The Footprint of Mussolini - TL
“… And I’m not sure about the Universe.”
Hey guys, I'm sorry if the pace is a little long but I've really caught the writing bug and have a lot of ideas. I probably won't write this much in future, but I'm determined to write to the conclusion I had in mind. I jus hope I can continue to entertain you.
I read every post and suggestion and intend to address as many as I can in the work itself.
“… And I’m not sure about the Universe.”
The Second World War – Christopher Armlong
Everything was against the Allies going into Operation Overlord, and Churchill knew it. The Luftwaffe remained a serious threat, the Battle of the Atlantic had barely been won, the American divisions were green as grass (as were significant numbers of British divisions), getting a decent landing time was hard enough and there were some forty German divisions posted across France. The odds were formidable – but it was too late to turn back.
On June 18th 1943, a cacophony of explosions broke the dawn over the coasts of France. American, Canadian and British troops landed and were immediately flung into the fight of their lives. At every beach, the Germans were ready, and at every beach it was as if the attackers were not. There were barely enough transports to go around and the full scale of the Atlantic Wall had not been expected by Allied commanders. Upon hearing news of the carnage on the shore, British General Bernard Montgomery would reportedly say, “Well, looks as if the War is going to end early, just not the way we intended.” Casualties were enormous on both sides, with the ground and air full of so much combat that one British soldier would recall, “It was like everyone on the planet had fallen on the beach and was trying to kill the other.”
However, much to Hitler’s fury, the beachheads had refused to be destroyed. Though the Germans flung their weight behind it, the little beachheads refused to give. This was the environment where General Patton became such a legendary figure, as he was roundly seen as having salvaged the operation from the brink of defeat through his aggressive assaults against the German advances. His pertinacity led to the Americans holding the line. It was only at the end of the month when all the beachheads had been connected and still Western leaders knew they were going nowhere soon. Their lofty expectations of capturing Caen in the first few days now seemed totally laughable. [1]
The Allies crept along the French coast, paying heavily for every bloody mile. At the rate they were going, they wouldn’t even be in Paris by the end of next year, let alone Berlin. The mood was grim in Allied capitals, despite the press’s declarations of the strength and bravery of the armed forces. They knew that unless something changed, they were going to be in a meatgrinder for a long time.
Fortunately for them, Hitler had exceeded their wildest expectations.
Miklós Horthy was no friend of the Jews. The Hungarian Dictator had passed multiple Anti-Semitic laws in the model of the Nazis, including forbidding Jews from the professions and intermarriage. Despite this, he was reluctant to hand over his some 800,000 strong Jewish population to the Nazis. He knew what would become of them if he gave them to the SS. Hitler had blamed Jewish subversion for the defeatist attitude permeating Hungary since the failure at Stalingrad and demanded Horthy take action to punish his population. Horthy seemed to be shaken in his resolve by the Allied landings at Normandy and the Soviet victory at Kursk. He reportedly told his staff, “Hitler’s not worth jumping into Hell for.” He wanted to get the pressure off him from Hitler, but also wanted to endear himself to the Allies to give Hungary lighter terms for the expected armistice. Then he saw something that inspired him.
In Denmark that October, an order had been given to deport the Jewish people to camps in Central Europe, where they would be slaughtered. Instead, by some miracle, the word got out ahead of time and almost the entirety of the Danish Jewish population was able to flee to Sweden and survive the War. The incident received scant mention in Germany days after the event and seemed to pass relatively unnoticed.
Horthy began thinking he could do something similar. He could endear himself to the West by sparing his Jewish citizens while selling it as an ‘expulsion’ to Germany. There was only one place to go though – Italy. Mussolini had fallen even lower in Hitler’s estimations recently as ‘a greater friend of the Jews than Roosevelt himself’. This was due to Mussolini’s purchase of so many Jews the previous year and the well-known story of Mussolini’s salvation at the hands of a Jew, which Hitler now suspected was proof Mussolini was part of the Jewish conspiracy. “Perhaps there is a third wing of the Jewish chimera – Capitalism, Communism and Fascism,” Hitler mused to Von Ribbentrop.
Horthy’s plan was simple: dump the 800,000 Hungarian Jews on Italy’s doorstep, Mussolini would probably accept and Hitler would stop pestering him on his treatment of Jews while doing little to anger the West. It seemed simple enough.
On November 12th, Horthy met with the senior officials of his government to discuss the idea. One staffer would recall, “It was the first meeting I could remember where we left feeling like we’d actually done something. All the others felt like we were only containing damage. We actually felt great after the meeting, as if things were going in the right direction. The only thing we discussed that could stop the plan was Mussolini turning it down because, obviously, 800,000 was a lot of people. We said we’d call up the Zionists and Red Cross and they’d take care of it. We were convinced the Zionists could pay for all of European Jewry if it wanted, so that wasn’t a concern. Not once in the whole meeting did anyone seriously wonder if Hitler would have a problem with it. We assumed that since Hitler hated Jews so much, he’d be glad to see them gone, especially since he’d already agreed to send Jews to Libya before, and especially because he’d already let the Danish Jews off without a problem. The idea that he would get angry over the plan was so insane, Horthy actually said ‘I just hope this pleases Mister Hitler’, and the whole room burst into laughter. The idea that it wouldn’t was so insane no one could conceive of it. But of course, there were a lot of things people couldn’t conceive about that man.”
