Mussolini by R.J.B. Bosworth

            I found Bosworth's book on the Duce to be a really good informative piece about the dictator, and a lot of it really surprised me. I think that Bosworth was a little too generous at times with Mussolini, although he clearly views the dictator with contempt. It might just come from the fact that Mussolini looks a lot better when compared to Hitler. Hitler was just such an irrational and stupid man, whereas Mussolini had much more substance by comparison. Mussolini was a thug, but he was also an aspiring intellectual, and had some complex thoughts, although they were contradictory and he knew little about how people actually worked beyond what was necessary to manipulate them. By the end, Mussolini comes across as a small and bitter man. I only wish that this book was told more like a novel and Bosworth got more into telling events as they happened, instead of focusing on his commentary. It makes the book less fun to read since the author specifically makes an effort to dull the most interesting parts of Mussolini's life.

             Mussolini was born in a small town in northern Italy to a politically active father who was a socialist. The young Mussolini was considered smart, and spent time as a teacher before becoming a writer for various political papers. He eventually became the leader of Il Popolo d’Italia, a socialist newspaper, and that’s where he was working in the 1910s as war appeared on the horizon in Europe.

On the eve of World War One, most Italians supported neutrality, including Giolitti, the leading Italian politician of the time, the King, big business, the Army, the Pope Benedict XV, most of the peasantry, and most women. Most Italians were not part of the “short war illusion” that predicted the end of the war by Christmas 1914.  But many Italian intellectuals like the young Mussolini (in his early thirties) supported entry into the war as a means of expansionism. Il Popolo d’Italia was not popular at all at this time—it had just 1,600 subscribers—but it was pushing Italy to intervene, claiming it was critical for Italy’s development into a major power.

Italy ultimately decided to go to war in May 1915 with the goal of taking some territory from Austria, not declaring war against Germany until 1916. Italy fought a mountainous campaign against Austria in which five million Italians saw military service, with half a million dying and another half million wounded. Most of the soldiers were peasants, and by 1919, 63% of war orphans came from peasant families. In October-November 1917, Italy suffered a major defeat at Caporetto, bringing Austrian and German troops onto the plains near Milan, but by the end of 1918, Austria surrendered (on November 4, a week before Germany surrendered). Italy’s victory was ambiguous, but helped it gain some territories from Austria. But Italy did not emerge as a modern political state after the war like many other European powers. Whereas England, France, Russia, and Germany all ended the war with more politically activated populations that were bound to the state with new social programs, that never happened in Italy.

Mussolini was a corporal during World War One, and seemed to have been competent on the front. He published his war diary between 1915 and 1917 in Il Popolo d’Italia, speaking in short lines, as one does at war: “It is war time. So you go to war.” “ Trench life is natural, primitive life.” In March 1917, Mussolini was wounded by shrapnel during a grenade exercise behind the front and ran a fever of 40.2 degrees Celsius. By happenstance, Mussolini met King Victor Emmanuel III, who was on an official visit to a military hospital. They exchanged greetings there. When the war ended, Italy was in flux, and Bosworth writes that two words dominated Italian politics: national, describing the nationalization movement, and fascio, an Italian word meaning faction, or league. Fascio became relevant due to the Fasci di combattimento (ex-servicemen’s leagues) that were springing up across Italy, of which Mussolini was a leader. In March of 1919, Mussolini summoned the fasci to Milan along with other former interventionist thinkers, and the Fascist movement was born.

In the aftermath of the war, Italian socialists were triumphant, but forces hostile to socialism could rely on a natural electorate of those who craved a positive memory of the war in contrast to the socialists’ condemnation of it. Mussolini had a political transformation throughout the war. Whereas before the war, he had been a socialist, during the buildup to war he became more nationalist and more interested in what Italy could do on its own, unified. By the end of the war, Mussolini had renounced socialism, and argued that socialists had taken Italy into a civil war based on class war, and that the real conflict was not the socialist one between rich and poor, but the one between national and “anti-national” forces. Mussolini did what all conservatives must do to counter the strength of the poor masses, he had to siphon some of them off by changing the debate to be not about economics but mentality, “not material but spiritual,” as Bosworth writes.

But even though socialists couldn’t count on supporters from those with fond memories of the war, new members were joining socialist unions across the country, and elections in November 1919 gave socialists a majority. At this time, the fasci di combattimento were still divided and small, with 16 different fasci across the country with completely different ideologies. But there was still movement happening on the political right. In August of 1919, Mussolini found the funds to create a new journal, Il Fascio, and in September, the poet Gabriele Annunzio marched 1000 men into the town of Fiume on the Slovenian border and established a “lyrical dictatorship,” declaring himself the defender of the city’s Italian-ness.

