Hello all,
This is the finished thread for The Footprint of Mussolini. If you are interested, I would ask you to look at the discussion thread for list of canon omake's that help fill in the world's detail. The original thread (including maps) can be found here, navigable by threadmark:
The Footprint of Mussolini
Extract from 'The New Roman Empire' by David Lassinger
14th July 1932
It was a day that would determine the lives of millions. Because of what happened that day, millions would live who would otherwise have died, and millions would die who would otherwise have lived. It would determine Italy’s trajectory for the whole rest of the century, and with it the whole of the Middle East, Africa and the Eastern Bloc.
Mussolini had concluded another one of his fiery speeches to the faithful in Milan. He had never considered himself too concerned with the Jewish question and didn’t think much of it. He was vaguely aware of a certain Austrian attempting to become the President of Germany who was had quite pronounced opinions to say the least. However, at the time, he took little emotional interest. For the moment, he was more interested in his relations with the newly formed Vatican state and his moves in the Balkans and Africa.
Once the speech concluded, he was escorted around the back of the stage. On all sides were the Blackshirts, specifically the more aesthetic ones to give a positive impression of the Fascist movement at large – not that anyone was in the mood to fight back against a Totalitarian Dictatorship unless their backs were totally to the wall. For the moment, at least, the Fascists were quite popular with the population. That was, of course, with the exception of Roberto Giovana. He was a 22-year-old Communist who had managed to procure a firearm. By sheer luck, he was able to weave through the security and get close enough to his target.
By the time he got close enough, he made a dash and leaped in front of Mussolini. The dictator would recall ‘I was as certain of the inevitability of my death as I certain I am here right now.’ Giovana fired the pistol … but the bullet never reached the dictator.
A Blackshirt had flung himself in front of his leader, his Duce. The bullet struck him in the chest – as would the second. Giovana would never fire a third, as he was wrestled to the ground and dragged off. He was killed in transit to prison. Officially, he was resisting arrest, although documentation has shown since that he was beaten to death while already incapacitated.
Mussolini was awestruck by the proceedings, ignoring the commotion around Giovana and kneeling beside the Blackshirt. “You’ve saved me. What is your name?” Mussolini asked.
“I-Isaac Carpi,” said the Blackshirt as his skin paled and his voice quivered.
“Someone get a doctor!” called out a voice at the back.
“Someone get a Priest!” called a more sardonic voice closer to the front.
At that, Isaac seemed to laugh and regain strength for a moment. “Sorry, but no Priest – I’m a Jew. Duce? Are you safe?”
“I’m safe,” said Mussolini, standing especially erect and mighty to make up for the shock to his system just moments ago.
“Then we are safe,” said Carpi, as he dropped his head a final time.
For the rest of his days, Mussolini would always note that ‘we’. Though he was a Jew, he put his life on the line for the Leader of Italy, and of course, Mussolini was Italy - at least in his own mind. That Jew had died so Italy could live. It left an indelible impression on the Dictator’s mind that would never leave.
Carpi would be praised as a model Italian citizen and Fascist for the rest of the Fascist era, even getting a biography made of him in 1958. But that wasn’t the main influence Carpi left behind. Not since Gavrilo Princip, perhaps, has one simple man changed the fate of so many millions.
“I knew at that moment that the Jews of Italy had the same love of their country as the Italians had of their own. I decided at that moment that I would never forget what that Jew had done for me – and to let it follow me for the rest of my life. Destiny had determined that I would never side with Hitler. The Jews and Italians would never bow to Nazism, just as they would never bow to Communism!”
The notion of Mussolini as the proud, eternal resistor to Nazism that both Italian and occasionally Israeli media like to promote is at total odds with reality, even if we were to ignore the nature of his invasions of Abyssinia and Albania before the War. Mussolini was not the ‘benevolent dictator’ some characterise him to be – he was a ruthless, self-described Totalitarian who did nothing to stop the break-up of the Stessa Accord, allowed Hitler’s annexation of Austria and allowed himself to be so angered by the West’s refusal to let him eat Abyssinia whole that he decided to go neutral during the War.
His policy of total neutrality with respect to the Dual Pact [1] in the first years of the War should never be forgotten. If he had joined the Allies right at the start, we wouldn’t be talking about all the Jews he saved, because there would be no dead Jews because there wouldn’t have been a Second World War. What did he do instead? He used the conflagration in Europe to begin his own wars of conquest, beginning with the plump prey of Yugoslavia.
When France fell, the old ‘Little Entente’ alliance had by now totally fallen apart. Yugoslavia was completely at the mercy of the surrounding powers, all of whom had irredentist claims against the peaceful Kingdom.
Italy had long desired the regions of Yugoslavia they felt they had been cheated out of since Versailles, specifically Dalmatia, Fiume and others. Added to their recent conquest of Albania, the Italians looked upon the meat of Yugoslavia with an almost insane lust. Indeed, the Kingdom had plenty of divisions that could easily be exploited – and were. But first, Mussolini looked for allies to share the burden.
Satisfied that his choice to stay out of the War was working out, and convinced Britain wouldn’t complain, let alone resist his plans in the Balkans, he began enlisting allies. To the east, he courted Hungary, still sore after the brutal Treaty of Trianon, which had ripped off territory with no respect to the wishes of the inhabitants. Hungary woke up with half their population. The territory of Vojvodina was high on the list of territories the beleaguered state wanted ack under control. Just south was Bulgaria, likewise burned after siding with the Central Powers in World War One. Looking for easy victory, Tsar Boris the Third likewise decided to listen to the Italian offers of land for cheap.
