George L. Mosse e gli storici italiani. Il problema della 'nazionalizzazione delle masse'

The article reconstructs the reception of the Mosse’s book The Nationalization of the Masses in Italy starting from its publication in 1975. The author underlines how the arguments of the book, were overlooked and refused, until the second half of the ’80s, by a great part of Italian historians as an attempt of rehabilitation of Fascism. On the contrary, its importance and its originality were immediatly understood by Renzo De Felice and the group of young scholars bound to the journal «Storia contemporanea». The article shows how, from the end of the ’80s, Mosse’s book was progressively rediscovered, becoming fashionable and influencing the research about Fascism, sacralization of politics and invention of tradition. Nevertheless the author argues that, although this growing success, Mosse’s reception remained partly ambivalent