Benito mussolini

Like those of his wartime ally Joseph Goebbels, the diaries of the Italian fascist foreign minister Count Galeazzo Ciano (1903-44) have proved a mainstay of academic research into the frequently banal inner workings of the Axis dictatorships. Both men were entirely aware of their journals’ historical and commercial value. In 1937, Goebbels struck a lucrative deal with Max Amman, the Nazi Party publisher, for the release of his warped musings on race and politics twenty years after his death, which in the event came sooner than he might have imagined. Ciano in turn used his diaries to barter unsuccessfully for his life when arrested on charges of treason.

In 1919, an obscure political agitator called Benito Mussolini assembled a ragbag of Blackshirt diehards in the Lombard capital of Milan and launched the movement that was to become, two years later, the National Fascist party. The party took its name from the classical Roman symbol of authority — an ax bound in rods, or fasces. Once in power, Mussolini introduced the stiff armed Roman salute after the handshake was deemed fey and unhygienic. At times he wore a richly tasseled fez and thrust out his chin pugnaciously for the cameras. For all his posturing and demagoguery, Mussolini was widely admired in pre-war Britain, where Lord Rothermere’s Daily Mail routinely carried flattering portraits of him.

This article is in The Spectator’s January 2020 US edition. Subscribe here. Frank Dikötter has written a lively and concise analysis of the techniques and personalities of eight 20th-century dictators: Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Kim Il-sung (North Korea), François ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier (Haiti), Nicolae Ceausescu (Romania) and Mengistu Haile Mariam (Ethiopia). As a comparative study of those individuals, it is enlightening and a good read. The title and parts of the foreword indicate that it aspires also to be a guidebook of dictator tactics. There are some weaknesses in this broader ambition. These eight men were not altogether uniform in their methods of obtaining, retaining or losing power, and certainly not in their abilities.