When we were all called out to the streets of Budapest on the morning of November 20th, many were terrified. We thought that this was it. That they had finally decided to send us where we all feared to go: north. To certain death and destruction. Many people, including my own mother, cried as we went to the street and lined up. Still, I noticed there were no Germans and the police didn’t seem to be particularly aggressive as they would have been if they were ready for a fight. The whole Ghetto seemed to stop breathing when the policeman stood up on a makeshift platform and delivered his address.
“Jewish citizens, today you will be transported to the train station and then up to the Italian border.”
I felt the intense distance between ‘station’ and ‘Italian’. The sweeping movement from hopelessness to relief had nearly knocked me off my feet. I was saved. We were saved. Mussolini had come to save us again! He had already been a savior to us, and now he was going to save even more! I knew many Jews had attempted to make a break for the Fascist bloc and got out of Nazi reach but to think we were all going there?
“At the end of the week at midnight of November 28th, your Hungarian citizenship will officially be terminated. You will receive no protection from the Hungarian state from thereon and will be considered illegal alliens – you must have completed your immigration by that date. The trains will transport you to the Italian border. What you do from there is your own concern. That is all.”
I don’t think Jews have ever been as happy to be told they were being expelled from the land they had grown up in all their lives. But in the face of an evil as bottomless as Nazism, a fate as horrendous as Auschwitz, anything was life by comparison. My family and I packed our belongings as quickly as possible and headed to the train. By the end of the next day, we were right on the border with Italy, as were tens of thousands more, who were on every truck and train they could find.
On November 21st, Horthy received a telephone call from Berlin. As one staffer recalled, “when he heard who it was from, Horthy smiled and put the receiver to his ear. Hitler proceeded to scream so loudly his mere voice nearly decapitated Horthy.” Horthy was baffled and began to angrily reply that he had done nothing wrong and everything right – the Jews were gone, or going. What more was left? Why did Hitler want this group he thought were parasites inside the country, supposedly sabotaging the war effort? Especially given that the Exodus of the Danish Jews had gone without comment?
The game, Horthy failed to realise, had changed. Putting aside that there was a difference between the 6000 Jews of Denmark and the 800,000 Jews of Hungary, Hitler was convinced that the Fascist Bloc had been set up as a deliberately antagonistic force, as it had kept Croatia and Bulgaria out of the war and supporting his efforts in Russia. He was convinced that the Fascist Bloc was sending Jews to Libya and have them organize their own separate state. This was due to the surprising success Jewish refugees in Libya had in setting up their own state of affairs – irrigation, roads and medical facilities had suddenly built up Tripoli and Benghazi quicker than anyone was expecting. Hitler was convinced he’d been had – that far from being ‘under a Latin heel’ as he put it, that Italy had been taken over by Jews and that they had set up a base camp in Libya. From there, the Jews could organize and fight him. For that reason, he had redoubled his conviction that the Holocaust should continue and immensely regretted that he had ever let a single Jew go in 1942. Sweden was a non-player and isolated in the Baltic, but Libya? With free access to the Allied Powers and having virtually taken over the society? He was never going to allow the Jews to have that luxury, let alone allow Libya to nearly quadruple its size of Jews.
Hitler angrily ordered Horthy to rescind the order. Horthy, by now infuriated by Hitler’s obstinacy, refused outright, assuming Wehrmacht commanders would never allow the invasion of an ally over their not being Anti-Semitic enough. In the end, he was only half-right - the SS would gladly do it.
On November 25th, the SS invaded Hungary under the ludicrous pretext of a Communist conspiracy within the government. Hungarian soldiers were so baffled most didn’t put up a fight. The next day, Budapest was occupied. Horthy was arrested quietly executed under Hitler’s instructions, as well as half of this cabinet – German media reported Communists had killed him. The Arrow Cross Party, the Hungarian equivalent of the Nazis, was instituted as the ruling body of Hungary under Ferenc Szálasi, a ruthless Hitler worshipper. He assured Hitler that his Hungarian state would fully cooperate with any and every wish against ‘Judaism in all its wicked forms’.
As a result of his inability to be clearly defined in terms of his support of Hitler, Horthy is a controversial figure in Hungary to this day, with some regarding him as a hero for saving his Jewish community, while also being condemned for his prior persecutions. Others believe his final act to be one of repentance for past misdeeds. He supposedly told one of his German captors before he died that he wished “the Jews ruled Hungary forever rather than let your buffoon of a leader rule it for one second.”
Adolf Eichmann had been entrusted with rounding up the remaining Jews of Hungary. He didn’t even find a thousand Jews left across the whole country.
Mussolini was woken in the morning of November 21st to news that hundreds of thousands of Jews had descended on the narrow Hungarian border. He was baffled as to what was going on, but as the situation became clear to him he was torn. Though he was sympathetic to Jews for obvious reasons, the estimated 800,000 Jews was not a number he could easily absorb. Nor were these the handpicked special cases as before – these were old and young, smart and stupid, Left and Right. And they were all clogged on the Italian border in the Slovenian region, a place still recovering from their annexation into Italy. This was going to be a tough decision.
Graziani, especially as word got out of Hitler’s fury over Horthy’s decision, advised Mussolini to reject the stragglers, as it would risk war with Germany, while not doing anything would risk no harm to the Italian state. Balbo supported letting the Jews in if they would be sent to the colonies, suggesting that they could find enough Zionist organisations to foot the bill. Ciano was sympathetic to Balbo but was well aware that no one could easily pay for these 800,000 Jews, whatever the case. Ciano would, however, laugh off Graziani’s warnings of conflict. “Perhaps he’ll declare war on the Pope for good measure!” he laughed.
