Mussolini As Diplomat: Il Duce's Italy on the World Stage - Hardcover

Lamb, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0880642440 ISBN 13: 9780880642446

Publisher: Fromm Intl, 1999

Synopsis

Examining the diplomatic history surrounding Mussolini's rise to power and subsequent partnership with Germany, the author questions the notion that the Axis alliance was foreordained, criticizing British diplomacy as a factor alienating Il Duce from the Allies.

About this title

About the Author

Richard Lamb is an eminent historian with eight books to his credit, including the highly praised War in Italy 1943-1945: A Brutal Story and Montgomery in Europe. Lamb served with the British Eighth Army in Italy during World War II.

From Kirkus Reviews

A flawed look at Mussolini's diplomacy. This is an American edition of a work published last year in Great Britain. Lamb's controversial thesis: that until the mid-1930s, Mussolini was undecided whether to support Nazi Germany or Great Britain in the inevitable war on the horizon. Lamb (Churchill as War Leader, 1993, etc.) here enters the territory of revisionist history. Most scholars, examining Mussolinis and Hitlers respective ideologies, have concluded that Fascist Italy's alliance with Nazi Germany was inevitable and preordained. Lamb is only partially correct in pointing out that Mussolini was not slavishly tied to any ideology; indeed Mussolini in the 1920s boasted that fascism had no ideology. But this is a misreading. Lamb himself recognizes that Mussolini was quite able to say one thing on Monday and the opposite on Tuesday, but he reads Mussolini's courtship of Britain as earnest fascist foreign policy rather than cynical maneuvering. Lamb contends that a golden opportunity to divorce Mussolini from Hitler's fatal embrace was lost by Anthony Eden; Eden, according to Lamb, felt that Hitler was a man with whom the British ``could do business,'' while Mussolini was no more than a common gangster. He was wrong on both counts. That Lamb is essentially correct in condemning Eden and much of the British Foreign Office does not prove his thesis. A curious aside is Lambs contention, based on a previously published work (Mussolini's Other Woman) that the Jewish intellectual and patron of the arts, Margherita Sarfatti, influenced his foreign policy and early distrust of Hitler. Although there is no denying the tense relationship between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, Lambs thesis requires a selective reading of the evidence and a failure to address ideology. It is doubtful that Mussolini ever seriously considered entering the war against Hitler; it was more a question of when and how to enter the war at his side as an equal partner. Revisionist history that fails to revise. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Fromm Intl
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0880642440
• ISBN 13: 9780880642446
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 368