Abstract

During the 1900s, violence was a feature of totalitarian regimes and its analysis is a useful tool with which to compare Italian Fascism and German National Socialism. This paper reconstructs events of student violence, first in the establishment of the Fascist and then Nazi movement, in the academic world of Italy and Germany. University students identified with the Fascist and Nazi movements from their early stages, and in universities became the armed wing of a propagandized revolution. This was meant to sweep aside old social hierarchies and make way for the young, who had given much in the First World War and were destined to become the future élites of the two nations. In Italy, as in Germany, university students placed their desire for advancement at the service of the regimes, and became a tool for the control and regimentation of university life.