The
independent state of Italy emerged from a long nationalist struggle
for unification that started with the revolution of 1848. The southern
kingdoms of Sardinia and Sicily joined in 1866 and by 1914 only the
Vatican and San Marino retained independence within Italy. However,
a large Italian population remained within Austria-Hungary
in the Trentino and Trieste regions.
By 1911 Italy had a population of 34.7 million. Although primarily
an agricultural economy, there was considerable industry in the northern
areas of the country. To feed its growing population, Italy needed
to import some foods, notably grain from Russia
and Germany.
Italy was a constitutional monarchy. Victor
Emmanuel III had been king since 1900. People were appointed to
the upper house of the National Assembly but the lower house was elected
by universal adult male suffrage. The prime minister was Giovanni
Giolitti but after the 1913 elections when socialists and radicals
did well, he had a greatly reduced majority in the National Assembly.
Italy had been members of the Triple Alliance
with Germany and Austria-Hungary
since 1882. However, this alliance was unpopular with large numbers
of Italians and there was some doubt about Italy's military involvement
in event of a war with members of the Triple
Entente (Britain, France
and Russia).
The Italian Government introduced military conscription in 1907. However,
only about 25 per cent of those eligible for conscription received
training and by 1912 there were only 300,000 men in the Italian
Army.
Over
5.2 million men served in the Italian Army
during the First World War. Italy's total wartime
casualties was 420,000 killed and almost 955,000 wounded.
After
the war Benito Mussolini attacked Vittorio
Orlando for failing to achieve Italy's objectives at the
Versailles Peace Treaty and helped to organize the various right-wing
groups in Italy into the Fascist Party.
The next prime minister, Francesco
Nitti,
also came under attack and he was forced to resign in 1920.
After
a series of riots in 1922 King Victor Emmanuel
III appointed Benito Mussolini
in an attempt to prevent a communist revolution in Italy. Mussolini
headed a coalition of fascists and nationalists and parliamentary
government continued until the murder of the socialist leader, Giacomo
Matteotti in 1924. Left-wing parties were suppressed and in 1929
Italy became a one-party state. Mussolini carried out an extensive
public-works programme and the fall in unemployment made him a popular
figure in Italy.
Italy controlled
Eritrea and Somalia
in Africa but had failed several times to colonize neighbouring Ethiopia.
When Benito
Mussolini came
to power he was determined to show the strength of his regime by occupying
the country. In October 1935 Mussolini sent in General Pietro
Badoglio
and the Italian Army into
Ethiopia.
The League
of Nations condemned Italy's aggression and in November imposed
sanctions. This included an attempt to ban countries from selling
arms, rubber and some metals to Italy. Some political leaders in France
and Britain opposed sanctions arguing that
it might persuade Mussolini to form an alliance with Adolf
Hitler and Nazi Germany.
Over 400,000
Italian troops fought in Ethiopia. The
poorly armed Ethiopians were no match for Italy's modern tanks and
aeroplanes. The Italians even used mustard
gas on
the home forces and were able to capture Addis Ababa, the capital
of the country, in May 1936, forcing Emperor Haile Selassie to flee
to England.
Adolf
Hitler had been inspired by Mussolini's achievements and once
he gained power in Germany he sought a close
relationship with Italy. In October 1936 the two men signed a non-military
alliance.
In
1939 Italy invaded Albania and soon afterwards
Benito Mussolini signed a full defensive
alliance with Nazi Germany (the Pact of Steel). However, Mussolini
did not declare war on Britain and France
until 10th June 1940.
Mussolini
already had over a million men in the Italian
Army based in Libya. In neighbouring
Egypt the British
Army had only 36,000 men guarding the Suez Canal and the Arabian
oilfields. On 13th September, 1940, Marshall Rodolfo
Graziani and five Italian divisions began a rapid advance into
Egypt but halted in front of the main British
defences at Mersa Matruh.
In
October 1940, Benito
Mussolini declared
war on Greece. Attempts by the Italian
Army to
invade Greece ended in failure. The war was also going badly in North
Africa. Although
outnumbered, General Archibald Wavell
ordered a British counter-offensive on 9th December, 1940. The Italians
suffered heavy casualties and were pushed back more than 800km (500
miles). British troops moved along the coast and on 22nd January,
1941, they captured the port of Tobruk
in Libya from the Italians.
