Mussolini and His Generals: The Armed Forces and Fascist Foreign Policy, 1923-1940, by John Gooch New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xiv, 651. Illus, maps, tables, notes, biblio., index. $35.00. ISBN:0521856027. Noting that too often scholars have looked at the foreign policy and military institutions of Mussolini's Italy as essentially separate topics, John Gooch, the most noted English specialist on the Fascist experience, points out that since there was essentially only one man directing both, Il Duce, and thus they have to be studied in tandem. In Mussolini and His Generals Gooch does just that, looking at the complex interactions between Italy's foreign and military policy from the "March on Rome" in 1922 to the "Stab in the Back" in 1940.This is a very detailed, serious work, filled with surprising revelations, that braids an examination of the evolution of Mussolini's foreign policy objectives with convoluted inter-service fights over money, control of aviation, and more, ideological and political clashes within Fascism and between Fascists and Monarchists, and changes in the global economic, diplomatic, and strategic environment.
John Gooch has a new book 'Mussolini's War: Fascist Italy from Triumph to Collapse 1935-1945', 576 pgs.; it has been reviewed in the New Statesman and The Spectator (both behind registration or pay walls). He draws attention to the reputation of the Italians not being correct: Max Hastings is cited: Plus a few pre-publication reviews: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mussolinis-War-Fascist-Collapse-1935-1943/dp/024118570X
Another review in The London Review of Books by Edward Lutwark; it may require registration to view for free. See: Edward Luttwak · Not Uniquely Incompetent: Mussolini’s Unrealism · LRB 21 May 2020
