Youth members in gas masks, 'L'Opera Nazionale Balilla', Almanacco enciclopedico del Popolo d'Italia (Italy, 1935)
Half-tone photograph from a yearbook: a row of uniformed youth-organisation members in white blouses and dark skirts stand in gas masks with filter canisters at their hips, seen from a low angle against the sky. The photograph accompanies the yearbook's section on the Opera Nazionale Balilla. The tell: civil-defence drill is shown as the proud, uniform look of the organisation, so preparation for gas attack reads as ordinary youth activity.
Propaganda techniques used in this photograph
- Date
- 1935
- Period
- Interwar
- Made by
- Il Popolo d'Italia (Milan), Almanacco enciclopedico, Anno XIV; on the Opera Nazionale Balilla
Full record
Region, Country, Medium, Issuer type, Regime, Leader, Audience, Purpose, Themes, Source, Rights
- Region
- Western and Central Europe
- Country
- Fascist Italy
- Medium
- Photograph
- Issuer type
- Media
- Regime
- Fascist Italy
- Leader
- Benito Mussolini
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Mobilize or secure compliance
- Themes
- Home front, War and the military
- Leader
- Benito Mussolini
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons, retrieved October 11, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (Commons PD tag; Italian basis, URAA status not asserted)
Almanacco enciclopedico del 'Popolo d'Italia', Anno XIV, 1935; via Wikimedia Commons.
Text on the object
Checked for printed text: none found
No printed or legible text on this object.
No legible text appears in the photograph; the zoom-control overlay at its foot is a viewer artefact, not part of the page.