In May 1920, there was a second Fascist congress, and Mussolini tempered some of his anti-institutional instincts. He now said that the Vatican was good, and Catholicism could be tied to the state. He was more willing to accept the monarchy as well. The new Fasci directorate had swung to the right. In January 1921, D’Annunzio and his men were forced out of Fiume, which they had taken over a little over a year before, eliminating a major rival for Mussolini. D’Annunzio had shouted “Fiume or death,” but found out that fleeing was always an option.

The instability of Italian government led to new elections in May 1921, and Fascists proclaimed themselves to be outside ideological dogmatism, being both conservative and progressive, reactionary and revolutionary, and aristocratic and democratic, and so on. This made the Fascists acceptable to the Prime Minister, Giolitti, who added them to a national bloc, resulting in wins for the national bloc over the socialists and the presence of Fascists in parliament. Giolitti had unjustified confidence, stating that Fascists were like fireworks: “they’ll make a great deal of noise, but only leave smoke behind.” But they betrayed Giolitti, the 35 Fascists elected immediately abandoned the government, sat on the far right of the chamber, and associated themselves with the opposition. Giolitti’s government collapsed on June 27, 1921, and on August 2, the Fascists made an agreement with socialists and trade unions, and on February 26, 1922, the next government collapsed. All the while, Fascists were marching through the countryside and terrorizing left wingers and strikers, and there was a possibility of a Fascist attack and occupation of Rome, led by Fascist Italo Balbo. Other Fascists pressed for more action. Under the threat of Fascist attack, King Victor Emmanuele III was pressured into offering that Mussolini form a coalition government on October 29. Mussolini proceeded to the capital with wearing his black shirt with 300,000 men and was sworn in as Italy’s youngest prime minister at 39 years old on October 31, 1922. He had risen from being a nobody to being prime minister in under three years.

Once in power, the Fascists grew their party membership, rising from 200,000 in October 1922 to 780,000 in December 1923. Most of this growth came in the south. Once in power, Mussolini put out the word that fascist violence should end, stating in November of 1922 that it "bloodies and dishonors the nation." But it is unclear how serious he was about actually stopping the roving gangs of fascists terrorizing leftists. On December 15, Mussolini formed the Grand Council (Gran Consiglio), which was a sort of parallel cabinet outside of parliament that met in Mussolini's private apartment. The most powerful Fascists were in the Grand Council and not the cabinet, including Italo Balbo, Cesare de Vechi, Michele Bianchi, and Emilio de Bono. The first act of the Council was to create the "Voluntary Militia for National Security," which was a party-led militia ready to stop any Anti-Fascists that would threaten Fascist government, essentially a revolutionary guard. The Council was a major part of early Fascism, meeting 106 times between 1923 and 1929, but reducing in scope, meeting 56 times between 1930 and 1936 and then just 23 times between 1937 and 1940. By the mid-1930s, they met just to be harangued by Mussolini.

In August 1923, Mussolini began his first imperial ventures, conjuring up an international incident over the Greek-Albanian border. In a clash between Italians surveying the border and unknown assailants, and Italian general was killed. The Greeks alleged that bandits did it, but Mussolini claimed it was the Greek government. Mussolini ordered the Italian fleet to ready itself to seize the island of Corfu unless the Greeks accepted severe demands in 20 hours. Some of the demands included that the Greek government attend a funeral ceremony in a Roman Catholic church for the dead and publicly honor the Italian flag as well as paying a large indemnity. The Greeks "were conciliatory," writes Bosworth (whatever that means), but Italy landed troops on Corfu on August 31 anyway and took over the island quickly.