By the
end of 1941 Italy was totally dependent
on Nazi Germany. The Minister of
Foreign Affairs, Galaezzo Ciano, became
increasingly dissatisfied with the way Mussolini was running the country.
After a series of heated arguments with Mussolini, Ciano resigned
in February, 1943.
At the
Casablanca Conference Winston Churchill
and Franklin D. Roosevelt
discussed ways of taking Italy out of the war. It was eventually decided
to launch an invasion of Sicily, an island
in the Mediterranean Sea, south-west of Italy. It was hoped that if
the island was taken Benito Mussolini
would be ousted from power. It was also argued that a successful invasion
would force Adolf Hitler to send troops
from the Eastern Front and help to relieve pressure on the Red
Army in the Soviet Union.
The operation
was placed under the supreme command of General Dwight
D. Eisenhower. General Harold
Alexander was commander of ground operations and his 15th Army
Group included General George
Patton (US 7th Army) and General Bernard
Montgomery (8th Army). Admiral Andrew
Cunningham was in charge of naval operations and Air Marshal Arthur
Tedder was air commander.
On 10th
July 1943, the 8th Army landed at five points on the south-eastern
tip of the island and the US 7th Army at three beaches to the west
of the British forces. The Allied troops met little opposition and
Patton and his troops quickly took Gela, Licata and Vittoria. The
British landings were also unopposed and Syracuse was taken on the
the same day. This was followed by Palazzolo (11th July), Augusta
(13th July) and Vizzini (14th July), whereas the US troops took the
Biscani airfield and Niscemi (14th July).
General
George
Patton now moved to the west of the island
and General Omar Bradley headed north
and the German Army
was forced to retreat to behind the Simeto River. Patton took Palermo
on 22nd July cutting off 50,000 Italian troops in the west of the
island. Patton now turned east along the northern coast of the island
towards the port of Messina.
Meanwhile
General Bernard Montgomery and the
8th Army were being held up by German forces under Field Marshal Albrecht
Kesselring. The Allies carried out several amphibious
assaults attempted to cut off the Germans but they were unable to
stop the evacuation across the Messina Straits to the Italian mainland.
This included 40,000 German and 60,000 Italian troops, as well as
10,000 German vehicles and 47 tanks.
The loss
of Sicily created serious problems for
Benito
Mussolini.
It was now clear that the Allies would use the island as a base for
invading Italy. A meeting of the Fascist Grand Council was held on
24th July and Galaezzo Ciano got support
for his idea that Italy should sign a separate peace with the Allies.
The following day Victor
Emmanuel III told Mussolini he was dismissed from office. His
successor, Pietro Badoglio, declared
martial law and placed Mussolini under arrest.
On
3rd September, 1943, General Bernard
Montgomery and
the 8th Army landed at Reggio. There was little resistance and later
that day British warships landed the 1st Parachute Division at Taranto.
Six days later the US 6th Corps arrived at Salerno. These troops faced
a heavy bombardment from German troops and the beachhead was not secured
until 20th September.
While the
Allies were arriving in Italy, Adolf Hitler
sent Otto
Skorzeny
and group of airbourne commandos to rescue Mussolini, who was being
held in the Abruzzi Apennines. Mussolini was soon freed and Skorzeny
flew him to safety. After a short spell in Germany
Mussolini was sent to Gargagno in German-occupied northern Italy where
he established the fascist
Salo Republic.
On
23rd September 1943, Pietro Badoglio
and General Dwight D. Eisenhower
signed
the Italian surrender aboard Nelson off Malta.
The
German Army continued
to fight ferociously in southern Italy and the Allied armies made
only slow progress as the moved north towards Rome. The 5th Army took
Naples on 1st October and later that day the 8th Army captured the
Foggia airfields.
In
danger of being captured by the German forces, Badoglio and the Italian
royal family were forced to escape to Pescara where a government was
set up under the protection of the Allies. On 13th October the Italian
government declared war on Germany.
General
Albrecht Kesselring now withdrew his
forces to what became known as the Gustav Line on the Italian peninsula
south of Rome. Organized along the Garigliano and Rapido rivers it
included Monte Cassino, a hilltop site
of a sixth-century Benedictine monastery. Defended by 15 German divisions
the line was fortified with gun pits, concrete bunkers, turreted machine-gun
emplacements, barbed-wire and minefields. In December 1943, the Allied
suffered heavy loses while trying to capture the monastery.
