What is fascism? Many authors have proposed definitions, but most fail to move beyond the abstract. The esteemed historian Robert O. Paxton answers this question for the first time by focusing on the concrete: what the fascists did, rather than what they said. From the first violent uniformed bands beating up �enemies of the state,� through Mussolini�s rise to power, to Germany�s…
With Mussolini 's Italy, R.J.B. Bosworth�the foremost scholar on the subject writing in English�vividly brings to life the period in which Italians participated in one of the twentieth century's most notorious political experiments. Il Duce's Fascists were the original totalitarians, espousing a cult of violence and obedience that inspired many other dictatorships, Hitler's first among them…