Mussolini's Italy Life Under the Fascist Dictatorship, 1915-1945

by Bosworth, R. J. B.

• ISBN13: 9781594200786
• ISBN10: 1594200785
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-02-02
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The

Summary

From one of the greatest historians in the field, a vivid, brilliant history of Fascist Italy, rulers and ruled life the period in which Italians participated in one of the twentieth century's largest, most notorious, and ultimately most ruinous political experiments-Fascism-under their dictator, Benito Mussolini, and his henchmen. The Fascists were the first totalitarians, and they provided a model for many other twentieth-century dictatorships, Hitler's first among them. A regime based on a cult of violence and obedience, Fascism made immense demands on its subjects, killing many within Italy and its empire and ruining the lives of more. And yet one of R.J.B. Bosworth's most striking accomplishments is to show the gap that yawned between rhetoric and reality. Mussolini's Italy is lumped together with Hitler's Germany as a nightmarish totalitarian state that brutally reengineered an entire society. In fact, Bosworth argues, Fascism, though monstrous enough, had a far shallower impact on Italy because Italy was still such a traditional, undeveloped country, organized around family, tribe, and region, and because Italy's leaders were less ruthlessly ideological than the Nazis. Italians found many and ingenious ways of adapting, limiting, undermining, and ridiculing Mussolini's ambitions for them. The heart of this book is its engagement with the life of these ordinary Italians, struggling through terrible times.

Author Biography

R.J.B. Bosworth's prizewinning Mussolini was greeted on publication in 2002 as the definitive life of Il Duce. Bosworth is professor of history at the University of Western Australia and has been a Visiting Fellow at a number of institutions, including the Italian Academy at Columbia University, Clare Hall (Cambridge), Balliol College (Oxford), All Souls College (Oxford), and the University of Trento.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	xi
List of abbreviations	xiv
Note on further reading	xvii
Maps	xviii
Preface	xxi
Introduction	1	(8)
One Italy or another before 1914	9	(28)
Liberal and dynastic war	37	(29)
Popular and national war	66	(27)
1919	93	(28)
Becoming a Fascist	121	(29)
Learning to rule in the provinces	150	(34)
Learning to rule from Rome	184	(31)
Building a totalitarian dictatorship	215	(34)
Forging Fascist society	249	(28)
Placing Italy in Europe	277	(30)
Going to the people	307	(32)
Dictating full-time	339	(28)
Becoming imperialists	367	(29)
Embracing Nazi Germany	396	(35)
Lurching into war	431	(32)
The wages of Fascist war	463	(35)
Losing all the wars	498	(33)
The Fascist heritage	531	(30)
Conclusion	561	(12)
Notes	573	(90)
Index	663