Mussolini and Fascist Italy
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Good evening and welcome. We're Talking History on News Talk 106 to 108 with me, Patrick Gagan. In tonight's show, we're looking back on our programme on Mussolini and Fascist Italy. Looking first at Mussolini in myth and memory, and then exploring the regime through the eyes of Mussolini's daughter, once described as the most dangerous woman in Europe. Our panel of experts, Professor Paul Corner, Emeritus Professor of European. History at the University of Siena and former director of the Centre for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes there. And his books include The Fascist Party and Popular Opinion in Mussolini's Italy and Popular Opinion in Totalitarian Regimes. We were also talking to Caroline Moorhead, whose recent books include a quartet focused on resistance to dictatorship, particularly in Italy and France, and were shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Orwell Prize.
and the Costa Biography Award. Mussolini has rarely been taken seriously as a totalitarian dictator. Hitler and Stalin have always cast too long a shadow. Present day popular memory of Mussolini is increasingly indulgent. In Italy and elsewhere he is remembered as a strong decisive leader, and all of this is explored in a brilliant book Mussolini in Myth and Memory, the first totalitarian dictator. It's published in Hardback by By Oxford University Press. The author is Paul Corner and Paul, you're very welcome to the show tonight. It's a fascinating study and I think what's really interesting is the way you explore that myth and that memory because this isn't your standard biography, Benito Mussolini born eighteen eighty three.
Instead you're exploring how he's remembered and the various different clouding of the Mussolini story.
Absolutely, yes. The the Mussolini story now i is very different from the Mussolini story that I would want to uh tell as a historian. In popular memory, Mussolini, as you say, is now remembered by many people as a strong as a strong leader, uh somebody who got things done.
And in a way that contrast with Hitler and Stalin puts Mussolini in a good light, that they're seen as the terrible dictators and Mussolini was maybe not as bad. Y you have a chapter on exploding the myth of good natured fascism that you have to explore what that idea is and then you have to kind of dismantle it piece by piece.
Yes, exactly, yes. I think um well to begin with, I think uh the idea that Mussolini is not so bad has to be has to be questioned in some way. Uh, I I think w you have to remember that Mussolini is responsible for the death of about half a million Italians Uh Italians strangely don't seem to remember this. Uh if you add add the uh colonial death uh and other dead, you can probably arrive at a million people dead as a result of Italian fascism. So uh lesser evil, yes. But the problem with lesser evil is that um People have used this argument to say he's not so bad and then there's been a gradual slip it uh to say, well he wasn't so bad, he really did so many good things. Uh and in the end you get this indulgent idea
of uh Mussolini, which reflects I think this is an important point, reflects very much the propaganda that fo that uh fascism uh invented for itself. It's the self image of fascism as a f as a regime that gets things done
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–5:54
2
What is the myth versus memory of Mussolini in Italian history?
5:54–7:34
3
How does Paul Corner argue that Mussolini is often portrayed as a ‘lesser evil’?
7:34–43:09
4
What role did Edda Mussolini play as the fascist regime’s glamorous figurehead?
43:09–49:49