Word: monelli
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Mussolini, by Paolo Monelli. A sharp likeness that makes the would-be Caesar look like a buffoon (TIME...
Life of a Balloon. More afraid of his friends than of his enemies, Mussolini began to do his utmost to appease the friends. As Biographer Monelli sees it. he was terrified into terrorizing Italy. In 1925, "the Fascist regime became a regime of force," all opposition was suppressed, total censorship clamped on the newspapers. His followers made sure that the Duce's balloon of a phony identity was not punctured by public scorn. They kept him surrounded by "policemen in various disguises" playing the equally phony role of "fanatical admirers." These cops, known as "the Presidential Division," became...
Historians who believe that great decisions are the result of historical necessity rather than of the acts of individuals will find in Monelli's account of Mussolini's life a stiff argument to the contrary. Personal vanity, swollen to monstrous proportions, made Italy Germany's ally in World War II. Mussolini detested Hitler, but, as he said frankly: "It's too late to drop him. I don't want them to say abroad that Italy's cowardly." Of all Mussolini's millions of spouted words, none has a greater ring of sincerity than...
Death of a Lover. As the war advanced, the Duce became more and more of a rear light. He spent hours doodling at his great table or concocting headlines for the morning papers. According to Monelli. he even began to lose interest in one of his chief pleasures-that of "receiving" a woman in his office every afternoon. If she was unattractive, the Duce talked to her; if she was pretty, he hurled her onto the carpet ("You can't refuse a man of that importance," said one such lady), and then went straight back to his desk while...
...Author Monelli's book is never better than in the account of the last days of Mussolini and his doxie. Utterly defeated, universally despised, the sick and whipped dictator began mouthing extracts from a Life of Jesus and discovering "surprising analogies between his own fate and that of Christ." Too vain to surrender to the British, too indecisive to accept German protection, Mussolini blundered into the waiting hands of his bitterest enemies, the Italian partisans. By the time they dragged him, in pouring rain, to the wall against which he and Claretta were to be shot, he was much...