Italy emerged from World War I triumphant but ostracized from the comity of victors, which led to the notion in Italy that a war had been won but a peace lost. The Legend of the Mutilated Victory demonstrates that Italy's conflict with America over the nature of the peace was a direct outgrowth of Italy's ongoing quarrels with the Allies, quarrels that formed the basis of the "mutilated victory." In a clear and cogently argued narrative, Burgwyn reassesses Sidney Sonnino's diplomacy as he lead Italy to victory in the imbroglio of the war and domestic political intrigue. He observes the impact of domestic politics and the Supreme Command on Sonnino's wartime diplomacy, impartially describes Sonnino's efforts at the Paris Peace Conference, and also points out the failures in Sonnino's approach. This is the first book in any language to analyze Italian diplomacy from the outbreak of the war to the Paris Peace Conference.

Italy emerged from the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 with the feeling that it had been denied its just rewards by ungrateful allies and that its victory was thus mutilated. Integrating this vengefulness into his diplomacy in the 1920s, Mussolini undertook a policy of selected treaty revision aimed at the breakup of the newly created state of Yugoslavia through covert operations. These stratagems proved futile. Ignoring the threat posed by Nazi Germany's obvious determination to annex Austria, whose continued independence was key to Italy's security in Europe, Mussolini successfully invaded Ethiopia in October 1935, with only lukewarm opposition from France and Britain. Subsequently, in July 1936, he unwisely intervened on the side of the insurgent general Francisco Franco against the Republican government in Madrid. Instead of the expected speedy victory, Italy got bogged down in a prolonged civil war, which rendered Mussolini even more dependent on Nazi Germany. To preserve his standing in Berlin, he did not lift a finger when the Third Reich marched into Austria in 1938. Convinced of the growing decadence of the Western democracies, Mussolini turned to forge the Rome-Berlin Axis. But given Italy's military weakness, Mussolini was bound to be Hitler's junior partner. When the Duce talked of turning the Mediterranean Sea into an Italian lake in February 1939, he found himself trapped in Hitler's military iron cage. Parity in the Axis was the Duce's own peculiar myth. When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Mussolini declared nonbelligerency since he was in no position to wage war. He intended to bide his time in order to see who would win or, in the event of a stalemate, to step in as a mediator. But when the Nazi steamroller crushed France, Mussolini felt he had only one option—war on the side of Germany. By tying himself to Hitler's war chariot, Mussolini sacrificed the national interests of his country and doomed his Fascist regime to ultimate destruction.

This book is a long overdue in-depth study of the Italian Social Republic. Set up in 1943 by Hitler in the town of Salo on Lake Garda and ruled by Mussolini, this makeshift government was a last-ditch effort to ensure the survival of Fascism, ending with the murder of Mussolini by partisans in 1945. The RSI was a loosely organized regime made up of professed patriots, apostles of law and order, and rogue militias who committed atrocities against presumed and real enemies. H. James Burgwyn narrates the history of the RSI, with vivid portraits of key figures and thoughtful analysis of how radical fascists managed to take the Salo regime from a dictatorship in Italy to a Continental nazifascismo, hand in hand with the Third Reich. This book stands as an essential bookend to the life of Mussolini, with new insights into the man who duped the Italian people and provoked a war that ended in catastrophic defeat.