Every once in awhile people will say things like Hitler wasn't such a bad guy, he loved his dog or Mussolini did a lot of good like making the trains run on time in Italy and he also filled a few pot holes. This man Mussolini was a freakin facist who was responsible for killing women and children. Get the movie It's a beautiful Life for Christ sake.

The Mussolini Fallacy is believing that, because Mussolini made the trains run on time (if he did), that excuses his other terrible acts. So since people think Mussolini made the trains run on time it doesn't matter that he sent little children to the gas chambers and caused the destruction of Italy. Go figure.

A tribute to Mussolini. I couldn't believe how it glorified him as a great leader. I remember the stories my Mother told me about him, this man was out of control and destructive to Italy. During WW2 he first sides with France, then turns his back on them and joins the Axis of Power, Germany and Japan. What was he thinking, Mussolini could have done great things but like all out of control dictators they ruin everything. Wow that sounds familiar, we have that village idiot in office right now in the US doing the same thing. They just never learn from history do they.

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini made the trains run on time! Yeah right!

The Italian railway system improved a great deal during the 1920's and 1930's, the repair work had already been done before Mussolini and the fascists came to power.. but Mussolini took the credit. More importantly, those who actually lived in Italy during the Mussolini era knew that the Italian railways legendary punctual timetable was far more myth than reality.

The myth of Mussolini's trains lives on, albeit with a different slant: rather than serving as a fictitious symbol of the benefits of fascism, it is now offered as a sardonic example that something good can result even from the worst of circumstances.

No one can deny that the modern world is full of political and (or spiritual leaders for that matter) letting us down so why does his or her apparent lack of integrity surprise us? Furthermore, before attempting to answer particular questions I believe that it is essential to acquire a sound factual knowledge of Italian history.

I am always amused, moreover, when people make statements that incorrectly and unfairly misrepresent the facts or when they cite movies (which they appear willingly to embrace as the definitive truth) that not only fictionalize and romanticize history, they propagate a relativist and indifferent attitude toward truth itself.

Musolini was not a good man. We don’t need to be rocket scientists to realize that. However, he was not half as bad as he has been portrayed. He certainly wasn’t evil or a fool. Moreover, Mussolini only really gained what you could describe as dictatorial powers after the Lateran treaties whereby he could guarantee loyalty from Catholics who may well have not been supporters of the fascist regime.

In actual fact his regime did have mass appeal at the time because they got some things done, unlike democracy, especially Italian democracy. But did he make the trains run on time? This is debatable. The Italian railway system had fallen into a poor state after WW1, although it did improve substantially during the 1920’s.

Mussolini also launched several public construction programmes and government initiatives throughout Italy to combat economic setbacks and unemployment. Not all of these programmes were successful - there is nothing new in this as even today there is no quick fix to economic and social problems.

Let’s now turn to Mussolini’s apparent volta faccia.

The Hoare-Laval Pact was drafted by the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Samuel Hoare and the French Prime Minister, Pierre Laval for the partitioning of Ethiopia, as a means of ending the Italo-Ethiopian War. It aimed to satisfy the demand by Mussolini that the independent nation of Abyssinia (as Ethiopia was then called) become an Italian colony. According to the Pact, Italy would have gained the best parts of Ogaden and Tigrè, and economic influence over all the southern part of Ethiopia. Ethiopia itself would have had a guaranteed corridor to the sea, until the port of Assab. Mussolini was ready to agree with this but the plan was leaked and denounced as a sell-out of the Abyssinians by a French newspaper.

After that the British parliament (probably swayed by public opinion) refused to ratify the pact and both Hoare and Laval were forced to resign. Therefore the collapse of Hoare-Laval Pact in 1935 seemed to also have a negative impact on the Stresa front against Germany, which too had collapsed. Moreover, since he now faced sanctions, I guess Mussolini felt betrayed by both France and Britain and concluded that it was time to change sides.

Interestingly, however, Germany wasn’t even providing Mussolini with any backing on this whatsoever. Not only had Hitler been providing arms to the Negus, he had also offered arms and warplanes to Britain. Would the French parliament for example, think it a bad deal that favoured Britain too much if such an offer were to be accepted?

