Da emigranti ad aviatori. Italianità e mito del volo durante il Fascismo

This contribution aims to analyze, through documents and photographs, the cultural creation of a totalitarian Italianity that Fascism tried to forge through the myth of flight, a cardinal element of the regime’s propaganda. Mass air cruises organized in the 1920s and the 1930s proved to be very effective instruments of national and nationalistic exaltation, even overseas, among the Italian communities reached in 1931 (Brazil) and 1933 (United States) by the flights organized by Italo Balbo. In particular, the 10-year cruise (1933) also made a stop in Iceland, in Reykjavík, where as early as 1932 some Italian thugs had gone on an exploratory mission. The transatlantic flight of 1933 will be the apogee of a fascist winged Italy, of a modern and triumphant Italianity destined to crumble at the outbreak of the Second World War