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

Professor Bosworth puts together a well-balanced look at the development of Italy's Fascist Party and its subsequent takeover of Italy. While arguing that Mussolini was far from innocent, Bosworth does show that he was considerably less malignant than either Hitler or Stalin. For instance, Mussolini did not create anything approaching the horrors of Auschwitz. Moreover, he shows how, unlike those other 2 dictators, Mussolini never established a truly totalitarian state (despite his boasting to the contrary). For instance, the Catholic Church remained as a leading institution within Italian society, and did not always toe the Fascist line. The same thing applies to the Italian monarchy (although Bosworth does not present King Victor Emmanuel III in a positive light). Moreover, he makes a convincing case that the Rome-Berlin Axis was clearly a marriage of unequals, with Italy playing the role of a very junior partner (apparently, Italians did not figure highly in the Nazi racial hierarchy). Even though "national characteristics" are no longer en vogue among historians, I got the impression from this book that Italians were somehow culturally incapable of establishing a genuinely totalitarian state, not to mention one that would seek to create any sort of "new world order." Bosworth also peppers the book with references to Italian Jews who were active in the Fascist Party. This is obviously a striking contrast to the situation in Nazi Germany. On a more critical note, I wish that Bosworth would have given more attention to the issue of "Italia Irredentia" as a function of Mussolini's foreign policy. After all, the Paris Peace Conference did not resolve this issue in Italy's favor (as it had created Yugoslavia out of much of that territory). Why didn't Mussolini attempt to grab this territory before undertaking a far more costly invasion of Ethiopia? After all, Yugoslavia during this period was a rather unstable nation, in jeopardy of coming apart due to increased ethnic tensions. This would have been interesting to read about. In addition, I found Bosworth's random references to contemporary politics unnecessary. He should have focused all of his energy on his title subject.

This is an ambitious and successful attempt to write the social history of Fascism. Italian Fascism, Bosworth reminds us, controlled Italy for almost a generation, a considerably longer period than the disastrous experiment of Nazi rule of Germany. How was Fascism experienced by Italians? To what extent did Fascism change Italy? What were the essential features of Fascist rule? What were the well springs of Fascism? Bosworth treats all these issues and more in this carefully documented and well written volume. Rather than pursuing these issues topically, Bosworth has organized this book chronologically. He begins with the nature of Liberal Italy and the experience of WWI, moves through the interwar period and the grim events of WWII, concluding with a concise but revealing chapter on postwar fascist movements. He weaves his topical themes into the narrative very well, providing considerable analysis and showing the historically dynamic nature of the Fascist experience. This combination of narrative and analysis is excellent. Bosworth is particularly concerned with providing a balanced view of Fascist Italy. The Fascist state is often viewed popularly as a comic opera dicatorship. Bosworth shows well that Fascist Italy appears to be relatively benign only by comparison with Nazi Germany or the Stalinist Soviet Union. This oppressive dictatorship destroyed democracy and human rights in Italy, and by Bosworth's reckoning, was ultimately responsible for about 1 million deaths in Italy, the Balkans, and Africa. It was a police state in which millions of Italians were informing on each other, corrupting the quality of public life. At the same time, Bosworth addresses the "totalitarian" nature of the regime, a claim made by the Fascists themselves that they were remaking the Italian people. Due in large part to the actions of Fascist leaders themselves, this claim is shown to be a fraud. Fascist government itself exemplified the reliance on chains of patronage and clientage with its associated corruption typical of Italian society. Mussolini was quite content to compromise with powerful existing institutions like the Monarchy, the Papacy, and the Army. Bosworth shows very well the continuity the Fascist state had with the Liberal state it replaced and indeed, many of the crucial features of Italian Fascism appear to be extensions of some of the worst features of pre-WWI Italy. Bosworth's work is careful, thoughtful, and presented extremely well.

R.J.B. Bosworth, an Australian professor of Italian history, wrote a very well-received biography of Mussolini, and then agreed with a reviewer who suggested that Mussolini's era cannot be reduced to one man. This book is his answer to the void. It's meticulously researched, extremely well-written, pulls no punches in describing the evil of Mussolini's regime but yet puts it into perspective by comparing it to the German and Russian strains of totalitarianism. He captures the opera buffa aspects of fascism quite well, the futility of much of the rhetoric and plans, the less than unanimous enthusiasm for fascism. He describes, for example, the career of an assiduous sycophant who wrote "The Imitation of Mussolini," an almost sacrilegious spin-off of a Kempis' "Imitation of Christ." This is not a political screed in the guise of a history; it's refreshing to see him call John Cornwell's book "absurd." Nevertheless every so often one does glimpse that his critique of fascism is colored by his devotion to Anglo-Saxon political correctionism, as when he quotes a lieutenant in the Italian army noting that "Out of the sea, salt. Out of women, trouble," and deems this blatant misogyny. My time spent with peoples of the Mediterranean littoral lead to me suspect that this was less the fruit of misogyny than simply the flowery language used by both men and women in those cultures. Most tantalizing is his implicit and explicit description of how the administration of G.W. Bush is unabashed in associating with the spiritual and political heirs of Mussolini.

This is a book that reflects R.J.B. Bosworth's remarkable skills as a researcher and his equally remarkable knowledge of Italy. It is a detailed and meticulous account of the rise and reign of the Fascist Party in Italy and its most internationally recognized figure, Benito Mussolini. The reader quickly learns that a number of figures, some admirable, some not, contributed a good deal to shape the course of Fascism both prior to and during Mussolini's dictatorship. Bosworth leaves no doubt about how corrupt and malevolent the Fascists were, but somehow he also leaves at least this reviewer with the impression that Fascist Italy was a cut the other major European totalitarian regimes of Nazi Germany and Communist Russia. So is this a great book? Many informed people clearly think so, yet this reviewer has doubts. It is perhaps too concerned with the rise and contributions of individuals in the Italian Fascist movement and rather not concerned enough with the broader trends and currents that shaped or were shaped by that movement. Still it is worth anyone's time to read this book which is unflinching in its depiction of the Fascist Italy.

A surpurbly researched book presenting the inexorable rise of fascism in Italy, which presaged Hitler's emergence in Germany. From the disorder in both countries, in the aftermath of World War One, the urge for a strong leader who could simplify and create a new sense of identity for the nation, was inevitable. Professor Bosworth writes wonderfully, using a vocabulary rarely encountered today, which is a pure pleasure to discover. His grasp of history is profound, with a great deal of background, but never too much to smother the pace and the underlying story. A companion book is "The Third Reich in Power" but of the two, this history is the best written. Another book for the same shelf is "Mao-- The Unknown Story" Authoritism can arize from either the right or the left---one can only wonder if our own democracy could, someday, be equally susceptible.