As the Counsel continued discussing, a new piece of intelligence entered the room. It appeared that thousands of Jews along the border fence had begun chanting one phrase in broken Italian: “Duce! Duce! Save us!”
Balbo: “When we heard that, we all slowly turned and looked at him. Mussolini seemed to look into space and his eyes went wide. He later told me that when he heard the staffer, he had actually heard voice of Isaac Carpi, who had saved him. He stood up and told us to contact every Zionist organisation they could to demand they pay their part, and to get the ships necessary to transport the Jews to Libya, or East Africa if need be.”
Interviewer: “What did you think when you heard that decision?”
Balbo: “I felt proud that he was our Duce.”
Interviewer: “Did you expect the German response?”
Balbo: (*Smiling*) The Germans didn’t expect it, how should we have?
“They aren’t here,” reported Adolf Eichmann to Berlin on November 28th, “but we know where they are.” His troops had turned the Ghetto upside down but it was a ghost town; the Jews had not only escaped, but they had been granted access to Italy through Slovenia. They were currently in makeshift camps in the Slovenian heartlands, and the first Navy ships were heading to Trieste to carry the Jews off to the Italian colonies and hopefully develop the land for their Italian rulers. This was unacceptable to Hitler.
On November 29th, Hitler sent an angry telegram to Rome. It stated that the Italian government, in defiance of non-aggression treaties, had helped the Reich’s enemies and provided supplies and comfort. Mussolini was so baffled by the letter he at first thought their had been a mistranslation – they were broken civilians thankful to be alive. When the Italian government replied that no such aid to enemies of the Nazi regime had been done, the Germans quickly responded. If the Italian government did not begin the process of returning it’s Jewish refugees to the German authorities of Hungary ‘under the auspices of SS-Obersturmbannführer Eichmann”, the German government will consider the Italian government to have declared a state of war.”
Even though such a thing had happened in Hungary, Mussolini did not believe Hitler would do something so insane. Hungary was a small, easily conquerable country with half of its troops still in Russia. Hitler knew that if he attacked Italy, he would be declaring war on Spain, Bulgaria and Croatia, and those were just the nations he and his allies bordered. How was he going to hold France (as he was doing quite successfully, all things considered) if he was suddenly going to open a gigantic front on the Pyranees? What about the Ploesti oil that would be easily attained by Bulgarian assault? And for what? So he could kill Jews? No one believed Hitler could be that stupid. What they had forgotten was, as the famous Jew Albert Einstein had said, “Only two things are infinite: the Universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the Universe.” Perhaps ‘stupidity’ isn’t the right word – perhaps it’s ‘evil’.
On December 2nd 1943, with the German army already occupied on two fronts and slowly losing both, Hitler decided to open a third when he attacked Italy. The Luftwaffe even avoided targeting Italian military depots; they simply aimed to bomb the refugee camps around Slovenia with the Hungarian Jews still in them. No one could believe what had happened. Not the leadership in Rome, Madrid, Ankara, Sofia, Moscow, London, Washington or even Berlin for the most part. Not the citizens of Italy, Germany, Russia, Britain or America. Only one group of people knew Hitler would do this – the Jews themselves. But while others were scared or angry, they weren’t.
This time, they weren’t running: they were fighting.
[1] – Imagine Anzio writ large
I read every post and suggestion and intend to address as many as I can in the work itself.
“… And I’m not sure about the Universe.”
The Second World War – Christopher Armlong
Everything was against the Allies going into Operation Overlord, and Churchill knew it. The Luftwaffe remained a serious threat, the Battle of the Atlantic had barely been won, the American divisions were green as grass (as were significant numbers of British divisions), getting a decent landing time was hard enough and there were some forty German divisions posted across France. The odds were formidable – but it was too late to turn back.
On June 18th 1943, a cacophony of explosions broke the dawn over the coasts of France. American, Canadian and British troops landed and were immediately flung into the fight of their lives. At every beach, the Germans were ready, and at every beach it was as if the attackers were not. There were barely enough transports to go around and the full scale of the Atlantic Wall had not been expected by Allied commanders. Upon hearing news of the carnage on the shore, British General Bernard Montgomery would reportedly say, “Well, looks as if the War is going to end early, just not the way we intended.” Casualties were enormous on both sides, with the ground and air full of so much combat that one British soldier would recall, “It was like everyone on the planet had fallen on the beach and was trying to kill the other.”
However, much to Hitler’s fury, the beachheads had refused to be destroyed. Though the Germans flung their weight behind it, the little beachheads refused to give. This was the environment where General Patton became such a legendary figure, as he was roundly seen as having salvaged the operation from the brink of defeat through his aggressive assaults against the German advances. His pertinacity led to the Americans holding the line. It was only at the end of the month when all the beachheads had been connected and still Western leaders knew they were going nowhere soon. Their lofty expectations of capturing Caen in the first few days now seemed totally laughable. [1]
The Allies crept along the French coast, paying heavily for every bloody mile. At the rate they were going, they wouldn’t even be in Paris by the end of next year, let alone Berlin. The mood was grim in Allied capitals, despite the press’s declarations of the strength and bravery of the armed forces. They knew that unless something changed, they were going to be in a meatgrinder for a long time.
Fortunately for them, Hitler had exceeded their wildest expectations.
