Word: mussolini
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...proliferation of minorities. On the left were Tommy Douglas' 19 New Democrats and on the right a protest party of 30 Social Crediters, speaking mainly for a disaffected French Quebec in the frenetic accents of a rural Chrysler dealer named Réal Caouette, who named Hitler and Mussolini as his economic heroes...
There was always a considerable difference between the two dictatorial regimes. At its worst, Italian Fascism was not so ruthless or fanatical as Nazism. The Italians largely ignored Nazi demands that they persecute the Jews. When a wave of strikes broke out in 1943, Mussolini hesitated, eventually arrested some of the strikers and drafted others into the army. Hitler exploded: "That it is possible for people to stop work firmly in eight factories is for me unthinkable. I am convinced that if one shows the slightest weakness in such a case, one is lost...
...their pledges of undying loyalty, Hitler and Mussolini never had much to say to each other. In their dissimilar ways, each had a kind of affection for the other. But they rarely met, rarely agreed, and as the war drew to an end, they blamed each other for the defeat. In this scrupulously documented and vividly told history, Oxford Historian F. W. Deakin, who collaborated with Winston Churchill on his monumental war memoirs, shows how far-reaching the rift was, how it poisoned relations between the two countries from the top command to the soldiers in the field...
...Axis pact got off to a bad start because Hitler never let Mussolini know what he was up to. When he invaded Poland in 1939 without advance warning, the Duce was shaken. He was happy to have German support for his conquests in the Mediterranean, but he did not want to be dragged into a major European war. When Hitler invaded Russia, again without consulting Mussolini, many Fascists began to have second thoughts about the Axis pact. Among them was Mussolini's son-in-law and Foreign Minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, who upbraided the German ambassador to Italy...
...victory turned into disaster at Stalingrad in early 1943, the Germans blamed the Italians for capitulating too quickly. They took revenge by grabbing the Italian transport for their own retreat, leaving many Italians to freeze to death in the Russian winter. They also gleefully filmed Italians fleeing from battle. Mussolini received a letter from a soldier at the front: "Among the officers of both higher and lower rank a general feeling of rancor and distrust against the Germans is generally predominant here." It was no coincidence, notes Deakin, that many Italians who had fought in Russia joined the partisans when...