ABSTRACT
This book originally appeared in Italy at the beginning of July 1975 entitled: Intervista sul fascismo. By the middle of the month it was the best-selling paperback in the country, and at this writing (mid-October) it is still number one on the best-seller list. It has sold over fifty thousand copies (a remarkable figure in a country with a population of sixty million, an illiteracy rate of over thirty percent, and where only one person out often reads a daily newspaper). It has been the object of long diatribes from several of the country’s leading intellectuals, and the subject of front-page editorials in the official newspapers of both the Communist and Neofascist parties. It has twice been the subject of primetime programs on the national television network. Renzo De Felice has been called everything from “soft on Mussolini” to “depraved,” and has been accused of trying to “rehabilitate fascism.” In short, it is the most controversial book of the year in a highly charged political atmosphere.
