Mussolini’s cheerleaders in France and Britain, before 1940, envied what they saw as his success in overcoming Italy’s economic disadvantages through state-led planning and the establishment of umbrella agencies for whole economic sectors. Albert Speer, the administrator of Hitler’s New Order, was much admired abroad for his programme of economic direction and regulation. In September 1943, Speer and Jean Bichelonne, Vichy’s Minister of Industrial Production, worked out a system of tariff reductions based on inter-war ‘plan-ist’ ideas that closely anticipated European trading relations and
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