Lessons for Our Times from Mussolini's Son-in-Law, Galeazzo Ciano

The diaries of Benito Mussolini's son-in-law, Count Galeazzo Ciano are, indeed, remarkable, as Bill posted after he read them 7 years ago.

They are worth revisiting at this time and, in fact, a new edition is due out in March.  Although we generally avoid politics in this blog, the parallels with Trump are glaringly obvious.  And the parallels extend to the relationship.  This is a cautionary tale for another son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Ciano went from an art and drama critic who was critical of Fascism to Il Duce's foreign minister, which seems like a stretch.  The diaries don't clue us in to his "conversion," but start only after Ciano has married Mussolini's daughter, Edda, converted to Fascism whole-heartedly, and become, at age 33, the Italian government's Minister for Foreign Affairs.

Covering 1939-1943, these are diaries of a government official, perhaps the closest advisor to Mussolini in these years when Italy went to war against the Allies as part of the Axis with, primarily, Germany and with Japan.

Ciano's almost daily observations show us how a charismatic leader whose ego is his defining motivation can lead into war an apparently unwilling nation, whose people he often despises and castigates.  In the end, Ciano decides, it's Mussolini's ego, in reaction to foreign press reports, that drives him into the arms of Hitler.  Mussolini is a man of leadership skills and talent, according to Ciano, but he listens to those who prop up his views, berates the press and the Church, and cares mainly about his own prestige.

As Minister for Foreign Affairs for 7 years, Ciano had an intimate view of Il Duce, and he wrote regularly about the Italian Fascist leader's views and moods.

As the diary begins, the Italians clearly have their own design on empire.  They see Albania, for example, simply as one of their provinces, and when they take it, international reaction is almost nonexistent, Ciano notes - "the inertia of democracies."  Both men want a new "Roman Mediterranean Empire," but both hope to achieve it without war.

The Italian people don't want a pact with Germany, a country with whom they share few values, but it is Il Duce, not the majority of the people, who decides, says Ciano early on in his diary.

While Mussolini seems to agree with Ciano in 1939 that war is not desirable, the Duce "says that honor compels him to march with Germany.  Finally he states that he wants his part of the booty in Croatia and Dalmatia."  So it's ego and loot that's important here.

While Ciano sees himself as trying to speak truth to power with Mussolini, he laments "I have been completely abandoned by the large group of men who are concerned with telling the Duce only those things that please him.  To tell the truth is the least of their cares."

Ciano also views the Duce as focusing his attention "mostly on matters of form; there is hell to pay...if an officer doesn't know how to lift his legs in the Roman step....Does he fear the truth so much that he is unwilling to listen?"

In late 1939, Mussolini becomes "more and more restless.  He feels that he is out of this great struggle and in one way or another he would like to find a way to fit into it....He was quite pleased with an English article which said that the Italian people might fight at the side of Germany for reasons of honor.  This is also his point of view, and even when there are a thousand voices to the contrary, a single anonymous voice saying that he is right is sufficient, and he will cling to it and overlook, indeed deny, the others."

What concerns Mussolini most, as Ciano quotes him, is this:  "It is not possible that of all people I should become the laughingstock of Europe.  I have to stand for one humiliation after another."

Mussolini becomes more fascinated with Hitler as Hitler achieves military successes.  And that success, writes Ciano, "has had a favorable echo among the Italian people who, as Mussolini says, 'is a whore who prefers the winning mate.'"

Mussolini is also a believer in his own charisma:  He has written Hitler, "The feeling of the Italian people is unanimously against the Allies."  Ciano responds, "Where does he get this information? Is he really sure of what he writes, or is it not true that, conscious of his personal influence, he is thinking of the opportune moment for modifying the national mood at his whim."

Ciano argues against war because he distrusts the Germans, thinking they are playing the Italians, and he knows the Italians do not have the armaments and training for this war, though the sycophants around Mussolini tell him otherwise - "the clownish politicians, who have become exaggeratedly pro-German."

Ciano cannot stop Mussolini at this point:  "it is not that he wants to obtain this or that; what he wants is war, and, even if he were to obtain by peaceful means double what he claims, he would refuse." On May 29, 1940, Ciano notes, "Rarely have I seen Mussolini so happy.  He has realized his dream: that of becoming the military leader of the country at war."  Ciano adds:  "I am sad, very sad.  The adventure begins.  May God help Italy!"