At the same time, Germany was neither imposing sanctions on Italy nor telling Mussolini what to do. We could infer from this perhaps that Hitler was playing a calculated game, whereas Mussolini was allowing his bruised ego to cloud his better judgement and thus play the game using German cards. I suspect he felt that he could deal with his so-called friends who betrayed him by threatening an alliance with Hitler, whom he really despised. Add to this the fact that Mussolini wasn’t into democracy then I suppose you could say he would be better off joining forces with another dictatorship, but I’m not really convinced that this is what happened.

What I find particularly fascinating is that both Britain and France had already extended their empires along with their influence as it were, and then came Mussolini some 40 years later to acquire his own African empire, only to find that colonialism was starting to go out of fashion.

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CJ
Magical Marche &
Luchetti & Partners Studio Legale Tributario

I suppose I agree with what you say CJ, but its a bit difficult for me to see only a bruised ego and a poor misunderstood man when his direct orders had my family lead a life of true suffering throughout WWII.

I don't think anyone can deny that he had a big ego - but the same can be said of all those in power. Whoever they are and whatever their direct orders and decisions are, they affect all of us - just look at the of the effects of the war in Iraq for example.

My mother's family consisted of ten children and my grandfather worked on the railways. Life wasn't easy, but they did benefit from some of Mussolini's programmes.

I think that one of the most significant achievements of his regime was the public work programme launched in 1928, whose crowning glory was the draining of the maleria infested and inhabited marshes south of Rome. Even Roman emperors, popes, kings and other prime ministers before him had tried and failed. Millions of hectares of unusable land was converted to farmable land.

No one can deny that he was a controversial figure, and I am not saying that he was a saint, but rather am suggesting that any balanced judgment of Mussolini today needs to take account of some of the achievements as well as the failures.

Lastly, I disagree with Villa's assertion that "This man Mussolini was a freakin facist who was responsible for killing women and children" when in actual fact that once the Holocaust was under way for example, Mussolini and his fascists refused to deport Jews to the Nazi death camps, thus saving more lives than even Oscar Schindler. What the post war propaganda machine conveniently obscured was the fact that once the liberation of Italy had taken place, 35,000 Italians were slaughtered without trial by the Communist dominated elements of the resistance and that a further 15,000 Italians were slaughtered by Tito's communist partisans - not because they were fascists, but because they were Italian.

__________________
CJ
Magical Marche &
Luchetti & Partners Studio Legale Tributario

Well I agree with CJ. The statement "This man Mussolini was a freakin facist who was responsible for killing women and children. Get the movie It's a beautiful Life for Christ sake. "... Is very incorrect - Just look at the numbers of jewish actually killed or deported from Italy. Mussolini at the beginning of his carrer declared had absolutely nothing against Jewish and some jeish even joined the fascist party.
He was forced by Hitler toward the end of his regime to turn against the Jewish. He turned anti-jewish toward the end of the 30s but Killing was not his idea. Only when the German invaded Italy ( after at all effects Mussolini lost his power ) jewish people where sent to the camps in Germany / Poland etc.

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"A tribute to Mussolini. I couldn't believe how it glorified him as a great leader. I remember the stories my Mother told me about him, this man was out of control and destructive to Italy. During WW2 he first sides with France, then turns his back on them and joins the Axis of Power, Germany and Japan. What was he thinking, Mussolini could have done great things but like all out of control dictators they ruin everything. Wow that sounds familiar, we have that village idiot in office right now in the US doing the same thing. They just never learn from history do they."

On the 10 September 1943 the Germans occupied Rome, Mussolini’s officials perhaps guided by Mussolini himself tried to substitute halfa*s-measures to thwart deportation to the gas chambers in the death camps in the east.

But after his captivity on the Gran Sasso, Mussolini was a deflated balloon, and the Italian government was much weakened, the Gestapo wasted no time, aided by the Jewish registration lists created in the days when Mussolini and his fascist government had issued anti-Jewish decrees.

It was most unfortunate that many of the native and refugee Jews who made their way south following the Allied forces landings in Calabria should have waited in Rome, when the Germans occupied the city on the 10 September 1943 about 8,000 Jews fell into German hands, a sixth of the Jewish population of Italy.

