Review by Choice Review
The Australian author of the prizewinning biography Mussolini (CH, Feb'03, 40-3629) has complemented it with an equally impressive account of Mussolini's dictatorship. Extensively researched and attractively written, Bosworth's study questions several interpretations current in Italy, e.g., that the Duce's regime was generally benign (it was only so in contrast to its genocidal Nazi counterpart). Yet the author repeatedly shows that Fascist totalitarianism never overcame traditional Italian loyalties to family and the Catholic Church. Anti-Jewish policy was relatively restrained; in peacetime, just nine death sentences were imposed by the "Special Tribunal for the Defense of the State." However, up to 1.7 million Yugoslavs died under joint German-Italian occupation after 1941. Except for "Mussolini's war" in Ethiopia, Bosworth slights military campaigns and also international relations. Condemnation of Fascism's racist treatment of Africans is balanced by reference to the "shredding" of Australia's Aboriginal population through white settlement. And Axis warfare in Spain (unrestrained aerial attacks on civilians, concealing one's own casualty toll from domestic audiences) prefigured Allied and NATO conduct in subsequent conflicts. Overall, this is a provocative and often witty comparative assessment of an important 20th-century phenomenon. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. L. D. Stokes emeritus, Dalhousie University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
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 2006 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly 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&w illus. not seen by PW; 3 maps. (On sale Feb. 6) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
As in his magisterial biography, Mussolini, Bosworth (history, Univ. of Western Australia) combines prodigious research with a clear writing style that will appeal to all readers interested in the Italy of Il Duce. According to Bosworth, Fascist Italy was governed by ideological passions that persistently clashed with the traditional values and mores of this emerging nation. From the very outset, Mussolini had strutted onto the scene as the purveyor of a new mode of governing. He promised a revolutionary state that would be the embodiment of modernity and serve as a model for all nations seeking greatness. Indeed, Hitler embraced the Italian totalitarian model, but the Italian people did not. The Fascists may have bullied their way into power, but sustaining their grip on Italian society was another story. Through the skillful use of police reports and obscure local primary documents, Bosworth reveals that the populace found myriad methods for circumventing Mussolini's pontifical edicts. There is no historian better qualified to undertake this long-needed in-depth analysis of a critical period in Italian history. Some budget-stretched libraries that already own John Whittam's brief Fascist Italy may overlook Bosworth's definitive work, but any library that seeks to maintain a solid 20th-century history collection should purchase it.-Jim Doyle, Reference Dept., Sara Hightower Regional Lib., Rome, GA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A breathtakingly ambitious history that defies its author's own warning: "Aspiring to write the total history of a totalitarian society is a delusion." Pride of place for fascism's great leader is usually reserved for Adolf Hitler. Yet, as Australian historian Bosworth (Mussolini, not reviewed) notes, Hitler learned much from the fascist rulers of Italy; he was inspired by the Blackshirts' march on Rome in 1922 to make his own putsch. Though Mussolini sometimes came off as a buffoon, and though the Italian state was a generally feckless enterprise, it was no joke; as Bosworth notes, the fascists were quite efficient at exterminating or silencing their political opponents, and in all events "it is frequently forgotten that the word 'totalitarian' originated in Italy" and was first extensively applied there, just as "ethnic cleansing" became an Italian specialty in the Italian-occupied Balkans before Hitler's forces ever arrived. Still, as Bosworth writes, many Italians found plenty of ways to resist fascism, and even the true believers were very often in the fascism business to advance private agendas. Mussolini himself warned that "thousands of individuals had interpreted Fascism as no more than a defense of their own personal interests and as an organizer of violence for the sake of violence," but by the time Italy made the grievous error of declaring war first on the USSR and then on the U.S., Mussolini himself was surrounded by a cult of personality as thorough as any in history, removed from such daily worries. He even earned uppercase status, so that, as a fascist journalist put it, "Rome is where the Duce is, it is in Him, with Him, in His divinations, in His struggles, in His torments, in His will, in His many creations." Superb--and timely, for Mussolinian ghosts celebrate "when they hear of the current approval of pre-emptive strikes and the cheerful acceptance that vast collateral damage may accompany them." Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