When France capitulates quickly, Ciano finds "Mussolini dissatisfied.  This sudden peace disquiets him. ...The war has been won by Hitler without any active military participation on the part of Italy, and it is Hitler who will have the last word. This, naturally, disturbs and saddens him."

Mussolini becomes more and more concerned with how Hitler views him, And the Duce thinks a long war might restore Italy's lost prestige.  "Oh, his eternal illusions...," writes Ciano.

As the war becomes a series of losses for Italy - in Egypt, Libya, Greece, and elsewhere - "News from all sectors is bad."  Ciano, along with the entire cabinet, is relieved of his post on February 5, 1943, and he is made Ambassador to the Holy See, an unimportant position.  Mussolini reassures him, "Your future is in my hands, and therefore you need not worry," Ciano quotes Mussolini.  "He has invited me to see him frequently....I like Mussolini, like him very much, and what I shall miss most will be my contact with him."

The diary then goes silent for almost 10 months, until December 23, 1943, its final entry.  Ciano is now writing from his prison cell in Verona.  He reiterates that he opposed the pact with Germany, but received unequivocal orders for that alliance.  It was, says Ciano, a decision "that has had such a sinister influence upon the future of the Italian people."  That decision to join with Germany in provoking and promoting war, he says, in hindsight, was "due entirely to the spiteful reaction of a dictator to the irresponsible and valueless utterances of foreign journalists."  Italy was treated by Germany "never like partners, but always as slaves....Only the base cowardice of Mussolini could, without reaction, tolerate this and pretend not to see it."

Ciano has concluded that Mussolini read reports in foreign papers that he was subservient to Hitler and to counter them, and to protect his prestige, he had to join the Axis.

The last words of the diary are these:  "I believe that an honest testimonial of the truth in this sad world may still be useful in bringing relief to the innocent and striking at those who are responsible." Galeazzo Ciano  December 23, 1943, Cell 27 of the Verona Jail."

Ciano, who took part in the ousting of Mussolini on July 25, 1943, was executed, on Mussolini's orders it appears, on January 11, 1944.  His wife, Edda, Mussolini's daughter, disguised herself and smuggled the diary out of Italy.

Dianne
PS - Although Bill read the diary 7 years ago, I read it just this year.  I believe there are reasons it continues to be reprinted from time to time, and, as I indicated at the top, right now.

The Pope and Mussolini: What - and Who - did the Church Sacrifice for Fascism?

A commemorative card of the Lateran Accords, with the ineffectual King Vittorio Emanuele III at left (his Savoy house symbol above), Mussolini center, note, with his fasce symbol above, and Pope Pius XI right, with the papal symbol - papal hat and crossed keys, above right.

Where was the Catholic Church during Mussolini's rise to power?  Did it play a role in the increasing totalitarianism of the regime, the persecution of the Jews in Italy, or the invasions of other countries that marked the Fascist regime?  Those are difficult questions, and they fit with the near total confusion most of us have about Italy's role in World War II.  The Pope and Mussolini, David Kertzer's latest book, goes a long way towards providing some answers.

Kertzer is one of the best historians of the relationship between the Catholic Church and the secular side of Italy.  Along with his knowledge of the 19th and 20th centuries in Italy, he brings to this book knowledge of the vast Church archives that were opened only within the past 10 years, as well as the detailed records of the Fascist police, who had spies in the Vatican recording every move. Thus Kertzer, as his subtitle asserts, can tell us "The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe."

Most of this story takes place in Rome, the seat of both the Pope's and Mussolini's power.  It starts with the Pope locked in the Vatican, where the Popes had been in self-imposed exile since the secular forces took over the city, and formed the state, in 1870.  As Kertzer describes it, "Although the Church no longer ran the city, Rome still seemed to have a church on every block."

The Papal rooms in the Vatican where Mussolini's
negotiators met with Pope Pius XI's representatives.

The two men - Pope Pius XI and Mussolini - came to power in 1922, the year Pius XI was elected Pope and Mussolini orchestrated the Fascist March on Rome.  They shared important values, according to Kertzer. "Neither had any sympathy for parliamentary democracy.  Neither believed in freedom of speech or freedom of association.  Both saw Communism as a grave threat.  Both thought Italy was mired in crisis and that the current political system was beyond salvation." (One might think of Donald Trump in a similar vein.)

