General Information

Author/Creator

Bosworth, R. J. B., 1943-

Language

English.

Published

London : Arnold ; New York : Co-published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press, 2002.

Physical Description

xv, 584 p., [16] p. of plates : ill. ; 24 cm.

Contents/Summary

Summary

In 1945, disguised in German greatcoat and helmet, Mussolini attempted to escape from the advancing Allied armies. Unfortunately for him, the convoy of which he was part was stopped by partisans and his features, made so familiar by Fascist propaganda, gave him away. Within 24 hours he was executed by his captors, joining those he sent early to their graves as an outcome of his tyranny, at least one million people. He was one of the tyrant-killers who so scarred interwar Europe, but we cannot properly understand him or his regime by any simple 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 wife and mistresses, and sought in his way to be an intellectual. He was cruel (though not the cruelest); his racism existed, but never without the consistency and vigor that would have made him a good recruit for the SS. He sought an empire; but, in the most part, his was of the old-fashioned, costly, nineteenth century variety, not a racial or ideological imperium. And, self-evidently Italian society was not German or Russian: the particular patterns of that society shaped his dictatorship. 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, not so different from many of his contemporaries.-- from the cover

Subjects

Subject

Mussolini, Benito, 1883-1945.

Heads of state > Italy > Biography.

Fascism > Italy > History.

Italy > Politics and government > 1922-1945.

Bibliographic Information

Responsibility

R. J. B. Bosworth.

Content

1. The Furies and Benito Mussolini, 1944-1945 -- 2. First of his class? The Mussolinis and the young Benito -- 1883-1902 -- 3. Emigrant and socialist, 1902-1910 -- 4. The class struggle, 1910-1914 -- 5. War and revolution, 1914-1919 -- 6. The first months of Fascism, 1919-1920 -- 7. The Fascist rise to power, 1920-1922 -- 8. Government, 1922-1924 -- 9. The imposition of dictatorship, 1924-1925 -- 10. The Man of Providence, 1926-1929 -- 11. Mussolini in his pomp, 1929-1932 -- 12. The challenge of Adolf Hitler, 1932-1934 -- 13. Empire in Ethiopia, 1935-1936 -- 14. Crisis in Europe, 1936-1938 -- 15. The approach of a Second World War, 1938-1939 -- 16. Germany's ignoble second, 1939-1941 -- 17. First fall and feeble resurrection, 1942-1943 -- 18. The ghost of Benito Mussolini, 1945-2001.

Library Special Collection

The Roger Griffin ComFas Collection

ISBN

0340731443

Holdings

Item Type	Current Location	Collection	Call Number	Volume Info	Shelving Location	Public Note
Book	OSA Archivum Library	General collection	945.091/092 BOS		General Stacks	-

Browse related items