In store now! Mussolini's War: Fascist Italy from Triumph to Collapse, 1935-1943 by John Gooch

Looking to delve into history and expand your knowledge? Why not start with Mussolini’s War?

Order your copy today directly through October Books or buy online through our bookshop store and we’ll get a commission on your purchase.

Mussolini's War: Fascist Italy from Triumph to Collapse, 1935-1943 by John Gooch
Paperback RRP £12.99

From an acclaimed military historian, the definitive account of Italy's experience of the Second World War

While staying closely aligned with Hitler, Mussolini remained carefully neutral until the summer of 1940. Then, with the wholly unexpected and sudden collapse of the French and British armies, Mussolini declared war on the Allies in the hope of making territorial gains in southern France and Africa. This decision proved a horrifying miscalculation, dooming Italy to its own prolonged and unwinnable war, immense casualties and an Allied invasion in 1943 which ushered in a terrible new era for the country.

John Gooch's new book is the definitive account of Italy's war experience. Beginning with the invasion of Abyssinia and ending with Mussolini's arrest, Gooch brilliantly portrays the nightmare of a country with too small an industrial sector, too incompetent a leadership and too many fronts on which to fight.

Everywhere - whether in the USSR, the Western Desert or the Balkans - Italian troops found themselves against either better-equipped or more motivated enemies. The result was a war entirely at odds with the dreams of pre-war Italian planners - a series of desperate improvizations against Allies who could draw on global resources and against whom Italy proved helpless.

This remarkable book rightly shows the centrality of Italy to the war, outlining the brief rise and disastrous fall of the Italian military campaign.

Order your copy today directly from October Books or buy online through our bookshop store and we’ll get commission on your purchase.

We are open:

Monday - Saturday

10am - 4pm

We are back open six days a week, with the whole store open for browsing. We will still of course be taking customer orders and you will still be able to buy food and cleaning products online through our online store. 

We are able to be open 6 days a week again because of your consideration and care whilst in the shop. Keep doing what you’re doing and leave that extra space, sanitise those hands and pull on that mask. We know you’re smiling underneath it :) 

You will see we have a QR code at the door, if you have the NHS COVID-19 app downloaded to your smart phone please scan this as you enter the shop.