The Chigi Palace, seat of Mussolini's government.  One of
Mussolini's "gifts" to the Pope, to try to make him more
manageable, was the Chigi library.  The Pope started life
as a librarian.

Mussolini was not instantly easy to appreciate, and his movement was violent.  To gain approval, Kertzer argues, the Fascists needed the Vatican to play a major role in legitimizing the new regime.  Mussolini had at one time been a "mangiaprete" or priest-eater, and his wife, Rachele (as distinguished from his various mistresses, including the Jewish intellectual Margherita Sarfatti), remained staunchly anti-clerical.

Kertzer discovered from his work in the archives not how the Pope and Mussolini were different, but all they had in common  Besides their common values, listed above:  "Both had explosive tempers.  Each bristled at the charge of being the patsy of the other.  Both demanded unquestioned obedience from their subordinates...Each came to be disillusioned by the other, yet dreaded what would happen if their alliance were to end."

Piazza della Pigna in central Rome, where Mussolini met with
Cardinal Pietro Gaspari as part of the negotiations that led to the
Lateran Accords.   Mussolini entered the home of  Count
Carlo Santucci from this piazza.  The Cardinal entered from the
other side.  The home had the advantage of entrances on two
different piazzas - so the meeting could be kept secret.

The mutually supportive relationship between the two men led to the Lateran Accords of 1929, signed on February 9.  The Accords gave the Vatican specific territories in Rome (but not the Pamphili gardens it also wanted); Catholicism as the state religion - allowing crucifixes back in school classrooms; recognition of religious marriages for the first time since 1870; and a lot of money.
In return, the Pope supported Fascism.  One must recall at this time, many in the US did as well.  Cardinal Spellman wrote, "These are wonderful days to be alive and still more wonderful to be alive in Rome," adding that the Pope and Mussolini would find their places in history.  And President Franklin D. Roosevelt initially was positively inclined towards Mussolini.

As the Accords were being negotiated, the Pope saw Mussolini as the "man sent by providence," one who basically was releasing the Church from its exclusion from Italian life.

From February 9, 1929 onward the Pope and Mussolini continued an awkward dance, as the Pope continually tried to have the Lateran Accords firmly enforced - especially with respect to maintaining the Catholic Action social groups - and Mussolini tried to move away from them.  My conclusion, after reading Kertzer's book, is that Mussolini outfoxed the Pope.  By threatening to take away aspects of Catholicism's power in the state institutions, the Duce led the Pope to prop him up after opposition leader Giacomo Matteotti was killed by Fascist thugs (1924) [and Mussolini thought, because of the reaction to that murder, that his regime was doomed]; successfully kept the Pope silent when Italy invaded Ethiopia (1935); and managed to convince the Pope to keep his mouth shut when the racial laws (1938) went into effect.

The lodgings for the Jesuits, next to the Church of the Gesu' in
 central Rome.  The head of the Jesuits, the Polish Wlodimir
 Ledochowski, was among the most fanatical anti-Semites
 advising Pope Pius XI.  Ledochowski, according to Kertzer, 
thwarted some of Pius XI's attempts to counter the Fascist 
racial laws.

It's clear, according to Kertzer, that this Pope was uncomfortable with all of these actions by Italy and Mussolini.  At the same time, he could not imagine the Church having as great a role in the Italian state as it had with Mussolini in power.  Pius XI even allowed the Catholic political party, the Popular Party, to be disbanded; its founder, the Sicilian priest Don Luigi Sturzo, was sent into exile in London for more than 20 years.

Pius XI was especially troubled with the racial laws, in part because he did not believe in biologically separate races, but perhaps most because he wanted Jews who had converted to Catholicism not to be treated as Jews.  Yet the Pope was surrounded by others in the Vatican who were more conservative than he, and some of whom were virulently anti-Semitic (see the reference to the Jesuit leader in the photo caption at right).  Pius XI came to despise Hitler.  He closed the Vatican museums and left Rome when Hitler made his famous 1938 visit to Rome.

"The Vatican," Kertzer demonstrates, "made a secret deal with Mussolini to refrain from any criticism of Italy's infamous anti-Semitic 'racial laws' in exchange for better treatment of Catholic organizations.  This fact is largely unknown in Italy, and despite all the evidence presented in this book, I have no doubt many will deny it."

