Mussolini and Hitler: The Forging of the Fascist Alliance

Goeschel’s fine monograph adds significantly to our understanding of the fatal attraction that paved the way to World War II. Goeschel asks a fundamental question, What drew the two dictators together, strategic requirements, ideological affinity, or friendship? Goeschel sees the connection between Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler as an “instrumental union and politically constructed relationship rather than an ideologically inevitable pact or real friendship” (3), although he concedes that the two shared some common ideological elements. Notwithstanding its internal stresses and inequalities, the regimes carefully constructed this friendship from elements both mythic and real. Goeschel’s work seeks to explain the relationship in its rich complexity, focusing on “the rituals, ceremonies, emotions, gestures and other socio-political aspects of diplomacy” (7). Goeschel roots his argument in the current historiography that sees Hitler as a weak dictator, in the sense that he often expressed vague overarching goals that diverse factions within the Nazi...