My late uncle Aaron served in the Jewish Brigade. For those of you who have never heard the term, it was a brigade-strength formation raised by the British among the Jewish population of what was then Mandatory Palestine. Organized and trained in British-occupied Egypt, later it was transferred to Italy where it saw limited, action during the final stages of World War II. Limited not because the soldiers did not want to fight—they did—but because the British did not quite trust them.
Italy, Aaron once told me, was in ruins. As they proceeded south to north from one city to the next, all they saw was ruins. And more ruins. Still more. With people living among them like rats. With no utilities. On the brink of starvation. Begging to sell anything they had—from antiques to their sisters’ bodies. Writing about Nately’s Whore’s kid sister, Joseph Heller in Catch 22 did not have to invent anything. A point Heller did not dwell on was that the Italians may have been even more suspicious of each other than of the conquerors. Their civil war, which had started in 1943 and claimed tens of thousands of lives, was still in progress. Albeit that, as more and more provinces fell under Allied control, it was slowly dying down.
The guy who had started it all, Il Duce Benito Mussolini, was still alive. But not for long. On the 30th of April 1945, while trying to escape into Switzerland, he and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, were discovered by left-wing partisans and shot.
Our understanding of the reasoning that drove Mussolini into the war—the kind of reasoning which, he once claimed, King Vittorio Emanuele III had called “geometrical”—is as good as it can be. It all began in 1935-36 when Britain and France disapproved of Italy’s adventure in Ethiopia, driving it into Hitler’s arms. It went on when Mussolini visited Germany in November 1937 and was given a tumultuous reception that greatly impressed him. In March 1938, he did not try to resist the German annexation of Austria, thereby granting Hitler the greatest triumph in his career until then. In May of that year the two countries signed an offensive alliance to which Mussolini gave the name, Il Patto d’Acciaio, The Pact of Steel. However, when Germany went to war in September 1939 the Italians did not join it. Instead, feeling they were not ready, they presented their German friends with a long list of demands for fuel, raw materials, and weapons. So formidable was it that, in the words of Mussolini’s foreign minister, Galeazzo Ciano, it would have killed an ox—if an ox could read it.
Rather than live up of their commitments under the Pact of Steel, the Italians invented a new concept in international law: Nonbelligerenza (non-belligerence). It put them in a very favorable situation, what with both sides currying favor with them. However, it did not last. As France was overrun by Hitler’s legions, Mussolini thought that his hour had struck. All he needed, he told Ciano, was a few thousand dead; they would serve as his entry-ticket to the peace conference he expected.
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This is not the place to list the factors that were responsible for these failures. Including a shocking lack of economic-logistic-technical preparation. Including the failure to set up a combined command organization with Germany similar to the one the U.S and Britain had. Including armed forces that were underequipped with modern weapons. Including a supreme command structure—ironically, named Superesercito, Supermarina, and Superaereo—that did not function as it should. Including low morale both in the forces and among the population in general. When Italy entered the war the latter, called out by the Fascist authorities, demonstrated in favor. But it was not long before any enthusiasm there may have been disappeared.
Instead of assisting its ally, Italy became a burden on it. When the war ended the country lost its colonies as well as some territory in the northeast. That apart, though, the it remained intact. Internally, as already described, all was chaos. But the chaos did not last for very long. Thanks partly to the Marshal Plan, but mainly to Italy’s own efforts, the recovery was rapid. Japan apart, for two decades after 1950 no country showed faster rapid economic growth than Italy did.
For Italy as for much of the world, the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, which was followed by the oil crisis, proved a turning point. Later, too, there were all sorts of ups and down. Still the country and its system of government survived. Sustained by its own corruption and cumbersome bureaucracy, some people said. As of the time that Corona broke out, the recent financial crisis having been overcome, the country was as prosperous as at any time in its history. And looking forward to a future that would hopefully be no worse.
And why am I telling you all this? Because yesterday, 10 June, was the eightieth anniversary of Italy’s entry into the war.