Why read The Body Of Il Duce?

Book cover of The Body Of Il Duce: Mussolini's Corpse And The Fortunes Of Italy

Book description

A brilliant young historian follows the odyssey of Mussolini's body in an original exploration of the history and legacy of Italian Fascism

Bullet-ridden, spat on, butchered bloody: this was the fate of Il Duce, strung up beside his dead mistress in a Milan square, as reviled in death as he…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Body Of Il Duce as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Daniel Kalder

Author

Once a dictator dies, his statues might come down and his books might disappear from school curriculums, but his legacy can endure for generations. Mussolini was the man for whom the term “totalitarian” was coined, and he pioneered many of the techniques of domination that other dictators deployed later in the century. When it was all new, a lot of people thought he might be onto something and “Il Duce” even enjoyed the support of such famous figures such as Churchill and Gandhi. The sight of his bullet ridden corpse strung upside down outside an Esso gas station in Milan…

From Daniel's list on dictators.