Failure, as Hitler put it in December 1940 with a touch of racialist contempt, had the “healthy effect of once more compressing Italian claims to within the natural boundaries of Italian capabilities.” The Fascist regime, which Mussolini and many contemporaries believed had at last made Italy a great power of sorts, had failed the only test its founder recognized as valid, the test of war. That failure has dominated later interpretations of the regime, which have tended to underestimate its brutality, the vigor and extent of its expansionist ambition, and the degree of domestic support its aims enjoyed until their price became fully apparent.

The sources of this underestimation are various. Professional historians have no direct experience of wielding power, except in academic politics. They tend, perhaps naïvely, to underrate the degree of unwisdom prevalent in the world of action, and too often expect political leaders to behave rationally–as men of goodwill with the advantage of hindsight define rationality. Mussolini's outwardly erratic course and irresponsible decisions, and above all his failure, have therefore aroused widespread contempt, which in turn has inhibited analysis of his intentions and activities on their own terms.

Italian liberals from the philosopher Benedetto Croce downward have tended, once they ceased to support Fascism, to dismiss it as “antihistorical” and condemn it as the “anti-Risorgtmento.” The regime's success until 1940 affronted their tidy vision of civilization and progress, and the Fascist movement's not entirely illegitimate claim to the heritage of Mazzini and Garibaldi outraged their sense of propriety.