The Shoah by Abraham Dershowitz
Miklós Horthy was no friend of the Jews. The Hungarian Dictator had passed multiple Anti-Semitic laws in the model of the Nazis, including forbidding Jews from the professions and intermarriage. Despite this, he was reluctant to hand over his some 800,000 strong Jewish population to the Nazis. He knew what would become of them if he gave them to the SS. Hitler had blamed Jewish subversion for the defeatist attitude permeating Hungary since the failure at Stalingrad and demanded Horthy take action to punish his population. Horthy seemed to be shaken in his resolve by the Allied landings at Normandy and the Soviet victory at Kursk. He reportedly told his staff, “Hitler’s not worth jumping into Hell for.” He wanted to get the pressure off him from Hitler, but also wanted to endear himself to the Allies to give Hungary lighter terms for the expected armistice. Then he saw something that inspired him.
In Denmark that October, an order had been given to deport the Jewish people to camps in Central Europe, where they would be slaughtered. Instead, by some miracle, the word got out ahead of time and almost the entirety of the Danish Jewish population was able to flee to Sweden and survive the War. The incident received scant mention in Germany days after the event and seemed to pass relatively unnoticed.
Horthy began thinking he could do something similar. He could endear himself to the West by sparing his Jewish citizens while selling it as an ‘expulsion’ to Germany. There was only one place to go though – Italy. Mussolini had fallen even lower in Hitler’s estimations recently as ‘a greater friend of the Jews than Roosevelt himself’. This was due to Mussolini’s purchase of so many Jews the previous year and the well-known story of Mussolini’s salvation at the hands of a Jew, which Hitler now suspected was proof Mussolini was part of the Jewish conspiracy. “Perhaps there is a third wing of the Jewish chimera – Capitalism, Communism and Fascism,” Hitler mused to Von Ribbentrop.
Horthy’s plan was simple: dump the 800,000 Hungarian Jews on Italy’s doorstep, Mussolini would probably accept and Hitler would stop pestering him on his treatment of Jews while doing little to anger the West. It seemed simple enough.
On November 12th, Horthy met with the senior officials of his government to discuss the idea. One staffer would recall, “It was the first meeting I could remember where we left feeling like we’d actually done something. All the others felt like we were only containing damage. We actually felt great after the meeting, as if things were going in the right direction. The only thing we discussed that could stop the plan was Mussolini turning it down because, obviously, 800,000 was a lot of people. We said we’d call up the Zionists and Red Cross and they’d take care of it. We were convinced the Zionists could pay for all of European Jewry if it wanted, so that wasn’t a concern. Not once in the whole meeting did anyone seriously wonder if Hitler would have a problem with it. We assumed that since Hitler hated Jews so much, he’d be glad to see them gone, especially since he’d already agreed to send Jews to Libya before, and especially because he’d already let the Danish Jews off without a problem. The idea that he would get angry over the plan was so insane, Horthy actually said ‘I just hope this pleases Mister Hitler’, and the whole room burst into laughter. The idea that it wouldn’t was so insane no one could conceive of it. But of course, there were a lot of things people couldn’t conceive about that man.”
Day (1990) by Elie Wiesel
When we were all called out to the streets of Budapest on the morning of November 20th, many were terrified. We thought that this was it. That they had finally decided to send us where we all feared to go: north. To certain death and destruction. Many people, including my own mother, cried as we went to the street and lined up. Still, I noticed there were no Germans and the police didn’t seem to be particularly aggressive as they would have been if they were ready for a fight. The whole Ghetto seemed to stop breathing when the policeman stood up on a makeshift platform and delivered his address.
“Jewish citizens, today you will be transported to the train station and then up to the Italian border.”
I felt the intense distance between ‘station’ and ‘Italian’. The sweeping movement from hopelessness to relief had nearly knocked me off my feet. I was saved. We were saved. Mussolini had come to save us again! He had already been a savior to us, and now he was going to save even more! I knew many Jews had attempted to make a break for the Fascist bloc and got out of Nazi reach but to think we were all going there?
“At the end of the week at midnight of November 28th, your Hungarian citizenship will officially be terminated. You will receive no protection from the Hungarian state from thereon and will be considered illegal alliens – you must have completed your immigration by that date. The trains will transport you to the Italian border. What you do from there is your own concern. That is all.”
I don’t think Jews have ever been as happy to be told they were being expelled from the land they had grown up in all their lives. But in the face of an evil as bottomless as Nazism, a fate as horrendous as Auschwitz, anything was life by comparison. My family and I packed our belongings as quickly as possible and headed to the train. By the end of the next day, we were right on the border with Italy, as were tens of thousands more, who were on every truck and train they could find.
Unconquerable: The Story of the Jews of Hungary, by Mel Goldberg
On November 21st, Horthy received a telephone call from Berlin. As one staffer recalled, “when he heard who it was from, Horthy smiled and put the receiver to his ear. Hitler proceeded to scream so loudly his mere voice nearly decapitated Horthy.” Horthy was baffled and began to angrily reply that he had done nothing wrong and everything right – the Jews were gone, or going. What more was left? Why did Hitler want this group he thought were parasites inside the country, supposedly sabotaging the war effort? Especially given that the Exodus of the Danish Jews had gone without comment?
