Repubblica Sociale Italiana - Social Republic of Italy

## The Glorious Social Republic in 1962

The Regia Repubblica Sociale d'Italia is a country in Southern Europe. It shares borders with Germany, France, Switzerland, Croatia, Burgundy, and Monaco, colonies notwithstanding. Colonies withstanding, they share borders with Turkey, Arabia, Iran, Ostafrika, Zentralafrika, and various other nations. Their colonies are reserved for the purpose of economic exploitation and for the glory of the Fatherland. It's institution of neo-Roman slavery known as 'Convulsioni', meaning 'Seizures', dominates the de-facto Empire. Many non-Italians that live under Il Duce's boot have been introduced as apart of this institution, for various purposes - state labor, technological (and social) experimentation, as well as servitude to Italy's noble families such as the Badoglio family that dominates East Africa, the Messe family in North Africa, and the Graziani family in the middle east. With it's Laissez-Faire approach to minorities and non-Italians in comparison to the German policy, Italy is considered by many as an 'acceptable alternative' to Nazi Europe. Such policies have caused much tension in recent history with the Germanic superpower, especially since the Cordoba Accords of 1955 that have allowed for the creation of an autonomous mostly Sepharadic Jewish zone in Cordoba, and Venice's outskirts, though Jewish immigration to Italian lands is still illegal.

Not all is well in Rome - over the years, factions in the party have expanded their reach, and a visible fracture between Royalists and the Neo-Roman movement plagues the boot of Italy and it's overseas territories. While the Royalists wish to maintain the Royal House of Savoy, and some within the Royalist movement even wish to depose Mussolini in favor of the old monarchy, the Neo-Romans, the hardcore Fascist backbone of the party wish to establish a new monarchy, specifically a new Roman Empire. Many laugh at their vision, though this doesn't stop the tension from spreading. Day by day, the fracture expands.

### Official Name

Regia Repubblica Sociale d'Italia e sue Colonie (Social Royal Republic of Italy and it's Colonies)

### Unofficial Langauges

Several (Venetian, Ladino, Ethiopian, etc.)

### Party

Partito Nazionale Fascista - National Fascist Party

### Population

Approx. 70,00,000 [Not including colonial administrations]

## Ghosts of the Past - A History of Italy

To lay out the history of Italy from the olden Empire to the Renaissance would be as controversial as it would be time-costly. What truly matters is the new beginning, in a form of speaking; the Unification.

Prime minister of Sardinia, the Count Cavour, the heroes of the nation, Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi, and the Good King Victor Emmanuel I - all these figures were instrumental in the revival of Italy. Even then, the Italians looked beyond the shores of Sicily - to Africa and to the east. As the nation went on as all the others did during it's time, it's first debut in colonialism occurred in Libya and and Eritrea, though it did not go as well as expected - beaten back by the native population of Eritrea, an unthinkable scenario for the sons and daughters of old Rome who conquered the tribes of Germania and carved it's name across the Mediterranean in blood and in marble. This already foreshadowed the future of the nation, though not in the way one might expect by looking at it's colonial disasters.

After the first world war, where Italy was betrayed by the Entente and was refused most of the rightful clay they fought for, the dominos began to fall on the monarchical liberalism that has ruled Italy since it's recent unification. The pride of old Rome was not forgotten, many still remembered it, and the Fascist movement would not let their rightful destiny be denied. In the famous March on Rome, Mussolini and his Fascists took over, and their new, radical policies ensued.

Fortunately, the Fascist party that had many flaws in it managed to filter out it's trash during the de-facto coup, and a new generation of thinkers entered the frontline of Italian politics, no longer ruled by emotion as a whole, but by pragmatism and reality. This truly was beneficial for the nation, as Mussolini was himself very prone to emotion and pride, and in another time this would've likely led to his downfall. Instead, the new Italian government settled in and enacted it's policies first before acting unwisely - expansion of the industry, of agriculture, the military, and with cooperation with Germany all helped Italy to rise to the level that Germany has as a nation. In 1937, after years of preparation, a border incident was staged in Abyssinia - a "terrorist attack" involving what was likely a paid Liberian actor placing several explosives with the Coat of Arms of Abyssinia on them under an Italian M-12 'Garibaldi' tank in an Eritrean-Abyssinian border encampment. In response, the Italians launched a massive campaign to invade Abyssinia which swept the region, thanks to the 'Messe Doctrine' that massively helped adapt the Colonial Army to the harsh African and eastern environments, as well as the Garibaldi series of desert-fitted tanks, and the new brand of Schuberth's desert uniforms commissioned personally by Mussolini and his staff after a hazardous trip to the region. Italian planes, Italian tanks and Italian guns quickly swept the region. While this was not common news yet, this was the beginning of the Convulsoni program, secretly enslaving the local native population under the nose of foreign reporters and investigators. The Italian treatment of the region was - and is very reminiscent of the old Roman policy, likely an ideological move by Mussolini.

