From Library Journal
Richard Lamb, a British historian (War in Italy 1943-1945: A Brutal Story) and author of several books about Britain and Italy in World War II, reassesses the diplomatic history of Mussolini's Italy, attempting to answer questions that have been revived by the recent opening of previously inaccessible archives. This book offers a detailed treatment of Europe's foreign politics during the period leading up to the outbreak of World War II, including a lucid treatment of the war in Ethiopia and Italy's involvement in the Spanish Civil War. In his approach to this controversial subject, Lamb clearly views British mistakes as key factors influencing Mussolini and Hitler. This work builds on that of other major historians such as Denis Mack Smith (Mussolini, 1982) and the Italian historian Renzo de Felice while offering a distinctive viewpoint. Recommended for larger public and academic libraries.ABarbara L. Walden, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
A flawed look at Mussolini's diplomacy. This is an American edition of a work published last year in Great Britain. Lamb's controversial thesis: that until the mid-1930s, Mussolini was undecided whether to support Nazi Germany or Great Britain in the inevitable war on the horizon. Lamb (Churchill as War Leader, 1993, etc.) here enters the territory of revisionist history. Most scholars, examining Mussolinis and Hitlers respective ideologies, have concluded that Fascist Italy's alliance with Nazi Germany was inevitable and preordained. Lamb is only partially correct in pointing out that Mussolini was not slavishly tied to any ideology; indeed Mussolini in the 1920s boasted that fascism had no ideology. But this is a misreading. Lamb himself recognizes that Mussolini was quite able to say one thing on Monday and the opposite on Tuesday, but he reads Mussolini's courtship of Britain as earnest fascist foreign policy rather than cynical maneuvering. Lamb contends that a golden opportunity to divorce Mussolini from Hitler's fatal embrace was lost by Anthony Eden; Eden, according to Lamb, felt that Hitler was a man with whom the British ``could do business,'' while Mussolini was no more than a common gangster. He was wrong on both counts. That Lamb is essentially correct in condemning Eden and much of the British Foreign Office does not prove his thesis. A curious aside is Lambs contention, based on a previously published work (Mussolini's Other Woman) that the Jewish intellectual and patron of the arts, Margherita Sarfatti, influenced his foreign policy and early distrust of Hitler. Although there is no denying the tense relationship between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, Lambs thesis requires a selective reading of the evidence and a failure to address ideology. It is doubtful that Mussolini ever seriously considered entering the war against Hitler; it was more a question of when and how to enter the war at his side as an equal partner. Revisionist history that fails to revise. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) --
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