The game, Horthy failed to realise, had changed. Putting aside that there was a difference between the 6000 Jews of Denmark and the 800,000 Jews of Hungary, Hitler was convinced that the Fascist Bloc had been set up as a deliberately antagonistic force, as it had kept Croatia and Bulgaria out of the war and supporting his efforts in Russia. He was convinced that the Fascist Bloc was sending Jews to Libya and have them organize their own separate state. This was due to the surprising success Jewish refugees in Libya had in setting up their own state of affairs – irrigation, roads and medical facilities had suddenly built up Tripoli and Benghazi quicker than anyone was expecting. Hitler was convinced he’d been had – that far from being ‘under a Latin heel’ as he put it, that Italy had been taken over by Jews and that they had set up a base camp in Libya. From there, the Jews could organize and fight him. For that reason, he had redoubled his conviction that the Holocaust should continue and immensely regretted that he had ever let a single Jew go in 1942. Sweden was a non-player and isolated in the Baltic, but Libya? With free access to the Allied Powers and having virtually taken over the society? He was never going to allow the Jews to have that luxury, let alone allow Libya to nearly quadruple its size of Jews.
Hitler angrily ordered Horthy to rescind the order. Horthy, by now infuriated by Hitler’s obstinacy, refused outright, assuming Wehrmacht commanders would never allow the invasion of an ally over their not being Anti-Semitic enough. In the end, he was only half-right - the SS would gladly do it.
On November 25th, the SS invaded Hungary under the ludicrous pretext of a Communist conspiracy within the government. Hungarian soldiers were so baffled most didn’t put up a fight. The next day, Budapest was occupied. Horthy was arrested quietly executed under Hitler’s instructions, as well as half of this cabinet – German media reported Communists had killed him. The Arrow Cross Party, the Hungarian equivalent of the Nazis, was instituted as the ruling body of Hungary under Ferenc Szálasi, a ruthless Hitler worshipper. He assured Hitler that his Hungarian state would fully cooperate with any and every wish against ‘Judaism in all its wicked forms’.
As a result of his inability to be clearly defined in terms of his support of Hitler, Horthy is a controversial figure in Hungary to this day, with some regarding him as a hero for saving his Jewish community, while also being condemned for his prior persecutions. Others believe his final act to be one of repentance for past misdeeds. He supposedly told one of his German captors before he died that he wished “the Jews ruled Hungary forever rather than let your buffoon of a leader rule it for one second.”
Adolf Eichmann had been entrusted with rounding up the remaining Jews of Hungary. He didn’t even find a thousand Jews left across the whole country.
Mussolini: The Twentieth Century Man by Joseph Manderlay
Mussolini was woken in the morning of November 21st to news that hundreds of thousands of Jews had descended on the narrow Hungarian border. He was baffled as to what was going on, but as the situation became clear to him he was torn. Though he was sympathetic to Jews for obvious reasons, the estimated 800,000 Jews was not a number he could easily absorb. Nor were these the handpicked special cases as before – these were old and young, smart and stupid, Left and Right. And they were all clogged on the Italian border in the Slovenian region, a place still recovering from their annexation into Italy. This was going to be a tough decision.
Graziani, especially as word got out of Hitler’s fury over Horthy’s decision, advised Mussolini to reject the stragglers, as it would risk war with Germany, while not doing anything would risk no harm to the Italian state. Balbo supported letting the Jews in if they would be sent to the colonies, suggesting that they could find enough Zionist organisations to foot the bill. Ciano was sympathetic to Balbo but was well aware that no one could easily pay for these 800,000 Jews, whatever the case. Ciano would, however, laugh off Graziani’s warnings of conflict. “Perhaps he’ll declare war on the Pope for good measure!” he laughed.
As the Counsel continued discussing, a new piece of intelligence entered the room. It appeared that thousands of Jews along the border fence had begun chanting one phrase in broken Italian: “Duce! Duce! Save us!”
Interview of Italo Balbo for the BBC’s ‘World At War’ (1973)
Balbo: “When we heard that, we all slowly turned and looked at him. Mussolini seemed to look into space and his eyes went wide. He later told me that when he heard the staffer, he had actually heard voice of Isaac Carpi, who had saved him. He stood up and told us to contact every Zionist organisation they could to demand they pay their part, and to get the ships necessary to transport the Jews to Libya, or East Africa if need be.”
Interviewer: “What did you think when you heard that decision?”
Balbo: “I felt proud that he was our Duce.”
Interviewer: “Did you expect the German response?”
Balbo: (*Smiling*) The Germans didn’t expect it, how should we have?
Unconquerable: The Story of the Jews of Hungary, by Mel Goldberg
“They aren’t here,” reported Adolf Eichmann to Berlin on November 28th, “but we know where they are.” His troops had turned the Ghetto upside down but it was a ghost town; the Jews had not only escaped, but they had been granted access to Italy through Slovenia. They were currently in makeshift camps in the Slovenian heartlands, and the first Navy ships were heading to Trieste to carry the Jews off to the Italian colonies and hopefully develop the land for their Italian rulers. This was unacceptable to Hitler.
On November 29th, Hitler sent an angry telegram to Rome. It stated that the Italian government, in defiance of non-aggression treaties, had helped the Reich’s enemies and provided supplies and comfort. Mussolini was so baffled by the letter he at first thought their had been a mistranslation – they were broken civilians thankful to be alive. When the Italian government replied that no such aid to enemies of the Nazi regime had been done, the Germans quickly responded. If the Italian government did not begin the process of returning it’s Jewish refugees to the German authorities of Hungary ‘under the auspices of SS-Obersturmbannführer Eichmann”, the German government will consider the Italian government to have declared a state of war.”
