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

With Mussolini ’s Italy, R.J.B. Bosworth—the foremost scholar on the subject writing in English—vividly brings to life the period in which Italians participated in one of the twentieth century’s most notorious political experiments. Il Duce’s Fascists were the original totalitarians, espousing a cult of violence and obedience that inspired many other dictatorships, Hitler’s first among them. But as Bosworth reveals, many Italians resisted its ideology, finding ways, ingenious and varied, to keep Fascism from taking hold as deeply as it did in Germany. A sweeping chronicle of struggle in terrible times, this is the definitive account of Italy’s darkest hour.

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