R. J. B. Bosworth

An evaluation of Italy's notorious Fascist period under dictator Benito Mussolini considers its violence and demands for obedience, noting how it served as a model for other twentieth-century dictatorships while arguing that the nation's largely undeveloped country and tribal family structures helped Italians to devise creative survival and resistance methods. 30,000 first printing.

Life Under the Dictatorship, 1915-1945

Mussolini's Italy

"In this elegant book Richard Bosworth explores Venice--not the glorious Venice of the Venetian Republic, but from the fall of the Republic in 1797 and the Risorgimento up through the present day. Bosworth looks at the glamour and squalor of the belle époque and the dark underbelly of modernization, the two world wars, and the far-reaching oppressions of the fascist regime, through to the 'Disneylandification' of Venice and the tourist boom, the worldwide attention of the biennale and film festival, and current threats of subsidence and flooding posed by global warming. He draws out major themes--the increasingly anachronistic but deeply embedded Catholic Church, the two faces of modernization, consumerism versus culture. Bosworth interrogates not just Venice's history but its meanings, and how the city's past has been co-opted to suit present and sometimes ulterior aims. Venice, he shows, is a city where its histories as well as its waters ripple on the surface"--

a history

Italian Venice

Richard Bosworth

Italy and the Approach of the First World War

Mussolini was one of the tyrant-killers of the Axis powers who scarred Europe during World War II, but we can't properly understand him or his regime by any facile equation with Hitler or Stalin. Like them, his life began modestly in the provinces; unlike them, he maintained a traditional male family life, including both a wife and mistresses, and sought in his way to be an intellectual. He was cruel (though not the cruelest); his racism existed, but never with the consistency and vigor that would have made him a good recruit for the SS. He sought an empire, but, for the most part, his was of the old-fashioned, costly, nineteenth-century variety, not of a racial or ideological imperialism. And Italy was not Germany or Russia: the particular patterns of that society greatly shaped his dictatorship. R. J. B. Bosworth's Mussolini allows us to come closer than ever before to an appreciation of the life and actions of the man and of the political world and society within which he operated. With extraordinary skill and vividness, drawing on a huge range of sources, this biography paints a picture of brutality and failure, yet one tempered with an understanding of Mussolini as a human being shaped by and living within the context of this time.

Mussolini

The ideology which stood behind the largest events of the 20th century is explained from an historical perspective, enhancing the understanding of the most erratic, dynamic and enduring of belief systems.

Nationalism

Life Under the Dictatorship 1915-1945

Evan Mawdsley

Joseph A. Maiolo

Michael Geyer

J. Adam Tooze

John Robert Ferris

Volume 1: The military events of the Second World War have been the subject of historical debate from 1945 to the present. It mattered greatly who won, and fighting was the essential determinant of victory or defeat. In Volume 1 of 'The Cambridge History of the Second World War' a team of twenty-five leading historians offer a comprehensive and authoritative new account of the war's military and strategic history. Part I examines the military cultures and strategic objectives of the eight major powers involved. Part II surveys the course of the war in its key theatres across the world, and assesses why one side or the other prevailed there. Part III considers, in a comparative way, key aspects of military activity, including planning, intelligence, and organisation of troops and material, as well as guerrilla fighting and treatment of prisoners of war.

The Cambridge History of the Second World War

A master historian illuminates the tumultuous relationship of Il Duce and his young lover Claretta, whose extraordinarily intimate diaries only recently have become available Few deaths are as gruesome and infamous as those of Benito Mussolini, Italy's fascist dictator, and Claretta (or Clara) Petacci, his much-younger lover. Shot dead by Italian partisans after attempting to flee the country in 1945, the couple's bodies were then hanged upside down in Milan's main square in ignominious public display. This provocative book is the first to mine Clara's extensive diaries, family correspondence, and other sources to discover how the last in Mussolini's long line of lovers became his intimate and how she came to her violent fate at his side. R. J. B. Bosworth explores the social climbing of Claretta's family, her naïve and self-interested commitment to fascism, her diary's graphically detailed accounts of sexual life with Mussolini, and much more. Brimful of new and arresting information, the book sheds intimate light not only on an ordinary-extraordinary woman living at the heart of Italy's totalitarian fascist state but also on Mussolini himself.

