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Birth of the Regime

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Mussolini and the Salò Republic, 1943–1945

Part of the book series: Italian and Italian American Studies ((IIAS))

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Abstract

Hitler moved quickly by sending elite paratroopers to rescue Mussolini from his mountain incarceration. After having been flown to safety in Germany, Hitler persuaded the bedraggled Duce to be his puppet ruler of the Italian Fascist Republic headquartered in Salò. A nascent partisan movement immediately sprang into existence to challenge the fledgling RSI regime.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Dianella Gagliani , “Il ruolo di Mussolini nella Reubblica sociale italiana e nella crisi del 1943–1945,” Storia e problemi contemporanei 37 (2004), pp. 164–65.

  2. 2.

    Monica Fioravanzo, Mussolini e Hitler: La Repubblica sociale sotto il Terzo Reich (Rome: Donzelli, 2009), p. 13. Dissatisfied with the reports of von Bismarck and von Rintelen for their playing down the crisis in Italy, Hitler replaced them with Rahn, who became the new ambassador on 30 August, while General Rudolf Toussaint replaced General Rintelen.

  3. 3.

    Rahn is not bashful, in his memoirs, in exposing relentless ambition and in advancing the interests of the Third Reich.

  4. 4.

    Cited in Lutz Klinkhammer , L’occupazione tedesca in Italia, 1943–1945 (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1993), p. 104.

  5. 5.

    Forczyk, Raid, p. 50.

  6. 6.

    Gentile , I crimini di guerra tedeschi in Italia, p. 85.

  7. 7.

    Mimmo Franzinelli , Il prigioniero di Salò (Milan: Mondadori, 2012), p. 55.

  8. 8.

    Cited in Nicola Cospito and Hans Werner Neulen, Salò-Berlino: L’alleanza difficile (Milan: Mursia, 1992), p. 37. Filippo Anfuso, Da Palazzo Venezia al Lago di Garda (1936–1945) (Bologna: Cappelli, 1957), pp. 343–44, recorded Mussolini’s determination to raise an army.

  9. 9.

    Felice Bellotti, La repubblica di Mussolini (Milan: Zagara, 1947), pp. 55–58.

  10. 10.

    Joseph Goebbels, The Goebbels Diaries (New York: Eagle Books, 1948), p. 476.

  11. 11.

    Bellotti , La repubblica di Mussolini, p. 135.

  12. 12.

    Eugen Dollmann, Roma nazista (Milan: Longanesi, 1949), p. 82; Karl Stuhlpfarrer , Le zone d’operazione Prealpi e Litorale Adriatico 1943–1945 (Gorizia: Edizioni Libreria Adamo, 1979), p. 58.

  13. 13.

    Cited in Giorgio Bocca, La repubblica di Mussolini (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1977), p. 31.

  14. 14.

    Ettore Friedriech Moellhausen, La carta perdente: Memorie diplomatiche 25 luglio 1943–2 maggio 1945 (Rome: Sestante, 1948), p. 320.

  15. 15.

    Georg Zachariae , Mussolini si confessa (Milan: BUR, 2004), prime edition digital 2013, location 617.

  16. 16.

    Cited in Bocca , La repubblica di Mussolini, pp. 29–30.

  17. 17.

    Anfuso, Da Palazzo Venezia al lago di Garda, p, 89.

  18. 18.

    Luigi Bolla, Perché a Salò (Milan: Bompiani, 1982), p. 125.

  19. 19.

    Cited in Deakin, The Six Hundred Days of Mussolini, p. 104.

  20. 20.

    The Italian historian Giuseppe Parlato writes in his Fascisti senza Mussolini: Le origini del neofascismo in Italia, 1943–1948 (Bologna: il Mulino, 2006), pp. 13–14, that Pavolini was not nominated by Mussolini to become party secretary but was chosen “in a touch of Jacobinism from the base … It was the first time that Fascists exercised a kind of autonomous right with respect to the Duce.”

  21. 21.

    Marco Innocenti , Mussolini a Salò: Il tramonto di un uomo (Milan: Mursia, 1996), p. 86.

  22. 22.

    Benjamin G. Martin, The Nazi-Fascist New Order for European Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), pp. 115–16.

  23. 23.

    Cited in Giampaolo Pansa, Il Gladio e l’alloro (Milan: Mondadori, 1991), p. 148.

  24. 24.

    Anfuso, Da Palazzo Venezia al Lago di Garda, p. 405.

  25. 25.

    Bolla, Perché a Salò, p. 125.

  26. 26.

    Cited in De Felice , Mussolini l’alleato, II: 352.

  27. 27.

    Ibid., p. 353.

  28. 28.

    Bellotti , La repubblica di Mussolini, p. 74.

  29. 29.

    Deakin , The Six Hundred Days of Mussolini, p. 21.

  30. 30.

    De Felice , Mussolini l’alleato, II: 423–24.

  31. 31.