After more than 15 years of the pas de deux with Mussolini, the Pope was ready to be somewhat more outspoken, going so far as to prepare a speech that was seen at the time as highly critical of Fascism.

But Mussolini not only outfoxed the Pope, he also outlived him.  Pius XI died February 10, 1939, and the very pro-German Eugenio Pacelli, taking the name Pius XII, succeeded him.  That speech Pius XI haf prepared was never given, and even its full text  - hardly the heavy criticism some thought at the time - was repressed until recently.

Photos were not permitted, but this painting illustrates the visit.  Mussolini went to the Vatican only once, and hated going there.  His pact with Pius XI was purely practical.  He appeared to remain a "mangiaprete," or "priest-eater."

Two very good reviews of Kertzer's book when it first appeared in 2014 are by Alexander Stile in The New York Review of Books (interestingly titled, "The Pope Who Tried"), and Steve Donoghue in The National.

Dianne

Rome's Pantheon, and the Origins of Hitler's Great Hall of the People

On the 2nd page of a Martin Fuller essay in the New York Review of Books (12/17/15),  on the architecture of the Third Reich, I found this image:

Architect's rendering, the Volkshalle

It's an architectural drawing for what was intended to be the Volkshalle, the Great Hall of the People, the centerpiece of a project to transform Berlin into a city called "Germania."  What I saw, however, was Rome's Pantheon, or some version of it.  That's hardly a novel, or even an interesting observation. Almost anyone who has stood inside the ancient Rome building would have a similar perception.


Rome's Pantheon

As I was soon to discover, there is, indeed, a connection between Hadrian's Pantheon and the German architect Albert Speer's design for the Volkshalle.


Hitler's interest in the project dates at least to 1925, when he sketched an early idea of what the hall might look like, and it deepened in May 1938, when he toured the Pantheon as part of his only trip to Rome, where he met Mussolini and laid the groundwork for the Axis.


Hitler's admiration for Rome, and its Pantheon, surfaced again in 1940

Speer and Hitler, examining a model of Germania

when, with Speer and other German architects, he toured Paris and that city's Pantheon, only to be disappointed.  By that point, he imagined that his Germania would "only be comparable with ancient Egypt, Babylon or Rome.  What is London," he asked, "what is Paris by comparison?"

Well, Hitler was right about that, anyway.  But he and Speer--according to Martin Kitchen's recent book, a pedestrian architect with delusions of grandeur, and an evil man--had conceived of a project that even they couldn't pull off.

The overall plan for Germania included two grand boulevards (Mussolini, too, loved his broad boulevards), each 120 meters wide, lined with triumphal arches and

Imagining the exterior

grand buildings, including the Volkshalle.  As with Mussolini's Rome, the reconstruction of Berlin would have required tearing down hundreds of existing buildings and relocating tens of thousands of people.  Speer had designed the Volkshalle along stupendous lines.  While the interior skin of the dome resembled Rome's Pantheon, the German version was to have been much, much larger: 320 meters high; the podium on which the dome was placed was figured at 315 meters square, roughly the length of 3 football fields; the dome's oculus, at 46 meters in diameter, would, apparently, have been large enough to place inside the entire rotunda of Hadrian's Pantheon.  On top would rest an enormous eagle, holding in its claws a ball--the earth.  So subtle!

Hitler and Speer, who spent night after night mulling over plans and models of Germania, imagined a building in which Hitler would mesmerize the great throngs: 180,000 people at a time, most of them standing,

A rally outside

if the preliminary drawings are an indication. There was also a seating area along the sides, resembling the Congress Hall at Nuremberg--which, according to one source, was modeled on the Coliseum.  So large was the interior of the Volkshalle that even Speer, during time spent in prison after the war, speculated that so many bodies (and, therefore, so much humidity) in one great space would produce the dome's own "weather"--drizzle and rain.

Mussolini had grand plans, too, but he had the common sense to position his equivalent of Germania--EUR--in a largely undeveloped area south of the city center.  In contrast, Hitler's Germania was in the heart of Berlin.  According to one authority, had it been built, "Berlin's historic center would have forever been destroyed."


The dictators differed on their cities.  Mussolini was fond of Rome, and one could argue that his interventions, while hardly minimal and undeniably damaging, were designed to improve the city. Hitler, in contrast, disliked Berlin, most of whose voters had refused to support him in 1932-33. Germania was his revenge.  

