ABSTRACT
Mussolini had come to power 11 years before Hitler but the German dictator and the Italian succumbed quite appropriately within a few hours of each other. In the decades that followed the Second World War capitalism succeeded in transforming Italy in a way that made Fascisms achievements seem paltry indeed. The Italy that pre-dated Fascism was a restless construction that cannot be defined as a democracy and that, like much of Europe before 1945, was balanced precariously on a volatile mix of pressing dissatisfactions. In the decades that followed the Second World War capitalism succeeded in transforming Italy in a way that made Fascisms achievements seem paltry indeed. After 1945 liberal capitalism in Italy was guaranteed by an American-dominated inter-national order to which the ruling Christian Democrats fully subscribed and to which the Italian people in general also acquiesced.
