From the scenarios that have marked our past to the current political dynamics. From the end of the Second World War – with the almost simultaneous death of Hitler and Mussolini – to the advent of the new occupant of the White House, Donald Trump. A long journey which, stage after stage, features the great leaders of yesterday and today in a dense plot that holds together the historical and political events that have marked the last decades. Bruno Vespa go back to writing and with ‘End of the world. How Hitler and Mussolini changed history and how Trump is rewriting it‘, published by Mondadori and Rai Libri, offers readers, in dense and well-informed pages, a picture of the historical and political situation of these turbulent times. Without forgetting to directly question the protagonists of our times, from Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to the leader of the Democratic Party Elly Schlein.
Vespa, therefore, tells the story the passage from one ‘end of the world’ to another. With a particular eye on the present starting from the possible weakening of the Atlantic alliance, on which decades of peace and stability have been built. One fact, in fact, appears certain on the international scene: never since 1945 has Europe felt so trapped by the end of Atlanticism, decided by decree by the American president, and by the growing Russian aggressiveness in Ukraine and Eastern Europe in the substantial indifference of the United States. President Trump, in his second term in the White House, has also created a change of pace also on the front of trade relations with allies and beyond. Trump, Vespa writes in the introductory pages of his book, “with a barrage of executive decrees, immediately upset American political and social life and, with an unstoppable tariff war, the commercial stability of Europe itself”.
However, it is not just trade wars that are upsetting the world and Europe in particular. There are ongoing conflicts that are giving rise, as Pope Francis has repeatedly pointed out, to a real ‘piecemeal third world war’. The roar of the cannons has also reached the gates of the Old Continent. After the end of the Second World War, “until February 24, 2022, Europe lived in peace for seventy-seven years. Then Putin – recalls the journalist and presenter – invaded Ukraine as an initial move to reconstitute the ancient empire, first Tsarist and then Soviet. It went badly for him, because Ukraine did not surrender and three and a half years later, the Russian dictator hopes, with Trump’s help, to also take unconquered territories and to establish a new Yalta with the American president”.
In this context, Vespa underlines, “the Meloni celebrated his third year in government with the greatest internal and international consensus and try to explain the reasons in these pages. Just like Antonio Tajani and Matteo Salvini who, while underlining the mutual differences in international politics (and not only) guarantee that government stability to which the Prime Minister attributes credibility on international markets and in chancelleries around the world”. Elly Schlein, for her part, explains point by point “the rejection of the Meloni government”. Everything, concludes the journalist, “is in motion, as always in Italian politics, waiting for a new electoral law – which will force the parties to write their name in the symbol of the prime minister candidate – bring them out into the open”.