In 1919 a nationalist general concluded bitterly that, when confronted by the ‘test of war’, Italy had demonstrated that ‘no one governed it.’ - R. J. B. Bosworth

In this conflict [Red Week], Mussolini for the moment stood on the other side of the barricades; on 10 June, destined to be a redolent date in Fascist history, he urged: ‘We must take up again our anti-militarist propaganda to ensure that bayonets are only raised when we [socialists] want them to be… Our propaganda must break into the barracks, where currently the sons of the people are taught how to kill their own brothers.’

In 1914, by almost every index, Italy was the least of the great powers. Nor, despite huffing and puffing about imperial conquest and racial prowess, would that ranking be much altered during the Fascist years.

As I explore Mussolini’s personality, his power, its effects and its limitations, I became convinced that the Duce was not just the first modern dictator but also, far better than Hitler, the personage against whom to measure the very many tyrants who dominated so many countries in Europe between the wars and, in the developing world, then and thereafter. In more complex parallel, Mussolini also bore some comparison with Stalin and his later epigones in Eastern Europe, who, in apparent oxymoron ruled as national communists.