Mussolini: The Last 600 Days of Il Duce

by Ray Moseley

Overview

In his last days, Mussolini, the tyrant, was in the grip of anger, shame, and depression. The German armed forces that had sustained his puppet government since its creation in September 1943 were being inexorably driven out of Italy, the frontiers of his Fascist republic were shrinking daily and Mussolini was aware that German military leaders were negotiating with the Allies behind his back in neutral Switzerland. Moseley's well-researched and highly engaging tome throws light on the last twenty months of the despot's life and culminates with the dramatic capture and execution of Mussolini (and his mistress Claretta Petacci) by partisans of the Italian resistance on April 28, 1945.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781461625872
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	06/30/2004
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	448
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Ray Moseley was the chief European correspondent of the Chicago Tribune and in 1981 was runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting. During four decades as a foreign correspondent, he spent five years in Rome and was also based in Moscow, London, Nairobi, Berlin, Belgrade, Cairo, and Brussels. He is author of the widely acclaimed Mussolini's Shadow: The Double Life of Count Galeazzo Ciano. He lives in England.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	vii
1	The Last Spectator	1
2	After the Fall	6
3	Birth of the Salo Republic	25
4	The Fate of the Roman Jews	41
5	Mussolini and Claretta	52
6	A Most Unhappy Family	64
7	Galeazzo Ciano and Edda	70
8	Troubles on All Fronts	81
9	The Partisan War Develops	101
10	Il Duce and the Jews	114
11	The Liberation of Rome	124
12	A Terrible Summer	131
13	More Atrocities, Greater Despair	153
14	"I Have Ruined Italy"	167
15	The Secret Negotiations	174
16	In Search of a Way Out	190
17	Peace Hopes in the Balance	196
18	Looming Defeat and Paralysis	210
19	A Temporary Loss of Nerve	220
20	The Fall of Fascism	225
21	Flight and Capture	249
22	Mussolini Tamed: The Polite Prisoner	263
23	"I've Come to Shoot Them"	275
24	Execution of Il Duce: Whodunnit?	289
25	Piazzale Loreto: A Shameful Denouement	311
26	The German Surrender	323
27	Lakeside Murders and the Dongo Treasure	333
28	The Mysterious Churchill File	341
29	The Dead Sprout Wings	350
30	Epilogue	364
	Chronology	368
	Dramatis Personae	375
	Notes	383
	Bibliography	412
	Index	416

Editorial Reviews

With a lucid style and a well-paced narrative, Moseley chronicles how, while Hitler and Nazi Germany became more radical, Mussolini and Fascist Italy degenerated into chaos. Moseley, former chief European correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and author of a highly regarded biography of Mussolini's foreign minister and son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano (Mussolini's Shadow), has written a welcome synthesis of the final months of the fascist regime, beginning in 1943. In doing so, he uncovers the venality, intrigue, corruption, treachery and barbarism of the Fascist and Nazi regimes. The day after the Allies invaded Sicily and made preparations for an invasion of the mainland while their planes were bombing Rome, Turin and Milan, Mussolini was deposed by King Victor Emmanuel III in a (for the time being) bloodless coup d'etat. Moseley shows how Ciano was instrumental in this development and the tragic fate that awaited him. Mussolini is portrayed (accurately) as deflated, depressed and having come late to the realization that he had "ruined Italy." Moseley devotes chapters to the fate of the Roman Jews; the partisan underground; and wartime atrocities, (most of which are attributed to the Germans, thereby giving the false impression that Italian Fascists committed no war crimes). Moseley's telling of the theft of Mussolini's corpse and the return of a fragment of his brain reads like the plot of a bad horror film. (Aug.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Moseley (European correspondent, Chicago Tribune) provides a detailed account of an often ignored period of Mussolini's regime. Even R.J.B. Bosworth, in his mammoth biography, Mussolini, devotes only a few sentences to the final months of the dictator's tumultuous 23-year reign. Moseley follows Il Duce from his arrest by the pro-Allied government in July 1943 and does not give up the trail until Mussolini's final burial in Predappio in July 1956. In the process, he reveals much about this complex character while evoking the dynamics of the virulent factionalism that characterized postwar Italy. Moseley emphasizes that Mussolini may have wound up a mutilated corpse in a public plaza in Milan with only a few minions and his mistress by his side, but the charismatic dictator's legacy still haunts modern Italy. Moseley displays an impressive familiarity with the relevant primary and the secondary sources and provides an excellent dramatis personae and a chronology that will help readers stay focused. The result is the most balanced account available of Mussolini's last 600 days. Recommended for both public and academic libraries.-Jim Doyle, Sara Hightower Regional Lib., Rome, GA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Moseley discusses in remarkable detail, but with great readability and a swift narrative pace, the last 15 months of Italy's war.

The American Conservative - R. J. Stone

...his life, so splendidly captured, by Mosely...

Goldsboro New-Argus - Mario Szichman

Moseley has a crack journalist's nose for the evocative quotation or the vivid fact that encapsulates a larger truth.

Chicago Tribune - Thomas Simpson

Has elements of melodrama, of swashbuckling adventure, of tragedy and of comic opera.

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