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

R. J. B. Bosworth (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2, 2006

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. With this insightful, comprehensive study, Bosworth secures his place as one of the two leading historians in the English-speaking world (the other being Paul Ginsborg) of 20th-century Italy. Bosworth begins with an admission that he has embarked on an "impossible project": "to unveil the lives of Italians" from all walks of life "under a generation of dictatorship." Impossible, indeed, but what a grand attempt at a synthesis of social and political history he produces. While Mussolini and the party officials are at the center of the story, Bosworth dips into the Fascist police files to see what ordinary Italians were up to during the dictatorship, in order to portray a "fascism of the everyday." A good-natured drunken night on the town, ending with the singing of antifascist songs in the streets disturbing the people's sleep could land you in some God-forsaken remote village as punishment; further, the dictatorship was a corrupt and compromising affair. Yet Fascism in Italy, Bosworth frequently shows, was tempered by the continuing influence of the family and other nonparty institutions such as the Church, the army, the diplomatic corps and the universities.Another important feature is Bosworth's refusal to let "Liberal Italy" (1860–1922) off the hook. From imperialism to racism, corruption to authoritarianism, liberal Italy, he says, laid the groundwork for the Fascist regime. And while he gives ample instances of the violent and at times murderous nature of the regime, Bosworth does exonerate the Italian people of falling for totalitarianism. If Italians come off well from 1922 to 1945, they look far less noble in the postwar period. Bosworth's last chapter, "The Fascist Heritage," is a disturbing account of the tenacious survival of fascism into contemporary Italy. While not as pessimistic as Ginsborg, Bosworth (Mussolini) still reminds us of the "eternal tendency toward fascism." 35 b&a mp;w illus. not seen by PW; 3 maps.
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From Booklist

Bosworth wrote a biography of Mussolini in 2002; here he investigates how fascistic Italian society became under the ministrations of Il Duce. Bosworth recounts the origin of fascism in both Italian indignation about its inconsequential gains from World War I and the unconsolidated nature of the Italian state. Within this framework, Bosworth explores in detail the Fascist Party's claim to expand territorially and unify the populace via an authoritarian nationalist revolution. Mussolini's regime aspired to totalitarian control with its aggressive propaganda ("believe, obey, fight"), secret police, youth organization, and military. Bosworth sharply characterizes the leaders of these forces of the regime, considering most of them, Mussolini included, to have been corrupt cynics; however, he is studiously analytical about their importunities upon Italian society. Well attuned to ingrained attitudes, such as trust in family and suspicion of government, Bosworth traces, with sympathy and insight, the fate of Italians and the catastrophe the regime visited upon them. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 720 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The; First edition (February 2, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594200785
• ISBN-13: 978-1594200786
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 2.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,172,652 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, September 24, 2006

By 

R. Albin (Ann Arbor, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mussolini's Italy: Life Under the Fascist Dictatorship, 1915-1945 (Hardcover)

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.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Italian Nightmare, June 22, 2006

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Retired Reader (New Mexico) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Mussolini's Italy: Life Under the Fascist Dictatorship, 1915-1945 (Hardcover)

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.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well-written, except for political commentary, July 28, 2007

By 

Robert Fishman (Long Island, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mussolini's Italy: Life Under the Fascist Dictatorship, 1915-1945 (Mass Market Paperback)

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.