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Vorspann Es unterliegt keinem Zweifel, dass italienische Diplomaten und Offiziere im besetzten Griechenland, Kroatien und Südfrankreich tausende Juden vor der Deportation in die deutschen Vernichtungslager bewahrt haben. Heftig umstritten aber sind die Motive, die sie dabei leiteten. MacGregor Knox, einer der besten Kenner der Materie, schafft hier Klarheit und zeigt, dass sich der Mythos von den „anständigen Italienern“ nicht länger aufrechterhalten lässt.

The de-legitimisation of the Italian political system that culminated in the upheavals of the late 1980s has permitted a very public re-examination of the meaning and significance of both the Fascist regime and the Resistance to it. Although debates between historians had already begun over these issues, they have been thrust into the media spotlight now that the political consensus surrounding their interpretation has collapsed. The following two articles examine both the content and conduct of these debates, and consider the extent to which they have contributed to a reassessment of the history of these periods. Naturally the opinions expressed in these articles are solely those of the authors themselves: Contemporary European History would welcome further comments and contributions concerning this rethinking of the contemporary Italian experience.

The origins of the process that transmuted Prussia–Germany's most hallowed social institution and professional group, the officer corps, into a functional elite of ‘National Socialist Führer-personalities’ remain obscure. Recent studies have argued that the ‘structural pressures of modern war’ – the immense losses of summer 1942 – compelled the abolition of time-honoured educational and social qualifications for officer candidacy and the basing of promotions almost solely on battlefield prowess, and that ‘National Socialist elite manipulation’ was at best a secondary factor. Yet archival evidence makes clear that the pressures of war took second place in the army's official mind to the need to preserve order and tradition, and that it was above all Adolf Hitler who dictated the timing, shape, and extent of changes that the bureaucrats were largely incapable of imagining. ‘Führer-selection through battle’ was simultaneously the most far-reaching and lasting element in the social revolution that Hitler sought, and a decisive step in steeling the German armed forces for their fight to the bitter end. In this as in other areas, it was National Socialism's very modernity that endowed it with demonic force.

Fascism and Nazism twisted, or ended, the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Interest in their origins has prospered even in the present era of historical pointillisme . The most disdainful adherents of poststructuralist theory or of the social microhistory of everyday life find it difficult to deny that dictatorship, global war, and genocide can ruin your whole day. The overall structures of the national histories of Italy and Germany from territorial unification in 1860/71 to dictatorship in 1922/33 and defeat in 1943/45 consequently remain subjects of passionate debate. Yet analysts of the origins of the Western interwar “Great Dictatorships” have for the most part avoided systematic comparison as a tool for understanding each country's trajectory. A few scholars have explored resemblances between the processes and consequences of territorial unification in the two cases, or have studied the regimes' structures or particular sectors within them in a comparative way. A vast body of writing linked to the concept of “fascism” (lower-case) has usually assumed a common parentage, sometimes due to shared features of the unification process and aftermath, although always within the framework of a generic concept that embraces other cases with entirely different origins and is itself prior to and independent of the evidence. But most interpretations have followed the well-trodden and exclusive paths of the national historiographical Sonderwege . Heinrich von Treitschke and his successors sanctified Germany's supposed distinctness from the West.

This book offers a genuinely comparative analysis of the dictatorships that launched the Second World War: their origins, nature, dynamics, and common ruin. It seeks to understand their similarities and differences historically, without recourse to failed generic concepts such as 'Fascism.' The result is an unconventional and compelling analytical overview from territorial unification in the 1860s to national catastrophe in 1943/45 that places Fascism and Nazism firmly in the tradition of revolutionary mass politics inaugurated in the French revolution. Set within that overview are three chapters that interpret and explain Mussolini's poorly understood foreign policy and the character and performance of the military instruments upon which Fascist and Nazi success chiefly depended - the Italian and German armies. The chapter on the German army and the conclusion - which dissects the causes of the notable disparities between the two dictatorships in expansionist appetite, fighting power, and staying power - argue that a unique synthesis of Prusso-German military tradition and Nazi revolution prompted Germany's fight to the last cartridge in 1944–45.

The political genius of the Duce is beyond dispute. Anyone who doubts it has only to look at the depth of the abyss into which he has thrown Italy. Galeazzo Ciano, to his jailors, 1943/44 Ciano, as he faced execution in the winter of 1943–4 for voting against his father-in-law at the Grand Council meeting that provoked the regime's fall, saw a truth of sorts. The very magnitude of Mussolini's aspirations had brought disaster. “One man,” Ciano wrote in his farewell letter to the King in December 1943, “one man alone, Mussolini, through unscrupulous personal ambitions, ‘out of thirst for military glory’ (to use his own actual words) ha[d] deliberately led the nation into the bottomless pit.” While Mussolini had far more help than Ciano's reiteration of Churchill's shrewd propaganda implied, and “thirst for military glory” scarcely did the dictator's motivations justice, Ciano was clearly right in proclaiming Mussolini's preeminent responsibility for what had occurred. Mussolini had a genuine foreign policy program: the creation of an Italian spazio vitale in the Mediterranean and Middle East. Success would have raised Italy at last to the status of a true great power, a goal Mussolini shared with the Italian establishment, although the latter, like the generals and admirals, lacked his taste for risk. Internally, expansion would consolidate Fascist power, eliminate ball competing authorities and unwelcome restraints, and mold the Italians into a people “worthy” of the imperial mission Mussolini claimed for them. Italy's catastrophic defeat in its “parallel war” and the ultimate destruction of Grossdeutschland in the wider conflict fortunately deprived Mussolini of the opportunity to implement his program.