The Italian Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of Mussolini and Fascism

What was Italian Fascism? Was it the ideology and experience of the

trenches brought to political authority? Or did it express the hopes and

ideals of an emerging middle class which had done well out of the First

World War? To what extent was fascism a boys' ideology? And to what

degree did Mussolini lead - and to what extent follow - public opinion?



'The Italian Dictatorship' offers a skilful probing of the central

debates in the area and a detailed critique of the ways in which the

history of fascism has been given meaning in Italy and in the wider

world since 1919. Beginning in the 1990s, with the political, cultural

and historiographical crisis of the collapse of the 'First Republic' in

Italy, the account then returns to the inter-war period to review

fascist, conservative, liberal and Marxist understandings of fascism,

examining not only the more traditional sources but also film, 'memory',

music and other arenas in which history is crafted.