Meanwhile, in November of 1923, a little-known rabble-rouser named Adolf Hitler launched the failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich. Mussolini apparently showed some interest at the time, but was briefed that Hitler and his associates were "buffoons." But where his comrades failed in Germany, Mussolini sought to strengthen his hand in Italy through elections. The Fascists pushed through the "Acerbo Law" with conservative support, which gave additional seats as a reward to a party that won a majority and over 25% of the vote. While opposed by the liberals, it was had enough support from conservatives who argued that it would unify the nation. In January 1924, parliament was dissolved and elections were scheduled for April 6. While this was constitutional, illegal violence had not stopped outside Rome. The Fascist gangs, known as squadrisi, killed a left-Catholic priest, Giovanni Minzoni, near Ferrara in August 1923, and provincial Fascists continually advocated violence against those who doubted Fascism. By the time parliament was dissolved, it was clear who had the momentum. Elite men from all over the country joined the listone (big list) of Fascist party candidates for the election, and Mussolini cheerfully accommodated the old elite. Mussolini suppressed violence in the run-up to the election and the Fascists appeared to be an establishment party now that they had all the establishment players under their tent. They ended up not even needing the Acerbo Law to gain a majority, but it certainly didn't hurt. Whereas 18 months earlier, Fascism had barely existed, it won half the votes in the north, 76% in the center, and 81.5% in the south. It was the biggest victory in the history of unified Italy, and followed the classic tactic of aligning with Conservatives. Shortly after the election, Fascists kidnapped reformist and liberal Giacomo Matteoti and killed him.

The Matteoti affair became a major scandal. It appears that the Fascists who killed him hadn't planned to kill him, as they dumped him in an easy-to-find spot on the side of the road. Bosworth thinks they may have intended to kidnap him and rough him up but got carried away. It also appears they were not acing on orders, but rather "working toward the Fuhrer," to borrow a phrase from Ian Kershaw. For months the scandal grew, but surprisingly sort of fizzled out when Mussolini took responsibility for running a vicious propaganda campaign. By January 1925, it was over and the King approved a new cabinet. Mussolini was Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of War, Minister of the Navy, and Minister for Aviation. He later became Minister of Corporations from 1926-29, Minister of Colonies from 1928-29, and Minister of Public Works in 1929.

Mussolini was unique in forming Fascism as a political religion, connecting his party to the people in a way never done before. Mussolini developed a public image of charisma and a sort of savagery and athleticism. He was regularly photographed swimming, playing sports, and otherwise looking manly. Bosworth writes of how often he was seen and photographed in the "extrusion of bodily liquids." Mussolini was always sweating, shaking off water during a swim, seen taking off his shirt to ski or join a harvest, all of which was unimaginable to his political contemporaries. Within the state, the Fascists practiced a sort of "institutional Darwinism," in which it was assumed and even encouraged that Fascists in government be in conflict with one another to rise to the top. Public reports about Fascists on the rise usually included details about who supported them and who opposed them. But for all of his ability to bring his persona to the masses, Mussolini did little for them materially. Bosworth writes that, "Just as their fathers had done in 1915, peasants from the Piedmontese mountains thought they had entered paradise when they were conscripted in 1935, because military rations included meat. In the northern Alps, those who stayed at home told an interviewer with some wistfulness in the 1970s: 'Fascism brought us neither gain nor harm. It is as though it had never been.'" I think this is very reflective of what the right wing has to offer: personal connection to the leader and cultural victory over "the left," but little of material value. 

Mussolini's public persona took up most of his life. The Duce took advice from counselors in the morning and made most decisions at night. In his family life, the Mussolinis were becoming more respectable publicly and his children were sent to expensive private schools with the children of the aristocracy. Mussolini kept making more babies too, ending up with six children. But he remained a distant father to those children, preferring the family cat to his own children. His sons became quiet teenagers, and Mussolini usually ate alone. The family did not chat often. Mussolini was also a misogynist, something that got worse and worse as he got older. He would frequently advise young men to avoid the influence of women, and once rhetorically asked an interviewer, "During all the centuries of civilization, has there ever been a woman architect?" While he still enjoyed having sex with women (a lot it seems like), the dictator rarely longed for the company of intelligent women, and became a man's man.

Mussolini and the Catholic Church were not natural allies, but drew close throughout his reign. The young Mussolini viewed the church as a relic; but as a ruler, El Duce saw a use for the Pope. In February 1929, in an opulent ceremony at the Lateran Palace, Mussolini and the Pope Pius XI signed accords making the Vatican City and independent enclave within Rome, and the Church recognized (finally) the unification of Italy, after having been upset about losing Papal territory in Emilia-Romagna. The Church was confirmed in its authority over marriage as well as discipline of dissident priests, and the Fascists agreed to reinstitute compulsory religious education. There was another conflict in May 1931, when the Fascist regime banned the Catholic Action youth organizations, but a compromise was reached by the end of the summer, as the Pius XI recognized the uses of this conservative regime.

