The slow march to war that dragged across Europe for fourteen years and exploded in Serbia in August, 1914, was resisted by the international Socialist brotherhood. They dreamed of the day when all workers of all countries would unite and throw off their chains. But the other force of the late Nineteenth Century every bit as powerful as Socialism and Communism was Nationalism. The peoples of the various countries could be awakened very quickly with calls to a nationalistic brotherhood. Mussolini was caught in this dilemma in the early years of the Twentieth Century when his old Marxist teachers were all for resisting war. But he could see that the people wanted it. And his problems as a leader of the Left were the same for all the leaders of the Socialist and Communist Left as they all approached the seeming  inevitability of a World War.His move from Socialist Left to fascist right is very much rooted in his experience of war and what he learned about his Italian brothers and sisters in the war.

REQUIRED READING FOR SPRING QUARTER

Christopher Duggan,

A Concise History of Italy,

Cambridge University Press; 2 edition (January 20, 2014),

ISBN 0521747430

RECOMMENDED READING

Christopher Hibbert,

Mussolini: The Rise and Fall of Il Duce,

St. Martin's Griffin (July 22, 2008),

ISBN 0230606059


R.J.B. Bosworth,

Mussolini's Italy: Life Under the Fascist Dictatorship, 1915-1945,

Penguin Press HC, The; 1st American Edition edition (February 2, 2006),

ISBN 1594200785