Suchergebnisse

As a non-specialist in the historiography of Fascism and Nazism, I enter this discussion with trepidation. Viewed from the outside, antagonism and rigidity have long characterised historical debate about the causes, nature and consequences of both regimes, although it is clear (and as the other contributions published here have pointed out) that some of this fierceness has attenuated of late with the rise of a new generation of historians. I don't propose to go over the various points of disagreement about fascist Italy – the problem of popular 'consensus' for the regime, the reasons for collective 'amnesia' after the fall of the regime, and the myth of 'Italians as good people' (Italiani brava gente) – as these have already been discussed by Bernhard in his review and in the contributions by Giulia Albanese and Roberta Pergher. Nor will I enter into related debates about the Italian Resistance, the issue of Italian war crimes and the broader controversy about 'divided memory' in post-war Italy, although these questions have also generated a significant literature in recent years. Instead I want simply to re-visit Paul Corner's The Fascist Party and Popular Opinion in Mussolini's Italy and to propose a rather different interpretation than the one offered by Patrick Bernhard.