In 1933, Adolf Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany, an event that would dramatically effect the course of Mussolini's life. Bosworth explains that at that point, Mussolini had considered a 14 year rule, that would have led to his retirement in 1932. If he had done so, he would hardly be remembered as the monster we see him as today. "He might have entered history as a figure of some light and some darkness." But the rise of the Nazi party to the north changed everything. While the Fascists had spent most of the 1920s ignoring the Nazis, who were just one of many far-right parties in Europe struggling for power, the Nazis certainly spent a lot of time looking to Italy, a potential model of their government. But despite their ideological similarities, the Nazis were lukewarm about Italian Fascism. For one, they considered Italians to be Mediterranean, and therefore the lowest of the European races. One of the leaders of the Nazis, Anton Drexler, even said Mussolini was "probably" a Jew, and declared Fascism to be a Jewish movement (which the Nazis didn't really like lol). Moreover, Italy had taken the side of the allies in World War One, largely viewed as a betrayal by the Germans, and as a result, Italy had gained German territory in South Tyrol at the Versailles peace conference. But Hitler was different from the rest of the party, he saw in Italy an opportunity, and, writes Bosworth, "fanatically driven by Anti-Semitism, Anti-Communism, and Anti-Slavism, Hitler had no room among his prejudices to be Anti-Italian as well." The initial stage in their relationship culminated in 1934, when the two dictators met in June (in Venice), but nothing was set in stone yet. Mussolini still criticized Nazism in his political commentaries, especially its nonsensical race "science."

Economically, Mussolini was a poor leader who also faced difficult circumstances. Italy had long been the weakest of Europe's major powers, and Mussolini had done little to change that when the Great Depression struck in 1929. He displayed little interest in economic matters, and left most of his to his various Ministers of Finance. Like in most fields, he let the experts do their work. But the economy got very important after the Depression, when the Italian stock market lost a third of its value between 1929 and 1932. Italy did worse than most European countries, with its economic output declining from 8.2% of the European total to 8%. Whereas Liberal Italy had grown at 2.7% annually between 1897 and 1913, Fascist Italy grew at just 1.9% annually from 1922-1938, whereas Britain was at 2.2%, Germany at 3.8%, and Sweden at 4.1%.

 Mussolini reached the peak of his power in the mid-1930s, specifically in 1935, when he achieved his great victory in the conquest of Ethiopia. Bosworth differentiates Italy from Nazi Germany by explaining that Nazi Germany's wars of conquest were squarely of the 20th century. They were about getting territory connected to Germany, expelling the residents, and putting Germans on that soil to expand Germany. Italy, on the other hand, was squarely from the 19th century, simply seeking to conquer the last part of Africa not controlled by a European power. Unlike Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy never established a "mass base" of support of expansionism, and its aggression, while heinous and evil, never acquired the "murderous determination" of Nazi Germany. It was more about coloring the map green, more Theodore Roosevelt than Adolf Hitler.

By the time the Fascists came to power in 1922, Italy already controlled Eritrea and most of modern Somalia since the 1880s, and had won Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, combined and renamed Libya, in conflict with Turkey in 1911-12. Italy also won the Dodecanese islands between Greece and Turkey during that war. That said, the conquest of Ethiopia was still a massive new expansion to Italy's Empire. It should just be noted that it sometimes overshadows other evils of Italian imperialism. After all, the death toll of the Ethiopian conquest was lower than that of Libyan "pacification" from 1928-33. That policy of ethnic cleansing drove a population of 100,000 from the interior into concentration camps near the coast where many Libyans died of hunger and disease. Fascist rule killed some 90% of the livestock in Cyrenaica. Only half of the original deportees survived to the point when the camps were broken up in 1933.

Critically, the invasion of Ethiopia cast Italy out of Europe, showing Italy to be hungry for power in a way that isolated it from other powers. Only Germany, thanks to the personal beliefs of Hitler and the ideological similarities between the two, would support Italy's endeavor. The growing distaste for Mussolini was not just in the halls of government; political journalists also condemned Mussolini's adventurism, and Mussolini responded by expelling the more critical journalists. Italy invaded in October and marched into Addis Ababa in May 1936. Italy suffered just over a thousand casualties while Ethiopia was overwhelmed by bombing and poison gas, despite treaty obligations to avoid it. Once in control, Mussolini ordered a "systematic policy of terror and extermination against rebels and any in the population who favor them," and after the assassination of the local Fascist chief, Fascists responded with massacres that may have killed as many as 30,000. Through the blood of Ethiopians, Mussolini stood on top of the world.

