Mussolini, Hitler and the last days of Europe (1938-1940)
In: Civis Mundi / Digital #140
(December 2023)
Otto van de Haar
Review of Antonio Scurati, M. The last days of Europe. Uitg. Podium, 2023 (M. Gli ultimi giorni dell'Europa, 2022)
Antonio Scurati (b. 1969), professor of literature and media in Milan, has once again blown away the dust of the past in this third volume on the Mussolini era in a whirlwind narrative style. Printed at the end of each chapter are revealing passages from period documents: speeches and private conversations of the Duce, diaries, such as those of his son-in-law and foreign minister Galeazzo Ciano, the New York Times and the then accommodating Corriere della Sera. Then there are the personal notes of interpreters and journalists who were close to the fire during summit meetings between Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, their secret correspondences, transcripts of telephone conversations, treaty texts. Furthermore, memoirs.
Among Scurati's other publications is a biographical novel devoted to the famous, highly talented Odessa-born Jewish intellectual and anti-fascist resistance fighter Leone Ginzburg. He succumbed to exhaustion and torture in Rome in 1944. His dramatic life will surely have influenced Scurati's approach to the Mussolini era.
Antonio Scurati
Changing signs
Orchestrated mass meetings in Rome and Berlin with parades, torches and banners featured glowing and pompous speeches that effortlessly summarized history "in centuries and millennia. Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, two former lieutenants from the battles of World War I, gave the impression of a harmonious and combative duo, their "national revolutions" running parallel. This was also evident in the Treaty of Friendship and Alliance that went out into the world as the ‘Steel Pact’. (Ciano's proposal to call this treaty fraternally the "Blood Pact" did not pass.) The signing took place on May 22, 1939:
'The Italian and German people, closely united by their deeply related views of life and the complete solidarity of their interests, intend to act also in the future at each other's side and with united forces for the security of their living space and for the preservation of peace. Along this path indicated by history, Italy and Germany wish to fulfill their task, in a troubled and dissolving world, of maintaining the foundations of European civilization’.
Scurati shows, however, that behind weighty treaty texts and massive spectacle, a complex relationship was hidden. The relationship between Italy and Germany reached its fatal conclusion in ‘the last days of Europe’ (1938-1940) and had already been somewhat visible when both countries interfered in the Spanish Civil War in favor of Franco. As time progressed, a shift in the balance of power in favor of Germany also manifested itself. Mussolini did offer ‘allied counterplay’ a few times, about which further on.
The Wehrmacht occupation of Czechoslovakia, the non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin, and the ‘spiked boots’ marching toward Warsaw struck ally Mussolini with mixed feelings in the fall of 1939. Although, of course, he did not fail to congratulate his powerful ally on his overwhelming (and enviable) successes. It had been different in the past.
In the 1920s, Mussolini had made his name as the founder and inspirer of violent fascism. And Hitler - then still in his children's boots - had looked up to him with rapt attention and had immediately seen in him a role model. (2) So it must have stung Mussolini extra that the signs had now been hung. Scurati quotes from The New York Times Magazine which observed on October 30, 1938, ‘Now Hitler is the teacher, Mussolini the pupil’. When the Duce was still the dictatorial overlord, he had more than once made disparaging remarks about Hitler: 'an imbecile and a fanatical charlatan.' Western government leaders at the time were less outspoken for opportune reasons....
Typical of the skewed relationship was that the Duce was rarely informed in advance of impending military operations or political maneuvers. And if it did happen then as a fait accompli - allied obligations notwithstanding. Let alone that Mussolini was granted any share in the decision-making. Hitler - then still in his children's boots - had looked up to him with rapt attention and had immediately seen in him a role model. (2) So it must have stung Mussolini extra that the signs had now been hung. Scurati quotes from The New York Times Magazine which observed on October 30, 1938, ‘Now Hitler is the teacher, Mussolini the pupil’. When the Duce was still the dictatorial overlord, he had more than once made disparaging remarks about Hitler: 'an imbecile and a fanatical charlatan.' Western government leaders at the time were less outspoken for opportune reasons....
