“All of Mussolini’s monuments will be monuments to the strength of a weakling.”

A journalist’s account of Mussolini’s rise to (and exercise of) power, written by someone who both lived through parts of it and had significant contacts with the man himself. Despite being written at a time when Fascism was still being somewhat celebrated, and even admired, it’s quite a scorching read that dismantles many of its pretensions with both observations and data. It would have provided a lot of ammunition to those wanting to avoid fascist takeovers in their ovn countries to read exactly how imaginary the claims of Fascist Italy were, no matter how dramatically and repeatedly proclaimed.

Surprising for a book of its kind and date (it was first published in 1935), Hitler is conspicuous by his absence, mentioned only in passing: there are far more comparisons with Napoleon. It shows how different history looks when lived forwards.

The title is interesting: Shirer uses a similar turn of phrase to describe Mussolini in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (although he does not reference Seldes as a source). Mussolini’s will to power easily overrides any principles he may have had, which makes it hard to decide whether fascism itself had any principles or was simply the inflation of one man’s will: Mussolini seems to have been unclear about that himself, but resolving it may be key to understanding the modern trends towards authoritarian politics.

4/5. Finished Saturday 20 September, 2025.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)