But the "adventure" in Ethiopia was also the basis of Mussolini's downfall. Now pushed further into the arms of Hitler, Mussolini set events in motion that would tie their fate together. As early as 1936, Mussolini told the Austrian Foreign Minister that Italo-German relations were much closer since Germany had not joined the sanctions bloc on Italy after his invasion of Ethiopia. In November of that year Mussolini declared Germany and Italy to be "an axis around which all European states... can revolve." Italy also became the power most involved in Spain, supporting Franco in becoming the dictator in a war from 1936-38. Between 1935 and 1938, Italy spent almost as much of its GNP on military as Germany and spent twice as much as Britain and France. From 1934 to 1940, the military and colonial budgets of Italy took up 51% of government expenditure.

And Germany was a horrible ally. After promising Italy that he would not act in Austria without mutual agreement, Germany invaded Austria without telling Italy in March 1938, expanding German territory to border Italy in the northeast on the River Brenner. Mussolini was embarrassed publicly, and later commentators have identified this as the moment that Italy was made completely dependent on Germany as the junior partner. And Germany kept acting aggressively and irresponsibly, taking Italy along with it. Germany also seized the rest of the Czech lands in March 1939 (Mussolini was not informed). It was at this time that Mussolini began to adopt more German ways of thinking, and became more racist in his speeches. He even claimed privately that his family was "nordic" because they were from northern Italy and his children instinctively married other northerners. He declared that they wouldn't be known as Mediterranean, but Aryan. Mussolini unconditionally supported Kristallnacht, and passed laws banning marriage with Jews in the style of the Nuremberg laws. Of course, like most other racists, Mussolini and his followers all had their "good Jews," who they thought were exceptions, and it seems like the majority of the Fascist elites were protecting a Jew or helping a Jew escape the country or Europe. All in all, Mussolini's racism, and that of the government, was always somewhat half-hearted, doing as the Germans told them, but not complying to the extent that Eastern Europeans did with gusto in the wake of German invasion.  

Italy was forced to be the junior partner by not only the massive demographic differences (a German population of 80 million compared to 40 million Italians), but also because Mussolini, in nearly two decades in power, had failed completely in the economic sphere. By 1942, Italy would only be able to produce the number of planes in one year that the United States could make in a week, and Italians were starving as GDP actually fell during the war. Italy was still a poor country, and Italian officials begged Hitler not to take them into a war. And he replied that he wouldn't. And then he did anyway. By this point, Italians felt paralyzed by fear of the Nazis, and once again, when the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact was signed, no one told Mussolini. After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Italy continued to ask for delays through the spring of 1940 until Italy joined Germany in June, the absolute high point of German power after the blitzkrieg conquest of France, truly buying high and then selling low. They had no idea that in just a year Germany would invade the Soviet Union and bring it all crashing down on them. Bosworth points out that really Mussolini was very patient, more than Italian politicians were patient in World War One. He waited until it was clear that Hitler had won the war against France, and joined right before the Battle of Britain began. It seemed like brief participation in a short victory. 

On October 28, 1940, Italian forces tried to invade Greece to seize some territory like the Germans had, but they were immediately revealed to be incapable. Their clothes fell apart in the rain, thye had no mechanical or logistical support, and within six weeks they had lost all momentum. Meanwhile, the Italian "Empire" in Libya and Ethiopia crumbled and Haile Selassie was back in power by 1941. Spain played the whole situation much smarter. Franco had the excuse that he was still recovering from the Civil War and said that bad harvests made it impossible to go to war. That was clearly the right move, and by the end of 1941, he must have been sure he chose correctly.

