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Knox analyzes the origins, nature, dynamics, and ruinous end of the Italian and German dictatorships. Emphasizing themes of aggression, fighting power, and staying power, his book offers a comparative overview of the two countries' trajectories, from unification in the 1860s to national catastrophe in 1943-45.
List of contents
Introduction: war and revolution in Europe, 1789-1945; Part I. Origins and Dynamics: 1. Italy and Germany from unification to militant dictatorship, 1860-1933; 2. Conquest, foreign and domestic, in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany; Part II. Foreign Policies and Military Instruments: 3. Fascism and Italian foreign polity: continuity and break; 4. The Italian army at war, 1940-43: a study in combat effectiveness; 5. The Prussian idea of freedom and the 'career open to talent': battlefield initiative and social ascent from Prussian reform to Nazi revolution, 1807-1944; Conclusion: expansionist zeal, fighting power, and staying power in the Italian and German dictatorships.
About the author
MacGregor Knox has served as Stevenson Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science since 1994. He was educated at Harvard College (BA, 1967) and Yale University (PhD in History, 1977), and has also taught at the University of Rochester (USA). His writings deal with the wars and dictatorships of the savage first half of the twentieth century and with contemporary international and strategic history, and include Mussolini Unleashed, 1939–1941 (1982); The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War (ed., with Williamson Murray and Alvin Bernstein) (1994); Hitler's Italian Allies: Royal Armed Forces, Fascist Regime, and the War of 1940-43 (2000); The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050 (ed., with Williamson Murray) (2001); and To the Threshold of Power: Origins and Dynamics of the Fascist and National Socialist Dictatorships (2007). Between his undergraduate and graduate studies he spent three years in the U.S. Army, and served in the Republic of Vietnam (1969) as rifle platoon leader with the 173rd Airborne Brigade.
Summary
This book offers a genuinely comparative analysis of the dictatorships that launched the Second World War: their origins, nature, dynamics, and common ruin.
