I look forward with some trepidations to reading this book, since historians 
of modern times seem more to have an "agenda", than revealing truths.

What I say next is in no way a defense of Mussolini, but more of an appeal 
for a  more even handed criticism of him, and thereby a gentler treatment of 
Italy that suffers by way of "association".  

I look forward to seeing whether the author gives a truly balanced picture, 
and gives sufficient attention to: 

The deep and lasting resentment the Italians had toward the English and 
French, when after the militarily unprepared Italians were pleaded with to 
join the Allies, and Italy reluctantly did sign the Pact of London (1915), 
and the Italians did pay a horrific toll, and then the Allies abrogated the 
Pact at the Versailles Treaty (1919) and Italy received very little, and was 
the most disabled of the victors, with lowered prestige, a ruined economy, 
and riots. This gave birth to the discontented Fasci di Combattimento.

That Mussolini was a Newspaper Editor in the revolutionary syndicalist wing 
of the Leftist Social Democratic party in 1914, a close ally of the Communist 
Party.

That there were many high ranking Jews in the Fascist Party.

That Mussolini's African Colonization program IMITATED, those of England, 
France, Germany, Belgium, but since he was late to the scene "acquired" only 
very small territories compared to the other nations. Yet Italy is 
hypocritically "singled out".   
This expansionist policy was mostly carried out not for riches, but to 
bolster a severely battered national prestige.

That Mussolini was admired and respected by France, England and even FDR, 
up until Ethiopia, and even beyond, as a dependable bulwark against Communism.

That not a single Italian or Refugee Jew was harmed until Italy surrendered 
to the Allies, and the Nazis controlled Italy.

That Mussolini declared a state on Non Belligerency, the day after Hitler 
invaded Poland, and only when Hitler had overrun all of Europe, and was 
threatening France, and Japan had overrun the South Pacific, that Mussolini 
was faced with the dilemma of becoming one of Hitler's next victims, or 
joining Hitler in what looked liked a War that could  NOT be lost, against 
those who had betrayed Italy in WWI. 

Italy was an Ally ( July'43-May'45) almost as long as they were an Enemy (Oct 
'40-July '43), and suffered terribly under the German occupation.    

That Mussolini was a pragmatist and "adopted" to situations, and could not be 
considered an ideologue, whose only principle, was greatness for Italy, and 
himself,
not necessarily in that order.

If anyone misunderstands me, and feels the need to flagellate me about 
Mussolini,
please preface your comments by explaining to me why Stalin was so much worse 
than Mussolini, but does not receive anywhere near the degree of vilification 
 
===========================================
WHY MUSSOLINI STILL MATTERS

MUSSOLINI, By R.J.B. Bosworth, 
Oxford University Press / Arnold: 584 pp., $35

Los Angeles Times
Calendar Section
Review by Robert Mallett
Sunday, June 30, 2002

     A quasi-Chaplinesque image of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini has 
prevailed since his violent death in April 1945. Postwar biographers of the 
Italian Duce delivered a succession of body blows to the man's reputation so 
severe that his transmogrification from brutal fascist to a "sawdust Caesar" 
now dominates many popular perceptions of him. Fascist Italy's mediocre--at 
best--military performance in World War II, a performance so glaringly out of 
sync with the dictator's imperial pretensions, fueled such interpretations of 
his life. Thus Mussolini became a buffoon and clown, a second-rate 
sanguinario not in the same league as Hitler and Stalin. 

     Aside from the fact that such notions of the man and his regime are at 
best simplistic, this ridicule has invariably generated considerable 
resentment within Italy. Certainly a challenge to prevailing ideas about 
Mussolini and fascism was not long in emerging and came, inevitably, from the 
right of the Italian political spectrum. 

     While not openly pro-fascist, the work of such prominent scholars as the 
late Renzo De Felice were certainly far less critical than that of many of 
their non-Italian counterparts. The De Felice clique erased or played down 
the less palatable aspects of the fascist era in Italy (domestic repression, 
colonial brutality, international delinquency and aggressive militarism) and 
attempted to argue that Mussolini had been no more than a benign autocrat 
diligently defending Italy from the Bolshevik and even Germanic hordes. In 
political terms De Felice's approach has found a ready resonance in the Italy 
of today, where both the governing coalition's Alleanza Nazionale component 
and groups such as the neo-fascist Forza Nuova look to Mussolini as a sort of 
ideological messiah and insist that De Felice's multivolume biography is an 
honest and accurate analysis of his life and politics.
 
     Needless to say the two viewpoints are fiercely and mutually hostile to 
each other, and will remain so. Anyone, like Australian social historian 
R.J.B. Bosworth, who treads on this political minefield is a brave individual 
indeed. Not only do authors who tackle the question of interpreting 
Mussolini's ideological outlook face a tricky and controversial intellectual 
quagmire, but they do so at a time when the politics of the extreme right are 
again in vogue in continental Europe.
 
     Bosworth's new assessment of Mussolini emerges at a moment when the 
belief that social exclusion, this time around founded on the crass idea that 
immigrants and "asylum seekers" should be forcibly repatriated, has again 
gained alarming levels of support in mainstream European societies such as 
France, Holland and, yes, Italy. This makes it critically important to expose 
the fallacy of such notions, based, effectively, on "purifying" society, last 
time around.
 
