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(More customer reviews)My friends and I were somewhat mystified by the vehemence of criticism "Mussolini's War" has drawn from some amazon reviewers. We are all history buffs, do a lot of reading about World War Two especially, and were attracted to this title, because there are so few others of this genre (besides technical and political accounts) in English. Each one of us was left breathless by this book's fast pace and vast scope. It provides a unique over-view of the Second World War written in clear prose, but filled with innumerable details, as compelling as they were new to us.
"Mussolini's War" reads very much like a huge epic, with individual heroes and villains acting against the backdrop of a global conflagration. The Duce himself turns out to be a far more complex character than the two-dimensional bully caricaturized by mainstream historians. In a nutshell, what makes this book different from all the rest are Italy's numerous, previously unrecognized military triumphs and technological advances described nowhere else. For the first time, we learn about Mussolini's atomic bomb project, the triumph of his Mediterranean fleet over Britain's Royal Navy, his jet planes, routing the Americans on Sicily and in northern Italy, trouncing the Soviets in Russia with history's last cavalry charge, sinking U.S. freighters off Brazil, wiping out British battleships in one blow at Alexandria, saving Rommel's Afrika Korps in Libya, a round-trip counter-espionage mission from Rome to Tokyo, and much, much more material that is shocking to learn for its newness.
In short, "Mussolini's War" is a kind of lost history that radically revises preconceptions held about him for nearly seventy years. Perhaps that explains the hostility of conventional historians, who have their own, set view of things; a perspective that gives them comfort they feel needs defending.
Revealingly, one of the hostile amazon reviewers admits he is himself a published writer on the subject. His and his fellow critics attempt to savage "Mussolini's War", while ignoring its profusely documented research. They resort to arguing over armament disparities (which appear to arise from different sources) and other, relatively insignificant details. The skeptics insist Joseph made up his book out of sheer fantasy. If so, how can they account for his hundreds of footnotes and long list of source materials?
These are quibbles aimed at disparaging the far more significant story he offers. Should we have allowed such mean-spirited carping to make us pass over this book, we would have been cheated out of reading the most thorough, eye-opening and dramatic re-telling of World War Two from the Italian perspective in print.
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MUSSOLINI'S WAR: Fascist Italy's Military Struggles from Africa and Western Europe to the Mediterranean and Soviet Union 1935-45
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