In January
1944, General Dwight D.
Eisenhower and General Harold
Alexander, Supreme Allied Commander in Italy,
ordered a new Cassino offensive combined with an amphibious
operation at Anzio, a small port on the
west coast of Italy. The main objective of the operation was to cut
the communication lines of the German 10th Army and force a withdrawal
from the Gustav Line.
Attacks
on Monte Cassino on 17th January resulted
in the Germans reserves moving to the Gustav Line and on 22nd January
troops led by General John Lucas landed
at Anzio. Lucas decided not to push straight
away to the Alban Hills. This enabled General Heinrich
Vietinghoff to order the 14th Army to return to the area and contain
the 6th Corps on the Anzio bridgehead.
On 12th
February the exhausted US Army
at Cassino were replaced by the New Zealand
Corps. Alexander now decided to use these fresh troops in another
attempt to capture Cassino. General Bernard
Freyberg, who was in charge of the infantry attack, asked for
the monastery be bombed. Despite claims by troops on the front-line
that no fire had come from the monastery, General Harold
Alexander agreed and it was destroyed by the United
States Air Force on 15th February, 1944.
Once the
monastery had been bombed, the German
Army moved into the ruins. As Basil
Liddell Hart pointed out later in his book The Other Side of
the Hill the bombing "turned out entirely to the tactical
benefit of the Germans. For after that they felt free to occupy the
ruins, and the rubble provided mud better defensive cover than the
Monastery would have been before its destruction. As anyone with experience
of street-fighting knows, it is only when buildings are demolished
that they are converted from mousetraps into bastions of defence."
On 18th
May, 1944, Allied troops led by General Wladyslaw
Anders (Polish Corps) and General Alphonse
Juin (French Corps) captured Monte Cassino.
This opened a corridor for Allied troops and they reached Anzio
on 24th May. The German defence now began to disintegrate and General
Harold Alexander ordered General Mark
Clark to trap and destroy the retreating 10th Army. Clark ignored
this order and instead headed for Rome and liberated the city on the
4th June.
After the
capture of Rome Pietro
Badoglio
resigned and Invanoe Bonomi formed a new
government. In an attempt to unite the country against Benito
Mussolini,
Bonomi's government included long-time campaigners against fascism
such as Carlo
Sforza ,
Benedetto Croce and Palmiro
Togliatti, the leader of the Italian Communist Party.
The Allied
armies now pursued the German 10th Army and took Grosseto (16th June),
Assisi (18th June), Perugia (20th June), Florence (12th August), Rimini
(21st September), Lorenzo (11th October) until being held on the Gothic
Line in the northern Apennines. The arrival of winter weather meant
that a renewed offensive did not begin until 9th April, 1945.
On
23rd April the 8th Army began to cross the River Po at Mantua. German
resistance now began to collapse and Parma and Verona were taken and
partisan uprisings began in Milan and Genoa.
With
Allied troops approaching, Benito Mussolini
and his mistress, Clara Petacci, attempted to escape to Switzerland.
They were captured at Lake Como by Italian partisans on 27th April,
1945. The following day they were shot and their bodies displayed
in public in Milan.
German
resistance came to an end on 29th April and General Karl
Wolff , who had unofficially been negotiating with the Allies
for some time, signed a treaty of unconditional surrender at Caserta
on 29th May. Two days later General Heinrich
Vietinghoff, commander of all German troops in Italy, agreed to
the terms signed by Wolff at Caserta.
Herb
Block, Chicago Daily News
(1943)
(1)
Benito
Mussolini,
speech (1929)
In the creation of a new State which is authoritarian but not absolutist,
hierarchical and organic - namely, open to the people in all its classes,
categories and interests - lies the great revolutionary originality
of Fascism, and a teaching perhaps for the whole modern world oscillating
between the authority of the State and that of the individual, between
the State and the anti-State. Like all other revolutions, the Fascist
revolution has had a dramatic development but this in itself would
not suffice to distinguish it. The reign of terror is not a revolution:
it is only a necessary instrument in a determined phase of the revolution.
(2)
Francesco Nitti, speech (1929)
The ignoble
phenomenon of a dictatorship is a shameful blot on European civilization.
Reactionary minds, which are indignant at red dictatorships, have
only sympathy with 'white' dictatorships, which are equally, if not
more bloodthirsty, no less brutal and unjustified by any ideal, even
a false one.
