Italo Balbo

Italo Balbo
Allegiance	Italy
Years of service	1915-1940
Rank	Maresciallo dell'Aria (Marshal of the Air Force)
Awards	- 1 Bronze Medal - 2 Silver Medals

Italo Balbo (June 5, 1896 - June 28, 1940) was an Italian blackshirt leader, aviator, governor of Libya, and heir apparent of Mussolini.

Biography

Early life

Balbo was born in Quartesana, near Ferrara (Italy), in 1896. Very politically active from a young age, at only fourteen years old he joined in a revolt in Albania under Ricciotti Garibaldi, Giuseppe Garibaldi's son. As World War I broke out and Italy declared its neutrality, Balbo supported joining the war on the side of the allies, joining in several pro-war rallies. Once Italy eventually joined the war, he served in the 8th Alpine regiment, earning one bronze and two silver medals and reaching the rank of captain due to courage under fire. Just before the Italian defeat at Caporetto, Italo Balbo requested a transfer to the Regia Aeronautica, but apparently never quite began his flight training. His battalion had been captured at Caporetto, so some accused Balbo of deserting because of his sudden transfer before the disaster. Balbo returned to the 8th Alpine Regiment afterwards and again saw action in the war during July and August of 1918, and participated in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto. After the war, he studied in Florence and obtained a degree in Social Sciences, then returned to his hometown to work as a bank clerk.

Blackshirt leader

In 1921, he joined the Fascists and soon became a secretary of the Ferrara Fascist organization. He began to organize fascist gangs and formed his own group nicknamed Celibano, after their favorite drink. They broke strikes for local landowners and attacked communists and socialists in Portomaggiore, Ravenna, Modena, and Bologna. The group once raided the Estense Castle in Ferrara.

Italo Balbo had become one of the ras, adopted from an Ethiopian title somewhat equivalent to a duke, of the Fascist hierarchy by 1922, establishing his local leadership in the party. The ras typically wished for a more decentralized Fascist Italian state to be formed, against Mussolini's wishes. Balbo was one of four main planners of the March on Rome (Bianchi, De Vecchi, De Bono, and Italo Balbo, Mussolini would not participate in the risky operation) which would ultimately bring Italy under Fascist rule. In 1923 he was charged with the murder of anti-fascist parish priest Giuseppe Minzoni in Argenta. He fled to Rome and in 1924 became General Commander of the Fascist militia and undersecretary for National Economy in 1925.

Aviator

Poster for Italo Balbo's transatlantic flight to the Century of Progress in Chicago.

On November 6, 1926, despite the fact that he knew nothing at the time about aviation, he was appointed Secretary of State for Air. He went through a crash course of flying instruction and set up to build the Regia Aeronautica, the Italian air force. On August 19, 1928 he became General of the Air Force and on September 12, 1929 Minister of the Air Force.

Balbo led two transatlantic flights. The first was the 1930 flight of twelve Savoia-Marchetti S.55 flying boats from Orbetello, Italy to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil between December 17, 1930 and January 15, 1931. From July 1 - August 12, 1933 he led a flight of 24 flying boats on a round-trip flight from Rome to the Century of Progress in Chicago, Illinois. The flight had seven legs; Orbetello — Amsterdam — Derry — Reykjavík — Cartwright — Shediac — Montreal ending on Lake Michigan near Burnham Park. In honor of this feat, Mussolini donated a column from Ostia to the city of Chicago; it can still be seen along the Lakefront Trail, a little south of Soldier Field. Chicago renamed Seventh Street "Balbo Drive" and staged a parade in his honor. (Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn has called for the city to remove Balbo's name from the street and replace it with a "more virtuous" Italian-American.) President Franklin D. Roosevelt invited him to lunch. The Sioux even honorarily adopted Balbo as "Chief Flying Eagle". Back home in Italy, he was promoted to Air Marshal. After this, the term Balbo entered common usage to describe any large formation of aircraft.

Governor of Libya

Later in 1933, Balbo was appointed governor general of the Italian colony of Libya, where he moved in January, 1934. At that stage he had apparently caused bad blood in the party, possibly because of jealousy and individualist behavior, so being appointed governor of Libya was an effective exile from politics in Rome where Mussolini considered him a threat. He began road construction projects, tried to attract Italian immigrants, and made efforts to draw Muslims into the fascist cause. In 1938, Balbo was the only member of the fascist regime who strongly opposed the new legislation against the Jews (Racial Laws).

After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Balbo visited Rome to express his displeasure with Mussolini's support for Hitler, the only Fascist man of rank to publicly criticize this aspect of Mussolini's foreign policy. He argued that Italy should side with Britain, but attracted little following. When informed of Italy's formal alliance with Nazi Germany, Balbo exclaimed "You will all wind up shining the shoes of the Germans!".

Death

On June 28, 1940, he was killed while landing on the Italian airfield of Tobruk, Libya, a few minutes after a British air attack. The cruiser "San Giorgio" started firing on his SM.79 airplane (bearing the civil registration "I-MANU" in honor of his wife, Donna Manu), followed by the airport's anti air guns. It is still not clear which of them shot him down. The government in Rome maintained that the incident was an accident of friendly fire, but Balbo's closest friends and his family strongly believed that it was an assassination on Mussolini's orders. This idea was supported during Mussolini's next visit to Tobruk to review the Italian forces, during which he refused to visit Balbo's death place. A 1997 interview with the gunner who shot him down claimed that Balbo's plane was simply identified as an enemy target, as Balbo was flying low and coming in against the sun after an attack by British Bristol Blenheims, but debate continues. Italo Balbo's remains were buried outside Tripoli on July 4, 1940. His remains were brought back to Italy and buried in Orbetello by Balbo's family in 1970 as the Libyan government threatened to disinter the Italian cemeteries in Tripoli.

References

• Di Scala, Spencer. Italy: From Revolution to Republic, 1700 to the Present. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8133-4176-0
• Smith, Denis Mack. Italy: A Modern History. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1959. Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 59-62503
• Taylor, Blaine. Fascist Eagle: Italy's Air Marhal Italo Balbo. Montana: Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, 1996. ISBN 1-57510-012-6

See also

• Military history of Italy during World War II
• Squadrismo

External links

• Comando Supremo: Italo Balbo
• Italo Balbo and the Sioux