A Technological Fiasco: Scientific Research, Institutional Culture, and Fascism in the Italian Navy (1919–1940)

The article analyzes the causes of the Italian Navy’s delay in developing new technologies during the interwar years. The wider institutional panorama of Fascist Italy, characterized by the polycratic chaos typical of totalitarian regimes and interservice rivalry, combined with naval cultural opposition to technological change, rooted in part in the Italian naval officers corps. Employing new archival sources, the essay explains how the institutional-cultural background hampered scientific cooperation between the Navy, other armed forces, and national scientific institutions. The slowdown in Italian naval technological development and its subsequent failure to develop new technologies such as radar and sonar were a central cause of the Italian fleet’s poor performance in the Second World War.