Mussolini: The Last 600 Days of IL Duce FROM THE PUBLISHER
In his last days, Mussolini, the tyrant, was in the grip of anger, shame, and depression. The German armed forces that had sustained his puppet government since its creation in September 1943 were being inexorably driven out of Italy, the frontiers of his Fascist republic were shrinking daily, and Mussolini was aware that German military leaders were negotiating with the Allies behind his back in neutral Switzerland. Moseley's well-researched and highly engaging work throws light on the last twenty months of the despot's life and culminates with the dramatic capture and execution of Mussolini (and his mistress Claretta Petacci) by partisans of the Italian resistance on April 28, 1945.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
With a lucid style and a well-paced narrative, Moseley chronicles how, while Hitler and Nazi Germany became more radical, Mussolini and Fascist Italy degenerated into chaos. Moseley, former chief European correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and author of a highly regarded biography of Mussolini's foreign minister and son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano (Mussolini's Shadow), has written a welcome synthesis of the final months of the fascist regime, beginning in 1943. In doing so, he uncovers the venality, intrigue, corruption, treachery and barbarism of the Fascist and Nazi regimes. The day after the Allies invaded Sicily and made preparations for an invasion of the mainland while their planes were bombing Rome, Turin and Milan, Mussolini was deposed by King Victor Emmanuel III in a (for the time being) bloodless coup d'etat. Moseley shows how Ciano was instrumental in this development and the tragic fate that awaited him. Mussolini is portrayed (accurately) as deflated, depressed and having come late to the realization that he had "ruined Italy." Moseley devotes chapters to the fate of the Roman Jews; the partisan underground; and wartime atrocities, (most of which are attributed to the Germans, thereby giving the false impression that Italian Fascists committed no war crimes). Moseley's telling of the theft of Mussolini's corpse and the return of a fragment of his brain reads like the plot of a bad horror film. (Aug.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Moseley (European correspondent, Chicago Tribune) provides a detailed account of an often ignored period of Mussolini's regime. Even R.J.B. Bosworth, in his mammoth biography, Mussolini, devotes only a few sentences to the final months of the dictator's tumultuous 23-year reign. Moseley follows Il Duce from his arrest by the pro-Allied government in July 1943 and does not give up the trail until Mussolini's final burial in Predappio in July 1956. In the process, he reveals much about this complex character while evoking the dynamics of the virulent factionalism that characterized postwar Italy. Moseley emphasizes that Mussolini may have wound up a mutilated corpse in a public plaza in Milan with only a few minions and his mistress by his side, but the charismatic dictator's legacy still haunts modern Italy. Moseley displays an impressive familiarity with the relevant primary and the secondary sources and provides an excellent dramatis personae and a chronology that will help readers stay focused. The result is the most balanced account available of Mussolini's last 600 days. Recommended for both public and academic libraries.-Jim Doyle, Sara Hightower Regional Lib., Rome, GA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Home