The Fascist
government abolished in Italy every safeguard of the individual and
every liberty. No free man can live in Italy, and an immoral law prevents
Italians from going to a foreign country on pain of punishment. Italy
is a prison where life has become intolerable. Everything is artificial
- artificial finance - artificial exchange - artificial public economy
- artificial order - artificial calm.
Without
a free parliament, a free press, a free opinion and a true democracy,
there will never be peace.
(3)
Henry
(Chips) Channon,
diary entry (30th July, 1935)
I am bored by this Italian-Abyssinian dispute, and really
I fail to see why
we should interfere. Though, of course, the League of Nations will
stand or fall by it. But I am a little uneasy that the destinies of
countless of millions should be in the exquisite hands of Anthony
Eden, for whom I have affection, even admiration - but not blind respect.
Why should England fight Italy over Abyssinia, when most of our far
flung Empire has been won by conquest?
(4)
Benito
Mussolini,
letter to Adolf Hitler (August, 1939)
If Germany attacks Poland and the conflict is localised, Italy will
give Germany every form of political and economic aid which may be
required.
If Germany
attacks Poland and the allies of the latter counter-attack Germany,
I must emphasize to you that I cannot assume the initiative of warlike
operations, given the actual conditions of Italian military preparations
which have been repeatedly and in timely fashion pointed out to you.
(5)
Benito
Mussolini,
speech declaring war on the Allies (10th June, 1940)
Fighters of the land, the sea and the air, Blackshirts of the revolutions
and of the legions, men and women of Italy, of the Empire, and of
the kingdom of Albania.
Listen
- the hour marked out by destiny is sounding in the sky of our country.
This is the hour of irrevocable decision. The declaration of war has
already been handed to the Ambassadors of Britain and France.
We are
going to war against the plutocratic and reactionary democracies of
the West, who have hindered the advance and often threatened the existence
even of the Italian people.
The events
of quite recent history can be summarized in these words - half-promises,
constant threats, Blackmail and finally as the crown of this ignoble
edifice the League siege of the 52 States. This reference was to sanctions.
Our conscience
is absolutely tranquil. With you the whole world is witness that the
Italy of the lictor has done what was humanly possible to avoid the
hurricane which is overwhelming Europe, but all was in vain.
It would
have been enough to revise the treaties to adapt them to the vital
demands of the life of nations, and not to regard them as infrangible
throughout eternity.
It would
have been enough not to have persisted in the policy of guarantees
which have shown themselves to have been above all fatal for those
who accepted them. It would have been enough not to have rejected
the proposal which the Fuhrer made last October when the Polish campaign
came to an end.
But all
that belongs to the past. We are to-day decided to face all the risks
and sacrifices of war. A nation is not really great if it does not
regard its undertakings as sacred, and if it recoils them those supreme
trials which decide the course of history.
We are
taking up arms after having solved the problem of our land frontiers."
he went on. We want to break off the territorial and military chains
which are strangling us in our sea for a people of 45.000.000 inhabitants
is not truly free if it has no free passage over the ocean.
The gigantic
struggle is only a phase of the logical development of our revolution.
It is the struggle of peoples poor, but rich in workers against the
exploiters who fiercely hold on to all the wealth and all the gold
of the earth. It is the struggle of the fruitful and young peoples
against the sterile peoples on the threshold of their decline. It
is the struggle between two centuries and two ideas.
Now that
the die is east and we have our own will burned the bridges behind
us. I solemnly declare that Italy does not intend to drag into the
conflict other peoples who are her neighbours by sea and land. Let
Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Turkey, Egypt, and Greece take note of these
words of mine, for it will depend entirely on them whether they are
fully confirmed or not.
At a memorable
meeting that in Berlin - I said that according to the law of Fascist
morality when one has a friend one stands by him to the end.
We have
done that and we shall do it with Germany, with her people, and her
victorious armed forces. On the eve of this event of historic importance
we address our thoughts to his Majesty the King emperor and we salute
equally the head of a allied Greater Germany.
(6)
Wilhelm von Thoma was interviewed by Basil
Liddell Hart after the war for his book The Other Side of the
Hill (1948)
Hitler thought that the Italians were capable of holding their own
in Africa, with a little German help. He expected too much of them.
I had seen them in Spain, 'fighting' on the same side as we were.
