The Italian Fascist Party In Power

The Italian Fascist Party in Power was first published in 1959. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. Although much significant material on the Italian Fascist party became available when the regime collapsed, scholars have not made extensive use of it until now. In this study, which is based on all the available sources, Professor Germino describes the functions of the party, ,explains how it was organized to perform tasks, and discusses conflicts between the party and other power elements in the dictatorship. He reaches a conclusion contrary to that of most other scholars -- that Fascist Italy was a full-fledged totalitarian state resembling Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in political structure and ideological content. Professor Carl J. Riedrich of Harvard University writes: "I consider this a major contribution to our knowledge of totalitarian dictatorship. There is nothing in the existing literature that can be compared to it either in terms of depth or analysis, range of documentation or breadth of treatment." Professor Taylor Cole of Duke University comments: "Professor Germino has presented an excellent case study of the Italian Fascist Party. He has made use of more materials on the Party than any previous writer in English, and has marshalled them effectively to support his contention that the Fascist Party did not differ 'in kind' from [the Nazi and Soviet Communist parties] on the eve of World War II. His conclusion that on most (though not all) basic counts the Italian Fascist system was to be classified as 'totalitarian' is controversial, but it merits the careful attention of all students who are interested in the Italian Fascist period and in totalitarianism."

In Mussolini and Fascist Italy Martin Blinkhorn explains the significance of the man, the movement and the regime which dominated Italian life between 1922 and the closing stages of the Second World War. He examines: those aspects of post-Risorgimento Italy which provided the longterm context vital to an understanding of Fascism the social and political convulsions wrought by economic change after 1890 and by Italy’s intervention in the First World War the Fascist movement's rapid rise from obscurity to power and the subsequent establishment of Mussolini’s dictatorship the history of the Fascist regime until its demise during the Second World War the ways in which Italian Fascism has been understood by contemporary analysts and by historians. The third edition of this best-selling Lancaster Pamphlet provides an expanded and fully updated analysis. New features include additional material on Fascist totalitarianism and a completely revised consideration of the ways in which Fascism has been interpreted.

"For the third edition, De Grand has substantially revised the discussion of culture and ideology, the conclusion, and the bibliography."--BOOK JACKET.

The question of how ordinary people related to totalitarian regimes is still far from being answered. The tension between repression and consensus makes analysis difficult; where one ends and the other begins is never easy to determine. In the case of fascist Italy, recent scholarship has tended to tilt the balance in favour of popular consensus for the regime, identifying in the novel ideological and cultural aspects of Mussolini's rule a 'political religion' which bound the population to the fascist leader. The Party and the People presents a different picture. While not underestimating the force of ideological factors, Paul Corner argues that 'real existing Fascism', as lived by a large part of the population, was in fact an increasingly negative experience and reflected few of those colourful and attractive features of fascist propaganda which have induced more favourable interpretations of the regime. Distinguishing clearly between the fascist project and its realisation, Corner examines the ways in which the fascist party asserted itself at the local level in the widely-differing areas of Italy, at its corruption and malfunctioning, and at the mounting wave of popular resentment against it during the course of the 1930s - resentment and hostility which, in effect, signalled the failure of the project. The Party and the People, based largely on unpublished archival material, concludes by suggesting that the abuse of power by fascists mirrors much wider problems in Italy related to the relationship between the public and the private and to the modes of utilisation of power, both in the past and in the present.

"A note to official Italian publications": pages 143-144. Bibliography: p. 145-151.

“FASCIST IDENTITY” provides an interpretation which places fascism outside the traditional political categories of right and left, it is proposed as innovative politological research compared to a deeper understanding of this ideology, and through consultation with many studies specialists, as well as a whole series of original documents that describe the fascist project, analyzes the totalitarian evolution during Years 20,30 and 40 of the twentieth century, through the writings of founder Benito Mussolini and those who, like the philosopher Giovanni Gentile, contributed to form the fascist political identity. Thus, the authors hope to bring to the attention of readers one of the most original and misunderstood particularities of the history of fascism, what the “regime” intended to create, a new social model focused on the direct participation of the masses in political life of the Italian nation, through the totalitarian full adherence to the universal values of Ethical Corporative State.