Today is the last episode on Italy before the Great Depression and is also our first biography episode! Benito Mussolini is remembered mostly for his ineffectualness, and is often seen as the bumbling sidekick to the much more dangerous Adolf Hitler. And while that certainly isn't exactly wrong, it also focuses on those last years when everything got away from him. His early life, presented here, shows him to be a much more complex figure, both intellectual and savage. Starting from virtually nothing, this episode covers his journey from poverty to early 1919, when he formally launched his Fascist movement. It was in these years that the personality that would decide the fate of tens of millions took shape. 

Bibliography for this episode: 

1. Bosworth, RJB Mussolini Oxford University Press, 2002

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