Word: duces
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...family of Clara Petacci, mistress of Benito Mussolini who died with him at the hands of a Milanese mob in 1945, sued the Italian government for return of 36 love !enters from Il Duce to Clara, plus pages from her diary and other personal documents. Although the government confiscated the papers because of their "national historical interest." Rome buzzed with the word that the letters are not yet entirely historical. As the rumor went, the government is reluctant to part with evidence that many a now prominent Italian asked favors of Mussolini through the dictator's doxy...
...launched his Blackshirt attack on Greece through Albania. Eagerly seizing her first opportunity for service, Crown Princess Frederika plunged four-square into the task of mobilizing Greece's women in a drive to provide clothing for the pitifully under-equipped Greek army. The army stopped the Duce's Fascists cold, Frederika's clothing drive was a huge success, and both won new respect in the eyes of the Greek people. Then, early irf the next year, Hitler sent the Wehrmacht into Greece. The royal family was forced to flee, first to Crete (where bombs rained about Frederika...
...faithless nation. Bismark used to say that you can't have a policy with Italy when she is faithless both as friend and foe." Yet no one took a more contemptuous view of the Italian people than Mussolini himself. One incident or another kept him boiling. "The Duce has been made furiously angry ... by the bad behavior of some farmers from Bari who were being entertained in the Party House in Munich -they even relieved themselves on the stairs. A disgusting incident, likely to lower us to an unbelievable extent in the opinion of the Germans; The Chief...
...turn the army, at least, into a Prussian facsimile, Mussolini introduced the "passo Romano," a copy of the goose-step. When old soldiers and short-legged King Victor Emmanuel complained, the Duce's comment was: "People say the goose-step is Prussian. Nonsense. The goose is a Roman animal. ... It is not my fault if the King is half-size. Naturally he won't be able to do the parade step without making himself ridiculous. He will hate it for the same reason that he has always hated horses-he has to use a ladder to climb...
...coalition against Germanism. And we shall crush Germany for at least two centuries." What irked the Italians most was that they were treated as silent partners of the Axis, and only called in when matters reached the sign-on-the-dotted-line stage. After the Austrian Anschluss, "the Duce was in a mood of irritation with the Germans . . . they ought to have given us warning-but not a word." Just before Munich, Ciano notes: "The Duce is disturbed by the fact that the Germans are letting us know almost nothing of their program with regard to Czechoslovakia...