Typical of the skewed relationship was that the Duce was rarely informed in advance of impending military operations or political maneuvers. And if it did happen then as a fait accompli - allied obligations notwithstanding. Let alone that Mussolini was granted any share in the decision-making.
Criminal quartet: Ciano, Von Ribbentrop, Hitler, Mussolini.
Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler's foreign minister had promised, as late as the spring of 1939 and at the urgent request of the Italians, to begin military operations in 1942 at the earliest. This was because the Italian armed forces were in a rather wretched state and, to Mussolini's chagrin, were simply not yet equipped to wage serious battle on Hitler's side. That Italian soldiers cynically compared their tanks to "powder boxes" or "sardine cans" because of the light armor may be an indication. Von Ribbentrop's promise turned out to be a lie. It may have been made verbally, but a written promise, in good totalitarian custom, would not have made much difference.
Mussolini's authoritarian ego got all bruised when on one occasion, during a two-and-a-half-hour summit meeting, he spoke for only twenty minutes...the rest of the time was filled by the Führer in an exhaustive account full of military details. Hitler often taunted talkative intellectuals but for an anti-intellectual, the German head of state could also be quite long-winded.
The Duce later complained about the acquired affronts to son-in-law Ciano, who diligently summarized everything in his illustrious diary. (3) Mussolini had made things unnecessarily difficult for himself by refusing an interpreter out of vanity, assuming that he had a perfect command of the German language. That was not the case, although Mussolini possessed more language skills than Prime Minister Daladier (France) or his counterpart Chamberlain (Britain) - not to mention Hitler (and Stalin).
So it was not that Mussolini had any principled objection to war. On the contrary. He wanted delay, not postponement. War, in his view, stemmed from his own fascist doctrine and was inevitable to revive the Imperium Romanum. Consequently, the Duce wanted to participate in a full-scale war on the European continent, if only to secure the largest possible share of the spoils at a ‘post-war peace conference’. For the time being, Mussolini declared himself to be ‘non-belligerent’. At least that included the word 'bellum,' albeit with a prefix. He supported Hitler, but not yet by force of arms. That did not happen until June 1940.
Duce's counterplay
The asymmetrical balance of power did not preclude some counterplay on Mussolini's part. To buy time, in late August 1939 he requested Hitler to supply him with necessary materials and raw materials so that he could 'stand his ground in a future large-scale European conflict'. 'Our contribution can ... be without delay if Germany immediately supplies us with the means of war and raw materials to engage in the struggle which the French and the British will predominantly direct against us ...'
In an understated response, Hitler asked what he thought he would need. Thereupon Mussolini earnestly sent him a wish list in which he politely requested the delivery of... totally absurd quantities of titanium, tungsten, nickel, tin, turpentine oil, potassium salts, rosin, rubber, toluene, sodium nitrate, copper, steel, mineral oils, coal and also a generous portion of "molybdenum," a virtually unknown and untraceable raw material, according to Scurati. Plus ‘immediate dispatch’ of 150 batteries 90 mm and associated ammunition to protect the crucial industrial plants. With this, Mussolini said, I can sustain the armed struggle for twelve months....
To this, of course, Hitler could not possibly comply - and that was exactly what was intended. Scurati calls this backlash ‘the bluff of a desperate comedian’, but at the same time speaks of a ‘humiliation’ for the Nazi leadership. Hitler was boiling inside, but remained composed and retreated briefly to his desk. He needed Italy as his southern backing in the Mediterranean, where Britain was active. That is why he had also renounced claims to the Italian Alto Adige (South Tyrol), where many German-speaking Austrian s lived. He definitively awarded this often disputed area to Mussolini. That was, it must be said quite an achievement for an aggressive Pan-Germanist par excellence. During his visit to Rome, Hitler said: ‘Well, after about two thousand years (!), today the Roman state is rising through you, Benito Mussolini, from traditions of long ago to new life…it is my unshakable will and also my political testament to the German people who regard the natural border of the Alps between us as inviolable’. France, the United States, but especially Great Britain tried to extricate Mussolini from his alliance with Hitler until May 1940. In vain.
