Either the quality of this episode is lower than that of the others in this generally fine series, or my mind is growing sluggish more quickly than I'd hoped.
Nothing is given about Mussolini's earlier years except for an offhand reference to his having been a journalist. He is presented already in power and the first twenty minutes or so deal with his political shenanigans with regard to Hitler, Britain, and the League of Nations. Sometimes the program sounds like an indictment of England, which was in some sort of cahoots with Italy.
There are moments when I thought I was stroking out. The narrator tells us that by enthusiastically joining the League of Nations, Mussolini believed that they would then give him a free hand in his invasion of Ethiopia.
He evidently believed -- as so many other political leaders have -- that a military crisis would divert attention from domestic tribulations. But what domestic tribulations? The narration doesn't tell us. And, in fact, my general impression from other sources is that he was a popular leader in Italy, known as "the man who made the trains run on time." He also implemented many public works, clearing swamp land, creating vacation spots on the beaches.
The narration does tell us how some modern historians, by name, interpret events. We learn that he considered the Treaty of Versailles a bitter blow. Well, it was harsh and punitive, but Italy, in an attempt to grab some land in the Alps, happened to have fought on what turned out to be the winning side. It's all pretty confusing.
Italy lacked the genocidal practices of its European partner but its rule of the colonies in Africa was heavily influenced by ethnicity. Whores were imported from Italy so that the soldiers and civilian staff wouldn't sleep with the natives, an act that was seen as a threat to Italian manhood. At home, anti-semitic propaganda appeared in the media and in schools, and laws banned intermarriage. Aping Hitler, Mussolini declared that all Italians belonged to the Aryan race. You could be a Jew and still be an Aryan as long as you didn't practice Judaism. No better example of the confusion between biology and culture can be imagined.
I'll have to make this quick. During the war, Mussolini ordered Italy to remain in defensive positions, waiting for the other belligerents to wear themselves out. Italy would then be in a stronger position after the war. But the policy only ensured that Germany faced longer odds. He had no clear strategy. His decisions were whimsical and probably reflected a greater concern with newspaper headlines than warfare. Of course he lost Italy's war.
The musical score sounds as if it had been written for a European horror movie but there is a perceptive ten-minute summing up at the end of the program.