Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review in the Washington Times of Christian Goeschel’s Mussolini and Hitler: The Forging of the Fascist Alliance.
Might we call it “the pact
made in Hades?”
In the 1930s, Adolf
Hitler and Benito
Mussolini, tyrants who did not especially care for one another
personally, signed onto a partnership that was a major step toward the war that
devastated much of Europe.
Hitler
wanted his southern flank protected, recognizing the ability of the Royal
British Navy to land a force in Italy that
could cut the legs beneath his campaign centered on France.
Mussolini
had his eyes on converting much of North Africa into Italian colonies, ousting
the British and French.
The “partnership” — the alliance
deserves the quotation marks — was fraught with betrayal and mistrust. Many
historians have depicted the duo as “vain, pompous, and jealous rivals.” Mussolini
especially has been described as, a “boob” and opportunist.
Nonetheless,
British historian Christian
Goeschel contends, convincingly, that the partnership, despite its
many flaws, was “decisive in destroying the inter-war Wilsonian order.”
At first glance, the men were
ideological opposites. Hitler
bullied his way to leadership with rhetoric promising to “restore” war-ruined
Germany. Mussolini,
a sometime editor, started as a socialist; by the time he achieved power in
1921, he cared naught for democracy.
Initial relations were
restrained. Mussolini
ridiculed Hitler’s
putsch as a “caricature of Italian Fascism” — a backhanded acknowledgement of
his power. After some early slurs, Hitler
recognized Mussolini
as a “tough anti-Marxist” in his book, “Mein Kampf.”
You can read the rest of the
review via the below link:
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