By the end of September 1943 it was known to the German Embassies in Rome and the Vatican City that Himmler intended to send these Jews to the Auschwitz – Birkenau death camp. On the 30 September Bishop Hudal, rector of the German church in Rome warned General Stahel, the Town Commandant, that the Pope might take a position against the deportations.

Stahel decided not to carry out the deportations without the permission of the Foreign Office, at the same time Mollhausen, the German Consul-General in Rome, wrote personally to Ribbentrop, recommending internment in Italian labour camps rather than deportation.

The response could have been predicted, Ribbentrop would not intervene with the SD, from whom Stahel took his orders – the first round-up of Jews in Rome occurred on 18 October 1943.

The always compliant Baron Ernst von Weizsacker was now very much on the spot as Ambassador to the Holy See. Much was made at Weizsacker trial of the warnings which he gave both to the Vatican and the Jewish community leaders of the impending action.

The only certain intervention of von Weizsacker is the forwarding of Bishop Hudal’s protest to the Security Police commander, Obersturmbannfuhrer Hubert Kappler. But that was only on 22 October 1943 after the round-up had already taken place.


According to Gerhard Gumpert, Weizsacker’s First Secretary, Kappler was persuaded that Hudal’s warning to Stahel had been inspired by the Pope. Kappler was now too frightened to continue the actions.

This version of events does not ring true firstly because Kappler did inh fact continue the round-ups, and secondly because the action of 18 October had taken place without the least protest from the Vatican.

The best witness is Weizsacker himself, writing to Dr Karl Ritter, Minister for Special Purposes at the Foreign Office in Berlin:

“Although pressed on all sides, the Pope did not allow himself to be drawn into any demonstration of reproof at the deportation of the Jews of Rome. The only sign of disapproval was a veiled allusion in Osservatore Romano on 25-28 October, in which only a restricted number of people could recognise a reference to the Jewish question.”

Pope Pius Xll negative attitude towards the Jews, he never renounced the 1933 concordant with Hitler and who only denounced the National Socialist regime, only after the German surrender in spring 1945.

However, there can be no doubt regarding the sympathy and practical assistance of the clergy in Rome, monasteries and convents sheltered a very large portion of the Jews who were warned in time and who went into hiding.

Nevertheless, on the night of 18 October 1943 1,270 Jews were arrested of whom 235 had to be released. On 23 October 1,035 Jewish men, women and children arrived at Auschwitz- Birkenau, and 839 people were murdered in the gas chambers.

Until 4 June 1944 when the Allied forces liberated Rome the Germans continued to deport Jews in small batches, approximately a quarter of Rome’s Jews were deported while the rest spent eight haunted months in hiding.

Adreatina Caves where 335 were murdered

Only 102 Jews of the 2091 deportees survived the war, another 75 victims were murdered on 24 March 1944 in the Adreatina Tunnel, for which SS – Hauptstumfuhrer Erich Preibke who had fled to Argentina after the war had ended, but was extradited to Italy to stand trial. He was at first tried and released. Then on a re-trial, he was found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to serve fifteen years in prison on 14 April 1997.

On 23 March a bomb was thrown at a company of German Security Police marching along the Via Rasella. On learning that 32 of them had died, Hitler ordered the death of ten Italians for each German.

The order was conveyed through Field-Marshall Kesselring, General von Mackensen of the 14th Army, and General Malzer, Town Commandant of Rome. Finally, it was passed to the executioner, the same Obersturmbannfuhrer Kappler, who was responsible for the mass round-up of Jews in October 1943.

The 335 victims were shot under Kappler’s eyes in the Ardeatina Tunnel, they included people whom the Italian fascist police had selected at random, plus 75 Jews whom Kappler had thrown in as a matter of course.

Martin Sandberger

As soon as the armistice was announced in September 1943 a police commando of the SS left Novara for Lake Maggiore, arresting numerous Jews in Licino, Stresa, Baveno, and Pallanza. These Jews disappeared completely, but a number of bodies were said to be recovered by fishermen from the lake.

Incidents like this were common but, after a few weeks, casual murder was replaced by methodical destruction, early in October 1943, Martin Sandberger, a former Einsatzgruppen commander in Russia, took over the Gestapo in Mussolini’s capital Verona, while Theo Dannecker, who had been Eichmann’s representative in Paris and Sofia, became Jewish Commissary for Italy.

