{"id":34197,"date":"2013-07-26T19:29:45","date_gmt":"2013-07-27T00:29:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=34197"},"modified":"2013-07-26T19:30:35","modified_gmt":"2013-07-27T00:30:35","slug":"the-axis-breaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=34197","title":{"rendered":"The Axis Breaks"},"content":{"rendered":"

By the standards of his twenty-one years of rule, Benito Mussolini’s meeting at the Italian Royal Palace of Caserta was an unusual one. \u00a0The head of the Italian government and self-styled Il Duce<\/em> (The Leader) of Fascism, Mussolini was unaccustomed to being given orders. \u00a0But in addition to his other titles, Mussolini was also the Prime Minister and, in theory, although not in practice, subservient to the Italian Monarch Victor Emmanuel III.<\/p>\n

With Sicily invaded on July 10th and Rome bombed for the first time on the 19th, Mussolini believed he was to modestly report to the diminutive (both in size and stature) Monarch. \u00a0Barely a few sentences into their meeting, Emmanuel III shocked his guest by declaring he was enacting his right to remove Il Duce<\/em> from power. \u00a0A stunned Mussolini emerged from\u00a0Caserta\u00a0only to be arrested by the Carabinieri<\/em> or military police. \u00a0The father of Fascism, the man whose ideology inspired countless imitators around the world and indirectly launched the most destructive war in human history was deposed.<\/p>\n

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Benito the Beneficent: Mussolini in 1923 at the height of his popularity among the democracies<\/p><\/div>\n

The narrative of the rise and fall of Benito Mussolini has only recently begun to emerge from under the shadow of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich in more mainstream historical literature. \u00a0Despite ruling Italy for over 20 years, and being regarded as one of the continents foremost political leaders before World War II, Mussolini’s brutal, confusing reign has resided in caricature. \u00a0The image of Mussolini – shaved head, military uniform, jutting out his chin and jowls in pompous performance while giving a speech<\/a> – reflects a persona not-so-carefully crafted in Il Duce’s<\/em> second decade of power. \u00a0The impression then, as now, trivializes Mussolini as a dunce and buffoon; a comically dangerous echo reflected in countless tin-pot dictators around the world.<\/p>\n

Such a view obscures Mussolini’s first decade in power – one in which the would-be dictator was lauded as bringing stability to the chronically unstable Italy. \u00a0TIME gave him “Man of the Year” honors. \u00a0Cole Porter declared “You’re the top!\/You are Mussolini!”<\/a> as late as 1934. \u00a0\u201cIf I had been an Italian I am sure that I should have been whole-heartedly with you from the start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism,” said Winston Churchill<\/a> about Mussolini’s rise to power. \u00a0H.G. Wells’ coined term “liberal fascism”<\/a> (which Jonah Goldberg has ridden to great success<\/a>), highlighted the view of Il Duce<\/em> and his movement in its heyday as a positive, progressive force that would synthesize democracy, socialism, and capitalism, removing their individual excesses.<\/p>\n

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Mussolini the Gangster: By 1935, any pretense that Fascism wanted peace was gone.<\/p><\/div>\n

Instead, the narrative of Benito Mussolini and Fascism begins with his 1935 decision to invade Abyssinia (the end product of which\u00a0we’ve covered before<\/a>), a move now seen as a\u00a0fait accompli<\/em>\u00a0despite being viewed as a betrayal at the time. \u00a0But as late as the German invasion of France, there were still those who held out hope that Fascism could be turned against Nazism. \u00a0Not without reason – Mussolini had nearly gone to war with Germany<\/a> over the assassination of Austrian dictator Englebert Dollfuss in an attempt for Germany to annex Austria. \u00a0But by 1940, Mussolini was firmly in Hitler’s pocket and Italy declared war on Britain and France. \u00a0As FDR remarked<\/a>:\u00a0“the hand that held the dagger\u00a0has struck it into the back of its neighbor.”<\/p>\n

—-<\/p>\n

When he signed the “Pact of Steel,” binding Italy to Germany in the late 1930s, Mussolini proclaimed that “the olive branch of peace springs from a forest of 8 million bayonets”<\/a>; a reference to Italy’s claimed military manpower.<\/p>\n

By late July of 1943, what little remained of Italy’s military might, bayonets or otherwise, was collapsing. \u00a0The home front was doing little better. \u00a0Major strikes in the industrial north of the country occurred for the first time since the mid 20s. \u00a0Factories in Milan and Turin followed, bringing arms production to a crawl. \u00a0Fascism was now seen by the populace as little more than an Italian glove covering the German fist of increasing occupation. \u00a0 When Allied troops took Sicilian towns, the locals welcomed them as liberators.<\/p>\n

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The Suicide Pact: Mussolini tied his fate to a man and nation he didn’t even respect, regarding the Germans as \u201cthe descendants of those who were illiterate when Rome had Caesar, Virgil and Augustus.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

Mussolini saw the writing on the wall. \u00a0As early as April of 1943,\u00a0Il Duce<\/em>\u00a0tried to convince Hitler to negotiate an end to the war with the Soviets and turn the sizable forces committed on that front against the Western Allies. \u00a0The suggestion went no further – Mussolini was mostly assuredly Hitler’s junior partner, a fact demonstrated on July 19th when Hitler summoned Mussolini to berate the crumbling performance of the Italian army. \u00a0In turn, Hitler’s suggestion of withdrawing from all of southern Italy was in reality more of an order.<\/p>\n

German dominance over the defense of the Italian homeland didn’t go unnoticed by Mussolini’s fellow fascists. \u00a0Unlike Adolf Hitler’s consolidated hold on power in Germany, Mussolini at least nominally reported to the Fascist Grand Counsel, a group of 26 members of the highest ranking Fascist officeholders. \u00a0Most were Mussolini’s allies, including his son-in-law Count\u00a0Galeazzo Ciano. \u00a0At a meeting on July 24th, the first time the Counsel had met since war was declared, the long knives had been drawn and were out to carve Mussolini to pieces.<\/p>\n

