It was later during this same conference that Hitler received the first hint of the power struggle underway in the Eternal City. It came in the form of a report from Walter Hewel, Ribbentrop’s man at Hitler’s headquarters, who had been in touch with Ambassador Mackensen in Rome.38 Hewel confirmed that the Duce had convened the Fascist Grand Council the previous evening, Saturday, July 24. As Hitler was aware, the council was little more than a rubber-stamp committee in the service of Mussolini, who had not even bothered to convene it since 1939.
“He heard from different sources that the meeting was extraordinarily stormy,” said Hewel, referring to Mackensen. “Since the participants are sworn to secrecy, he hasn’t heard anything authentic yet; only rumors.”39 The Germans did not know it at that point, but the Grand Council had essentially voted to abolish the Duce’s dictatorship. Because the Council had no legal powers and lacked the brute force necessary to enforce its resolution, the vote was largely a symbolic gesture. Only a coup supported by the Italian military was likely to succeed, but the army had decided to back the king of Italy’s more radical change of regime.
In the absence of additional information, the gravity of the situation in Italy was not readily apparent. Hitler seemed more puzzled than alarmed. “What’s the use of councils like that?” he asked. “What do they do except jabber?”40
By early evening, however, news of the Italian coup had exploded upon the Wolf ’s Lair like a thunderbolt. Though the finer points remained sketchy, even the bare fact of the power grab was enough to send shock waves through the compound. Around 9:45 P.M., Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Hitler’s sycophantic chief of Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW)—the German High Command—was hurrying to a conference room where the Fuehrer and a few others had assembled to discuss the matter.
“The Duce has resigned,” Hitler announced. The words were directed at Keitel, who had just entered the room, but it seemed as if Hitler were still trying to convince himself of the news. “It is not confirmed yet. Badoglio has taken over the government. The Duce has resigned.”41
That evening, shortly after King Victor Emmanuel had arrested the Italian dictator, Badoglio contacted the Germans and issued a cover story: Mussolini had stepped down of his own accord and Badoglio had been charged by the king to head a provisional Italian government.42 Badoglio emphasized that the regime change was purely a domestic matter and did not affect its alliance with Germany. 43 He assured his Axis ally that Italy would continue to fight against their common enemies.44 Disgusted, Hitler did not even bother to reply.45
“The decisive thing is,” asked General Alfred Jodl, chief of operations for OKW, “are the Italians going to continue fighting, or not?”46 (“Decisive” was something of a pet word among the Nazis.)
“They say they will fight,” Hitler answered, “but it is certainly treachery. We must realize that this is open treachery. I’m just waiting for information about what the Duce says . . . I want the Duce to come to Germany right away.”47 No one in the German camp was having success in tracking down Mussolini.
“If there is any doubt,” Jodl said, “there is only one thing to do.”48
It was only hours since the Duce’s downfall, but Hitler was contemplating a forced takeover of Rome and the swift reinstatement of Mussolini: “I have been thinking about ordering the 3rd Panzergrenadier Division to occupy Rome and to capture the whole government,” Hitler said, referring to a motorized division stationed about thirty-five miles north of Rome near Lake Bolsena.49
Military discussions between Hitler and his advisors followed. He was especially concerned about the large number of German troops fighting in Sicily. By July 25, the Allies had squeezed these soldiers into the northeastern corner of the island.50 Hitler feared that if the Italians switched sides in the war, German units trapped in Sicily would be surrounded by an enemy coalition of Italian and British-American forces.
“The fellows down here have to be saved under all circumstances,” Hitler said in reference to the troops in Sicily. “They are of no use down here. They have to get back. . . . Their equipment doesn’t matter a damn. Let them blow it up or destroy it; but the men have to get back. There are 70,000 men there now. . . . We can handle the Italians with side arms.”*51 Recent history had convinced Hitler that he could safely underestimate serious resistance on the part of the Italian army.