The task which confronted Sandberger and Dannecker was complicated by the dispersed nature of the Jewish population in Italy, but a bonus was the availability of a number of empty prisoner of war camps north of the Apennines. The German Army had succeeded in removing the British prisoners, who were held by the Italians, at a time when Badoglio’s dealings with the Allies were still in doubt.

Fossoli di Carpi Camp in 1943

Under the Fascist Republic, the SD filled these camps with the Italian opposition, the Yugoslav partisans and any Jews they could find, all being destined for deportation to the Reich.

There was however, a time-lag between the Rome deportation of 18 October 1943 and the deportations from the North Italian camps, which did not begin until February 1944, a law of the Italian Fascist Republic was announced on 1 December 1943, ordering the committal of all Jews to concentration camps.



About a fifth of the Jews living in Italy, partly refugees from abroad and partly the remains of the native community who had not gone underground or emigrated, were rounded up during the twenty months of the Fascist Republic.

The number of names of Jewish deportees, received by the Search Committee for Deported Jews, is 10,271, of whom some 2824 were sent to Auschwitz in 1944 from a single collecting centre, the camp at Fossoli di Carpi near Modena. Since this was classed as a mere transit camp, families were not broken up nor the sexes segregated.




Primo Levi

Although it was handed over to the SD after the Badoglio armistice, the administration stayed in Italian hands and was relatively mild. According to Primo Levi, who survived Auschwitz, it was even possible to get drunk.

The Jews were sent to Auschwitz whenever the camp, which contained other categories of internees, became too full. 650 Jews, some of them from Tripoli, left on 22 February 1944 arriving in the Auschwitz – Birkenau death camp on 26 February, following the usual selection 526 people were killed in the gas chambers.


Primo Levi who was in this transport recalled in his memoirs:

“With the absurd precision to which we later had to accustom ourselves, the Germans held the roll call. At the end the officer asked “Wieviel Stuck?” (How many pieces?) The corporal saluted smartly and replied that there were “six hundred and fifty pieces and that all was in order.”

Then they loaded us on to the buses and took us to the station of Carpi. Here the train was waiting for us, with our escort for the journey. Here we received the first blows – and it was so new and senseless that we felt no pain, neither in body nor in spirit. Only a profound amazement – how can one hit a man without anger?

An Italian Jew who survived the war disguised as a priest in the Vatican from October 1943 to June 1944

Italian Jews at forced labor at a lumber mill in Gorizia, Italy

Through the slit, known and unknown names of Austrian cities, Salzburg, Vienna, then Czech, finally Polish names. On the evening of the fourth day the cold became intense – the train ran through interminable black pine forests, climbing perceptibly. The snow was high.

It must have been a branch line as the stations were small and almost deserted, during the halts, no one tried any more to communicate with the outside world – we felt ourselves by now “on the other side.”


"There was a long halt in open country – the train started up with extreme slowness, and the convoy stopped for the last time, in the dead of night, in the middle of a dark and silent plain. That dark and silent plain was Auschwitz."

On 30 June 1944 another transport from Fossoli di Carpi nearly 1,000 Jews arrived in Auschwitz – Birkenau, from which 582 Jews are murdered in the gas chambers,




Kurt Franz in Italy

The transport from Fossoli di Carpi which conveyed 300 Jews to Auschwitz –Birkenau was the final transport from that camp, as the Allied forces were approaching the Gothic Line, and the province of Modena had become a combat zone.

The chief transit camp was now Gries near Bolzano, 180 miles closer to Vienna and Auschwitz. From Gries a final small transport reached Auschwitz-Birkenau on 28 October 1944, a few days before gassing was halted in early November.

Most of the Gries transports went to Mauthausen concentration camp, where the rate of human destruction was just as dreadful as Auschwitz. On 25 February 1945, a transport of 150 Jews returned to the Gries Sammellager, because the Mauthausen train was blocked by a successful Allied bombing raid on the Brenner Pass.

One has to compare the results of this unintentional air attack on a strongly defended Brenner Pass with the Allies decision not to bomb the railway lines heading to Auschwitz- Birkenau, were relatively undefended, how many thousands of Jews perished, as a result of this strategy.