    After the victory in Abyssinia in May 4th 1937 with the suicide of the entire Abyssinian Royal Court, the administrative region of Italian East Africa was proclaimed with several of the notable commanders during the conflict immediately proceeding to grab and claim parcels of land for their own purposes. Pietro Badoglio who managed to secure Addis Ababa was named 'Viceroy of East Africa', and thus ruled the region, enslaving and exploiting the native population for the purposes of Italy, and for his own.

The victory over Abyssinia, the redemption if Italy's shameful defeat in years past had cemented the Fascist party, with Mussolini at it's helm as the rightful, legitimate, and benevolent rulers of Italy, those who will restore the Italian people to their rightful place in the sun. Changes were implemented almost immediately; the flag of Italy was changed for various reasons. First and foremost, the party agreed that the Tricolor was too western, too foreign, *not Italian.* Secondly, the idea of a final and true rebirth proposed by Mussolini could well be cemented with a flag changed, and thus the Tricolor went out in favor of the Bandiera Nazionale, the national flag, and with that came a change to the official name and status of the nation, now known as the Social Royal Republic of Italy. The 'Royal' in the name was put in place after disagreements from the more monarchist-leaning wing of the Fascist party, but Mussolini still viewed this as a symbolic Fascist victory. What kind of an Oxymoron is a 'Social Royal Republic'? Nevertheless, the divide between the Fascists and Monarchists can well and truly be seen here.

Not too long after these changes were implemented, the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis Pact was signed, cementing the three nations as allies due to their commonly shared goals and ideologies. The partnership was beneficial to all sides, with Italy acquiring much of the previously inaccessible German technologies to use in their army, as well as the infamous 'National Exchange' policy that permitted, at times perhaps forced Ethnic Italians in Germanic territories to move to Italian lands and for Germans in Italy to move to Germany. Furthermore, Japanese businesses began to expand into Italy, with the Romeo-Hidashi Electronics Corporation being established in Palermo, Sicily, a corporation that would go on to dominate the Italian and economy and lead it into the future.

In 1939, the invasion of Poland began - in response, the then French Republic declared war on Germany, which in turn Germany's allies joined in to her defense. The French army was stretched thin, and all the Germans had to do was wait on the border for the Italians to push into Savoy; and so they did. When the modernized Italian army pushed into Savoy, the French almost immediately began to panic, moving around their soldiers from border to border, eventually leaving the Maginot line undefended, which led to the Final German push into Paris in 1940, by which time Poland had already surrendered to the invasion. Italy occupied territories all the way up to Monaco.

Italian settlers flushed into the newly conquered territories, and the Romeo-Hidashi Electronics Corporation even bought out the entirety of Monaco from French Government remnants that fled there and occupied it, which it maintains to this day as it's own autonomous economic zone.

Italian forces would continue the fight with the French, this time in Africa, while the Germans continued their rampage in Europe. In 1942, when Italian forces crossed the Sinai desert into Palestine, the local governments had issued their surrenders to the Italians before they had even properly arrived - this is including the local British mandates. Supposedly not long before the Italians came, the Mandate government began to collapse after open conflict between the Jews and the Palestinians. Seeing an opportunity, Mussolini ordered General Graziani to accept all the surrenders and to move into the middle east and to occupy it. Unfortunately, the British in Egypt and their home islands would not abide by this and the 'Guerra del Sale', or War of Salt began, named as such due to the constant attempts of the British to invade into the Dead Sea, a body of sea renowned for it's pink salt cubes.

The British, who were really not expecting this at all, instead they were preparing mostly in their other colonial territories and in their home isles for an attack from the Germans, were caught off completely off-guard, and the Italian Colonial Royal Army ravaged their colonies, taking most of it over, with the Germans eventually coming in from South Africa to carve their path all the way to Central Africa.

Technically now, the British were at war with the Axis, and the British continued to stand resolute in the face of resistance in their home isles and their remaining overseas territories.

After the end of the war, the Neo-Roman policies of the victorious Italian nation were now able to fully spread across the nation without fear of embargo or denouncement. Slavery reigned and reigns supreme, and the ever-growing fracture between Italy's Fascists and Monarchists plagues the nation. The mess of an Empire held by Italy after the war's end has become a monster to administrate, and the strain of difficulties on the economy and administration had become too much to handle - thus, Italy, Spain and Croatia all formed the Zagreb Pact in an attempt to work together to mend their economies.

In the 1950s, slavery was expanded and the economy became reliant on it though this eventually proved beneficial to the overall nation due to the neo-Feudal Nobility system that had taken place in Italy after the war. Colonies were given more autonomy and foreign, mostly corporate investments in the colonial territories increased their value and took off much of the strain at the time for Italy.

In the 1960s, these troubles had not yet been eliminated, with the King and Mussolini constantly competing for power and support, and the military nobility slowing down the country for their own profit, and with Italy's rapid distance from Germany's ideological policies with things like the establishment of local autonomous communities, even Jewish communities, the tensions only rise. Many speculate about potential conflicts between the two titans in the near future.