Mussolini's Last Lover

Claretta

An incisive account of how Mussolini pioneered populism in reaction to Hitler's rise--and thereby reinforced his role as a model for later authoritarian leaders On the tenth anniversary of his rise to power in 1932, Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) seemed to many the "good dictator." He was the first totalitarian and the first fascist in modern Europe. But a year later Hitler's entrance onto the political stage signaled a German takeover of the fascist ideology. In this definitive account, eminent historian R.J.B. Bosworth charts Mussolini's leadership in reaction to Hitler. Bosworth shows how Italy's decline in ideological pre-eminence, as well as in military and diplomatic power, led Mussolini to pursue a more populist approach: angry and bellicose words at home, violent aggression abroad, and a more extreme emphasis on charisma. In his embittered efforts to bolster an increasingly hollow and ruthless regime, it was Mussolini, rather than Hitler, who offered the model for all subsequent authoritarians.

From Dictatorship to Populism

Mussolini and the Eclipse of Italian Fascism

In this elegant book Richard Bosworth explores Venice—not the glorious Venice of the Venetian Republic, but from the fall of the Republic in 1797 and the Risorgimento up through the present day. Bosworth looks at the glamour and squalor of the belle époque and the dark underbelly of modernization, the two world wars, and the far-reaching oppressions of the fascist regime, through to the “Disneylandification” of Venice and the tourist boom, the worldwide attention of the biennale and film festival, and current threats of subsidence and flooding posed by global warming. He draws out major themes—the increasingly anachronistic but deeply embedded Catholic Church, the two faces of modernization, consumerism versus culture. Bosworth interrogates not just Venice’s history but its meanings, and how the city’s past has been co-opted to suit present and sometimes ulterior aims. Venice, he shows, is a city where its histories as well as its waters ripple on the surface.

A History

An incisive account of how Mussolini pioneered populism in reaction to Hitler’s rise—and thereby reinforced his role as a model for later authoritarian leaders On the tenth anniversary of his rise to power in 1932, Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) seemed to many the “good dictator.” He was the first totalitarian and the first fascist in modern Europe. But a year later Hitler’s entrance onto the political stage signaled a German takeover of the fascist ideology. In this definitive account, eminent historian R.J.B. Bosworth charts Mussolini’s leadership in reaction to Hitler. Bosworth shows how Italy’s decline in ideological pre-eminence, as well as in military and diplomatic power, led Mussolini to pursue a more populist approach: angry and bellicose words at home, violent aggression abroad, and a more extreme emphasis on charisma. In his embittered efforts to bolster an increasingly hollow and ruthless regime, it was Mussolini, rather than Hitler, who offered the model for all subsequent authoritarians.

A master historian illuminates the tumultuous relationship of Il Duce and his young lover Claretta, whose extraordinarily intimate diaries only recently have become available Few deaths are as gruesome and infamous as those of Benito Mussolini, Italy’s fascist dictator, and Claretta (or Clara) Petacci, his much-younger lover. Shot dead by Italian partisans after attempting to flee the country in 1945, the couple’s bodies were then hanged upside down in Milan’s main square in ignominious public display. This provocative book is the first to mine Clara’s extensive diaries, family correspondence, and other sources to discover how the last in Mussolini’s long line of lovers became his intimate and how she came to her violent fate at his side. R. J. B. Bosworth explores the social climbing of Claretta’s family, her naïve and self-interested commitment to fascism, her diary’s graphically detailed accounts of sexual life with Mussolini, and much more. Brimful of new and arresting information, the book sheds intimate light not only on an ordinary-extraordinary woman living at the heart of Italy’s totalitarian fascist state but also on Mussolini himself.

R. J. B. Bosworth

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