This book takes up the stimuli of new international historiography albeit focusing mainly on
the two regimes that undoubtedly provided the model for Fascist movements in Europe namely the
Italian and the German. Starting with a historiographical assessment of the international
situation vis-à-vis studies on Fascism and National Socialism and then concentrate on certain
aspects that are essential to any study of the two dictatorships namely the complex
relationships with their respective societies the figures of the two dictators and the role of
violence. This volume reaches beyond the time-frame encompassing Fascism and National Socialism
experiences directing the attention also toward the period subsequent to their demise. This is
done in two ways. On the one hand examining the uncomfortable architectural legacy left by
dictatorships to the democratic societies that came after the war. On the other hand the book
addresses an issue that is very much alive both in the strictly historiographical and political
science debate that is to say to what extent can the label of Fascism be used to identify
political phenomena of these current times such as movements and parties of the so-called
populist and souverainist right.
