F. W. Deakin, The Brutal Friendship: Mussolini, Hitler and the Fall of Italian Fascism (New York & Evanston: Harper & Row, 1962) (From the book jacket: "The Brutal Friendship is an outstanding contribution to contemporary history. Specifically it is the history of the turbulent, often inflamed relations between Germany and Italy, Der Fuhrer and Il Duce: a study in power and in rivalries between two towering and twisted personalities.").
Joachim C. Fest, Hitler, translated from the German by Richard Winston & Clara Winston (New York: A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973) ("Among the things that set Nazism apart form the Fascist movements of other countries is the fact that Hitler always found obedient instruments to carry out his eccentric radicalism. No stirrings of pity mitigated the concentrated and punctilious harshness of the regime. Its barbarous features have often been ascribed to the deliberate application of cruelty by murderers and sadists, and such criminals elements continue to loom large in the popular mind.To this day toys of this sort appear in literary works, whip in hand, as the personification of Nazism. But the regime had quite another picture of itself. No question about it making use of such people, especially in the initial phase; but it quickly realized that lasting rule cannot be founded upon the unleashing of criminal instincts.The radicality that constituted the true nature of national Socialism does not really spring from the license it offered to instinctual gratification. The problem was not one of criminal implies by of a perverted moral energy." "Those to whom Nazism chiefly appealed were people with a strong but directionless craving for morality. In the SS, National Socialism trained this type and organized it into an elite corps. The 'inner values' that were perpetually being preached within this secular monastic order--the theme of many avenging meeting complete with romantic torchlight--included, according to the prescript of Heinrich Himmler, the following virtues: loyqlty, honesty, obedience, hardness, decency, poverty,, nd bravery.But all these virtues were detached form any comprehensive frame of reference undirected entirely toward the purposes of the regime. Under the command of such imperatives a type of person was trained who demanded 'cold, in fact, stony attitudes' of himself, as one of them wrote, and had 'ceased to have human feelings.' Out of his harshness toward himself he derived the justification for harshness toward others. The ability to walk over dead bodies was literally demanded of him; and before that could be developed, his own self had to be deadened. It is this impassive, mechanical quality that strikes the observer as far more extreme than sheer brutality. For the killer who acts out of overpowering social, intellectual, or human resentment exerts a claim, however, small, upon our sympathy." Id. at 391. "The tendency of the Enlightenment throughout Europe was to challenge existing authorities. But the spokesmen of the Enlightenment in Germany refrained from criticizing the government of princes; some even lauded it--so ingrained were the terrors of the past. The German mind accords unusual respect to the categories of order, discipline, and self-restrain. Idolization of the state as court of last resort and bulwark against evil, and even faith in a leader, have their origins in such historical experiences. Hitler was able to play on such attitudes and use them to further his plans for dominion. Thus he created the cult of obedience to the Fuhrer or staged those militarylike demonstrations whose precise geometry offered protection against the chaos so feared by all and sundry." Id. at 392-393.).
Hisham Matar, The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between (New York: Random House, 2016) ("Almost immediately after the Italians arrived, a local leader emerged. Omar-al-Mukhtar, the main we grew up referring to affectionately as Sidi Omar, was part of the Senussi order, a mystical religious family that ran schools an charities form Cyrenaica in the north-east of the country [i. e., Libya] all the way west into Algeria and further south into sub-Saharan Africa. Its patriarch, Idris, was to become king and Libya's first head of state after independence. Despite having very few resources, Omar al-Mukhtar led Libya's tribesmen on horseback in what became a very effective campaign. But after the Fascists marched on Rome in 1933 and Benito Mussolini seized power, the destruction and slaughter took on a massive scale. Airpower was employed to gas and bomb villages. The policy was that of depopulation. History remembers Mussolini as the buffoonish Fascist, the effective silly man of Italy who led a lame military campaign in the Second World War, but in Libya he oversaw a campaign of genocide." Id at 132-133.).
