A New Statesman Book of the Year Winner of the
Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize Winner of the Aldo and Jeanne
Scaglione Prize for Italian Studies "Extraordinary…I could
not put it down." -Margaret ...MacMillan "Reveals how ideology
corrupts the truth, how untrammeled ambition destroys the soul, and
how the vanity of white male supremacy distorts emotion, making
even love a matter of state." -Sonia Purnell, author of A Woman
of No Importance When Attilio Teruzzi, a decorated military
officer and early convert to the Fascist cause, married a rising
American opera star, his good fortune seemed settled. The wedding
was blessed by Mussolini himself. Yet only three years later,
Teruzzi, now commander of the Black Shirts, renounced his wife.
Lilliana was Jewish, and fascist Italy would soon introduce its
first race laws. The Perfect Fascist pivots from the
intimate story of a tempestuous courtship and inconvenient marriage
to the operatic spectacle of Mussolini's rise and fall. It invites
us to see in the vain, unscrupulous, fanatically loyal Attilio
Teruzzi an exemplar of fascism's New Man. Victoria De Grazia's
landmark history shows how the personal was always political in the
fascist quest for manhood and power. In his self-serving pieties
and intimate betrayals, his violence and opportunism, Teruzzi is a
forefather of the illiberal politicians of today. "The brilliance
of de Grazia's book lies in the way that she has made a page-turner
of Teruzzi's chaotic life, while providing a scholarly and
engrossing portrait of the two decades of Fascist rule." -Caroline
Moorhead, Wall Street Journal "Original and important…A
probing analysis of the fascist 'strong man.' De Grazia's attention
to Teruzzi's private life, his behavior as suitor and husband,
deepens and enriches our understanding of the nature of leadership
in Mussolini's regime and of masculinity, virility, and honor in
Italian fascist culture." -Robert O. Paxton, author of The
Anatomy of Fascism "This is a perfect book!…Its two entwined
narratives-one political and public, the other personal and
private-help us understand why the personal is political for those
who insist on reshaping people and society." -Azar Nafisi, author
of Reading Lolita in Tehran
In the climate of isolationism, nativism, democratic expansion of civic rights, and consumerism that America experienced after the First World War, Italian-born movie star Rudolph Valentino and ...Italy’s dictator, Benito Mussolini, became surprisingly appealing emblems of authoritarian male power. Drawing on extensive research in the United States and Italy, Bertellini’s work shows how the political and erotic popularity of Valentino, the Divo, and Mussolini, the Duce, was not just the result of spontaneous popular enthusiasm. Instead, Bertellini argues, it also depended on the efforts of public opinion managers, including publicists, journalists, and even ambassadors. As such, the fame of the Divo and the Duce reveals both the converging publicity work undertaken in Hollywood and Washington since the Great War and the extent to which their foreignness was put to work in managing postwar anxieties about democratic governance. Beyond the democratic celebrations of the Jazz Age, this promotion of charismatic masculinity, while short-lived, inaugurated the now-familiar convergence of popular celebrity and political authority.
During the 1920s and 1930s, Mussolini’s fascist regime attempted to promote fascist Italy’s national project in Argentina, bombarding the republic with its propaganda. Although politically a failure, ...this propaganda provoked a debate over the idea of a national identity outside the nation-state and the potential roles that citizens living abroad could play in their country of origin. In propagating an Italian national identity within another sovereign state, Mussolini’s initiative also inspired heated debate among native Argentines over their own national project as a nation of immigrants. Using the experiences of Mussolini’s efforts in Argentina as its case study, this book demonstrates how national projects take on different meanings once they enter a contested public space. It details how both members of the Italian community as well as native Argentines reshaped Italy’s national discourse from abroad by entangling it with Argentina’s own national project. In exploring the way in which nations are imagined, constructed, and recast both from above as well as from below, Mussolini’s National Project in Argentina offers new perspectives on the politics of identity formation while providing a transatlantic example of the dynamic interplay between the Italian state and its emigrant communities. It is in short, a transnational perspective on what it means to belong to a nation.