Next, Mussolini had to create a Causus Belli. In late July, as the Battle of Britain raged, Mussolini began financing anti-Serb riots in major Croatian cities, demanding Croatian independence. These were led by the Ustache political organisation, a notoriously violent ultranationalist organisation under Ante Pavelić. Naturally, Yugoslavia had little choice but to put down the insurrections in Zagreb, which resulted in full-scale riots across the region. Croatian nationalist sympathies were inflamed as Mussolini easily exploited the ethnic divisions within Yugoslavia to his advantage.
After demanding Yugoslavian forces comply with ‘the national desires of the Croatian people’ on September 10th, the Yugoslavs turned down the offer. Three days later, Belgrade was bombed. Just like Spain, the bombing was indiscriminate, brutal and effective. The same day, forces under Rodolfo Graziani, the committed Fascist, began pouring into Slovenia, as the Regina Marina began shelling the Yugoslav fleet up and down the Adriatic. Italo Balbo would likewise command his own army in Albania, moving into Kosovo.
However, after the initial shock, the Yugoslavians managed to find their feet somewhat, managing to hold Graziani just outside of Ljubljana and recapturing Dubrovnik after having it fall to Ustache insurgency. Hopes of salvation were finished, however, when Hungary and Bulgaria began their invasion on October 1st. Within days of Bulgaria’s entrance into the War, which would become known as the Third Balkan War, their forces met Balbo’s in Priština. The next day, Macedonia’s representatives within that part of the Federation announced their independent surrender. From there, all hope was lost. The lines broke in Slovenia, and on October 23rd, Italian tanks were met with cheers through the center of Zagreb, with Pavelić declaring the formation of an independent Croatia.
The Yugoslavian government offered a peace deal, giving independence to all the outer countries but leaving Serbia (as well as Kosovo) as part of a core Yugoslavia. The terms were rejected in Rome, Budapest and Sofia, demanding unconditional surrender. To this, Yugoslavia could only vainly resist.
The Battle of Belgrade would be fought from November 4th to November 20th, with the Hungarians and Italians attacking from both sides. Croatian Ustache volunteers did half of the work for the Italians, who were, as one Hungarian witness described, “like unleashing those who would torment the Devil in Hell.” War crimes committed by the Ustache were so common that Italian commanders stopped trying to reign them in, deducing that it was like, as Balbo put it, “trying to catch a plane by running.” By the time the fighting was over, Belgrade was in ruins, and by now the situation was impossible. The government signed its surrender on November 23rd, leaving the Royal Family exiled and the spoils divided.
Hungary received Vojvodina while Bulgaria received Macedonia and Bulgarian speaking regions in the Serbian territories. Italy swallowed Slovenia, Istria and large parts of Dalmatia, also incorporating Montenegro and Kosovo into her Albanian conquest. This left a Croatian state which incorporated Bosnia under he ruthless rule of Pavelić, who began a ruthless crusade of expulsions of the Serb residents, reaching half a million. This created a broken, crippled Serbia swamped by refugees and left for dead.
It was cruel, it was brutal and it was the beginning of the Fascist Bloc.
[1] - The name the Axis get ITTL as Mussolini never makes his famous declaration.
Interviewer: Why did Italy not side with Germany during Operation Barbarossa?
Balbo: Because we were never on good terms with the Germans, even though we hated Communism. Not to mention our disagreement over the Jews. We had Jewish Blackshirts, Jewish soldiers and many others. We had no interest in going to war in a land so far away, especially since it meant a war with Britain.
Interviewer: Did the Germans ask you to join?
Balbo: Of course, and every time we refused. They also asked Croatia and Bulgaria, who turned it down as well. Hungary accepted, since they shared a border with the Communists and were more concerned about it than we were. The Hungarians joined the Romanians, Finns and the Slovaks into the conflict on the German side. It speaks to the wisdom of Mussolini to ask what became of them. We had more pressing matters to deal with.
Interviewer: How was a tiny country like Greece a greater threat than your ideological nemesis of the Soviet Union?
Balbo: (*Pause*) No matter what we did, we spared it from the fate of Communism.
In 1942, Germany continued her march at Stalingrad while Japan stretched itself in the Pacific – the Dual Pact felt ascendant. Britain and America began the difficult discussion of where to put the pressure on Hitler, after the near effortless seizing of Corsica at the end of the Spring, bringing about the collapse of the Vichy government and full German occupation of France. By contrast, Mussolini had developed a new plan, taking all the time he desired.
After his embarrassment in the Corfu affair, Mussolini was adamant of avenging himself against Greece and getting the whole of the Mediterranean on his side. To that end, he called up old allies. Croatia was out of the way of the fighting and Hungary was not only in the same boat but an active participant in Operation Barbarossa, so not exactly available. Bulgaria could be relied on; Tsar Boris had become a national hero for re-establishing national pride in what had once been called the ‘Prussia of the Balkans’. But Mussolini had one more trick up his sleeve. He called up Turkey, tempting them with the prospect of major gains in land and prestige. The democratic government of Turkey refused. The Turkish military and Turkish nationalists within the government were outraged that weakling politicians were holding back Turkey from re-entering the global titans. In August of 1942, Turkey’s government was replaced by an ‘interim’ military government, which would last a long time indeed. They would soon get the boost they wanted, starting the Fourth (and to date final) Balkan War.
