Fascist Voices: An Intimate History of Mussolini's Italy

Christopher Duggan’s new history of fascist Italy explores how the movement became embodied in the person of Benito Mussolini who occupied for many an almost divine status and gave millions of men and women a sense of pride and hope, offering the prospect of national regeneration after decades of disappointment. A work of exceptional authority and originality, Fascist Voices makes use of rarely examined sources – letters and private diaries, newspaper reports and secret police files – to uncover how ordinary people experienced fascism on a daily basis and how its ideology influenced their beliefs, values, language and lifestyle. Tracing fascism from its conception to its legacy, Christopher Duggan unpicks why the regime enjoyed so much support among the majority of the Italian population. He examines the extraordinary personal relationships that millions of Italians had with Mussolini, explores the religious dimensions of totalitarianism, and discusses why the 'cult of the Duce' still resonates in contemporary Italy. Fascist Voices is a fresh and disturbing look at a country in thrall to a charismatic dictator.

About the Author :
Christopher Duggan is Professor of Italian History at Reading University. He has written several books on modern Italian history, including History of Sicily, with M. I. Finley and D. Mack Smith, Fascism and the Mafia, A concise history of Italy and Francesco Crispi- From Nation to Nationalism. His most recent book is The Force of Destiny- a History of Italy Since 1796.

Review :
A fascinating exploration of the letters that ‘ordinary’ Italians who supported fascism wrote to Mussolini in the 1920s and 1930s This original, revealing and disturbing book provides a grassroots view of fascist Italy Duggan’s superbly researched book uncovers the nasty reality of [Mussolini’s] regime and demonstrates that there was a disturbing symbiotic relationship between fascism and the Catholic Church In his magnificent new book, a pathbreaking study that everyone interested in Fascism, or in Italy past and present, should read, Christopher Duggan fills the gap by examining a wide range of diaries… This enables Duggan to deliver not merely a detailed account of popular attitudes towards the regime, but, far more, a general history of Fascism that for the first time treats it, not as a tyranny that allowed ordinary Italians no possibility of expressing themselves freely, nor as the brutal dictatorship of a capitalist class that reduced the great majority of the country’s citizens to the status of victims, but as a regime rooted strongly in popular aspirations and desires. An elegantly written study that is the work of a historian at the height of his powers