In October 1935, Fascist Italy launched a full-scale military invasion of Ethiopia. Thereafter, Mussolini thrust his nation into a series of military adventures: the Spanish Civil War (1936-9), the annexation of Albania (1939), and, during the Second World War, the attacks on France (June 1940) and, later, Greece (October 1940). For many historians, Ethiopia signaled the beginning of the regime's “totalitarian turn,” a phase of Fascism in which warfare and radical domestic policies drove a “process of progressive ‘totalitarianization’” and a “cultural revolution.” In the past, Mussolini had spoken about, and to some extent pursued, the project of creating the new “Fascist man” (uomo fascista) but always as a long-term objective.