The long train of failures that Mussolini had presided over were thrown back at the dictator who hadn’t seen legitimate political opposition in 15 years. \u00a0In a 19-7 vote, the Counsel declared that King\u00a0Victor Emmanuel III would resume his constitutional duties as the political and military leader of the country. \u00a0Mussolini had, in effect, been voted out of office.<\/p>\n

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Stature in Short Supply: King Victor Emmanuel III (right) was Italy’s nominal war-time leader. His 46 year reign was a disaster for Italy and the end of the Italian monarchy<\/p><\/div>\n

The Counsel’s decision had no impact on Mussolini, who regarded it as a merely advisory body with no political power. \u00a0And in essence, Mussolini was correct. \u00a0In 1925, Mussolini had changed the his title from\u00a0“president of the Council of Ministers” to “head of the government.” \u00a0The move sounded unnecessarily grandiose (in keeping with Mussolini’s style), but had the practical impact that Mussolini was no longer accountable to any legislative or judicial oversight. \u00a0Only the King could now remove Mussolini without it being viewed as a coup.<\/p>\n

—-<\/p>\n

Victor Emmanuel III would make for a terrible hero character in any fictional work. \u00a0Short (generously listed as 5-feet tall), disinterested in political affairs and capricious when it came to war and peace, Emmanuel III had already lead his country into World War I against the wishes of many. \u00a0Emmanuel III had stayed silent during most of Mussolini’s reign, willingly accepting the new titles of Emperor of Ethiopia and King of the Albanians despite concern among the dwindling Italian royalty at being seen as endorsing Mussolini’s imperial escapades. \u00a0Nevertheless, Emmanuel III remained reasonably popular and was assumed as distant from the Fascist regime.<\/p>\n

If inaction had caused Italy to fall into the position of being torn apart by war, action saw no respite to the poor leadership and decision-making that had haunted Italy for decades. \u00a0Despite his willingness to depose the man he had invited into power in 1922, Emmanuel III had no intention of directly running the government. \u00a0After arresting Mussolini at\u00a0Caserta, Emmanuel III appointed Gen. Pietro Badoglio as the new Prime Minister. \u00a0A general with better political skills than military ones, Badoglio was equally ill-suited for the task of saving Italy.<\/p>\n

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Marshal Pietro Badoglio: Charged with saving Italy after the coup against Mussolini, Badoglio and Victor Emmanuel III managed to botch almost every decision, leading to a protracted war in Italy<\/p><\/div>\n

Badoglio’s best decisions were his first. \u00a0Knowing the Italian government was now more a hostage to Nazi Germany than an ally, Badoglio immediately announced that Italy would stay in the war on the Axis side. \u00a0But Badoglio was quickly taking steps to ensure neither Mussolini or his allies could seize power, at least without German help. \u00a0The Fascist Party was dissolved without fighting or fanfare and its former leader was now being shuffled off to\u00a0Campo Imperatore, a mountain resort in\u00a0Abruzzo\u00a0where he was to be hidden from his German allies.<\/p>\n

These were the relatively easy decisions – Italians were tired of Fascism and Mussolini and hardly eager to fight for either. \u00a0But how to extract Italy from the war was a thornier problem – and one that Badoglio failed to solve with brutal consequences.<\/p>\n

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Ruin in Roma: The bungled surrender of Italy cost the Allies and Italians dearly. 320,000 Allied soldiers were killed or wounded and nearly 153,000 Italian civilians died as well. Italy proved to be the costliest campaign of the Western Front.<\/p><\/div>\n

Badoglio and Emmanuel III hoped to negotiate an armistice with the Allies, a task complicated by the thousands of German troops still on Italian soil and intermingled with the Italian Army. \u00a0To make matters even more complicated Badoglio had agreed, after the overthrow of Mussolini, to the unification of the two armies under German command, in order to appease the Germans. \u00a0Thus, in order for Italy to exit the war Badoglio would have to find a way to inform his troops, under German command, that they were now to resist the Germans if they attempted to disarm them or refuse to leave Italian territory.<\/p>\n

Badoglio never did communicate that message to his troops when on September 8th, 1943, the outcome of the secret negotiations with the Allies became public. \u00a0The Germans were less than surprised, quickly disarming Italian troops and turning their former allies into POWs. \u00a0Those were the lucky ones. \u00a0Others, like the 5,000 men on the Greek island of\u00a0Cephalonia learned how Germany treated its enemies – all were massacred after they resisted German efforts to occupy the island.<\/p>\n

Badoglio and Emmanuel III escaped from Rome and would shortly afterwards formally declare war against Germany. \u00a0It hardly mattered; what was left of the Italian army was either captured, killed, or under German or Allied command. \u00a0Italy would be bloodiest campaign in Western Europe while little of the fighting would be done by Italians.<\/p>\n

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The Great Escape<\/p><\/div>\n

The Italian monarchy and military were effectively finished – at least as a factor for the rest of the war. \u00a0But Benito Mussolini had one last story in him; a story of perhaps the most daring rescue operation of World War II. \u00a0But that story was, and is, months away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By the standards of his twenty-one years of rule, Benito Mussolini’s meeting at the Italian Royal Palace of Caserta was an unusual one. \u00a0The head of the Italian government and self-styled Il Duce (The Leader) of Fascism, Mussolini was unaccustomed to being given orders. \u00a0But in addition to his other titles, Mussolini was also the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":425,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-ringer","category-ww2-fact-and-myth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34197"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37536,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34197\/revisions\/37536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}