Fascist Ideology is a comparative study of the expansionist foreign policies of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany from 1922 to 1945. One of the most extensively debated features of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany was their propensity for aggressive, large-scale territorial expansion. From the initial goal of revising the post-1918 territorial settlement to its culmination in the Second World War, territorial expansion became a defining characteristic of the two regimes ideologies and policies, and played a crucial role in their eventual collapse in 1943-45. Fascist Ideology provides a comparative investigation of fascist expansionism by focusing on the close relations between ideology and action under Mussolini and Hitler.
With an overview of the ideological motivations behind fascist expansionism and their impact on fascist policies, this book explores the two main issues which have dominated the historiographical debates on the nature of fascist expansionism: whether Italy's and Germany's particular expansionist tendancies can be attributed to a set of generic fascist values, or were shaped by the long term, uniquely national ambitions and developments since unification; whether the pursuit of expansion was opportunistic or followed a grand design in each case. This book is a fascinating study of the expansionist visions of Hitler and Mussolini and it enlightens our understanding of the dynamics and evolution of the fascist policies of Italy and Germany to the end of the Second World War.