After faking an incident at a border crossing (based off the Nazi technique in Poland) Mussolini sent the troops in through Albania on September 12th 1942. Britain was furious but was obviously in no position to respond, as Mussolini had correctly calculated - America had no interest in such a conflict. After getting multiple reality checks during their invasion of Yugoslavia, Italy had reformed their army, much as Stalin had done since his Finnish excursion in 1940. “It terrifies me to imagine what would have befallen us if it wasn’t for Yugoslavia,” cautioned Balbo as he attempted his assault through the mountainous region. Despite all the lessons, the Greeks remained superior fighters man-for-man. Balbo's troops slogged through the Epirus until Bulgaria launched an invasion through her Macedonian conquest and Turkey sent her navy into the Aegean Sea, shelling anything that moved. Beset on all sides, the Greeks retreated further and further back. By November, the air raids on Athens were near daily and Larissa had fallen. Not wanting Athens to be pulverised like Belgrade, Metaxas’s subordinates turned on him. He was arrested and exiled while the officers tendered an unconditional surrender. Metaxas and the King would seek asylum in Britain.
Once again, the Fascist powers (with Turkey the newest addition) took turns devouring their recent conquest. Epirus and the Ionian Islands came to Italy’s possession, erasing Mussolini’s embarrassment over Corfu. Turkey annexed Thrace, the Aegean Islands and Crete. Though Bulgaria lost its former sea access route to the Mediterranean in Thrace, it more than gained in taking the remainder of Macedonia in Greece, leaving Greece much reduced in size. Once again, a shattered country was left to rot.
But by then, Mussolini had already done what would begin to make him a hero to millions.
Jews around the world know the sort of person Mussolini was. Of course he was a bad person, of course he was a dictator, but it’s equally as obvious that hundreds of thousands of Jews today owe their life to him.
In February 1942, just after the Wannsee Conference – though it was likely unknown to Mussolini at the time – Count Ciano, the Italian Foreign Minister, would deliver Berlin an offer from the Italian State. In return for crucial raw minerals that Italy could procure as a neutral and send northward, Mussolini asked if he could get 250,000 Jews on the condition they be settled in Libya. He was trying to improve the infrastructure of the colony and wanted more settlers than what he had. Not just any Jews either, but the most educated and economically viable. In particular, Mussolini was interested in the German and Austrian Jews, feeling they had no other national loyalty owing to the nature of their current ruler.
The offer was discussed amongst the German leadership – Goering was quite in favour and Bormann was quite opposed. Ultimately, Ciano’s assurance that the Jews would be sent to Libya and thus off of the European Continent was enough to convince Hitler of the plan. As he told his staff, “As long as they are stranded in a lifeless desert under a Latin heel, we don’t have to worry about their conniving influence.”
The German leadership agreed, limiting their selections of Jews to non-Polish or Soviet Jews (who made up the vast majority of European Jewry). This was explained as ‘logistics’ to the Italians (although in reality it was because Hitler had considered them lower than any form of life imaginable, on top of having the temerity to live in his Lebensraum). This would mean those chosen would disproportionally represent the professions (be it doctors and engineers) or those who were rich enough to buy their own and their family’s way out (the businessmen and aristocrats). They were disproportionally Sephardic, secular and right wing. Avowed Communists or any other persons considered too politically opposed to Fascism would be left behind to die. The immediate families were almost always brought along - otherwise they would rarely depart. These demographics would have a profound effect on the future Israeli state, and indeed Libya itself.
By the end of 1942, the process was over. Roughly a quarter of a million Jews were camped in Libya in makeshift tents. About one hundred and fifty thousand came from Germany and Austria, with France coming up with roughly another fifty thousand. They were hungry, they were tired, but they were grateful. Even then, they had a vague idea about what was going on under Nazi rule.
The moment we crossed the Italian border on the train, when we were finally free of the Nazis, the whole carriage with one movement tore off their yellow stars as if they were leeches sucking them dry. Songs from every language filled the air: Yiddish, Hebrew, Ladino, German, Dutch, French and so on. Margaret tried to sing in Italian to impress the guard on the train but he took no notice. We thought he treated us so kindly. In reality, he was quite indifferent to us, but it was such a change from our daily lives in Amsterdam. The fear Gentiles had if you approached them, as if they would be suspected of being sympathizers by the Gestapo. The hatred the Germans had if you dared catch a glimpse of them. That total indifference of that Italian looked to us as pure and wholesome as the love a mother would give her child by comparison.
Father’s business credentials may have impressed the Italians enough to get us out, but business was the last thing he thought about. He talked to us about the future, and how we would come back one day from Libya. I wish I could say I was as wholesome and loving, but I was just thinking how hot Tripoli would be. It sounds silly, almost disrespectful to say such a thing, knowing how lucky I was. But that younger me, that younger Anne, I feel like I still understand her, even when she could be spoiled and childish. So many years have gone by, but the little Anne Frank lives on within me.
The formal creation of the Roman Alliance (or the Fascist Bloc as it became more popularly known) was motivated by many factors.
1. The desire for neutrality – which speaks to Hitler’s insanity given what happened not too soon after. The war was still a tossup by the start of 1943, or at least there was a good chance for a negotiated peace. Italy had already absorbed plenty of territory and was too scared to make a go for the French and British territories it desired, feeling that the risk was far too high. At the same time, a war with Germany would be devastating and was not desired either. The fellow nations of the bloc had received many invitations to join the war from both sides and wanted a collective insurance. If they were all tied up inside a collective security unit, it would become much more effective deterrent to pestering by foreign powers.