Another countermove was the Italian campaign against the powerless Albania across the Adriatic. The protectorate of Albania served as a springboard to Greece. This military action took place three weeks after the - unannounced - military occupation of Czechoslovakia by German troops in March 1939 and was undertaken without prior consultation with ally Germany. Now I am doing something besides Hitler, he must have thought. All over the world, Mussolini said, the great democracies had established protectorates and colonies - so why not Italy? He was convinced that those French and British 'pinstripe suits' wouldn't dare intervene anyway....
He also stepped out of his role when he gave a candid analysis of the situation in Europe including the infamous non-aggression treaty between the Soviet Union and Germany, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939. In earlier years, the two countries had been each other's ideological mortal enemies. Mussolini's analysis is one of many documents Scurati pulled from under the dust during his thorough research.‘Teacher’ Hitler received the letter on his desk on January 5 1940. Northwestern Europe was not yet occupied. Duce, six years his senior commented the ‘devil’s pact’ to Hitler as follows:
Führer,
(… ) I, who was born a revolutionary and have not changed my thinking, I tell you that you cannot permanently sacrifice the principles of your Revolution to the tactical demands of a given moment. You cannot abandon the anti-Semitic and anti-Bolshevik flag, which you have flown for 20 years and for which many of your comrades have died... Let me believe that this will not happen. The solution to your Lebensraum lies in Russia and not elsewhere... Until 4 months ago, Russia was world enemy number one: it could not have become friend number one and is not. This deeply shocked the fascists in Italy and perhaps also many National Socialists in Germany. On the day we eliminated Bolshevism, we remained faithful to our two Revolutions. Then it will be the turn of the large democracies (...)'.
But Hitler had a different order in mind. In the spring of 1940, he attacked northwestern Europe first, and only a year later was it the turn of the Red Tsar's reign of terror.
Demonstration of American Italians against Hitler and Mussolini in New York.
Indoor resistance
The strained friendly relationship with Hitler-Germany was not made any easier for Mussolini by the fact that several exponents of the regime were downright dismissive of Germans in general and the mustachioed upper neighbor in particular (just as Mussolini had been in the past). For example, the renowned poet-dandy and war aviator Gabriele d'Annunzio casually characterized Hitler as ‘Attila the phone painter’. King and Pope both also had their reservations. Pius XI sided against that "pagan idolater," and Victor Emanuel III likened him to a psychiatric case’.
Foreign Minister Ciano also voiced objections to cooperation with Germany but it was basically limited to a ‘dashing parlor resistance over tea’, according to one of Scurati's many apt descriptions. He shied away from a break with his father-in-law. It was unthinkable for him to put an end to his life of luxury that took place on golf courses, in his seaplane that he flew back and forth along the shores of Capri or sitting at the edge of cobalt blue pools, always busy ‘refining his art of seduction’. His marriage to Mussolini's favorite daughter Edda - who, like her husband, did not care about ecclesiastical vows - Ciano was happy to maintain because a divorce would, in his own words, make him .a lost man’. Moreover, Ciano hoped he would succeed his father-in-law as Duce. The main Fascist opponent of the alliance with Hitler was the illustrious ocean pilot Italo Balbo, one of the very few who dared to tutor Mussolini.
He had been one of the captains of the merciless thugs when hundreds of party and union offices, people's homes and cooperatives were demolished or reduced to ashes. And he had been at the forefront of the subsequent March on Rome in 1922.(3) Balbo was not only fiercely anti-German (and more Britain-centered), but openly condemned the lowly anti-Semitic legislation anno 1938.
Even after 1938, he kept in touch with his Jewish fascist friend, Renzo Ravenna, the mayor of Ferrara, kicked out of office by Mussolini. But Balbo had to watch his step.
