Mussolini
R.J.B. Bosworth
Arnold, 2002
xv + 584 pages
Empty chameleon? Sell out? Conflicted man? Bloodthirsty cynic?
After reading Professor Bosworth’s entertaining and very readable work, I think the Duce was all the above and more.
A sometimes problem with political biography is that historical events can overshadow the actor. One of the few criticisms I have about Mussolini is that we sometimes, briefly, lose sight of Benito Mussolini. When “the Leader” disappears from the pages, we are treated to the wider history of Italy. Given the events Mussolini lived through, and in part effected, it is not surprising that Bosworth occasionally pushes our subject to the background. I also think it has something to do with the author’s view of his subject. Unlike the great men of history who really affected events, “Mussolini did not even dictate, but, rather, was swept along by destiny which began with ambition and hope in the provinces.” (p.11) It is little wonder then that the Duce becomes, at times, a supporting player in his own biography.
Still, I am quibbling. This is a worthwhile book. We get many glimpses of Mussolini the man: the socialist firebrand who wanted to be a Parisian intellectual; the would-be Marxist revolutionary who also happened to have a good eye for business; the increasingly conflicted internationalist who felt the emotional tug of the Risorgimento during the First World War; and the emerging cynic who championed the downtrodden in print whilst simultaneously fostering connections with the elite. All this after reading just five chapters of Bosworth’s story.
“Swept along by destiny.” Historians usually avoid inevitability like the plague. Just because it happened does not mean it was destined to happen. Mussolini could have caught a bullet in the First World War (he was wounded in a training exercise) or chosen to remain a provincial teacher in Bologna (Professor was one of his most cherished titles). I understand why Bosworth claims it was destiny; however, I think he proves that it was not destiny. Instead, luck combined with moxie, bluff and political skill took Mussolini on his long-successful ride. For example, he found himself the leader of a decentralised movement that really stood for nothing:
We permit ourselves the luxury of being aristocrat and democrat, conservative and progressive, reactionary and revolutionary, accepting the law and going beyond it, according to the circumstances of time, place and environment, in a word, of the ‘history’ in we must live and act. (p. 156)
His appointment as Prime Minster was due more to the weaknesses of his enemies than his own political skills and popularity. When King Victor Emmanuel considered declaring martial law and killing Fascism in its cradle, “The army chiefs enigmatically advised the monarch that their forces were loyal, but that such loyalty was better not put to the test.” (p. 168)
He survived the Matteotti crisis and emerged as dictator. Here too Chance was his friend: his enemies were weak and divided; most were unwilling to act. And yet, after overcoming a momentary paralysis, Mussolini acted. He took responsibility for Matteotti’s murder and then declared a dictatorship. The monarchy approved and rubber stamped his new Fascist dominated government:
By August [1925] Mussolini was himself Prime Minster, Minster for Foreign Affairs, Minister of War, Minister of the Navy, Minister for Aviation. Later he would also become Minister of Corporations (1926-29), Minster of Colonies (1928-29) and Minster of Public Works (1929), while in November 1926 he resumed his position of Minister of the Interior.
Luck, bravado, bluff, political skill.
The problem with living by the gambler’s code is luck runs out. Ironically, it was the chances he took in foreign affairs that led to his dangling from a meat hook in the Piazzale Loreto. After all, Mussolini was a soi-disant foreign policy expert, and it was through conquest abroad that his regime reached its apogee. Moreover, Fascism, above all else, exulted war and conquest. Mussolini promised a new Roman Empire. His 1936 conquest of Abyssinia delivered on this promise if Italians did not look too closely; however, the campaign marked the watershed for his regime. Although “the real winner in Ethiopia, the leader of a united and victorious nation, was Benito Mussolini,” he was also “the Duce of one of the most fleeting empires in history.” (p. 308-09). It was all downhill from there.
The reason, of course, is that Mussolini bet on the wrong country in 1940 and hitched Italy to the German war machine. Bosworth’s treatment of Mussolini after the German invasion of Poland is one of the more fascinating chapters in his book. He describes a man desperate to enter a war to gain spoils and bask in the refracted light of German victory. Not to enter the war would reduce Italy to another “Switzerland.” Had he not championed war since 1915? To not enter the fighting would have revealed him for the charlatan he was. So, the choice was made as the Wehrmacht rolled through France and the Italian people showed signs of wanting to be on the winning side. It was the worst gamble of his life:
Unarguable, however, is the fact that the war entry was proved with astonishing swiftness a mistake. The ‘test’ even of Italy’s relatively peripheral and undemanding Second World War graphically illustrated the limitations of Fascism and the superficiality of Mussolini’s purported revolution, just as it made manifest the fatuity of the ambitions of international ‘greatness’ which had been nurtured in the minds of educated members of the Italian nation since the Risorgimento. Quite a few nations had the hollowness of their political and ideological beliefs savagely exposed by the war – fallen France and devasted Poland were premier examples. But no participant revealed a more profound gap between ambition and practice than did Fascist Italy. For this disastrous ‘failure’, the Duce, Benito Mussolini must take much of the historical blame. (p. 371)
It is in this period too that Bosworth offers the reader more insights into Mussolini the man. He was an economic ignoramus, “financial problems do not exist for states.” (p. 363) He held his own people in contempt because Italians admired German military successes, “The people were ‘a whore’…who simply ran after a ‘conquering male.’ (p. 367) He was willing to send thousands of his countrymen to their deaths so he could “attend the peace conference as a belligerent.” (p. 368)
The rest of Italy’s story is well known. So laughably inept on the battlefield, the defeats, especially against little Greece, smashed Fascism’s façade. The Duce’s too. Buffoonish attempts at damage control were made: A sporting event was held to showcase Mussolini’s “superhuman form” where he entertained the crowd with his horse jumping and tennis playing. (p. 374). After being overthrown and briefly resurrected as a German puppet in the “Salo,” Bosworth describes our subject being “reduced to the Micawberish position of being utterly devoid of plans but hoping somehow that something positive would come up.” (p. 399)
When taken together, what kind of man does Bosworth show us? I think stripped of everything else, it was a cynic who held humanity in contempt. He also developed a taste for power which he wanted to hold on to no matter the cost. Scattered through the book are suggestions that he also was a depressive who believed in nothing; expressions of loyalty or love from the Italian people did not “salve Mussolini’s own deepening sense of the hollowness of life.” (p. 192)
If I have another minor quibble with this study, it is this: why did Italians follow this man? Yes, Bosworth tells us why: the charisma, the gambles, his ability to read people, etc. Yet, we do not a get good look into what every day Italians thought of him. Unlike works examining Hitler, Mao or even Stalin, I do not see or sense the charisma of the man in this book. It almost makes a mystery of the Italian people’s attraction to Benito. It is possible that Bosworth sensed this too because he followed up this biography with Mussolini’s Italy: Life Under the Dictatorship. Still, this is a nit-pick. Readers will gain a lot from this book. Small men are capable of great evil.