Even though such a thing had happened in Hungary, Mussolini did not believe Hitler would do something so insane. Hungary was a small, easily conquerable country with half of its troops still in Russia. Hitler knew that if he attacked Italy, he would be declaring war on Spain, Bulgaria and Croatia, and those were just the nations he and his allies bordered. How was he going to hold France (as he was doing quite successfully, all things considered) if he was suddenly going to open a gigantic front on the Pyranees? What about the Ploesti oil that would be easily attained by Bulgarian assault? And for what? So he could kill Jews? No one believed Hitler could be that stupid. What they had forgotten was, as the famous Jew Albert Einstein had said, “Only two things are infinite: the Universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the Universe.” Perhaps ‘stupidity’ isn’t the right word – perhaps it’s ‘evil’.
On December 2nd 1943, with the German army already occupied on two fronts and slowly losing both, Hitler decided to open a third when he attacked Italy. The Luftwaffe even avoided targeting Italian military depots; they simply aimed to bomb the refugee camps around Slovenia with the Hungarian Jews still in them. No one could believe what had happened. Not the leadership in Rome, Madrid, Ankara, Sofia, Moscow, London, Washington or even Berlin for the most part. Not the citizens of Italy, Germany, Russia, Britain or America. Only one group of people knew Hitler would do this – the Jews themselves. But while others were scared or angry, they weren’t.
This time, they weren’t running: they were fighting.
[1] – Imagine Anzio writ large
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- Interesting TL.
- Oh, Adolf...nice work shooting yourself in the foot even worse than OTL. This will be fun.
I’m wondering if any German territory will become part of the fascist bloc postwR. I could see the Italians setting up a satellite state in Austria or Czechoslovakia
And Hitler shoots himself in the (Italian) boot even harder this time. It's 1943 and without the "problems" of OTL the Forse Armate are in a much better position... Let's say, a somewhat better officer corps, new and better tanks, the Regia Aviazione has finally got their arms on some interesting things they had the time to develop, like the P.108 and his variants, the serie 5 fighters, etc. The Regia Marina has completed I think the Littorio class and I hope the Aquila has been almost completed. On top of that they could just camp at the Brennero, with the new front in Hungary the Reich has almost no troops to spare, or not?
marathag
Banned
There really wasn't much to the Atlantic Wall in 1943. Of the planned 15,000 bunkers on the Dutch, Belgian and French Coast, only half were built by May, 1943. By the end of 1943, it stood at 8478.
And of that construction, Calais and the Channel Islands had most of the attention. Normandy, by contrast, had little attention until Rommel was tasked with improvements in December, after von Rundstedt damning report was sent on lack of effort during October 1943, with the existing 38 Divisions were under strength, a two to one ratio of 'Osttruppen' to German units, that were mostly youths and reservists, and that the U boat Pens had been prioritized for concrete over bunkers.
Of the reserve forces, all six Panzer and motorized divisions were refitting after being chewed up on the Eastern Front, and two reserve infantry divisions plus two new divisions forming up with 11 more planned.
From January to May 1944, 4600 more bunkers were built, with over 700,000 m3 of concrete poured per month, twice the rate of 1943
the Beach Obstacles were all Rommel.
By time of von Rundstedt's report nearly 2 million mines had been set. Rommel put 4.5 million more in.
OTL in 1944 D-Day, 46 Divisions were in place along the Coast, with two Infantry in reserve, and 10 Panzer divisions, with four of them.in the South.
And of that construction, Calais and the Channel Islands had most of the attention. Normandy, by contrast, had little attention until Rommel was tasked with improvements in December, after von Rundstedt damning report was sent on lack of effort during October 1943, with the existing 38 Divisions were under strength, a two to one ratio of 'Osttruppen' to German units, that were mostly youths and reservists, and that the U boat Pens had been prioritized for concrete over bunkers.
Of the reserve forces, all six Panzer and motorized divisions were refitting after being chewed up on the Eastern Front, and two reserve infantry divisions plus two new divisions forming up with 11 more planned.
From January to May 1944, 4600 more bunkers were built, with over 700,000 m3 of concrete poured per month, twice the rate of 1943
the Beach Obstacles were all Rommel.
By time of von Rundstedt's report nearly 2 million mines had been set. Rommel put 4.5 million more in.
OTL in 1944 D-Day, 46 Divisions were in place along the Coast, with two Infantry in reserve, and 10 Panzer divisions, with four of them.in the South.
I think the end result is legit. The WAllies are really "green", without the experience Mussolini gently provided for in otl in Tunisia and at Anzio.
Remember, that there is no distraction with North Africa or Italy, and since more troops are freed up the Wall is more built up (not to mention they are suspecting an attack much more so than OTL 1943 so the buildup is more hectic). I felt that given the mutual handicaps a realistic scenario would be a slower Allied advance at a far higher cost.
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The main assault is from Hungary into Slovenia (not that it's exclusive to that region by any stretch). This is not an assault to intelligently conquer Italy; this is an attempt to exterminate the Jews of Hungary.
Ljubljana has been renamed Lubiana to fit with it's new status as an Italian city. Needless to say, a lot of Slovenians aren't exactly fans of it and are sympathetic to the Germans as they hope to be liberated from the Italians before the latter obliterates their culture.
marathag
Banned
That was Organization Todt limits on construction, not the Troops. There were not that many divisions in North Africa, for all of its size. Todt was doing sub pens. If pulled off from that, more U Boats get wrecked.
All that said, it's not an unrealistic outcome for a 1943 'Sledgehammer' or 'Roundup' invasion than Overlord.
There are Jews being moved to AOI? Makes me wonder or not if Jews suddenly become associated with the Italians’ oppression and atrocities if and/or when Italy finally decides to abandon Ethiopia.
