SOURCE: “Duce and Führer,” in The Times Literary Supplement, November 30, 1962, p. 936.

In the following review of The Brutal Friendship: Mussolini, Hitler, and the Fall of Italian Fascism, the anonymous critic calls the book “enthralling reading.”

Mr. Deakin's The Brutal Friendship is above all a book for specialists and must be judged as such; within the stern limits he has set himself it is a very fine piece of writing and for the specialist it makes enthralling reading. As Mr. Deakin explains, the book grew out of a study of the events leading to the meeting of the Fascist Grand Council on July 24, 1943, and its theme is essentially that of the decline and fall of Mussolini; Hitler is there rather as Mussolini's love-hate nightmare: when he woke from it both their lives ended.

The outline story of Mussolini's fall was already well known, though it is easily corrupted...