Of course it wasn't built, nor was EUR completed until the 1950s.  The war intervened.  How sad!
Bill
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Shopping in Rome: Fascism for Sale

The Fuhrer, riding in a staff car.  Or the Fuhrer acknowledging the folk with a friendly wave.  Buy both and you get a free attack dog.  

The era of Hitler and Mussolini is now a lifetime in the past.  But if you miss these guys, you can still purchase figurines--in the heart of Rome--to remind you all the good things they did.  We found a nice supply at a small shop just south of the Palazzo di Montecitorio, which houses the Italian Chamber of Deputies. 

That could be the Duce at center right.  Not sure who the dude with the binoculars is.  Marshall Petain, head of the Vichy government?

Another version of Mussolini--apparently--on the pedestal, though he looks a bit gaunt for the Duce.  But who's the guy on the left?  A representative worker?  And what's the gold stuff in the cart? Could be harvested wheat. The red and blue
flag may offer a hint, though I don't think the answer is Haiti.
Help us out here!

Bill
 
PS:  Marco, a regular reader of the blog, offers assistance:  The guy with the binoculars is likely Italo Balbo--Fascist hero, flyer, and governor of Libya--and the red and blue flag belongs to an Army corps.  Thanks so much, Marco.  Michael W. suggests that "the bloke on the right of the Duce looks like Hermann Goering."  Thanks for your help, Michael. 

Centocelle: Rome's New Rochelle

We doubt that any of our readers have been to Centocelle, the mid-20th century suburb
located about 7 km to the east of Rome's Centro, between via Casilina on the south and via Prenestina on the north. Nor had we until recently, perhaps because the name (literally, one hundred cells) led us to imagine a degraded, high-crime community characterized by enormous, sterile apartment buildings. We went anyway, attracted by a photo exhibit (now closed) on Centocelle, brought to our attention by a friend (thanks, Jennifer!). The exhibit was mounted in a 1935 church, in Piazza San F. da Cantalice, just off via Casilina. The center of community life, if not in the center of the community, the church ushers one into town from the south (see photos of the exterior of the church soon after construction, and the interior, then undecorated). What we found was more like New Rochelle than the South Bronx.

Although aerial photos in the exhibit show the site sparsely populated in 1934
(the church is in red, Rome to the right, via Casilina at top), and densely populated by 1977, our walk revealed several examples of buildings constructed in the 1920s, some marked with the Roman numerals of the Fascist system, and others built in the early 1930s, including the school below right, with its Anno EF XI (Fascist Era Year 11) dating, above the arches.

The town's inviting, tree-lined main street (via del Castani), running northward off the front of the church, is filled with shops of all kinds, including, on the left (heading north) and in the first block, a high-end gift shop ensconced in small structure whose facade still features the faded mosaics fashioned when the place was built around 1930.

Further down, the circular piazza (Piazza dei Mirti) that only recently was doubtless the center and hub of Centocelle's community and commercial life is suffering from the construction of Metro Line C, whose opening will surely be delayed longer than any of us can imagine. Perhaps in anticipation of the line, a trendy apartment building was recently completed nearby (below right). The area is currently served by streetcar.
A block west, mixed-gender youth soccer teams were having a spirited game on a small, fenced-in pitch.

Our visit featured intermittent rain. Waiting for it to subside (we were on the scooter), we spent a pleasant half hour over glasses of wine
(available only in small bottles) in Bar Gelateria, across from the church, where a dozen locals, many sitting in the covered area outside, had also taken refuge. That's Dianne's back in the photo.

Celebrities don't flock to Centocelle any more than tourists do, but Pope Giovanni Paolo was there, probably in the 1990s; the photo exhibit revealed the community's rich religious life. And Centocelle's airport, a busy place in the 1930s,
saw Charles Lindbergh passing through and witnessed an historic--and fateful--encounter between Hitler and Mussolini on May 4, 1938. Neither, we're sure, ever got to New Rochelle.

Bill

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Monti Goes After the Mayor

Rome's Mayor, Gianni Alemanno, was elected two years ago on a right-wing program, and it's no wonder that he's not popular in left-wing Monti, despite the gentrification going on there. On a trek around the area a few days ago, we couldn't help noticing that one of the Mayor's recent posters (see left) was being reinterpreted by the locals.

