Miniature Guns for the Fascist Youth: Italian Balilla Carbines
Italy
•
8m 58s
As part of his effort to imbue Italy with a fascist culture, Mussolini formed the ONB, or National Balilla Organization as a replacement for all other youth organizations in Italy in 1926. It was intended for boys aged 6 to 18, and included military training. Older boys practiced shooting and drill with real rifles, but the younger boys were given Balilla carbines - blank-firing scaled-down versions of the Modelo 1891 Carcano carbine, named after an 18th century folk hero who sparked a revolt in Genoa at the age of 10 in 1746. Over 100,000 of these Balilla carbines were made between 1931 and 1943.
The most prolific manufacturer was Fratelli Grazian of Verona, and we have both an early and later type example of Grazian carbines today. They made extensive use of bronze parts, and the early model has a distinctive bulge to the magazine well. Grazian made some 57,000 of these carbines in total.
Up Next in Italy
-
Italy's M14: The BM-59 at the Range
Beretta in Italy developed the BM-59 after World War Two as an improvement on the M1 Garand - lightened, shortened, and given a box magazine, bipod, and selector switch. And the did this in a whole lot less time that the US took to finalize the M14. So how does the BM-59 handle? Well, sorry Sprin...
-
Tipo Alleggerito Beretta: Because Ita...
Today we are looking at two examples of prewar/wartime Beretta compact pistols. The first is a Tipo Alleggerito Model 34 in .380. This was developed because of a quirk in Italian law which prohibited the civilian sale of military small arms. Beretta had been selling the Model 1934 commercially fo...
-
FNAB 43: From WW2 Italy to Algerian I...
Designed and manufactured by Fabbrica Nazionale d'Armi di Brescia (National Arms Factory of Brescia) in northern Italy, for use by the RSI and German military forces (as well as some partisan units). They were produced in 1943 and 1944, and only about 1,000 were made (all with serial numbers in t...