2. Italy wanted to establish itself as a new power in Europe. To do that, it wanted to have its own zone of influence. The Mediterranean proved an easy choice, especially as the Adriatic had become an Italian lake. If it could be seen as influencing the trajectory of multiple nations, it would make Italy more widely considered a serious power. Likewise, many nations within the Roman Alliance wanted to be part of a bloc without the diplomatic nightmares of keeping up appearances if they were to be openly friendly with democratic countries.
3. On a purely economic basis, Italy wanted a trade bloc to expand their export market. The remaining nations, some war-torn and battered, would gladly accept the sort of economic aid the Italians could bring.
“Today in Rome, a new international political organisation was formed, uniting the Mediterranean powers under one roof. With a name like ‘The Roman Alliance’, only one man could come up with a name as boastful as that and have the resources to have a stab at it. Benito Mussolini, leader of Italy, flanked by the leaders of Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Bulgaria and Turkey met together and declared their common neutrality in the European conflict, a neutrality to be guaranteed with the strength of the others. Not looking at all dissimilar to the ancient Roman glory of the past, the powers agreed to expand trade, pledged military alliances and technological exchange. Mussolini states that the Roman Alliance will lead the planet into the twenty-first century. They were bold words, but that is only to be expected of the Italian.”
Stalin’s demands for a second front were intense, but there was no easy way about it. Corsica had fallen quickly, but it had no lasting effect. Norway was floated as an option but this was stranded in the middle of nowhere and wasn’t considered a decent way to exert any influence on German war efforts. Talks to put troops in Russia were flatly rejected, especially after the victory at Stalingrad. Efforts to recruit the Fascist bloc were likewise unsuccessful.
Roosevelt and Churchill were at loggerheads about it. Churchill demanded time before going through France, while Roosevelt insisted the only option was to ‘get it over with’ and charge straight into the line of fire in France. Ultimately, Rommel’s victories against the Soviets shortly after Stalingrad - which halted the Russian advance - had convinced Churchill of the urgent need for action, regardless of the result.
“For what I am about to do,” he told his wife, “I will go down in history. This and this alone. If I succeed, I will be second only to Saint George himself. If I fail, I will be second only to Hitler himself.”
The die was cast. That summer in 1943, the Western Allies were landing at Normandy.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
“Israeli Prime Minister, Anne Frank, made her first state visit to Italy today. She landed in Venice before arriving in Trieste, the scene of the historic World War Two battle between the forces of Nazi Germany and a force consisting mostly of Jewish refugees escaping the Holocaust. She laid a wreath, alongside King Umberto II of Italy, in memory of those who died during the battle. Frank, who escaped the Holocaust along with her family as a result of Mussolini’s immigration program in 1942, stated that ‘Trieste would live forever, as the city where the state of Israel was truly founded”.
“The enemy by now does not even conceal himself! Who was he this whole time? The Hebrew! The usurer, the rootless Capitalist who broke the economy of Germany and the world in 1929! The bloodthirsty Bolshevik who does all that he can to overthrow the Civilisation of Europe! The enemy is there in Trieste, in all its root wickedness! At last, cornered by the soldiers of the Aryan race, they run and cower like rats in the filth of the ruins! No longer can they hide behind their foolish British, or Mongroloid American or negroid Italian or unthinking Slavic footsoldiers to do their bidding! Now they’ll see what fighting and hardship is! The same fighting they forsook in 1918 when they betrayed the German nation! The last time they will have seen a fight like this will be the time of Titus, and the result shall be the same!”
While once, the news of Christmas was enough to bring the sound of guns to a halt all across France in the midst of the Great War, no one would dare think such foolish thoughts about the chances of that happening here in Trieste.
Despite having received no almost no training, with almost no support the Jews of Hungary, in one week, have turned Trieste into a fortress. By some estimates, there are some 500,000 Jews still left inside the city, with the children and many women by now mostly evacuated. Every street has its own patrol setting up plans and traps. They have no uniforms but it’s easy to tell who is Jewish – they’re dressed like they’ve been dragged through the mud but have faces so intensely devoted to their work that they could lose an arm and not notice it until someone pointed it out. I saw boys who were barely half my height set up machine gun turrets in the ruins of this once great city of Trieste. This Renaissance town has been pulverised by indiscriminate bombing – it would be as unthinkable as bombing Dresden. [1]
The Jewish fighters have also had a galvanizing effect on local Italians. The Italian residents, initially dismayed at the massive numbers of foreign refugees in their city, were impressed by the commitment and attention to detail the Jewish fighters displayed. Italian citizens have by now formed their own groups, with one telling me they were, “sick of the Jews embarrassing us by defending our city better than we were”. Others have been terrified that their city would fall into the hands of the ‘Slovenian barbarians’ after news of the anti-Italian pogroms occurring in the city of Lubiana. Regardless, everyone is united in common cause. Those who do not have guns have knives, and those who do not have knives have everything else imaginable. Ships come into the harbor loaded with guns and leave loaded with children. By now, the Jews have mostly forsaken the evacuation route and insist that the locals take the ships and get out. However, they have so inspired the local residents that few want to leave.
The fighters do not move in groups or as individuals – they move like a single collective organism. Everyone seems to know where everyone else is at any one time. There is no fear, even when one of their number falls, because the Jews have determined it is far better to die like this, the road to Valhalla, than die a dreary death strung up against a wall and riddled with machine gun fire that surely awaits anyone foolish enough to surrender. I have yet to hear reports of a single accepted surrender on either side. In terms of the ferocity and hatred on display, it outmatches any battle I have ever seen. The Luftwaffe only occasionally attacks now, and the Italian planes have surprised even the locals in their performance. But don’t let that mislead you – this is overwhelmingly a Jewish operation, as the Italian army is mainly ensuring a breakout towards the centre of Italy is rendered impossible. That the fearsome Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler division cannot take this city is likely beyond the comprehension of Nazi ideology. After having so long regarded the Jews as rats, they’ve discovered that they are lions. Every Jew fights not as if their life depends on it, but that their family’s life depends on it.