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit  www.luminosoa.org  to learn more. In the ...post–World War I American climate of isolationism, nativism, democratic expansion of civic rights, and consumerism, Italian-born star Rodolfo Valentino and Italy’s dictator Benito Mussolini became surprising paragons of authoritarian male power and mass appeal. Drawing on extensive archival research in the United States and Italy, Giorgio Bertellini’s work shows how their popularity, both political and erotic, largely depended on the efforts of public opinion managers, including publicists, journalists, and even ambassadors. Beyond the democratic celebrations of the Jazz Age, the promotion of their charismatic masculinity through spectacle and press coverage inaugurated the now-familiar convergence of popular celebrity and political authority. This is the first volume in the new  Cinema Cultures in Contact  series, coedited by Giorgio Bertellini, Richard Abel, and Matthew Solomon. This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries. Learn more at the TOME website, available at: <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://openmonographs.org/&source=gmail&ust=1557591620226000&usg=AFQjCNE-eOZXGAIreNeEFRaBO4qU9vT-jQ" href="http://openmonographs.org/" target="_blank">openmonographs.org .  
The dramatic story of Mussolini's fall from power in July 1943, illuminating both the causes and the consequences of this momentous event. Morgan shows how Italians of all classes coped with the ...extraordinary pressures of wartime living, both on the military and home fronts, and how their experience of the country at war eventually distanced them from the dictator and his fascist regime. Looking beyond Mussolini's initial fall from power, Morgan examines how the Italian people responded to the invasion, occupation, and division of their country by Nazi German and Anglo-American forces - and how crucial the experience of this period was in shaping Italy's post-war sense of nationhood and transition to democracy.
Hitlers Weg an die Macht ist oft beschrieben worden. Kaum beachtet wurde jedoch bisher, dass er sich dabei in starkem Maße an Mussolini orientierte. Der faschistische Diktator war sein großes ...Vorbild. Auf ihn ließ er auch nichts kommen, als er selbst die Macht erlangt hatte und der "Duce" von ihm abhängig geworden war. Die beiden Diktatoren verband eine politische Freundschaft, die bis zu ihrem Tode anhielt. Ursachen, Verlauf und Ausdrucksformen dieser 'Männerfreundschaft' sind Gegenstand dieses Buches, das die deutsche Zeitgeschichte ebenso befruchten wird wie die italienische.
There is no question that the First Libyan Campaign of 1940-41 was an Italian military disaster of the highest order. For all of the ethnic slurs and cultural stereotyping levelled at Italian ...military performance in North Africa by historians and popular authors, the last 70 years has seen relatively little research effort invested into identifying the real military disadvantages under which Mussolini's soldiers in this theatre fought. When understood as a product of measurable and objective military factors, like the issue of leadership for example, the rout of the 10th Army takes on an entirely new complexion. The subsequent reputation of Italian soldiers as embarrassing battlefield liabilities in the Western Desert in this period is unfair. This overlooks the handicaps they fought under, and often ignores the bravery displayed in spite of them all. Like the Australians, the Italians in the Western Desert were ordinary men, no more and no less. In truth, it is singularly unsurprising that so many were killed or surrendered without putting up much real resistance. They faced challenges and conditions that would have handicapped troops from any country. Adapted from the source document.
Surviving Hitler and Mussolini Robert Gildea, Olivier Wieviorka, Anette Warring / Robert Gildea, Olivier Wieviorka, Anette Warring
2006
eBook
Surviving Hitler and Mussolini examines how far everyday life was possible in a situation of total war and brutal occupation. Its theme is the social experience of occupation in German- and ...Italian-occupied Europe, and in particular the strategies ordinary people developed in order to survive. Survival included meeting the challenges of shortage and hunger, of having to work for the enemy, of women entering into intimate relations with soldiers, of the preservation of culture in a fascist universe, of whether and how to resist, and the reaction of local communities to measures of reprisal taken in response to resistance. What emerges is that ordinary people were less heroes, villains or victims than inventive and resourceful individuals able to maintain courage and dignity despite the conditions they faced.The book adopts a comparative approach from Denmark and the Netherlands to Poland and Greece, and offers a fresh perspective on the Second World War.
The Tragedy of Line C Ruggeri, Amanda
World policy journal,
12/2010, Letnik:
27, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
ROME-all roads leading to Rome are measured from a patch of grass in the middle of Piazza Venezia. Overlooking the square, a 400-foot monument celebrates the reunification of Italy. It was here, at ...the piazza, that Mussolini hung over a balcony and declared, to the electrified crowds below, a new Italian empire. Both the republican and imperial forums, with their triumphal arches and ruined temples, stand a few steps away. And at the end of the road leading southeast from the piazza, against the sky, looms the Colosseum. Adapted from the source document.
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