Word: mussolini
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Author Monelli, no professional historian but a veteran newspaperman, has written a biography that often verges on caricature. Obviously ashamed of his people's long allegiance to Mussolini, Author Monelli does his best to de-Caesarize Italy's 20th century Caesar. In destroying the legend of Mussolini as hero, he occasionally seems to build up another legend of Mussolini as utter boob. But with that qualification in mind, Mussolini can be enjoyed as a highly readable biography...
...became popular at once. He seemed ready to work hard and cooperate with other parties, and his chief desire was to be "respectable." When the lights burned late in Mussolini's palace, it was often because he had got his hands on "lists of subscribers to opposition papers" and was busy marking down those who were to be "beaten up until they bled." But, asserts Author Monelli, some of Mussolini's followers were far tougher than he. When his old Socialist enemy, Giacomo Matteotti, was murdered by some of his Fascist pals and Mussolini was blamed...
...group of his "friends," appalled by such weakness, staged a second March on Rome and cornered their cowering, unshaven chief in his palace. "What do you expect me to do with a corpse under my feet?" Mussolini wailed. "A fine head of a revolution, if you're afraid of a corpse!" bellowed an angry follower...
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...