Mussolini's War

WINNER OF THE 2021 DUKE OF WELLINGTON MEDAL FOR MILITARY HISTORY

A DAILY TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020

From an acclaimed military historian, the definitive account of Italys experience of the Second World War

While staying closely aligned with Hitler, Mussolini remained carefully neutral until the summer of 1940. Then, with the wholly unexpected and sudden collapse of the French and British armies, Mussolini declared war on the Allies in the hope of making territorial gains in southern France and Africa. This decision proved a horrifying miscalculation, dooming Italy to its own prolonged and unwinnable war, immense casualties and an Allied invasion in 1943 which ushered in a terrible new era for the country.

John Goochs new book is the definitive account of Italys war experience. Beginning with the invasion of Abyssinia and ending with Mussolinis arrest, Gooch brilliantly portrays the nightmare of a country with too small an industrial sector, too incompetent a leadership and too many fronts on which to fight.

Everywhere - whether in the USSR, the Western Desert or the Balkans - Italian troops found themselves against either better-equipped or more motivated enemies. The result was a war entirely at odds with the dreams of pre-war Italian planners - a series of desperate improvizations against Allies who could draw on global resources and against whom Italy proved helpless.

This remarkable book rightly shows the centrality of Italy to the war, outlining the brief rise and disastrous fall of the Italian military campaign.

It is hard to imagine a finer account, both of the sweep of Italys wars, and of the characters caught up in themCaroline Moorhead, The Guardian