Hitler seemed to form his idea of their value from the way their commanders
talked when he met them at the dinner-table. When he asked me what
I thought of them, I retorted: 'I've seen them on the battlefield,
not merely in the Officers' Mess.' I told Hitler: 'One British soldier
is better than twelve Italians.' I added: 'The Italians are good workers,
but they are not fighters. They don't like gun-fire.'
(7)
In his autobiography, Memoirs: 1940-1945 , General
Harold Alexander
wrote about the Anzio Campaign.
Anzio
played a vital role in the capture of Rome by giving me the means
to employ a double-handed punch - from the beachhead and from Cassino
- which caught the Germans in a pincer movement. Without this double-handed
punch I do not believe we should ever have been able to break through
the German defences at Cassino.
Orders
for the operation were issued on 2 January. The objective was defined
as to cut the enemy communications and threaten the German rear. Fifth
Army was ordered to make "as strong a thrust as possible towards
Cassino and Frosinone shortly before the assault landing to draw in
enemy reserves that might be employed against the landing forces and
then to create a breach in his front through which every opportunity
will be taken to link up rapidly with the seaborne operation".
Despite the switch, in all, of five divisions from Eighth Army to
the Fifth Army, German resistance on the main front remained stubborn;
and during the early critical days the British and United States divisions
at Anzio had to fight unaided for their own salvation. Meanwhile,
on the Adriatic sector. General Montgomery had continued with his
attempt to break through the enemy's defensive system; but with even
less success as the weather worsened and the enemy's strength increased.
Against
a less formidable foe an operation such as we had devised would have
succeeded; but I think we may well have underestimated the remarkable
resilience and toughness of the Germans, in expecting them to be frightened
by such a threat to their rear.
Hitler's
orders to Kesselring were to hold on to Cassino at all costs, for
political reasons, and to eliminate the Anzio landing. The withdrawal
of the Hermann Goring division from Italy was cancelled, and Hitler
told Kesselring that he would be reinforced by two motorized divisions,
three independent regiments, two heavy tank battalions and some heavy
and medium artillery units. Thus the enemy refused to weaken his battlefront
at Cassino by drawing back formations to deal with the landings.
Every
time we attacked Kesselring in Italy we took him completely by surprise;
but he showed very great skill in extricating himself from the desperate
situations into which his faulty intelligence had led him. I feel
now that he would not, in these circumstances, have altered his dispositions
on the main front to any great degree until he had tried every means
to eliminate the threat to his rear. Nor need his determination be
doubted. The forces under his command had been engaged in a continuous
retreat for almost a year since November 1942, a retreat that had
brought them just short of Alexandria to just north of Naples - and
it was time to put a stop to it.
(8)
While in Italy in 1943, General Bernard
Montgomery commented on the importance of air support during modern
battles.
I believe that the first and great principle of war is that you
must first win your air battle before you fight your land and sea
battle. If you examine the conduct of the campaign from Alamein through
Tunisia, Sicily and Italy you will find I have never fought a land
battle until the air battle has been won. We never had to bother about
the enemy air, because we won the air battle first.
The second
great principle is that Army plus Air has to be so knitted that the
two together from one entity. If you do that, the resultant military
effort will be so great that nothing will be able to stand against
it.
The third
principle is that the Air Force command. I hold that it is quite wrong
for the soldier to want to exercise command over the air striking
forces. The handling of an Air Force is a life-study, and therefore
the air part must be kept under Air Force command.
The Desert
Air Force and the Eighth Army are one. We do not understand the meaning
of "army cooperation". When you are one entity you cannot
cooperate. If you knit together the power of the Army on the land
and the power of the Air in the sky, then nothing will stand against
you and you will never lose a battle.
(9)
John Steinbeck covered the landings
at Salerno in Italy. One of his reports
appeared in the New York
Tribune on 9th September 1943.
There are little bushes on the sand dunes at Red Beach south of the
Sele River, and in a hole in the sand buttressed by sand bags a soldier
sat with a leather-covered steel telephone beside him. His shirt was
off and his back was dark with sunburn. His helmet lay in the bottom
of the hole and his rifle was on a little pile of brush to keep the
sand out of it. He had staked a shelter half on a pole to shade him
from the sun, and he had spread bushes on top of that to camouflage
it. Beside him was a water can and an empty "C" ration can
to drink out of.
The soldier
said. "Sure you can have a drink. Here, I'll pour it for you."
