Mussolini’s inability to confide in anybody around him had left him out of touch with reality. He pretended to be the all-knowing, all-seeing dictator, yet none of his entourage dared to tell him that he was loathed by the majority of Italians, and that they wanted to have nothing more to do with his war. The Duce’s compulsion to issue streams of instructions on every subject under the sun also meant that he was, in the words of one Fascist Party secretary, ‘the most disobeyed man in history’. The government was adrift and his son-in-law, Count Ciano, although not daring to oppose him openly,
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