Mussolini''s Camps: Civilian Internment in Fascist Italy (1940-1943)

This bookwhich is based on vast archival research and on a variety of primary sourceshas filled a gap in Italys historiography on Fascism, and in European and world history about concentration camps in our contemporary world. It provides, for the first time, a survey of the different types of internment practiced by Fascist Italy during the war and a historical map of its concentration camps.

Published in Italian (I campi del duce, Turin: Einaudi, 2004), in Croatian (Mussolinijevi Logori, Zagreb: Golden Marketing Tehnika knjiga, 2007), in Slovenian (Faistina taboria, Ljublana: Publicistino drutvo ZAK, 2011), and now in English, Mussolinis Camps is both an excellent product of academic research and a narrative easily accessible to readers who are not professional historians. It undermines the myth that concentration camps were established in Italy only after the creation of the Republic of Salò and the Nazi occupation of Italys northern regions in 1943, and questions the persistent and traditional image of Italians as brava gente (good people), showing how Fascism made extensive use of the camps (even in the occupied territories) as an instrument of coercion and political control.