    At Bir el Gobi, in North Africa, a unit of young Fascists was annihilated by the English after a heroic resistance. During the war, Fascist propaganda turned this episode into a glorious myth.

  32. 32.

    Bellotti , La repubblica di Mussolini, p. 58.

  33. 33.

    Cited in Giuseppe Zanzanaini, Renato Ricci: Fascista integrale (Milan: Mursia, 2004), p. 141.

  34. 34.

    Decreto del Ministero dell’Educazione nazionale, Direzione Generale delle Arti, 1 decembre 1943. According to a long report for Mussolini from the desk for general affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this provision was taken clearly as a result of the appropriation by the Germans of Jewish possessions, particularly in the zones of occupation, the Litorale Adriatico and the Prealpi . ACS, SPD RSI, Carteggio riservato, b. 76, f. “Affari esteri.”

  35. 35.

    Bertoldi , Salò, p. 309.

  36. 36.

    Moellhausen , La carta perdente, pp. 74, 202. Moellhausen found Barracu’s habit of appearing for work with a machine gun slung over his shoulder theatrical and offensive and abhorred the way he threatened to shoot the next person he met.

  37. 37.

    De Felice , Mussolini l’alleato, II: 362.

  38. 38.

    Bellotti , La repubblica di Mussolini, p. 58.

  39. 39.

    Cited in Bellotti , La repubblica di Mussolini, p. 201.

  40. 40.

    Giacomo Perticone, La repubblica di Salò (Rome: Edizioni Leonardo, 1947), p. 138.

  41. 41.

    A particularly harsh judgment of Graziani in North Africa can be found in Giorgio Rochat and Gilio Massobrio, Breve storia dell’esercito italiano dal 1861–1943 (Turin: Einaudi, 1978), p. 284 sgg. A recent Anglo-American judgment can be found in Martin Kitchen, Rommel’s Desert War. Waging World War II in North Africa, 1941–1943 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

  42. 42.

    Lepre, La storia della Repubblica di Mussolini, p. 59–60; Giuseppe Bottai, Diario (Milan: Rizzoli, 1982), p. 386.

  43. 43.

    Cited in Fioravanzo, Mussolini e Hitler, p. 39.

  44. 44.

    Marco Gasparini and Claudio Razeto, 1943: Diario dell’anno che sconvolse l’Italia (Rome: Castelvecchi, 2013), p. 207.

  45. 45.

    Moellhausen , La carta perdente, p. 94.

  46. 46.

    Rodolfo Graziani, Una vita per l’Italia. “Ho difeso l’Italia” (Milan: Mursia, 1986), p. 376. Rahn later claimed that Hitler severely rebuked him for urging Graziani to accept the portfolio as minister of defense. Fioravanzo, Mussolini e Hitler, p. 41, n. 81.

  47. 47.

    Moellhausen wrote in his La carta perdente, p. 25: “Turning to Graziani, Rahn told him that the time had arrived for a decision. He repeated to the General that acceptance would signify his readiness to save what could still be salvaged.”

  48. 48.

    Dollmann, Roma nazista, p. 405.

  49. 49.

    Attilio Tamaro, Due anni di storia 1943–1945 (Rome: Tosi, 1949), 3 vols. II: 8.

  50. 50.

    Cited in H. James Burgwyn, Mussolini Warlord: Failed Dreams of Empire (New York: Enigma Books, 2012), p. 109.

  51. 51.

    Bolla, Perché a Salò, p. 158.

  52. 52.

    Ibid., pp. 203–04.

  53. 53.

    Ibid., p. 163.

  54. 54.

    Dollmann, Roma Nazista, p. 405.

  55. 55.

    Ray Moseley, Mussolini:The Last Days of Il Duce (Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade Publishing: An Imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., 2004), p. 94.

  56. 56.

    Bellotti , La Repubblica di Mussolini, p. 201.

  57. 57.

    Ermanno Amicucci, I 600 giorni di Mussolini (Rome: Editrice “Faro,” 1948), p. 25.

  58. 58.

    Moellhausen , La carta perdente, p. 101.

  59. 59.

    Cited in Deakin , The Six Hundred Days of Mussolini, p. 48, and in Giorgio Bocca, Storia dell’Italia partigiana (Rome-Bari: La Terza, 1997), p. 112.

  60. 60.

    “Credere, Obbedire, Combattere” … “Fede, Speranza, Carità: fede nella Divina Provvidenza, speranza nella vittoria, carità di patria.”

  61. 61.

    Dollmann, Roma nazista, p. 290.

  62. 62.

    Amedeo Osti Guerrazzi, Storia della repubblica sociale italiana (Rome: Carocci, 2012), p. 88.

  63. 63.

    Ibid., p. 89.

  64. 64.

    Cited in Amicucci , I 600 giorni di Mussolini, p. 52.

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  1. Department of History, West Chester University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    H. James Burgwyn

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Burgwyn, H.J. (2018). Birth of the Regime. In: Mussolini and the Salò Republic, 1943–1945. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76189-3_2

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