I saw one boy, probably about fourteen, leaning against a wall as he reloaded his rifle. I heard him muttering something, as it turned out in Hebrew, the ancient language of the Israelites. When I asked him what he said, he cheerily replied to me, ‘Hayom Kadosh … Hayom kadosh l'Adonai eloheichem.’ ‘It means ‘this day is sacred. This day is sacred says the Lord God’. It’s in the Torah, in Hebrew. It’s talking about the Sabbath. Today is Christmas to you Christians, but to us, it’s Saturday, the Sabbath. ‘Al titabloo v'al tivku’. It means, ‘do not mourn and do not weep’. [2] We can’t really rest,” he laughed, “but we can refuse to weep!”
And at that moment, I saw one of the most unique expressions I had ever witnessed. It was childish innocence with the wisdom and experience of adults. It was something resolute, monumental and human. It was proof that there were some things that all the bombs in Germany could never crush.
Today, Spanish leader General Franco made good on his promise to attend Christmas mass in the Catholic pilgrimage destination of Lourdes. He attended with leading members of the French Resistance and numerous Catholic clergy from the region. This follows the near total collapse of German presence in the occupied nation since the sudden, shock news of Germany’s invasion of Italy. Franco would go on to state that Bordeaux would be liberated by the start of the new year, which would have been unthinkable months ago, given the bitter stalemate that reigned over the battlefields of France. However, given what has happened it may very well be achievable.
Now, even the American and British forces, still mostly boxed inside northern France have reported unprecedented advances due to German forces being divided yet further to prop up the Italian front. Hopes are arising that perhaps even Paris will fall soon. Prime Minister Churchill has re-iterated his belief that the War in Europe would be over by the end of 1944 and that belief certainly seems more plausible than it was before. It appears that the Germans are consolidating their defence by putting as many troops between the Allies and Berlin as possible. Fearing encirclement, they have abandoned their positions close to the Pyrenees. Isolated reports suggest the same thing may be happening in the French Alps, though this remains unconfirmed.
“In all the history of warfare, no people have shown more bravery, more courage and more intensity of human spirit and strength than have the Jewish people right now in Trieste. As the Satanic forces of Nazism attempt to extinguish the light of human civilization, those who are holding the line are the most persecuted, mistreated people in the history of the world. Those Jews do not fight like heroes. Heroes fight like those Jews. And even should they perish under the evil of Hitler, like their heroic ancestors at Masada, they will live on forever in the souls of all who yearn for liberty in this world. We extend our well-wishes to the Jewish and Italian people, to the Italian government and to all those in the fight against the forces of darkness, for the light has never been closer.”
Despite heroic resistance, the Jews were slowly pushed back inside Trieste, but not after making the Germans pay for every bloody step. As Model would report to Hitler, “We have to fight for every brick”. Eichmann was increasingly frustrated that almost no Jews, apart from those who were incapacitated or unconscious were being captured. The Jews were dying on their feet, not at the German’s feet, as had been the plan. The Germans expected the Jews to be fighting for every spot on the evacuation boats by the time they arrived. By now, almost no ships were arriving, and hundreds of thousands of Jewish men (and a fair few women and male children) would rather take a hundred bullets than abandon their community. Jewish neighbors who had spent decades living in tranquility now had their own specific streets to defend. Wily Great War veterans led boys who until just years ago had debated whether Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck was funnier. Jewish aristocrats and Jewish Communists laughed and shared cigarettes together between breaks in the fighting. Habitual shoplifters and the police who frequently arrested them now fought on the side of all that was good and right together. Women who had been scared of a bug just a few years before would grab sniper rifles and fire from behind the rubble, because the love of their children was stronger than any fear they had. Taxi drivers drove ambulances up and down the shattered streets. Prostitutes and Rabbis tended to the wounded together. [3] Never in the history of warfare had there been a situation like it. A whole society, from its rich to its poor, from all political and religious segments, was united as brothers. The simple truth was inescapable: we were Jews, and if we didn’t work together, all the Jews will die.
One nurse would recall, “I saw a man awake from his morphine. He demanded to know what had happened to him. He’d been hit by a mortar, and had lost his leg. He saw his missing leg, looked at his arms and said, “Thank God. I still have my arms, so I can still fight – what’s the quickest way to the front?” Israelis to this day talk about ‘The Trieste Spirit’ when there are rocket attacks from Mesopotamia, though the threat was far more total back in 1943/1944.
By January 4th, the Jews had been pushed into a narrow corridor barely ten miles from the sea. If air raids were possible, the Jews would have been in serious trouble. They were exhausted before the fight even started, and were fighting an elite SS division on top of it. These were horrendous circumstances by any stretch of the imagination and the Germans were getting angrier and angrier. Hitler finally snapped and ordered an all out assault on Trieste, casualties be damned – the Jews had to be massacred, no ifs or buts.
But on the day of final assault, January 6th, something didn’t go according to plan.
Interviewer: “How do you explain the success of your attack on the German forces that January?”