“We really ought to wait for exact reports about what is going on,” said Jodl.52
“Certainly,” said Hitler, “but still we have to plan ahead. Undoubtedly, in their treachery, they will proclaim that they will remain loyal to us; but that is treachery. Of course they won’t remain loyal.”53
For Hitler, the implications of the Duce’s mysterious vanishing act were clear from the beginning. Having disposed of Mussolini— practically the only leading Italian who still maintained fidelity to the Axis—the Badoglio government would move quickly to negotiate a separate peace with the Allies. Or perhaps, as Hitler feared, Badoglio had made a deal with the enemy before the coup. As things stood on July 25, the Allies could easily swoop into mainland Italy (which was practically bare of German troops) with Badoglio’s consent and take over the country.
“Has anyone spoken to this fellow Badoglio?” Keitel asked.54
“Although that so-and-so declared immediately that the war would be continued,” Hitler said, “that won’t make any difference. They have to say that, but it remains treason. But we’ll play the same game while preparing everything to take over the whole crew with one stroke, to capture all of that riffraff. . . . The climax will come at the moment when we have mustered enough strength to go in there and disarm the whole gang.”55
The meeting was interrupted by Hitler’s telephone call to Hermann Goering, the corpulent chief of the Luftwaffe. Goering had been planning to pay a visit to the Duce to celebrate his sixtieth birthday on July 29, just a few days hence. Hitler’s war chiefs listened as the dictator personally delivered the bad news to his disbelieving longtime lieutenant. Though they could hear only Hitler’s part of the call, the drift of the conversation was clear enough.
“Hello, Goering?” Hitler asked. “I don’t know—did you get the news? Well, there’s no direct confirmation yet, but there can’t be any doubt that the Duce has resigned and that Badoglio has taken his place. In Rome it is not a question of possibilities, but of facts. That’s the truth, Goering, there’s no doubt about it. . . . At any rate, under these circumstances I think it would be a good idea for you to come here right away. What? I don’t know. I’ll tell you about that then. But adjust yourself to the fact that it’s true.”56
Hitler hung up the phone. “I only hope they didn’t arrest the Duce,” he said. “But if they did, it is even more important that we go in there.”57
Even when outside the conference room, Hitler seems to have spent much of the evening huffing and puffing about the Italians. “Hitler swore,” recalled Traudl Junge, one of Hitler’s female secretaries. “He was furious about the [secret] secession of Italy and Mussolini’s mishap, and that evening he didn’t hide his bad temper even from us women. He was monosyllabic and absent-minded. ‘So Mussolini is weaker than I thought,’ he said. ‘I was giving him my personal support, and now he’s fallen. But we could never rely on the Italians. . . . They’ve cost us more in loss of prestige and real setbacks than any success they brought us was worth.’”58
The Duce’s disappearance was all the more disturbing to Hitler because he had seen his fellow dictator and “friend” just one week before his fall. The two men had met at Feltre in northern Italy for a military conference, their thirteenth in nearly ten years.*59 The meeting was precipitated by the chaos following the Allied invasion of Sicily.* Almost immediately after the Anglo-Americans had landed on the beaches, the two Axis powers began to clash.
For the Italians, the key issue was military aid—or rather the lack of it. Their outnumbered, demoralized, and ill-equipped forces were no match for the massive Allied assault, especially in the air
. On July 12, just two days after fighting had broken out on the island, the Italians urgently requested that Hitler send them 2,000 fighter planes to help stem the tide. Hitler balked at this and other large requests for military support, which in turn outraged many in the Italian camp who had hoped that the Nazis would rally to Italy’s side.