Not a single Jew has got on a boat yet. They are still stranded in Slovenia with the SS chasing after them. With the exception of the small children and those who physically can't fight, not a soul wants to leave. They know they are all dead if the Germans win, and don't intend to let that happen.
Compared to the Italians, the SS divisions employed here are strong - indeed, they just 'conquered' Hungary. While they obviously won't march to Rome anytime soon, they won't easily be dislodged, especially with help from what's left of the Luftwaffe. That said, once the surprise element wears off, Germany is in serious trouble.
Yeah, the Alps practically defend themselves, if you have enough manpower; that's part of the reason why Germany never invaded Switzerland, IIRC (the cost of capturing and holding Switzerland would be way too much, they realized)...
"All we've ever done is survive!"
“All we’ve ever done is survive!”
The Making of Fascist Bloc by Jodie Rutkins
The Making of Fascist Bloc by Jodie Rutkins
No language has words to express the shock that greeted the Fascist Bloc at the news that there were SS divisions pouring over the border into Italy and that they were now in a state of war with not only Germany, but Romania too. On a darker note, it certainly put the many Italian volunteers in Russia off their balance. Some five thousand Italians were serving on the Russian front when the news came through. They were arrested before they ever got news of the invasion and interned in concentration camps. Barely half would survive the war, in perhaps one of the more vivid illustrations of the sudden nature of the latest stage of the war.
In Bulgaria, Tsar Boris was in surprisingly good spirits by contrast. He would tell his cabinet, “God won’t deny a single want of the Bulgarian nation, it seems.” He was referring to Dobruja, the Romanian territory located along the Black Sea. If he could secure that, he would landlock Romania, and fulfill some of the longest standing desires of Bulgarian nationalism. But he first ordered the Ploesti oil fields to be targeted, which would cripple the Pact’s war effort.
In Spain, Franco was quite astonished to arise on the morning of December 2nd to find he was in the middle of another war, especially against a former ally. He soon steadied himself and gave a radio address that evening from Madrid declaring that, “Those who would attack the nation of our Church deserve no forgiveness. This Christmas, Lourdes shall breathe in Christian air again.” The speech did a lot to assuage terror in Spain at the prospect of another war. Salazar in Portugal, would go down a similar road, only re-emphasizing the Anglo-Portugese friendship on top of it. Interestingly, a few despondent Communists still resisting Franco would join the Spanish military, just to be part of ‘at least one Anti-Fascist Crusade that was going to win,” one recalled.
In Croatia, Pavelić was still busy rooting out anything Orthodox or remotely Serbian and was left thunderstruck when the Nazis had dragged him into the War against them, all for a race he had little love for. However, given how close he was to the action, he readied the troops, especially as the first bombs fell on Zagreb on December 3rd. It appeared that he and Croatia were entering another war much sooner than he anticipated.
Turkey was so distant from the carnage that the news was registered mostly with confusion rather than fear. Most were convinced that the War would be long over before Turkey could send even a division, and ultimately they weren’t far off the truth.
In Italy, the mood was unique, given that the attack had befallen them and them alone. Mussolini had been stupefied by the news of war and further stupefied when he realised that his army in Slovenia had gone virtually unmolested. Even Lubiana escaped terror bombing. Still, the invading German troops, who were mostly from the SS were easily able to puncture the Italian border against Hungary. Minor assaults were launched across the length of Austria, but these were simply diversionary techniques given how impassable the Alps were.
Operation Visigoth (named after the German Barbarians who successfully challenged Rome) was the codename for the invasion of Italy. The main assault was launched over the Hungarian border towards Lubiana. The plan from there was to reach Trieste and cut the Fascist Bloc in two. Troops would then be sent into the northern Italian heartlands, where the vast majority of Italian industry was located. Once Italy’s industry was taken, it was assumed Italy would sue for peace, after which the remaining members of the Roman Alliance would likely sue for peace as well – after they had agreed to turn in any Jews they were sheltering. General Walter Model would lead the operation, despite his being a more defensive-suited commander. This was due to Model’s sympathy with Nazi policy, which had never been more fully on display. Behind him was Adolf Eichmann, tasked with ‘treating’ the Jews after the Italians had been beaten back. Hitler told Eichmann in no uncertain terms that Auschwitz was now off the table. The Jews were to be killed whenever he found them, wherever he found them, shot on sight.
Eichmann made little complaint.
Four’s Company: The Great Power relations in World War Two, by Steven Benford
Mussolini knew he was not popular in the West, especially after his opportunistic wars of expansion in Yugoslavia and Greece. Upon news of their latest ally, Roosevelt cut a decidedly mixed reaction. He was at once relieved that there was a new opportunity, but also embarrassed that he had to share the same side as that, “Mediteranean Peacock.” Stalin by contrast was quite concerned, correctly predicting the changes this would push on post-war Europe. He looked at the map: he was a long way from Romania, but Bulgaria was right there. He realised that the Fascist Bloc could set up their puppets right on the border. It filled him with alarm. Soviet propaganda refused to give support to Italy, merely using it to launch into mockery of ‘German insanity’. Churchill, despite his anger over Mussolini’s conquests, was much more relieved, still burned by Roosevelt after being pushed into the Normandy campaign, which he regarded as a mistake. He felt Roosevelt was too soft on Stalin, and was relieved that he would ‘have someone in the foxhole against Stalin at the next conference’, as he told Anthony Eden.
