Word: mussolini
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...garrison at Pantelleria, told to "hold the line" by Mussolini, did so with commendable valor, an indication that the universally maligned and notoriously misled Italian troops will not necessarily wilt away before the first invasion troops...
...Happy Birthday to You." These facts, a warning to the overoptimistic among the Allies and some scant balm for the crushed Italian ego, did not make the conquest of the first territory within metropolitan Italy any more palatable to the war-sick, disorganized and frustrated Italian people. Mussolini waited 24 hours before officially announcing the capitulation, claiming that Italian airmen were having "great successes" and finally that Pantelleria had been turned into a "gigantic volcano." Italians did not miss the fact that the defeat came exactly three years and one day after Mussolini had led Italy into war against France...
...While Mussolini stalled, Franklin Roosevelt, no amateur at political warfare, had his say. Roosevelt had blistered Mussolini three years ago: "The hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor." Now he invited the Italian people to toss out the betrayer, the Fascist Party, and the Germans. In return, the President promised that Allied victory will mean that Italians can have a non-Fascist government of their own choosing and will be restored to real nationhood as respected (the President emphasized the word respected) members of the European family...
...Learn to Hate." Anticipating just such political warfare, Mussolini has wrapped a toga of self-righteousness about his sub-Napoleonic figure. More than two decades as the father of 20th-century Fascism have taught him how to play upon the childlike sentiment of millions of his people. While the Allies paused in Tunisia he cunningly launched a hate-the-U.S. campaign which was ridiculous but effective...
Into minds dulled by years of propaganda and on to nerves chewed raw by this winter's bombings, Mussolini rubbed wholly fabricated atrocity stores: U.S. airmen, "bloodthirsty flying gangsters," have been bombing only churches, hospitals and nurseries; fiendish pilots have been dropping lipsticks, ladies' purses, flashlights, pens, pencils, cough drops and candy which explode in innocent and eager Italian hands. There have been broadcasts, press stories and faked newspictures of those supposedly maimed or killed...