Balbo: “The German flanks were ludicrously exposed. You could send a brigade and it would probably smash right through. A whole Italian army? They didn’t stand a chance. The flank was so exposed because they kept throwing away men trying to take Trieste. It was ludicrous. Combined with letting the Croatians do what they wanted, it was doubly ludicrous.
Interviewer: “What do you think would have happened if it wasn’t for the defence of Trieste?”
Balbo: “The war would have gone on until 1945.”
As if they hadn’t learned their lesson from Stalingrad, both the Italian armies in the West under Balbo and the Croatian armies in the east quickly and decisively overwhelmed the German forces (more accurately Slovenian recruits) on the flanks. The reason was the single-minded focus on killing the Jewish population inside Trieste – an act of insanity that would come to define Nazism as an ideology. The Italian airforce proceeded to pulverize the German rear, in conjunction with British and American planes who Mussolini had gladly accepted onto his soil, wanting to get on their good side. The Nazi advance inside Trieste was stopped almost as soon as it began. With a lightning quick action, the SS Adolf Hitler division was trapped inside Trieste, some 30,000 troops.
Despite this they continued to charge the Jewish holdouts with suicidal conviction. It was as if they thought time was running out, and that they absolutely had to kill the Jews or something terrible would happen. Thankfully, their attacks were repulsed and it made the infiltration of the Italians and Croatians into the city even easier. By January 15th, Trieste was declared secure. By the help of the Jewish population, the city had withstood Nazism. Only 10,000 Germans would surrender, overwhelmingly to the Croatians.
Some fifty thousand of the Hungarian Jews had died since Horthy’s expulsion order. Some from bombings, shelling, bullets – but none would ever die in a gas chamber. They died as free, proud people, defending their families and nation. More importantly, some three quarters of a million had survived.
Trieste was not too important a battle in the course of World War Two – the outcome had long since been decided. Its significance would mostly be felt after the War.
[1] On one happy note, the war will be over before the bombing of Dresden.
[2] -
My inspiration for this segment.
[3] All of which would be shown in the Hollywood Classic ‘Exodus’ (1954) starring Kirk Douglas, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Edward G. Robinson, Peter Lorre, Otto Premiger, Ernest Borgnine, Lauren Bacall and Frank Sinatra. It would be the product of the newfound comradery between Italian and Jewish communities.
I’d volunteered to help the newcomers, but there was just too many of them. There were as many Jews coming in as were already in Libya – it wasn’t easy to try and provide for us, let alone the next set of arrivals. These ones were different though, almost all women and young children. When our group of Jews arrived in Libya, many of us kissed the ground, happy to be alive and out of Hitler’s grasp. The Hungarians that came did anything but. They were so worried about their fathers, sons and brothers who had stayed behind to fight at Trieste that they couldn’t be happy for any reason. I remember one twelve-year-old girl who was crying because she had always fought with her older brother and realised that she might never see him again to say she loved him. Many children were totally unescorted, without anyone else from their family coming along to Libya. It was no time for singing ‘Hatikvah’ or makeshift Bar Mitzvahs, as had been the way of us initial Libyan arrivals. Now, we were just as concerned with the fate of the Jews of Trieste as the very families themselves.
The news of the victory at Trieste was the greatest victory in the history of Judaism, outmatching anything found in the Torah. In terms of numbers, odds and the purity of goodness and evil, nothing in the Biblical campaign to reach the Promised Land even comes close. Gentiles looked at us differently from then on; we looked at ourselves differently from then on. We had been used to seeing ourselves as victims, whose destiny was out of their hands. It was as if we were cursed.
After Trieste though, a new spirit rose through the Jewish people all across the world. From Brooklyn to Golders Green to Tel Aviv, Jews around the world knew that we were stronger than we ever thought. We had beaten back one of the strongest divisions in the whole of Germany, after the Germans started a war against one of the strongest countries on earth just to kill. All of a sudden, the ancient dream of forming our own state on the lands of our ancestors didn’t seem so impossible after all. Actually, it looked pretty tame.
It was a special time, with every tent and house full of song and celebration. The Italians even joined in, seeing as they had helped us after all. I remember the songs going long into the night, total strangers kissing and embracing, the alcohol drank by the crate. My parents were in such a good mood that they even let me have some. I started drinking and soon started laughing. But soon later, I walked outside and started crying. No, I wasn’t sad or afraid, I was just a little embarrassed because I was so happy. Because for the first time in my life, I was so happy to have been born a Jew.
Ben-Gurion was standing right in the centre of the camp on a podium. There was no safety-glass or anything of the sort back then because no one was going to hurt let alone challenge a man we respected so much. We’d all learned more about Zionism in the years since the war started, but here was the man who represented the Jews of Palestine. He spoke in Hebrew, but not all of us were good enough at it, including me.
We all had little camp segments with their own translators piping over the sound system – it was a miracle we’d set something like that up in a place as godforsaken as we were near the desert. The Yiddish had the biggest, but there were plenty for the German speakers, French speakers and so on. I stuck to my relatively tiny Dutch section, slightly embarrassed to be speaking what seemed so unimportant a language compared to everyone else.
He said that Trieste would be remembered ‘until the sands of time gave out’, and that he had been given permission by the Italian government to form a new fighting force under the command of the British army (which still ran Palestine at the time). It would, however, be ran by Jews for the interest of Jews. When he let out a call for how many of us would respond to ‘the call of Zion’, nearly a quarter of a million people let out their voices so loud I wondered if Hitler heard it in Berlin. I joined in the call too, even though the offer only stood open to men at the time, as per instruction by the British. I remember being quite annoyed when I found out, as if I couldn’t help my family or people unless I grabbed a rifle and started smashing Germany with my own two hands. At the same time, I remember being so deeply infatuated by Ben-Gurion that right then and there I knew he was my leader – it was no wonder which party I wound up joining in Israel.