None of these anti-German critics made the decision to actually put Mussolini on guard. Resisting was obviously not an option; the ‘dissidents’ themselves had diligently helped to eliminate the resistance, leaving no stone unturned. To son-in-law Ciano, the Duce let slip: ‘If he [Balbo] thinks he can fish in murky waters inland, he should know that I can put anyone against the wall, no one excepted’.
In April and May 1940, Denmark, Norway and the Low Countries were forced to surrender by Hitler-Germany. German film newsreels were shown in Italy that included the bombing of Rotterdam that caused carnage. Nearly eight hundred deaths were counted. Eighty thousand people were left homeless. On that same day, May 14, 1940, the Duce said in a private conversation with girlfriend Claretta Petacci: '(...) Yes, yes, I am sorry for the Dutch, but they don't deserve any better.' Indeed, Belgium and Holland were 'repulsively Anglophile’.
In June 1940, when, to everyone's surprise, the Wehrmacht had overrun half of France in a lightning-fast advance from the north, Mussolini considered the time had come to insert himself manu militari into the fray and opened the attack on southeastern France. Scurati ends his book with the Duce's war speech, which he delivered ‘with both thumbs tucked into the leather belt’ on the 10th of that month. From the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia in Rome, Mussolini shouted, surrounded by party bosses and in the sweltering heat, "Fighters on land, on sea and in the air! Black shirts of the revolution and the legions! Men and women of Italy, of the Empire [Ethiopia] and Royal Albania! Hear!...An hour appointed by destiny strikes in our homeland...We enter the arena of battle against the plutocratic, reactionary democracies...'. One of the banners read "Let France fool around, we want Nice and Savoy! Cheers rang out but a secret report intended for the General Directorate of Public Security, Political Police Department, contained a remarkable phrase: 'No woman applauded.'
That same month, France, led by Philippe Pétain, surrendered to Germany and Italy.
Ethiopia
Scurati titled his book Mussolini. The Last Days of Europe. But the question is legitimate where Mussolini and ‘the last days of Ethiopia' went? Why did the author omit this war of destruction in the Horn of Africa except for a few sentences? This country may be outside Europe, but it is an intrinsic part of violent Italian fascism. Hundreds of thousands of troops - some of them indigenous auxiliaries from neighbouring Eritrea and Somaliland; countries that had already joined
Italy when Mussolini had yet to learn to walk - invaded the country armed with flamethrowers and machine guns.
Mussolini and his sons
To the air force, the Regia Aeronautica, Mussolini personally ordered the deployment of poison gases. His sons Bruno and Vittorio were part of a squadron of fighter planes and dropped gas bombs on villages and towns. Upon returning home, a silver medal was waiting for them. Vittorio Mussolini, the older of the two, experienced the bombing flight, in his own words, as a divertente - fun. Galeazzo Ciano also monetized his military pilot's license. Head of state Emperor Haile Selassie had only a dozen planes and a handful of pilots at his disposal; anti-aircraft artillery was virtually non-existent. Because of this war, Ethiopia lamented proportionately as many deaths as the most severely affected countries after the end of World War I, with the exception of Serbia. (5)
In the second volume of Scurati's Mussolini tetralogy, M. The Man of Providence, dozens of thoughtful pages were devoted to the colonial war of Mussolini cum suis in Libya, which was brought to its knees in 1932. Thus, there is no reason to believe that the author intended to downplay this much larger, Ethiopian drama or suffered from amnesia. (6)
One possible explanation for this omission could be the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine initiated in February 2022 - with all its ongoing escalation. Did Scurati perhaps feel the need to sound the alarm and, with his book on ‘the last days of Europe’, urge the (still free) West to show the utmost urgency in providing military support to Ukraine's armed struggle for independence? After all, this was only getting off to a slow start in the early stages. Did Scurati perhaps want to warn Europe not to get stuck again in a half-hearted, disastrous mindset - lest the continent once again face its "last days”?
