Word: blackshirted
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Hour of Tragedy. When Benito Mussolini, the proletarian, marched on Rome in 1922, Carlo Sforza, the aristocrat, 17th count of a venerable line, was Italian Ambassador in Paris. He had reached that post after diplomatic service from London to China and a spell as Foreign Minister. With the Blackshirt government he would have no truck. He resigned as Ambassador, returned to Rome, denounced Fascismo and its dangerous "adventurers" from his seat in the Senate. The Duce said that he could have twelve bullets put into Count Sforza. The Count replied that political murder was inadvisable. But the time came, during...
Last week another automobile bearing Amerigo Dumini raced across Italy. The murderer of Matteoti was trying to escape the blackshirt roundup of the Badoglio Government. In his car were forged passports, a wad of currency and his mistress. But he did not reach the Swiss frontier. One story said that the carabinieri captured Dumini after a fierce gun fight. Another had him stopped by a barricade on the highway. All stories agreed that he was betrayed by a discarded mistress...
...crusade against Blackshirt Fascists continued. The Party and its trappings had vanished (TIME, Aug. 9). Now Party "profiteers," the big shots who had lined their pockets well, were rounded up, their property confiscated. Marshal Badoglio, erstwhile partner of the Blackshirts, hoped thus to convince the people of Fascismo's demise. But the rule now was comparable in harshness to the rule in Fascismo's harsh era. Saber-wielding carabinieri cowed peace demonstrators and strikers in northern Italy. New decrees muzzled the press. The jails filled with a new batch of political prisoners. Six Socialists were executed as traitors...
...Temper. Italy's anti-Fascist groups wondered if Blackshirt Fascismo had merely given way to Whiteshirt Fascismo. Cried the underground: "Treason . . . betrayal. . . . We are going from one dictatorship to another. . . . The time has come for [the people] ... to demand ... a clear declaration of [the government's] foreign and internal policy." Giornale d'ltalia, no longer edited by Mussolini Mouthpiece Virginio Gayda (rumored a suicide), warned: "[Italy might have as much to fear] from her friends as from her enemies." Milan's Corriere della Sera, mutilated by the censor, voiced a widespread worry: "The limpid truths...
From many sources came reports of Italy in upheaval. Bern and Stockholm told of peace riots in Bologna, Milan and Rome, of clashes between Italians and German soldiery. The Fascist Blackshirt militia, posted on the northern frontier, it was said, had been replaced by Badoglio's police; bad blood brewed between the factions; Italy might yet be plunged into civil...