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The Italian State's Active Support for the Aeronautical Industry: The Case of the Caproni Group, 1910–1951

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 June 2021

Francesca Fauri
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Abstract

Based on Italian and foreign archival sources, this study shows how Italy's active assistance to its industrial apparatus soon included the newly born aircraft industry, including the Caproni Group. However, after World War II the Group went bankrupt along with most aircraft manufacturers. The suspension of aircraft development, the preference for importing allied (American and British) aircraft for civil airlines, and the denial of international assistance were the ensuing political and economic costs of defeat. In the end, Italy nationalized what was left of its aviation firms. Also, nationalization was consistent with its industrial history and represented the only way to help this sector survive.

Keywords

Italy's aircraft industrystate assistanceCaproni Grouppolitical biasesnationalization
Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 95 , Issue 2 , Summer 2021 , pp. 219 - 247
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2021

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Footnotes

I would like to thank the personnel of the following archives: Archivio Provinciale Trento (Trento); Archivio Centrale dello Stato (Rome); Archivio Storico Banca d'Italia (Rome); Archivio Storico Fiat (Torino); Archivio Storico Intesa Sanpaolo (Acilia, Rome); National Archives and Records Administration (Washington, DC); and the Public Record Office (Kew). I also wish to thank the staff of the Ruffilli Library in Forlì (incredibly helpful even during the COVID-19 emergency lockdown) and the three anonymous referees.

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42 CSVI, Sede principale, pratt. n. 266, fasc. 18, Relazione del comitato di vigilanza e di controllo sulle aziende del gruppo Caproni giugno 1939, ASBIT. Apparently Mussolini's choice of Graziani was also motivated by the need to remove the general from the media spotlight, after it had become public that his military operations in East Africa made use of poisonous gas.

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86 In the United Kingdom the state intervened in sectors such as transportation and communications; in France the government nationalized the railways, the armament sector, and, partially, the Bank of France; in Germany the state ended up being the real controller of the entire national economic apparatus. See Robert Millward, “State Enterprise in Britain in the Twentieth Century,” and Emmanuel Chadeau, “The Rise and Decline of State-Owned Industry in Twentieth-Century France,” both in Toninelli, Rise and Fall, 157–84, 185–207.

87 Castronovo, Storia dell'IRI, vol. 1, 43. On the history of IRI, see also Amatori, Storia dell'IRI, vol. 2.

88 With the exception of Aeronautica Umbra, which, after being saved by the state holding GEPI, was sold to the Umbragroup company in 1993.