However, Mussolini’s awkward transition to a champion of Democracy was to be severely eased by events in Slovenia. The Nazis had won the hearts of the Slovenian people, angry at Italy for their attempt to remove their culture. The Italians had changed the name of every city, suppressed teaching of the Slovenian language and forced everyone to adhere to Italian customs over the native ones. The population was lucky not to be considered Sub-human by the Nazis, and so the Slovenians were promised their own state in the event of German victory. This gave a false confidence to German commanders that Italy would crumble in days, which was brutally halted during the battle of Lubiana on December 10th.
The Germans had incorrectly assumed that the Italian army was as primitive and poor as it was against Yugoslavia, and that decent Nordic equipment and men would overrun them like mincemeat, especially with a hostile population. Instead, a brutal battle was held, lasting ten days. The Luftwaffe found itself in a totally unexpected fight for its life by waves of P.108 and G.55 planes made from the Piaggio and Fiat manufacturing plants, needing sheer numbers it had a hard time sparing. It was expected to fall in a day and lasted a week due to dogged Blackshirt and Italian resistance. Few Jews fought in the battle, and were instead pressed against the Adriatic in Trieste, which was overwhelmed on all sides by refugees. The lack of Jews and the extreme nature of the fighting brought German anger to a boiling point.
With the help of Slovenian collaborators, members of the Fascist Party, Blackshirts, prominent Italians and a handful of Jews were rounded up into the city centre and executed under Eichmann’s orders. The Slovenian collaborators took the message to mean ‘Italians out!’ An orgy of violence would destroy Lubiana for the rest of the year, with the Italian population ethnically cleansed from the city as the first stage of a ‘pure, Slovenian homeland’.
The event would devastate sympathy for Slovenian nationalism in the long-term, but even in the short term it did much to endear the Italians to the Western public. However, the generational defining event for both Italy and the Jewish people was still to come.
Unconquerable: The Story of the Jews of Hungary, by Mel Goldberg
With the fall of Lubiana, and news of the subsequent slaughter, the Chief Rabbi of Rome Israel Zolli and representatives of the Hungarian Jews arrived in Rome to meet Mussolini on December 22nd. These representatives included Antal Szerb, one of the most respected writers in Hungary, Miklós Vig, a stage legend and Gold medal Olympian János Garay [1]. Mussolini expected pleading to send more troops into the region to help save the Jewish escapees, who were now crowded around Trieste, tired and hungry. He even began the meeting by telling him that extra troops were currently unavailable. He was shocked by the reply: they didn’t want troops, but they wanted guns. The Jewish escapees demanded guns so they could hold Trieste and repulse the Nazis out of Italy. They furthermore requested that the ships currently in the Adriatic, from the battleships down to the fishermen evacuate the Jewish women and children only. Jewish men would stay and fight. They would rather the Littorio ships save their children rather than give support to the fighters. In other words, ‘our own Dunkirk’. This line in particular impressed Mussolini, as he was sure Britain was finished in the war three years ago and was amazed at the ‘Dunkirk Spirit’ that existed during the Battle of Britain.
Israel Zolli then told Mussolini that that very day, December 22nd, was the beginning of Hanukah, the Jewish holiday commemorating the Jewish fighters who held out against a mighty empire they would ultimately outlive. Mussolini, a man who believed in the power of destiny despite his atheism, saw it as a sign, and agreed to send out the evacuation call while dropping in supplies to the beleaugured city of Trieste, which was overwhelmed with Jewish refugees, and Italian ones too for that matter.
Day (1990) by Elie Wiesel
My mother and sister were now drifting away from us. It seemed that all the boats were at that point. All along the shore, the boats were full of children, barely younger than me. Some were gigantic crusiers, some were tiny little fishing boats. The harbor couldn’t have been more full but there was no end to the number of us who stood on the shores. I was barely fifteen but I knew there were twelve year olds who were staying behind as well. My father stood beside me and held me. We could already hear the guns starting to fire in the distance. We knew we were going into that soon, and there was no guarantee either of us were going to make it out alive. If I was being perfectly honest, the same was true of my mother and sister. All along the water’s edge were boys just like me, still kids, knowing this may be the last time that they saw their mother’s before they died.
One child just to my right couldn’t take it anymore. He must have been thirteen or fourteen, and having had his Bar Mitzvah he had to stay and fight, or there wouldn’t be any of us left. He knelt, weeping as his mother slowly moved into the distance on one of the little fishing boats, she herself broken with grief. Then the boy stood up, and with a voice so loud it seemed to silence the whole city, he screamed, “Next year in Jerusalem!”
Soon I called out the same thing to my mother and sister. Then my father. Then the man beside me, then the plucky woman who wanted to fight with her brothers, then the old man by the lamppost, then the whole line, the whole street, the whole harbor, the whole city.
At that point, we knew we’d survive - as a people. But that wasn’t enough for us anymore. All we’ve ever done is survive! It was so routine, it was almost boring. Of course we would pull through, we always had and we always would. But there was one thing more we were going to do now: fight back. The Nazis said we’d cower and shake at their sight. But it wasn’t what the Nazis said about us that matter. The only thing that mattered was what we said about us. If we said we were going to fight them to the death, then by all the strength within us, we would. David was still a boy when he slayed Goliath, and so I would slay those who would have killed my family, my country, my whole world. As the day broke over the horizon, I could feel the presence of God within, telling me that I would enter the Valley of the Shadow of Death, but not to be afraid … for he was with me.
[1] All of whom perished in the Holocaust
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