MUSSOLINI’S WAR FASCIST ITALY FROM TRIUMPH TO COLLAPSE 1935-1943
JOHN GOOCH
Allen Lane, 576pp, £30, ebook, £12.99
In his review for the Financial Times, Tony Barber reminded readers that ‘between 1935 and 1943, Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime went to war in Ethiopia, Spain, Albania, north Africa, the Mediterranean Sea, France, Greece, the dismembered territories of Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and finally the islands of Italy itself’. In this ‘authoritative account of the dictator’s reckless adventurism, John Gooch asks how far Italy’s total defeat should be ascribed to the Duce, how far to military commanders and how far to the state’s longer-term weaknesses’.
Gooch ‘draws on a fuller range of official Italian military sources than most previous accounts. He makes relatively light use of other material, such as soldiers’ diaries and letters and secret police reports on morale. But his narrative is lucid, his analysis is perfectly judged and the result is a thorough, readable account of a series of pointless wars that did Italy nothing but harm.’ Saul David, in the Daily
Telegraph, thought that while ‘Gooch – an obvious Italophile – is keen to dispel the cruder stereotypes of Italian military incompetence... the finger of blame for Italy’s humiliation is firmly pointed at Mussolini.’ If Gooch’s book ‘lacks a little colour and atmosphere, that is often the price to pay for a work of such meticulous scholarship’. For Caroline Moorehead in the Guardian, it was ‘hard to imagine a finer account, both of the sweep of Italy’s wars, and of the characters caught up in them. That Mussolini’s soldiers fought for so long, against such odds, often with such tenacity and courage, is what really stands out.’