The Corriere della Sera's August 28, 2022 interview with Antonio Scurati, six months after the murderous Russian invasion, is instructive. In it he expressed that he ‘saw a strong symmetry [in] the staggering passivity of certain European liberal democracies’. He pointed to the imperialist invasion of countries under the guise of ‘liberation of minorities’. Adolf Hitler did that to Czechoslovakia and Poland, Vladimir Putin in turn came to 'liberate' Crimea, Georgia and Ukraine. In short, according to Scurati, Europe's last days are once again upon us if Europe does not more vigorously resist - this time Russian - aggression. To what extent this familiar parallel holds true is secondary; what matters is Scurati's reasoning as a possible explanation for the curious omission. Was de Milanese professor of literature perhaps in a hurry to publish, and so he was forced to delete the drama ‘Ethiopia’?
Sculpture of Mussolini in Adowa (Ethiopia).
Whatever may have been the motive behind this forgotten chapter, it remains a remarkable omission. Historian and Italy-specialist Aram Mattioli of the University of Luxzern, when asked, says: 'Erstaunlich ist es...dass in einem Werk dieses monumentalen Seitenumfang [ca. 1800 pages] ausgerechnet der von M. entfesselte Angriffskrieg gegen Äthiopien kaum eine Erwähnung wert befunden wird. Dieser Horrorkrieg war zentral in der Geschichte des faschistisches Regimes und M. der Hauptverantwortliche für dieses Inferno’ (email dated October 2, 2023) ['It is astonishing...that in a work of this monumental size (ca. 1800 pages) the war of aggression against Ethiopia unleashed by M. is hardly worth a mention. This horror war was central to the history of the fascist regime and M. was the main perpetrator of this inferno'.
It stands out all the more because Antonio Scurati has otherwise demonstrated a thorough research in slightly ironic and sensitive style given to few.
notes
1) Previous volumes: M. The Man of the Century (2019) and M. The Man of Providence (2021). The title is reminiscent of a book by Romanian diplomat Georgi Gafencu: The last days of Europe: a diplomatic journey in 1939, published after the war.
2) Not only Hitler showed great interest in Italian fascism. Someone like Winston Churchill also joined its admirers for longer than he later loved. See also the dutch study of Hans Geleijnse, Fascisme en de goede dictator. Oordelen en dwalingen van de Nederlandse pers (1920-1940) (2022) [Fascism and the good dictator. Judgments and errors of the Dutch press (1920 - 1940).
3) Galeazzo Ciano, Diary. 1937-1943 (1980; 1946). To the 1980 Italian edition, Edda, the beloved daughter of the Italian dictator, wrote that her husband's diaries were ‘absolutely authentic’ (...) ‘nothing has been changed or omitted’. That is not the case. It has been shown that Ciano tampered in a few places to diminish his own role in the fascist debacle. The consensus, however, is that the diaries nevertheless contain many valuable insights about top political figures and about international relations, particularly, of course, with Hitler Germany and his father-in-law Mussolini. Any kind of morality in Ciano's view of international politics one looks for in vain.
4) This March was commemorated last year. Murals appeared here and there. In Rome, a parade took place with flag display and all. A large banner could be seen bearing a portrait of the cruel dictator: '100 years later, the March continues' the banner read. Scurati's reaction: 'The authorities let it happen, while glorification of fascism is forbidden by law' (De Volkskrant, Dec. 29, 2022).
5) See Aram Mattioli, 'Entgrenzte Kriegsgewalt. Der italienische Giftgaseinsatz in Abyssinien 1935-1936' in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (VfZ) , 3/2003.
6) Someone who did suffer from severe 'amnesia' was the businessman and former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who died on June 12, 2023. During his life as a politician (1994 - 2013), he stated with regard to the Mussolini era that Italy was only derailed under the influence of Hitler, in the late 1930s (i.e., not under the influence of Mussolini). According to him, the Fascist dictatorship had been ‘gentle’ in character and the Duce had not killed anyone.
In doing so, he paved the way for a partial rehabilitation of Mussolini.
In an hour-and-a-half broadcast of the thoughtful Dutch podcast Betrouwbare Bronnen (Reliable Sources) (June 16, 2023 ) on Berlusconi's life, this aspect escaped the attention of the creators.
