very best players in the world has limited the success of the lead, It compressed it and Italy simply does not produce enough good players themselves. Okay, fair enough. All right. So I really hope you enjoyed this first episode of the series. It's been a very exciting recording for us becausecause right next door is the Belgian player, Eden Hazard. When he looked through the window and he saw Paul Rouse, he's like, Jesus, it's Paul Rouse. And we had to actually keep him at bay because he was so overexcited Anyway, if you've enjoyed this first episode, head to therest ishistory. com and join Eden Hazard in the Rest is History Club. He will be listening to the next two episodes in this series and I hope you will too Hello everybody. Now As those of you who are good children will know here in Britain onn the twenty first of June It's Father's Day, but not just here in Britain It's also Father's Day on the twenty first of june in the United States In Canada and in the Republic of Ireland So those are four countries that are united Dads who love to listen to the rest is history. And that is why we are offering an amazing twenty five percent Father's D discount on the subscription price to the Rest is History Club because we are all heart. So treat the Peter the Great in your own life this Father's Day to early access to full series. You get say early access to that, you get that with a membership, you get bonus episodes, you get ad free listening You get access to tickets for live shows. Basically you get an entire host of supplementary benefits. And that I think is what a lot of patriarchs want, isn't it? It absolutely is because I think nothing says happappy Father's Day quite like the chance to listen to six solid hours Ad free about the First World War? Yeah, that's what most fathers want. So Head to there ishistory. com click on the word gifts And that gift meembership of our much loved Rers History Cub will land straight in your father's inbox on Father's Day itself. So if you want to give best Father's Day gift there's ever been in history ever we say this as the presenters of the restl is history, you know what to do Hello everybody. Now as those of you who are good children will know here in Britain on the twenty first of June, it's Father's Day, but not just here in Britain It's also Father's Day on the twenty first of june in the United States In Canada and in the Republic of Ireland So those are four countries that are united Dads who love to listen to the rest is history. And that is why we are offering an amazing twentyenty five percent. Father's D discount on the subscription price to the Rest is History Cub because we are all heart. So treat the Peter the Great in your own life this Father's Day to early access to full series. you get bonus episodes, you get ad free listening, you get access to tickets for live shows. basasically you get an entire host of supplementary benefits