     Bosworth's overall approach is to chart a middle way between De Felicean 
apologia and the derision of orthodox Anglo-American academic scholarship. 
For Bosworth, Italy under il Duce was, and remained, "the least of the Great 
Powers" and, by implication, Mussolini constituted the lesser evil in a 
century besmirched by Nazi and Stalinist atrocities. As he argues, Mussolini 
was "cruel (but not the cruelest)," racist but in an "erratic" and 
"unscientific" way. Revealing his own background as a social historian of 
Italy, Bosworth refutes "intentionalist" scholars who argue that Mussolini 
led from the front. As far as Bosworth's work is concerned, "to a 
considerable degree Mussolini did not even dictate" but, on the contrary, had 
been swept along by "destiny."
 
     Of course not everyone will agree with Bosworth's general arguments. For 
one thing his view that Mussolinian imperialism was "old-fashioned" and 
"ramshackle," and therefore very different from National Socialism's racially 
driven quest for Lebensraum, is not entirely convincing. Mussolini's policy 
during the Libyan war of "reconquest" (1921-31) was violent and repressive in 
the extreme, being based on the imposition of "fascist" rule in the 
rebellious Italian colony. Likewise, fascist aggression against Ethiopia 
(1935-40) was marked by widespread use of mustard gas, mass executions and 
indiscriminate violence against "racial inferiors," many of them women and 
children. More to the point, such barbarity was undertaken by the fascist 
military on Mussolini's direct instructions. While there can be no doubting 
Bosworth's integrity and his repugnance for such activities, his attempt to 
quantify the question of inhumanity by claiming that fascist barbarity paled 
into insignificance alongside Hitler's "Night of the Long Knives" in June 
1934 and the Stalinist purges, relegates Mussolini to a sort of second 
division for despots. This approach misses the point. The fact is that 
Mussolini was responsible for the deaths of about 1 million human beings and 
the suffering of countless others. In addition, in 1939, with the full horror 
of National Socialist Darwinian-style "social cleansing" already plainly 
manifest, he signed the Pact of Steel with Hitler and embarked on his 
long-anticipated European war. Would Mussolini have attempted to restrain the 
Fuhrer's murderous racial program had the Rome-Berlin Axis prevailed? Did he 
attempt to dissuade the Nazi hierarchy from pursuing the persecution of 
European Jewry? The answer to both questions is no. 

     This leads neatly into the question of how Bosworth does, ultimately, 
interpret the nature of Mussolini and fascismo. For the sake of brevity we 
might look at two of his book's main themes: the extent to which il Duce 
conceived of his movement as "totalitarian," and the revolutionary nature--or 
otherwise--of Italian foreign policy under his stewardship. Bosworth casts 
some doubt on Mussolini's "totalitarian" credentials. He believes that il 
Duce, a pragmatist, kept his options open and did not automatically select 
the route to a total state, one in which an institutionalized political 
religion built around the cult of his personality would replace a tired Roman 
Catholicism. Mussolini was, Bosworth concludes, too cynical to believe in 
such solutions. He kept his options open, and even sought a reconciliation 
with his old socialist friends once in power. This view flies in the face of 
considerable work, particularly the work of renowned historian Emilio 
Gentile, which argues to the contrary. Gentile and many others stress that 
fascism was a revolutionary ideology whose objective was the total 
annihilation of existing Italian political and social forms and their 
replacement with new, fascist models. This revolution, by its very nature, 
would extend into the soul of society, for it was only here that the total 
conquest of the human spirit was possible. Bosworth is right to conclude that 
this experiment failed in Italy. But this was not through any lack of 
conviction on the part of Mussolini. Rather, this failure is best explained 
by the dictator's need to temper his revolutionary ardor in order to comply 
with powerful Italian vested interests (the monarchy, industry, the Vatican), 
that were more conservative by nature.
 
     Not surprisingly, then, Bosworth also denies any Mussolinian master plan 
in the field of international politics. He rightly defines the debate on 
fascist diplomacy as founded on a "contradiction between words and deeds." In 
short, Mussolini seemed rich on bombastic war-like rhetoric but short on 
concrete action. In fairness this argument is more pertinent when applied to 
the first decade of fascist rule, a period when Mussolini lacked an apogee in 
the form of Hitler's Germany. Its explanation is simple. The fascist leader 
may have, as Bosworth notes, ordered an assault on Yugoslavia in 1926 but 
this was "not followed up," as he puts it, simply because the Italian 
military leadership refused to endorse it given that it would also involve a 
clash with Belgrade's main ally, France. Later, with Hitler neatly installed 
in Berlin, the Italian regime did wage wars (in Ethiopia, Spain and Albania), 
and prepared for a great Mediterranean confrontation with the Anglo-French 
empires sometime in 1942 by forging the Axis alignment and bankrupting the 
national exchequer through military spending. In short, ambition and intent 
were plainly evident in fascist foreign policy; what was lacking in 1939-40 
were completed armaments programs and raw materials.

     Bosworth has produced a competent, readable account of il Duce's life 
that will undoubtedly contribute to the debate on fascism. Had he exposed the 
true bleakness, and degeneracy of Mussolini's revolutionary ideology, 
Bosworth would perhaps have better shown the errors of treading the same path 
in the 21st century. We do so at our peril. It is essential that we remember 
this. 
- - -
Robert Mallett Is the Author of "The Italian Navy and Fascist Expansionism, 
1935-1940" and the Editor of "International Fascism, 1919-1945."