Word: fascistes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...armored car was stopped by a roadblock. Italian partisans, members of the fabled 52nd Garibaldi Brigade, began their search. One of the things they found was a grotesque figure of a man in a swastika-marked helmet with a German corporal's greatcoat draped over his black-shirted Fascist uniform. Two days later the squat man, Benito Mussolini, and his doxy Claretta Petacci were hanging upside down outside a gas station in Milan...
...partisans also found something else: a fortune estimated at nearly $90 million, which Mussolini and his entourage were trying to smuggle into Switzerland. Besides much of the Fascist government's gold bullion and foreign currency, there were Mussolini's personal funds (including three sacks of wedding rings contributed by Italian wives to the Ethiopian campaign), the personal jewelry of Claretta Petacci and the wives of other Fascist bigwigs traveling in the convoy, and satchels of secret correspondence between Mussolini and Hitler...
Salutes & a Shift. As Zoli had calculated, the Fascists and Monarchists were too eager to get back into political grace to be put off by his avowals of philosophical hostility. But when 17 Monarchists and Fascists helped him win a 132-93 vote of confidence in Italy's Senate, the whole nation rang with outrage. In the halls of Parliament, other Deputies mockingly greeted Christian Democrats with a stiff-armed Fascist salute. From the industrial north came frantic warnings that acceptance of Fascist support was sure to cost the Christian Democrats dear in next year's general election...
Left to himself, Zoli might have accepted the Fascist votes ("I think I can ride a horse without becoming one"), but as the protests increased he hastily shifted tactics. Shortly before the Chamber of Deputies was to pass final verdict on his government, he announced: "No matter what the results of the voting are, I shall subtract from the total the votes of the Fascists. Then if I remain short of the required majority I shall resign...
...Careless Tellers. Even in the face of this, 24 Fascist Deputies gave Zoli their support. So did 280 Christian Democrats and Monarchists and one crucial independent-enough, according to the official count, to give Zoli a one-vote majority without the Fascists. Zoli and his ministers prepared to settle comfortably into office. Then, less than 24 hours after the Chamber vote, parliamentary tellers announced that they had carelessly counted as abstainers two Deputies who had actually voted against Zoli. If he continued to spurn Fascist support, anti-Fascist Adone Zoli appeared to be one vote short of a majority. Jeered...