SS/SD group photo at San Sabba

About 5000 Jews were shipped to Auschwitz and the Reich from other Italian towns and transit camps, a collective transport from Rome, Trieste and Fiume reached Auschwitz in December 1943, and 132 Jews were sent from Trieste. This particular transport arrived on the 4 April 1944, and 103 Jews were killed in the gas chambers.


The case of Trieste was unusual since, as a former Austrian city, it was incorporated into the Reich on 23 September 1943, as the capital of a new Gau, Trieste – Kustenland. Friedrich Rainer was appointed Gauleiter and his friend from the Austrian Anschluss days of 1938, Odilo Globocnik, was appointed as Higher SS and Police Leader by Himmler.

Odilo Globocnik, who was born in Trieste on 21 April 1904, and he brought with him to Trieste a number of SS and Police members who had served under him as part of Aktion Reinhard, the mass murder programme of Polish Jews.

Before the war there were more than 5,000 Jews in Trieste, but less than half remained behind when the Germans occupied Trieste. There was a round-up on the 9 October 1943 and a second on the 19 January 1944, when Dr Morpurgo, secretary of the Community Council, was taken, and the old-peoples home, “Pia Casa Gentilomo” was liquidated.





Hackenholt (center, right) in Trieste after receiving the Iron Cross

The 70 inmates from the old-peoples home were kept for seven days in the rice warehouses at San Sabba before being shipped to Auschwitz, where they arrive in the camp on 2 February 1944.



The buildings of Riseria di San Sabba, in the outskirts of Trieste were constructed in 1913 and had been vacant for years, when the Germans took them over. The warehouses were first used as a prison -however, in October 1943 the complex was converted into a Polizeihaftlager – (police detention camp).

The premises were ideal for this purpose, three high buildings which included cells, storage rooms, dressmaking and shoe-making workshops and living quarters for the SS and police staff.




Wirth & Hering at San Sabba

The tall old chimney, in combination with an enlarged old oven was used for cremating thousands of victims a small gas chamber was built in the courtyard. The installations were made ready under the supervision of Erwin Lambert, the “flying architect” of T4 and Aktion Reinhard, who supervised the improved gas chambers at Treblinka and Sobibor.


The crematorium was tested on 4 April 1944 with the burning of seventy corpses, from 20 October 1943 until early 1945 approximately 25,000 partisans and Jews were interrogated and tortured at San Sabba, between 3,000 to 5,000 of them were killed, either by shooting, beating or in the gas chamber.
SS –

Sturmbannfuhrer Christian Wirth was the camp commandant until he was killed by partisans on 26 May 1944, he was replaced by SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer Dieter Allers who remained as camp commandant until the dissolution of the camp in April 1945.

In late April 1945 as Yugoslav partisans prepared to liberate Trieste, on 29 April 1945 the Germans blew up the crematorium in order to destroy the evidence of their crimes.

The original Synagogue in Trieste


The camp staff fled the camp and went into hiding, hoping to escape justice, there was no trial for the crimes committed at San Sabba.

Returning to the history of Trieste on the 25 January 1944 Globocnik dissolved the Community Council and closed the synagogue, and thereafter the Jews of Trieste led an underground life.

On the 30 April 1944 23 Jewish men and women who enjoyed Swiss consular protection arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau, they were deported because a bomb had exploded in a German officer’s mess in the Via Gegha.

During the whole period of the German occupation, some 600 Trieste Jews were deported to the death camps and only 400 -500 living in great destitution were discovered after the entry of the 8th Army on 7 May 1945.

A very impressive set of regurgitated quotes but that's all they are. Considering that most of what you list occurred after Mussolini was stripped of power, I would find it hard to conclude that he was solely responsible.

In total about 8,000 Jews were deported to the Nazi death camps during the occupation. About 95% of them perished there. The remaining 40,000 Jews in Italy survived because of the refusal of Italians, as well as some government and military authorities, to cooperate with the Nazis both before and during Germany's brutal occupation. In many instances, Italians actively assisted Jews by obstructing or not cooperating with deportations, or helped them escape to unoccupied southern Italy. Eighty percent of Italian Jews survived the Holocaust, while elsewhere in Europe as many as 80% of Jews were murdered.

__________________
CJ
Magical Marche &
Luchetti & Partners Studio Legale Tributario