In the last years, the discussion around what is fascism, if this concept can be applied to present forms of politics and if its seeds are still present today, became central in the political debate. This discussion led to a vast reconsideration of the meaning and the experience of fascism in Europe and is changing the ways in which scholars of different generations look at this political ideology and come back to it and it is also changing the ways in which we consider the experience of Italian fascism in the European and global context. The aim of the book is building a general history of Fascism and its historiography through the analysis of 13 different fundamental aspects, which were at the core of Fascist project or of Fascist practices during the regime. Each essay considers a specific and meaningful aspect of the history of Italian fascism, reflecting on it from the vantage point of a case study. The essays thus reinterrogates the history of Fascism to understand in which way Fascism was able to mould the historical context in which it was born, how and if it transformed political, cultural, social elements that were already present in Italy. The themes considered are violence, empire, war, politics, economy, religion, culture, but also antifascism and the impact of Fascism abroad, especially in the Twenties and at the beginnings of the Thirties. The book could be both used for a general public interested in the history of Europe in the interwar period and for an academic and scholarly public, since the essays aim to develop a provocative reflection on their own area of research.

"In the last years the discussion around what is fascism, if this concept can be applied to present forms of politics and if its seeds are still present today, became central in the political debate. This discussion led to a vast reconsideration of the meaning and the experience of fascism in Europe and is changing the ways in which scholars of different generations look at this political ideology and come back to it and it is also changing the ways in which we consider the experience of Italian fascism in the European and global context. The aim of the book is building a general history of Fascism and its historiography through the analysis of thirteen different fundamental aspects, which were at the core of Fascist project or of Fascist practices during the regime. Each essay considers a specific and meaningful aspect of the history of Italian fascism, reflecting on it from the vantage point of a case study. The essays thus re-interrogates the history of Fascism, in order to understand in which way Fascism was able to mold the historical context in which it was born, how and if it transformed political, cultural, social elements that were already present in Italy. The themes considered are violence, empire, war, politics, economy, religion, culture, but also antifascism and the impact of Fascism abroad, especially in the Twenties and at the beginnings of the Thirties. The book could be both used for a general public interested in the history of Europe in the interwar period and for an academic and scholarly public, since the essays aim to develop a provocative reflection on their own area of research"--

Bringing together leading scholars from a range of nations, Rethinking Antifascism provides a fascinating exploration of one of the most vibrant sub-disciplines within recent historiography. Through case studies that exemplify the field’s breadth and sophistication, it examines antifascism in two distinct realms: after surveying the movement’s remarkable diversity across nations and political cultures up to 1945, the volume assesses its postwar political and ideological salience, from its incorporation into Soviet state doctrine to its radical questioning by historians and politicians. Avoiding both heroic narratives and reflexive revisionism, these contributions offer nuanced perspectives on a movement that helped to shape the postwar world.

During the early decades of the twentieth century, Italy produced distinctive innovations in both the intellectual and political realms. On the one hand, Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) and Giovanni Gentile (1875-1944) spearheaded a radical rethinking of historicism and philosophical idealism that significantly reoriented Italian culture. On the other hand, the period witnessed the first rumblings of fascism. Assuming opposite sides, Gentile became the semi-official philosopher of fascism while Croce argued for a renewed liberalism based on 'absolute' historicism. In Historicism and Fascism in Modern Italy, David D. Roberts uses the ideological conflict between Croce and Gentile as a basis for a wider discussion of the interplay between politics and ideas in Italy during the early-twentieth century. Roberts examines the connection between fascism and the modern Italian intellectual tradition, arguing that the relationship not only deepens our understanding of fascism and liberalism but also illuminates ongoing dangers and possibilities in the wider Western world. This set of twelve essays by one of the leading scholars in the field represents an authoritative view of the modern Italian intellectual tradition, its relationship with fascism, and its enduring implications for history, politics, and culture in Italy and beyond.

The period spanning the two World Wars was unquestionably the most catastrophic in Europe's history. Despite such undeniably progressive developments as the radical expansion of women's suffrage and rising health standards, the era was dominated by political violence and chronic instability. Its symbols were Verdun, Guernica, and Auschwitz. By the end of this dark period, tens of millions of Europeans had been killed and more still had been displaced and permanently traumatized. If the nineteenth century gave Europeans cause to regard the future with a sense of optimism, the early twentieth century had them anticipating the destruction of civilization. The fact that so many revolutions, regime changes, dictatorships, mass killings, and civil wars took place within such a compressed time frame suggests that Europe experienced a general crisis. The Oxford Handbook of European History, 1914-1945 reconsiders the most significant features of this calamitous age from a transnational perspective. It demonstrates the degree to which national experiences were intertwined with those of other nations, and how each crisis was implicated in wider regional, continental, and global developments. Readers will find innovative and stimulating chapters on various political, social, and economic subjects by some of the leading scholars working on modern European history today.

Ordinary Violence in Mussolini's Italy reveals the centrality of violence to Fascist rule, arguing that the Mussolini regime projected its coercive power deeply and diffusely into society through confinement, imprisonment, low-level physical assaults, economic deprivations, intimidation, discrimination, and other everyday forms of coercion. Fascist repression was thus more intense and ideological than previously thought and even shared some important similarities with Nazi and Soviet terror.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat provides the first in-depth study of feature and documentary films produced under the auspices of Mussolini’s government that took as their subjects or settings Italy’s African and Balkan colonies. These "empire films" were Italy's entry into an international market for the exotic. The films engaged its most experienced and cosmopolitan directors (Augusto Genina, Mario Camerini) as well as new filmmakers (Roberto Rossellini) who would make their marks in the postwar years. Ben-Ghiat sees these films as part of the aesthetic development that would lead to neo-realism. Shot in Libya, Somalia, and Ethiopia, these movies reinforced Fascist racial and labor policies and were largely forgotten after the war. Ben-Ghiat restores them to Italian and international film history in this gripping account of empire, war, and the cinema of dictatorship.