For them, Hitler’s standoffishness was proof that the Fuehrer was intending to “leave Italy in the lurch”—to sacrifice his Mediterranean partner to the Allies so that he could wear down the enemy, conserve German forces, and delay an assault on the Third Reich itself.60 Dino Alfieri, the Italian ambassador in Berlin, spoke for many on the Italian side of the Axis when he expressed the view that Hitler looked on Italy and the Axis satellite countries merely as “bastions of the German fortress.”61 Germany could “never commit herself fully against the Anglo-Americans in Italy because she wants to reserve her main effort for the Russian campaign and does not yet possess sufficient forces to wage total war on both fronts simultaneously.”62
Hitler, meanwhile, was deeply disturbed by reports he had received— and these reports were accurate—indicating that the Italians were offering only a token resistance to the Anglo-American attack (and in many cases were surrendering or simply melting away). “The Fuehrer’s worries are heavier than ever,” lamented the fanatical Martin Bormann, Hitler’s aide, in a letter written to his wife during July. “The Italians are bolting, exactly as they did in Russia, or they simply let themselves be taken prisoner. In actual fact Sicily is now being held only by our handful of Germans.”63 That meant that Hitler’s 60,000 or so soldiers were left to fend off an Allied invasion force of half a million men.64
On the evening of July 12, just two days after the Sicily invasion, Hitler sent Mussolini an angry message through General Enno von Rintelen, the military attaché at the German embassy in Rome. Rintelen, who served as a military liaison between the Nazis and the Italians, told the Duce that Hitler had no intention of sending more German soldiers to Italy if the Italians were not willing to defend their own country. This sparked a flurry of exchanges between the Axis partners.
On July 18, Mussolini wrote Hitler a lengthy telegram.* The Allied successes in Sicily, he argued, had nothing to do with a lack of fighting spirit on the part of the Italians. But Italy was reaching the end of her tether and required help. “Germany is stronger economically and militarily than Italy,” the Duce wrote. “My country . . . has step by step exhausted itself, burning up its resources in Africa, Russia, and the Balkans.”65
Mussolini also included an ominous warning: “The sacrifice of my country cannot have as its principal purpose that of delaying a direct attack on Germany.”66 The same day, the Duce received an urgent invitation from Hitler to attend an Axis summit scheduled for the following morning, July 19. After grumbling over the short notice, Mussolini agreed.
The stakes at Feltre had been high for both men. With the defense of Sicily in doubt, Hitler worried with some justification that even the Duce, as staunch an ally as he was, might consider backing out of the war altogether. Using a combination of bluff and bluster, Hitler meant to whip up the martial spirit of his drooping Axis ally without promising too much in the way of direct German aid, now in short supply.67 On the Italian side, Mussolini faced an equally daunting challenge. He was under intense domestic pressure to obtain speedy military support for the defense of Italy or, failing that, to end his country’s participation in the war—if possible, by seeking Hitler’s permission to pursue a separate peace with the enemy.
However, as had happened so often in the past, the Duce did not quite muster the courage to speak frankly with Hitler when the two men were standing face-to-face in northern Italy. Whether out of fear or shame, Mussolini could not bring himself to admit that Italy had finally reached the end of the line.
It was the Duce’s inexplicable silence at Feltre that had prompted the king of Italy to remove him from power one week later on July 25.
* * *
*In August 1939, on the eve of World War II, Hitler emphasized to his generals that the very existence of Mussolini was “decisive” and warned that if he were removed from the political equation “Italy’s loyalty to the [Axis] alliance will no longer be certain. The basic attitude of the Italian Court is against the Duce.” Even before this date, Hitler and the king of Italy had grown to loathe each other. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. 3, 582.
*About 200,000 tons of bombs were dropped on Germany during 1943 alone. That was five times as much tonnage as was dropped the year before.
*The decline in health that Hitler experienced during the last few years of his life has never been fully explained. It has been suggested that an onset of Parkinson’s disease could account for some of Hitler’s symptoms, though no one can rule out the effects of sheer psychological stress.
*According to Albert Speer, Hitler began to employ stenographers at headquarters in the fall of 1942 and so provide “evidence for posterity that he had always issued the right orders.” Speer, 305.
*The minimal losses suffered by the Allies (who had put 791 bombers in the air) were largely due to the debut of Window, a new development in the ongoing radar wars: Thousands upon thousands of thin aluminum strips had been dumped over Hamburg in an effort to jam German radar.
*German forces on Sicily included the SS-Panzerdivision “Hermann Goering,” the Fifteenth Panzergrenadier Division, and elements of the Twenty-ninth Motorized Infantry Division and the First Parachute Division.
