Understand Mussolini's Italy: Teach Yourself PDF Download

Author: David Evans
Publisher: Teach Yourself
ISBN: 1444157523
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Mussolini's Italy is a compelling introduction to this infamous fascist dictator and his extraordinary rule. Though sometimes regarded as a farcical ruler, Mussolini's 'brutal friendship' with Hitler and his tyrannical killing of over a million people cannot be ignored as crucial aspects of modern European history. David Evans' pacy and nuanced analysis of the rise and fall of this colourful yet dangerous dictator, will keep you gripped from beginning to end.

Author: David Evans
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
ISBN: 9781444157505
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
An introduction to the infamous fascist dictator and his cruel way of governing that will fascinate and horrify you Though sometimes regarded as a farcical ruler, Benito Mussolini's 'brutal friendship' with Hitler and his tyrannical killing of over a million people cannot be ignored as crucial aspects of modern European history. David Evans' pacy and nuanced analysis of the rise and fall of this colorful yet dangerous dictator will keep you gripped from beginning to end.

Author: David Evans
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780071461474
Category : Fascism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Teach Yourself History Each title in the history category of Teach Yourself makes complex events accessible when you’re seeking an alternative to dry, academic texts. Incorporating gripping personal stories, our Teach Yourself History Books transform history from a record of facts and dates to a dynamic, fascinating experience. Teach Yourself Mussolini’s Italytraces the development of the dictator Benito Mussolini and his influence on the country, and shows how a former socialist became one of the most hated dictators of the twentieth century.

Author: Mabel Berezin
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 150172214X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
In her examination of the culture of Italian fascism, Mabel Berezin focuses on how Mussolini's regime consciously constructed a nonliberal public sphere to support its political aims. Fascism stresses form over content, she believes, and the regime tried to build its political support through the careful construction and manipulation of public spectacles or rituals such as parades, commemoration ceremonies, and holiday festivities. The fascists believed they could rely on the motivating power of spectacle, and experiential symbols. In contrast with the liberal democratic notion of separable public and private selves, Italian fascism attempted to merge the public and private selves in political spectacles, creating communities of feeling in public piazzas. Such communities were only temporary, Berezin explains, and fascist identity was only formed to the extent that it could be articulated in a language of pre-existing cultural identities. In the Italian case, those identities meant the popular culture of Roman Catholicism and the cult of motherhood. Berezin hypothesizes that at particular historical moments certain social groups which perceive the division of public and private self as untenable on cultural grounds will gain political ascendance. Her hypothesis opens a new perspective on how fascism works.

Author: R. J. B. Bosworth
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 110107857X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 720

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Book Description
With Mussolini ’s Italy, R.J.B. Bosworth—the foremost scholar on the subject writing in English—vividly brings to life the period in which Italians participated in one of the twentieth century’s most notorious political experiments. Il Duce’s Fascists were the original totalitarians, espousing a cult of violence and obedience that inspired many other dictatorships, Hitler’s first among them. But as Bosworth reveals, many Italians resisted its ideology, finding ways, ingenious and varied, to keep Fascism from taking hold as deeply as it did in Germany. A sweeping chronicle of struggle in terrible times, this is the definitive account of Italy’s darkest hour.

Author: Christopher Duggan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019933837X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 526

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Book Description
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.

Author: Nicholas Farrell
Publisher: Independently Published
ISBN: 9781731426970
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 634

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Book Description
Drawing on freshly discovered material--including correspondence previously unavailable outside academia--the talented writer and journalist Nicholas Farrell has created a revelatory biography of the Italian fascist leader and dictator. How did Mussolini manage to take power and hold on to it for two decades? What inspired Churchill to call him "the Roman genius" and Pope Pius XI to say he was "sent by Providence"? And how did Mussolini successfully curtail democracy without using mass murder to stay in command? Farrell answers these questions and more, focusing particularly on Mussolini's fatal error: his alliance with Hitler, whom he despised. Anyone interested in history, politics, and World War II will encounter an intriguing and startling picture of one of the 20th century's key figures.

Author: Richard J. B. Bosworth
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1849660247
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 630

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Book Description
In 1945, disguised in German greatcoat and helmet, Mussolini attempted to escape from the advancing Allied armies. Unfortunately for him, the convoy of which he was part was stopped by partisans and his features, made so familiar by Fascist propaganda, gave him away. Within 24 hours he was executed by his captors, joining those he sent early to their graves as an outcome of his tyranny, at least one million people. He was one of the tyrant-killers who so scarred interwar Europe, but we cannot properly understand him or his regime by any simple equation with Hitler or Stalin. Like them, his life began modestly in the provinces; unlike them, he maintained a traditonal male family life, including both wife and mistresses, and sought in his way to be an intellectual. He was cruel (though not the cruellest); his racism existed, but never without the consistency and vigor that would have made him a good recruit for the SS. He sought an empire; but, in the most part, his was of the old-fashioned, costly, nineteenth century variety, not a racial or ideological imperium. And, self-evidently Italian society was not German or Russian: the particular patterns of that society shaped his dictatorship. Bosworth's Mussolini allows us to come closer than ever before to an appreciation of the life and actions of the man and of the political world and society within which he operated. With extraordinary skill and vividness, drawing on a huge range of sources, this biography paints a picture of brutality and failure, yet one tempered with an understanding of Mussolini as a human being, not so different from many of his contemporaries. 'The definitive study of the Italian dictator.' - Library Journal

Author: Stephen Gundle
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526101416
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 437

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Book Description
The cult of the Duce is the first book to explore systematically the personality cult of the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. It examines the factors which informed the cult and looks in detail at its many manifestations in the visual arts, architecture, political spectacle and the media. The conviction that Mussolini was an exceptional individual first became dogma among Fascists and then was communicated to the people at large. Intellectuals and artists helped fashion the idea of him as a new Caesar while the modern media of press, photography, cinema and radio aggrandised his every public act. The book considers the way in which Italians experienced the personality cult and analyses its controversial resonances in the postwar period. Academics and students with interests in Italian and European history and politics will find the volume indispensable to an understanding of Fascism, Italian society and culture, and modern political leadership. Among the contributions is an Afterword by Mussolini’s leading biographer, R.J.B. Bosworth.

Author: Hamish Macdonald
Publisher: Nelson Thornes
ISBN: 9780748733866
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 68

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Book Description
Students will benefit from the provision of a structured route through the A-Level History process that is clearly explained. The books maintain focus on narrative in a readable style, while presenting additional topical information alongside. The approach concentrates on providing students with the essential information, keeping their attention on important and key issues throughout. The series is extremely cost-effective and can be used alongside any main A-Level topic book or resource. Teachers can use Pathfinder as a multi-role resource that can be used in as many ways as they determine: as an introduction at the start of the course, as a guide throughout a topic, or as a revision guide.