Advertising communications in the context of the commercial culture of the interwar period of the 20th century in Italy and Germany

The aim of the study is to identify the ways in which the fascist regime attracted a significant portion of advertising professionals, who were responsible for conveying commercial messages to residents of Italy and Germany during the interwar period (1918-1939), to its side. The article analyzes the relationship between the regimes, advertising campaigns, and commercial structures. Based on archival materials introduced into Russian scholarly discourse for the first time the study demonstrates that fascism, using methods of both terror and seduction, managed to enlist the support of representatives of the advertising industry, who transmitted not only commercial but also ideological messages to the mass consumer. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the analysis of fascist communications and the comparative study of the use of mass media, advertising, and propaganda in the two countries. On the one hand, the management of mass media by the governments of Germany and Italy is one of the most studied features of the fascist and Nazi eras. However, on the other hand, historiography has largely concentrated on the political side of this history, neglecting the commercial aspect. The study shows that advertising became the “economic propaganda” of the two regimes in Italy and Germany, a key element in the fascization of the collective imagination in the 1930s in both countries. Contrary to many reconstructions developed in the process of describing the history of advertising in Italy and Germany in the second half of the century and at the beginning of the current one, advertising was by no means ignored by the regime and was not opposed to fascism. If anything, it played a prominent role in its existence from the very beginning.