So I stayed in Libya for the rest of the war, which now had a lot more women in it than men since everyone was desperate to fight alongside ‘the warriors of Trieste’. Yet there were plenty of Trieste warriors right beside me – women who risked it all and learned to tell the tale. It was a good time. What were once endless rows of makeshift and damp tents in the middle of a desert had become rows of one Kibbutz after another. The Italians were astonished at how we’d been able to irrigate and cultivate so much land they assumed was absolutely worthless. We thought it was the least we could do, given what they had done for us. While the Jews didn’t stay in Libya for long, not that there aren’t plenty of us there now, we made it possible for so many Italians to go there by building the infrastructure needed for them to support so many people. That isn’t to mention, of course, the engineers who Mussolini saved in 1942 who discovered how much oil there was located in Libya the very next year. Having been Prime Minister, I can assure you that it’s somewhat comforting to know your country is sitting on some oil.
When I returned to Libya in 1980, I remember seeing some of the old sites and buildings. But it was the old faces I most cherished. Guards who had been kind to us, locals who had settled us in, even some of the holdout Jews who decided that Libya would be their home for good. In some ways, no matter the hardships we faced in the desert, they were some of the best days of my life. And besides, Moses had to wander the desert for forty years and he still never got there, right? We barely needed four!
The Jews of Hungary were in no shape to keep marching after they survived one of the most talked about battles in human history. The death rate was atrocious – the wounded rate was even higher, but their spirits were unquenchable. One Italian officer reported, “The spirit of the Jews is indescribable. Men laugh and say they’ve only realised they haven’t slept in three days. Others walk on broken legs while others casually give their food to locals after not having eaten for a week. There is no force between Heaven or Hell that can scare these people.” The only thing that could convince them to not advance further was the request to evacuate the younger children (those under 16 who had stayed) and remaining women. Thus, the Jews didn’t immediately advance from their positions, though they were assured they would see combat again.
News of such military prowess had not just impressed the Italian observers, but the whole world. American, British and Roman Alliance reporters interviewed every fighter they could to paint the incredible picture (the Soviets did not send anyone, but the news got around easily enough and excited the Jewish population). As George Orwell observed, “the Battle of Trieste will be a rallying cry for the oppressed for centuries to come. That the most hated, abused people on the Earth could one day decide that they could stand up and not only fight, but win shall send a shiver of excitement down the spines of the world’s underclass.”
More immediately, Jewish soldiers in the Allies suddenly started demanding to be moved to this new Jewish brigade. Reasons ranged from ‘they need all the help they can get’, ‘they need a rest’ to ‘God really rubbed a lot of luck onto those guys’. The largest contingent, naturally, was in the Jewish mandate in Palestine (the community known as the Yishuv), which had been demanding to fight the Nazis one on one, not just the Arab allies Germany casually supported. They were doubly infuriated that Jews could not flee to the Mandate during the Holocaust. By now, the necessity of reaching out to the Jewish Agency, led by David Ben-Gurion, as well as Mussolini was unavoidable. After back-channel chat, on January 17th, Churchill announced that he and Ben-Gurion would meet with Mussolini and Salazar in Lisbon at the end of the month to flesh out what would become of the nascent Hungarian Jewish forces. Ben-Gurion would quickly arrive in Tripoli to a hero’s reception to illustrate his bargaining-hand to the Italian and British leaders – his word meant something to the Libyan Jews, and he wasn’t going to give them a bad deal.
Of course, there would be another arrival at the Lisbon Conference.
On January 31st, Churchill arrived in Lisbon. Roosevelt hadn’t been told until Churchill had publicly announced it. This helps illustrate how the pair’s working relationship had fallen since D-Day, which Churchill would always regard as a mistake and suspected Stalin’s influence over Roosevelt. Some historians suspect Churchill saw flashbacks of Gallipoli in the slaughter British troops faced on the Normandy beaches.
At Churchill’s side was Anthony Eden and, coming in from the far East, Orde Wingate. He had been ordered to Lisbon specifically for the mission he was about to be entrusted with. Wingate had served in the Palestinian Mandate. As a committed Christian, he felt a religious mission to support the Jewish people and aided the Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary group, in their asymmetric warfare. Wingate was ‘an eccentric’ if you liked him and ‘stark raving mad’ if you didn’t. While the British had grown increasingly weary of his antics (which included drinking water from a flower vase in a Cairo hotel and getting dysentery) he had won the hearts of the Zionists back in Palestine with his cooperation and conviction. His ‘Chindit’ program had debatable results when used in the Burma Front, but he was mainly used to help bridge the divide between the British and Jewish leaders. Many Jews wanted to serve under the Italians, seeing them as their saviors. Wingate was considered to be the only British general well liked enough by Jews to have them on their side. With this plan, Churchill landed in Lisbon, meeting Salazar and Mussolini the next day on February 1st.