*The first Allied bombing of Rome occurred on this same day. Rome was a major transportation hub (road and rail), which made it a tempting target for the enemy. Most of the supplies reaching the Germans in Sicily and southern Italy ran through Rome.
*Rudolf Semmler, who worked in the Propaganda Ministry, recorded Goebbels’s first reaction to the news. “On our journey back to Berlin in the train,” wrote Semmler in his diary on July 10, “we heard at Erfurt, at three in the morning, that the enemy had landed in Sicily. Goebbels looked black and once again cursed our alliance with the ‘macaroni eaters.’” Semmler, 90.
*It is unclear whether this missive was actually sent.
AN EARLY FRIENDSHIP
The man is hysterical. When he told me that no one had lived through and shared my anguish more intensely than he had there were tears in his eyes. All that is an exaggeration.1
—Mussolini, referring to Hitler’s behavior during a 1941 Axis summit
HITLER’S DETERMINATION TO RESCUE MUSSOLINI FROM THE CLUTCHES of his fellow Italians was a dramatic reminder of how much had changed since the early 1920s when the two men first made tentative contact.2 At that time, Hitler was a little-known right-wing agitator, but Mussolini was the leader of Fascist Italy and an increasingly visible figure on the world stage.* The young and ambitious Hitler looked up to Il Duce in those days, and it is not difficult to see why. The Fascist revolution in Italy was a source of inspiration and a potential model for what Hitler fervently dreamed of accomplishing in Germany.
“In this period—I openly admit—I conceived the profoundest admiration for the great man south of the Alps,” Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, referring to the year 1923, “who, full of ardent love for his people, made no pacts with the enemies of Italy, but strove for their annihilation by all ways and means. What will rank Mussolini among the great men of this earth is his determination not to share Italy with the Marxists, but to destroy internationalism and save the fatherland from it.”3 (That the Duce had succeeded in getting the Italian trains to run on time was mere icing on the cake.)4
However, the attraction was not necessarily mutual. True, Mussolini occasionally (and quietly) doled out cash to Hitler’s fledgling Nazi Party during its bid for power and offered it other forms of assistance. 5 But the cautious Italian dictator, while claiming to be flattered by Hitler’s admiration, generally kept the angry Austrian at arm’s length.6
In 1926, for instance, when Hitler contacted the Italian embassy in Berlin asking for a
signed photograph of his idol Mussolini, his request was promptly turned down.7 “Please thank the above-named gentleman for his sentiments,” read a message from Rome to the Italian diplomats in the German capital, “and tell him in whatever form you think best that the Duce does not think fit to accede to his request.”8 Hitler had to make do with a bronze bust of Mussolini, proudly displayed in his office at the Brown House, the Munich headquarters of the Nazis.9
The dynamic between the two men began to change when Hitler came to power in the early 1930s. Germany was disarmed and politically isolated at the time, and Hitler, who became chancellor early in 1933, was determined to strengthen the country’s military might and divide (and thereby weaken) the major European powers.10 Though the Duce had mixed feelings about the new Fuehrer—a resuscitated Germany could certainly pose dangers for Italy—he also believed he could use Hitler for his own ends: namely, that by exploiting the West’s fear of Nazism he could extract territorial concessions for Italy in the Balkans, the Mediterranean, or North Africa.
Naturally, Mussolini feared that Hitler would attempt to unite Germany and Austria, thereby erasing in one blow the security buffer (Austria) between Italy and the Third Reich.11 But the Duce was confident that he could control his adoring protégé and overrule attempts to create the so-called Anschluss (forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles).12 As Mussolini remarked at this time (1933), “[Hitler is] simply a muddle-headed fellow; his brain is stuffed with philosophical and political tags that are utterly incoherent.”13
Having spent the previous decade dodging Hitler, the Duce finally agreed to meet with the German dictator in Venice in June 1934. Even at this early date, Hitler did much of the talking, expounding on the two themes closest to his heart: aggressive war and race.14 Hitler even went so far as to cast bizarre aspersions on what he viewed as the less-than-pure race of the Italians!
Hitler's Raid to Save Mussolini Page 4
