Volume 11, Number 7 · October 24, 1968
Why Mussolini Made It
By Denis Mack Smith
Italy from Liberalism to Fascism
by Christopher Seton-Watson
Methuen (distributed in the US by Barnes and Noble), 772 pp., $19.00
The Fall and Rise of Modern Italy
by Serge Hughes
Macmillan, 322 pp., $6.95
Mussolini's conquest of power in 1922 opened a brutally unhappy period for Italy as well as for the rest of the world. Whether or not he made the tourist railways run on time, whether he hindered or encouraged the growth of communism, these may be debatable points; what is undeniable is that he turned his own country into a shambles. Worse, he ended by dividing Italians against themselves in a fierce civil war which it took the statesmanship and good sense of many years to placate. How was he given the power that enabled him to do this? And why was he allowed to govern Italy for twice as long as any other Italian ruler of modern times?
Review, 3223 words
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