One version had the Mayor as a clown [above right] (the words on the poster read, "Mayor, instead of laughing, why don't you present the city's budget? Problems?"). Another evoked the feminine in a mayor once known as a street thug ("merda" translates as "shit"). And a third dressed his honor up as Hitler, complete with mustache and floppy hair. Nice work, Monti!

Bill

Galeazzo Ciano's Remarkable Diaries

Galeazzo Ciano was Mussoini's son-in-law and Italian Foreign Minister from 1936 to 1943. He was executed in January, 1944. Ciano left us with his diaries, which he maintained from 1936 through 1943 (entries for 1938 and later are available in paperback: Simon Publications, 2001).

The diaries are a thoughtful, judicious commentary on Ciano's contacts with many of the protagonists of World War II, including Hitler, von Ribbentrop, Himmler and, of course, Mussolini, with whom he worked on a daily basis--the Duce at Palazzo Venezia, Ciano at Palazzo Chigi. The photo above, taken before the signing of the 1938 Munich Agreement, has Ciano at far right and, to his right, Mussolini and Hitler. Neville Chamberlain, the architect of what became known as "appeasement," is at left.

This isn't a "tabloid" diary--for example, Ciano's wife--Mussolini's daughter--seldom appears, and Ciano is appropriately consumed by the major developments of the day, including the war in Africa, the invasion of Greece, and developments on the Eastern front. But there are many revelations and observations of a personal nature, some of which I offer here.

March 10, 1939

"The Duce commented, 'The German people are a military people, not a warrior people. Give to the Germans a great deal of sausage, butter, beer, and a cheap car, and they will never want to have their stomachs pierced.'"

March 3, 1940

"I speak with the Duce about the eventual exportation of works of art. He is favorable, but I am not. He does not like works of art, and above all detests that period of history during which the greatest masterpieces were produced. I recall--he recalls it too--that he felt a sense of annoyance and physical fatigue unusual in him on the day he was obliged to accompany Hitler on a detailed visit of inspection to the Pitti Palace and to the Uffizi. "

May 28, 1941

"Mussolini inveighs against Roosevelt, saying that 'never in the course of history has a nation been guided by a paralytic. There have been bald kings, fat kings, handsome and even stupid kings, but never kings who, in order to go to the bathroom and the dinner table, had to be supported by other men.' I don't know whether that is historically exact...."

October 11, 1941

"The Italians, too, are pulling in their belts to the last hole: the one that the Italians call the 'foro Mussolini'--'the Mussolini hole.' [The Italian word foro means both forum and notch, or hole....]."

May 8, 1942

"Vidussoni [general secretary of the Fascist Party] wanted to close the golf courses. I questioned him, and he, who is very simple-minded and is never able to find a way out, answered candidly that he intended to do this because 'golf is an aristocractic sport'....I consider it a great mistake because nothing is gained and one does not even earn the gratitude of the masses, which are inconsistent and changeable as the sands."

August 2, 1942

"Edda [Ciano's wife] attacked me violently, accusing me of hating the Germans, saying that my hatred for the Germans is known everywhere, especially among the Germans themselves, who are saying that 'they are physically repulsive to me.'" That's Galeazzo and Edda, below.

August 7, 1942

"I spoke with Vidussoni [see above]....He said that he did not know who De Chirico was, because for two years he had been too occupied for read modern writers.'"

August 28, 1942

[After a visit to the Venice Biennale]: "....the Spanish pavilion is the best. We had two painters who are important: De Chirico and Sciltian." A Sciltian painting from the 1930s is at left.

October 16, 1942

From the Duce's entourage we learn that he may not be in a condition to receive [Reichsmarsal Hermann] Goering on Monday. In any event, he will have to receive him at home, and the Duce is somewhat embarrassed on account of the modesty of his living quarters [Villa Torlonia]."

Mussolini's home at Villa Torlonia is below right.


December 7, 1942

[Ciano speaks with the King of Italy, who recalls the advice of his grandfather, King Victor Emmanuel II]: "In speaking with people, one must say two things in order to be assured of a good reception, 'How beautiful your city is!' and 'How young you look!'"

December 19, 1942

"I believe that at heart Hitler is happy at being Hitler, since this permits him to talk all the time."

January 4, 1943

"The personal indifference of the Duce to personal possessions is moving. At home he owns only one good piece: a self-portrait by Mancini, which was a gift from the painter."

Bill