From the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 through to the waning months of the World War II in 1945, Fascist Italy was at war. This Fascist decade of war comprised an uninterrupted stretch of military and political engagements in which Italian military forces were involved in Abyssinia, Spain, Albania, France, Greece, the Soviet Union, North Africa and the Middle East. As a junior partner to Nazi Germany, only entering the war in June 1940, Italy is often seen as a relatively minor player in World War II. However, this book challenges much of the existing scholarship by arguing that Fascist Italy played a significant and distinct role in shaping international relations between 1935 and 1945, creating a Fascist decade of war.

This groundbreaking book explores the interpretative potential and analytical capacity of the concept ‘fascist warfare’. Was there a specific type of war waged by fascist states? The concept encompasses not only the practice of violence at the front, but also war culture, the relationship between war and the fascist project, and the construction of the national community. Starting with the legacy of the First World War and using a transnational approach, this collection presents case studies of fascist regimes at war, spanning Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Francoist Spain, Croatia, and Imperial Japan. Themes include the idea of rapid warfare as a symbol of fascism, total war, the role of modern technology, the transfer of war cultures between regimes, anti-partisan warfare as a key feature, and the contingent nature and limits of fascist warfare.

This book explores, from a transnational viewpoint, the historical relationship between war veterans and fascism in interwar Europe. Until now, historians have been roughly divided between those who assume that 'brutalization' (George L. Mosse) led veterans to join fascist movements and those who stress that most ex-soldiers of the Great War became committed pacifists and internationalists. Transcending the debates of the brutalization thesis and drawing upon a wide range of archival and published sources, this work focuses on the interrelated processes of transnationalization and the fascist permeation of veterans' politics in interwar Europe to offer a wider perspective on the history of both fascism and veterans' movements. A combination of mythical constructs, transfers, political communication, encounters and networks within a transnational space explain the relationship between veterans and fascism. Thus, this book offers new insights into the essential ties between fascism and war, and contributes to the theorization of transnational fascism.

Today Mussolini is remembered as a hated dictator who, along with Hitler and Stalin, ushered in an era of totalitarian repression unsurpassed in human history. But how was he viewed by ordinary Italians during his lifetime? In Fascist Voices, Christopher Duggan draws on thousands of letters sent to Mussolini, as well as private diaries and other primary documents, to show how Italian citizens lived and experienced the fascist regime under Mussolini from 1922-1943. Throughout the 1930s, Mussolini received about 1,500 letters a day from Italian men and women of all social classes writing words of congratulation, commiseration, thanks, encouragement, or entreaty on a wide variety of occasions: his birthday and saint's day, after he had delivered an important speech, on a major fascist anniversary, when a husband or son had been killed in action. While Duggan looks at some famous diaries-by such figures as the anti-fascist constitutional lawyer Piero Calamandrei; the philosopher Benedetto Croce; and the fascist minister Giuseppe Bottai-the majority of the voices here come from unpublished journals, diaries, and transcripts. Utilizing a rich collection of untapped archival material, Duggan explores "the cult of Il Duce," the religious dimensions of totalitarianism, and the extraordinarily intimate character of the relationship between Mussolini and millions of Italians. Duggan shows that the figure of Mussolini was crucial to emotional and political engagement with the regime; although there was widespread discontent throughout Italy, little of the criticism was directed at Il Duce himself. Duggan argues that much of the regime's appeal lay in its capacity to appropriate the language, values, and iconography of Roman Catholicism, and that this emphasis on blind faith and emotion over reason is what made Mussolini's Italy simultaneously so powerful and so insidious. Offering a unique perspective on the period, Fascist Voices captures the responses of private citizens living under fascism and unravels the remarkable mixture of illusions, hopes, and fears that led so many to support the regime for so long.

A remarkable new history evoking the centrality of Italy to World War II, outlining the brief rise and triumph of the Fascists, followed by the disastrous fall of the Italian military campaign. While staying closely aligned with Hitler, Mussolini remained carefully neutral until the summer of 1940. At that moment, with the wholly unexpected and sudden collapse of the French and British armies, Mussolini declared war on the Allies in the hope of making territorial gains in southern France and Africa. This decision proved a horrifying miscalculation, dooming Italy to its own prolonged and unwinnable war, immense casualties, and an Allied invasion in 1943 that ushered in a terrible new era for the country. John Gooch's new history is the definitive account of Italy's war experience. Beginning with the invasion of Abyssinia and ending with Mussolini's arrest, Gooch brilliantly portrays the nightmare of a country with too small an industrial sector, too incompetent a leadership and too many fronts on which to fight. Everywhere—whether in the USSR, the Western Desert, or the Balkans—Italian troops found themselves against either better-equipped or more motivated enemies. The result was a war entirely at odds with the dreams of pre-war Italian planners—a series of desperate improvisations against an allied force who could draw on global resources, and against whom Italy proved helpless.

Among the great misconceptions of modern times is the assumption that Benito Mussolini was Hitler's junior partner, who made no significant contributions to the Second World War. That conclusion originated with Allied propagandists determined to boost Anglo-American morale, while undermining Axis cooperation. The Duce's failings, real or imagined, were inflated and ridiculed; his successes, pointedly demeaned or ignored. Italy's bungling navy, ineffectual army - as cowardly as it was ill-equipped - and air force of antiquated biplanes were handily dealt with by the Western Allies. So effective was this disinformation campaign that it became post-war history, and is still generally taken for granted even by otherwise well-informed scholars and students of World War Two. But a closer examination of recently disclosed, and often neglected, original source materials presents an entirely different picture. They shine new light, for example, on Italy's submarine service, the world's greatest in terms of tonnage, its boats sinking nearly three-quarters of a million tons of Allied shipping in three years' time. During a single operation, Italian 'human torpedoes' sank the battleships HMS Valiant and Queen Elizabeth, plus an eight-thousand-ton tanker, at their home anchorage in Alexandria, Egypt. By mid-1942, Mussolini's navy had fought its way back from crushing defeats to become the dominant power in the Mediterranean Sea. Contrary to popular belief, his Fiat biplanes gave as good as they got in the Battle of Britain, and their monoplane replacements, such as the Macchi Greyhound, were state-of-the-art interceptors superior to the American Mustang. Savoia-Marchetti Sparrowhawk bombers accounted for seventy-two Allied warships and one hundred-ninety-six freighters before the Bagdolio armistice in 1943. On 7 June 1942, infantry of the Italian X Corps saved Rommel's XV Brigade near Gazala, in North Africa, from otherwise certain annihilation, while horse-soldiers of the Third Cavalry Division Amedeo Duca d'Aosta defeated Soviet forces on the Don River before Stalingrad the following August in history's last cavalry charge. As influential as these operations were on the course of World War Two, more potentially decisive was Mussolini's planned aggression against the United States' mainland. Postponed only at the last moment when its conventional explosives were slated for substitution by a nuclear device, New York City escaped an atomic attack by margins more narrow than previously understood. It is now known that Italian scientists led the world in nuclear research in 1939, and a four-engine Piaggio heavy bomber was modified to carry an atomic bomb five years later. These and numerous other disclosures combine to debunk lingering propaganda stereotypes of an inept, ineffectual Italian armed forces. That dated portrayal is rendered obsolete by a true-to-life account of the men and weapons of Mussolini's War.