Word: mussolini
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...MUSSOLINI (304 pp.)-Paolo Monelli-Vanguard...
Word from Portugal. Gruff, heavy-spending Achille Lauro, multimillionaire owner of a huge merchant shipping fleet, staunch friend of the late Benito Mussolini and now the popular mayor of Naples, was the party's nominal head and principal bankroller (about $3,000,000 in contributions). Ex-Professor (of law) Alfredo Covelli, an expert parliamentarian and a good organizer, was secretary-general and real leader of the Monarchists...
With great fanfare, Italy's weekly Oggi began publishing sensational documents that suggested strange doings between London and Rome at the outset of World War II. A letter addressed to Mussolini and signed "Churchill" recognized Italy's "right to the Mediterranean." A draft Mussolini-Churchill "agreement" recognized "the grave possibility" of Britain's defeat by the Axis and asked that Italy safeguard British interests "at any future peace conference." There were other letters and papers, all showing low jinks by high figures...
Historians, amateur as well as professional, promptly began to spot gaping holes in Oggi's yarns, which were apparently designed to glorify Mussolini and embarrass the democratic politicians who now govern Italy. The English phrases attributed to Prosemaster Winston Churchill were so wooden that some other newspapers ridiculed them as "Berlitz-learned English." In one letter, "Churchill" referred to himself as Prime Minister at a time when he was still only First Lord of the Admiralty...
...four old empires died: the Russian, Prussian, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian. The rot spread to Asia, and from the Middle East to Indo-China, the surge towards independence stirred among a billion people. World War II rocked the remaining empires: Japan's was liquidated; so was Mussolini's. In the past ten years, 600 million Arabs and Asians have won political independence, established ten new sovereign states.* France, expelled from Syria and Lebanon after World War II, is on the way out of Indo-China. The once prosperous Dutch East Indies has become the unprosperous Republic of Indonesia...