He tilted the water can over the tin cup. "I hate to tell you
what it tastes like," he said, I took a drink. "Well, doesn't
it?" he said. "It sure does," I said. Up in the hills
the 88s were popping and the little bursts threw sand about where
they hit, and off to the seaward our cruisers were popping away at
the 88s in the hills.
The soldier
slapped at a sand fly on his shoulder and then scratched the place
where it had bitten him. His face was dirty and streaked where the
sweat had run down through the dirt, and his hair and his eyebrows
were sunburned almost white. But there was a kind of gayety about
him. His telephone buzzed and he answered
it, and said, "Hasn't come through yet. Sir, no sir. I'll tell
him." He clicked off the phone.
"When'd
you come ashore?" he asked. And then without waiting for an answer
he went on. "I came in just before dawn
yesterday. I wasn't with the very first, but right in the second."
He seemed to be very glad about it. "It was hell," he said,
"it was bloody hell." He seemed to be gratified at the hell
it was, and that was right. The great question had been solved for
him. He had been under fire. He knew now what he would do under fire.
He would never have to go through that uncertainty again. "I
got pretty near up to there," he said, and pointed to two beautiful
Greek temples about a mile away. "And then I got sent back here
for beach communications. When did you say you got ashore?" and
again he didn't wait for an answer.
"It
was dark as hell," he said, "and we were just waiting out
there." He pointed to the sea where the mass of the invasion
fleet rested. "If we thought we were going to sneak ashore we
were nuts," he said. "They were waiting for us all fixed
up. Why, I heard they had been here two weeks waiting for us. They
knew just where we were going to land. They had machine guns in the
sand dunes and 88s on the hills.
"We
were out there all packed in an LCI and then the hell broke loose.
The sky was full of it and the star shells lighted it up and the tracers
crisscrossed and the noise - we saw the assault go in, and then one
of them hit a surf mine and went up, and in the light you could see
them go flying about. I could see the boats land and the guys go wiggling
and running, and then maybe there"d be a lot of white lines and
some of them would waddle about and collapse and some would hit the
beach.
"It
didn't seem like men getting killed, more like a picture, like a moving
picture. We were pretty crowded up in there though, and then all of
a sudden it came on me that this wasn't a moving picture. Those were
guys getting the hell shot out of them, and then I got kind of scared,
but what I wanted to do mostly was move around. I didn't like being
cooped up there where you couldn't get away or get down close to the
ground.
(10)
Siegfried Westphal
was interviewed by Basil Liddell Hart
about the invasion of Sicily in his book
The Other Side of the Hill (1948)
The situation
around Rome calmed down completely when the Commander of the Italian
forces accepted in its entirety the German capitulation suggestion.
This eliminated the danger to the supply of the 10th Army. At the
same time the German Command in Italy was freed from the nightmare
of having to use weapons against their former allies. The capitulation
ensured for the Italian soldiers an immediate return to their homes.
This concession had a repercussion because it infringed Hitler's order,
according to which all Italian soldiers were to be made prisoners
of war. But there can be no doubt that adherence to this order would
have held out no inducement to the Italians to accept the German proposals.
(11)
General Rudolf von Senger fought
under Albrecht Kesselring at Monte
Cassino.
Field-Marshal Kesselring had given express orders that no German soldier
should enter the Monastery, so as to avoid giving the Allies any pretext
for bombing or shelling it. I cannot testify personally that this
decision was communicated to the Allies but I am sure that the Vatican
found means to do so, since it was so directly interested in the fate
of Monte Cassino. Not only did Field-Marshal Kesselring prohibit German
soldiers from entering the Monastery, but be also placed a guard at
the entrance gate to ensure that his orders were carried out.
(12)
Franklin D. Roosevelt,
radio broadcast, Fireside Chat (5th June, 1944)
Yesterday, on June fourth, 1944, Rome
fell to American and Allied troops. The first of the Axis capitals
is now in our hands. One up and two to go!
It is perhaps
significant that the first of these capitals to fall should have the
longest history of all of them. The story of Rome goes back to the
time of the foundations of our civilization. We can still see there
monuments of the time when Rome and the Romans controlled the whole
of the then known world. That, too, is significant, for the United
Nations are determined that in the future no one city and no one race
will be able to control the whole of the world.