Once Allied forces were seriously bombing Rome, it was over for Mussolini. The Grand Council ended up voting him out of power, and he was relieved of his office by the King. It is here where I am most critical of Bosworth's writing style. He sometimes writes as if all the actual events are something for the reader to look up elsewhere, while he is just a commentator. But we could use some drama! We could use some narration of what happened. Mussolini's death is introduced in the prologue, but when it happens chronologically in the book, we just skip over it. What a mistake! But that said, Bosworth is best in his analysis of the emotions and the character of the individuals he describes. Speaking of Mussolini's affair with Claretta Petaci, Bosworth writes, "Mussolini's craving for such solace was no doubt meant to counter that brutal misanthropy which came so easily to his lips when he was at the office - in his search for a soft escape from the cruel public world, Mussolini was doing what many a male executive in his fifties has done before and since. Playing the part of sentimental sugar daddy with Elena and Claretta, he could fudge the grim memoranda piling up on his desk and forget the lack of human content left in his relationships with his colleagues. There he could try to resuscitate a 'real' Mussolini, and forget for a moment the burden of his charisma." And then there's another great passage desribing his bitterness: "Back in May 1941 Mussolini had angrily dismissed Roosevelt as a statesman: 'Never in history', he told his son-in-law, 'has a people been ruled by a paralytic. There have been bald kings, fat kings, handsome kings and even stupid ones, but never a king who when he wants to go to the toilet or to dinner must be assisted by other men.' It was a typically brutal outburst. However, by the end of 1941 Mussolini had allowed the underdeveloped Italian economy and fragile and divided Italian society to be pitted against both the USA and the USSR. In such an uneven contest, it was Benito Mussolini who was to learn the meaning (and the cost) of paralysis."

Bosworth ends the book by writing that Mussolinian Fascism is fundamentally of its time and is not reproduceable today in anything like its original form. The problem is that the right wing must always make compromises with the market, and that is why Fascism could not succeed as an ideology. Fascists can't achieve the autarchy they seek, so they end up just being a movement all about image and bluster without substance. And Mussolini's true legacy is being one of the first of a new generation of politics based so much more on propaganda and appearances than ever before. Bosworth rights of the dictator that "he turned out to be no more than an ambitious intellectual from the provinces who believed that his will mattered and who thought, as did others, that he was a Duce and could lead a state like Italy towards a special sort of modernization. His propagandists declared that he was always right. However, in the most profound matters which touch on the human condition, he was, with little exception, wrong."

Miscellaneous Facts:

• Rome fell on June 4, 1944, which was the original date for D-Day, delayed until June 6. Naples had fallen much earlier on October 1, 1943.
• Mussolini was named Benito after the Mexican revolutionary Benito Juarez.
• When Italy was unified in 1860, only 2.5% of Italians spoke the national language rather than a regional dialect.
• Mussolini learned to fly in 1920, and survived a crash in March 1921. Later on, he piloted a plane with Hitler on it in August 1941, terrifying Hitler.
• Almost all the characteristic symbols of Fascism came from “below.” The use of the Roman salute came from Verona, the wearing of the black shirt coopted from the Arditi, and the scouting movement came from the Balilla at Piacenza.
• In 1928-29, Mussolini collaborated with dramatist Giovacchino Forzano on a play about Napoleon, and was cited as co-author when it was performed outside Italy. Apparently it did very well in Budapest.
• Mussolini was not nearly as interested in race as Hitler. He was casually anti-Semitic, but did not stand out among the Italians of the time. In fact, at a meeting with Pope Pius XI in 1932, it was the Pope who was far more anti-Semitic, blaming all the world's problems on the "anti-Christian spirit of Judaism." Interestingly, Pius acknowledged that "In Italy, however, the Jews are an exception." There seems to be a lot of exceptionalism among Italians of the time who were anti-Semitic but still found room for Italian Jews, who they liked.
• There's this weird "Four Power Pact" that Mussolini tried to push with Britain, France, and Germany to solidify European borders (probably so that he could divert his forces elsewhere). The Pact was signed in July 1933, but it was never ratified.
• While many Italian Fascists felt they were fighting against Bolshevism, but the Italian Fascist state still maintained a relationship with the USSR, succeeding in making arms deals throughout the early 1930s.
• Just something interesting: Bosworth identifies a similarity between the Italian conquest of Libya and the conquest of Ethiopia. Both were marked by years of stability coming to an end, and Italy seizing colonial territory just before the outbreak of a World War.
• Mussolini described his Fascist ideology well in a letter to the Greek General Metaxas, who staged a coup in the 1930s. Mussolini advised him to create a single governing party, a single youth organization, a single organization of employers and employees, and a dopolavoro, or an organization dedicated to entertaining the masses after work.
• Germany got an early start on deporting people, taking Germans across the border from Italy to Germany to change the ethnic makeup of border regions.
• Mussolini didn't like Christmas since it celebrated the "birth of a Jew who presented the world with theories which weakened and emasculated it."
• Mussolini's son Romano became a jazz pianist and married Sophia Loren's sister. They had a daughter who is Alessandra Mussolini, a right-wing Member of European Parliament and a member of the same successor-to-Fascism party as Giorgia Meloni, the Prime Minister.