In addition
to the monuments of the older times, we also see in Rome the great
symbol of Christianity, which has reached into almost every part of
the world. There are other shrines and other churches in many places,
but the churches and shrines of Rome are visible symbols of the faith
and determination of the early saints and martyrs that Christianity
should live and become universal. And tonight (now) it will be a source
of deep satisfaction that the freedom of the Pope and the (of) Vatican
City is assured by the armies of the United Nations. It is also significant
that Rome has been liberated by the armed forces of many nations.
The American and British armies -- who bore the chief burdens of battle
- found at their sides our own North American neighbors, the gallant
Canadians. The fighting New Zealanders from the far South Pacific,
the courageous French and the French Moroccans, the South Africans,
the Poles and the East Indians - all of them fought with us on the
bloody approaches to the city of Rome.
The Italians,
too, forswearing a partnership in the Axis which they never desired,
have sent their troops to join us in our battles against the German
trespassers on their soil.
The prospect
of the liberation of Rome meant enough to Hitler and his generals
to induce them to fight desperately at great cost of men and materials
and with great sacrifice to their crumbling Eastern line and to their
Western front. No thanks are due to them if Rome was spared the devastation
which the Germans wreaked on Naples and other Italian cities. The
Allied Generals maneuvered so skillfully that the Nazis could only
have stayed long enough to damage Rome at the risk of losing their
armies.
(13)
The Manchester Guardian (30th
April, 1945)
Mussolini, with mistress, Clara Petacci, and twelve members of his
Cabinet, were executed by partisans in a village on Lake Como yesterday
afternoon, after being arrested in an attempt to cross the Swiss frontier.
The bodies were brought to Milan last night. A partisan knocked at
my door early this morning to tell me the news.
We drove
out to the working-class quarter of Loreto and there were the bodies
heaped together with ghastly promiscuity in the open square under
the same fence against which one year ago fifteen partisans had been
shot by their own countrymen.
Mussolini's
body lay across that of Petacci. In his dead hand had been placed
the brass ensign of the Fascist Arditi. With these fourteen were also
the bodies of Farinacci and Starace, two former general secretaries
of the Fascist party, and Teruzzo, formerly Minister of Colonies who
had been caught elsewhere and executed by partisans.
Mussolini
was caught yesterday at Dongo, Lake Como, driving by himself in a
car with his uniform covered by a German greatcoat. He was driving
in a column of German cars to escape observation but was recognised
by an Italian Customs guard.
The others
were caught in a neighbouring village. They include Pavolini, Barracu,
and other lesser lights in Fascist world on whom Mussolini had to
call in later days to staff his puppet Government.
This is
the first conspicuous example of mob justice in liberated Italy. Otherwise
the partisans have been kept well under control by their leaders.
The opinion expressed this morning by the partisan C.-in-C., General
Cadorna, son of the former field marshal, was that such incidents
in themselves were regrettable. Nevertheless, in this case he considered
the execution a good thing, since popular indignation against the
Fascists demanded some satisfaction. The risk of protracted trials,
such as has been taking place in Rome, was thus avoid.
(14)
The Manchester Guardian (4th
May, 1945)
New Zealand troops have occupied the Adriatic port of Trieste, which
was not covered in the unconditional surrender, agreement providing
for the ending of hostilities in Northern Italy and Western Austria
on Wednesday. Marshal Tito's Yugoslav forces had already entered the
port.
Prisoners
taken by the Fifteenth Army group in Italy before the German capitulation
exceeded 230.000, it was announced from Allied headquarters in the
Mediterranean zone.
The reaction
of the overwhelming majority of the British Eighth army troops to
the Nazi surrender in the Italian theatre has been one of marked indifference,
cables an Associated Press correspondent with the Eighth Army. The
first British soldier to whom the correspondent spoke after peace
was announced merely shrugged his shoulders and said, "The peace
is good, but it's not getting me home any faster than if we were still
fighting. I don't know whether I shall like Austria very much."
(15)
Studs Terkel interviewed Irving
Goff, who fought in the Spanish
Civil War, about his experiences during the Second
World War for his book, The Good War (1985)
In Naples,
the Communist Party had 150,000 members. All during the Mussolini
time, twenty-two years, the railroad workers maintained an illegal,
left-led union, underground. The Italian partisans, during the Nazi
occupation, were slaughtering the Germans, especially as they were
fleeing. Every sector of the front was commanded by a guy who fought
with the Garibaldi Battalion in Spain. The guy that captured Mussolini
and strung him up by his feet was Muscatalli. He fought in Spain.
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