Mussolini had prepared for an avalanche of criticism over Greece and Serbia, for which he had prepared a long list of reasons to justify himself. Instead, both he and Ciano were shocked by what was coming out of the mouths of the British representatives: Stalin had to be stopped and FDR wasn’t going to do it. The War would be over soon, and they needed to ensure Communism was contained. For that reason, the Roman Alliance had to take over Romania and Hungary before the Soviets did. While Churchill re-iterated that the British government would not recognise any of the Roman Alliance’s territorial gains from Yugoslavia and Greece, he seemed ambivalent about Italy stationing troops in Romania and Hungary ‘assuming free elections have been held’. The next conference of Allied leaders would be at held in April in Kiev, which had recently been liberated. Churchill asked Mussolini for support in standing up to Stalin ‘because I don’t always get it’. From here on, Churchill and Mussolini began a complicated balancing act, making sure neither got ensnared in the other’s net whilst hoping they could work together to outwit the common Soviet foe. Neither trusted the other, but they both knew one thing for sure: the other hated Stalin as much as they did.
On the matter of the Jewish forces, Mussolini was somewhat relieved to have the pressure taken off him in finding supplies. Between Ben-Gurion and Wingate, the two had proposed a new understanding: The Haganah would become ‘The Anglo-Jewish Army’, a surprisingly accurate title given the numbers of Hungarian Jews that existed. It would be led by Wingate but the mid-ranking roles would be staffed primarily with Haganah regulars like Zvi Brenner and Moshe Dayan. It would have to reform, losing its women, boy and elderly fighters to the safe shores of Libya. However, the influx of Jewish recruits from Libya (unless they were considered too economically important), Italian Jews who had lived there all their lives and indeed Palestinian Jews who were raring to have a piece of the Nazis more than made up the numbers. After a month of rest, the Jewish army would be on the march again, back to Budapest.
After other minor agreements, such as the use of the newest Regia Marina ships to help the British in the Pacific against Japan, everyone left the meeting in a good mood. “I’d forgotten what a decent meeting felt like,” laughed Churchill as he boarded the plane. He would report to the nation about plans for the Anglo-Jewish army to wild acclaim.
Mussolini would quietly return to Rome. As soon as he arrived in his office, the phone began to ring.
Mussolini had received a message from Graziani. Whilst Balbo and the Haganah had been performing PR in Trieste, the bulk of the Italian forces were actually pushing the invaders back into Ljubljana. The city was mostly, but not entirely surrounded, and mostly occupied by Slovenian Pro-Nazi forces, rather than German soldiers. German soldiers were already pulling back to the Alps to stake out a suitable defence, leaving the Slovenian collaborators to fight for themselves.
Ljubljana’s population had numbered some one hundred thousand, though the prior battle had already reduced the population count. With total air superiority, a numerically superior force and one that was well supplied with Western aid, there is no doubt the Italian army alone could have easily taken control of the city. But that wasn’t the intention of the Fascists – they wanted to make an example of anyone who defied Italian rule or occupation.
Graziani informed Mussolini that all preparation was complete. Mussolini then told his general, “Good, I want you to settle the question of who runs Slovenia … permanently.”
On February 6th, Italian bombers departed from their airfields and began to congregate in mass over Ljubljana’s historic city centre was the main target of the bombing, pulverizing centuries old art and architecture. After hours of plane bombing, the artillery began to obliterate the residential areas. The targets, by the on-the-record account of soldiers at the time, had absolutely nothing to do with German or even Slovenian military targets.
Mussolini had decided that after having done what they did in Ljubljana just weeks ago, launching a pogrom against the Italian population, the whole city deserved collective punishment. Soldiers were instructed to ‘avenge the rape of our people’ by ‘tearing this viper’s nest to the ground and start from zero’. He wanted not to destroy Ljubljana, but to remove it from the map entirely, replacing it with ‘Lubiana’ a pure, Italian town.
By February 8th,the Blackshirts were sent in. Mussolini had stated that he only wanted Blackshirts to perform the operation, convinced they were the only ones with enough resolve finish the job. The Blackshirts encountered little resistance, as the city had been pulverised with the Germans retreating and Slovenians fleeing. Satchel charges were set to the few remaining buildings still standing in the city centre. Rape was especially common by the Blackshirts, as was summary executions of almost anyone who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
On February 9th, Graziani wrote to Mussolini that, ‘Ljubljana is dead, long live Lubiana’. They had done what Hitler had only dreamed of doing in St. Petersburg or Moscow: they had succeeded in destroying the great city of a people and starting it from the ground up. While Warsaw was lucky enough to be rebuilt painstakingly according to detail, Ljubljana received no such relief. It was given an entirely different geographic layout with Italian citizens and exclusively Italian street-signs. If you came to Ljubljana in the 1950s, you would never have imagined it was anything other than a quiet Italian town. However, it was built upon the grave of the Slovenian people. The only things that were rebuilt as before were the Catholic churches, after the Pope complained.
With the loss of their capital, spirit and a significant proportion of their population, the Slovenian people were shattered. Post-war restrictions on Slovenian culture, which made the ones prior to entry into World War 2 seem lenient, were brutal. Teachers would be imprisoned for speaking a word of Slovenian to their students, even if the students didn’t understand what they were saying in Italian and needed clarification. Conditions were so unforgiving in their occupied homeland that many wound up running away to the Italian colonies for a more hands-off existence. By 1958, what was once Slovenia was by now majority Italian, with the colonial diaspora too fragmented to keep their culture alive to any significant degree. At the same time, you would never see a sign in Slovenian in any store, lest the Blackshirts come and smash the place up for being ‘Nazi sympathizers’.
Under every definition of the word, the Fascists committed genocide against the Slovenian people. And it was ignored by every nation on Earth.
Interviewer: “It’s estimated that some twenty thousand civilians died in the destruction of Lubiana. That corresponds to roughly one fifth of the city. It’s also estimated that by the end of the bombing, some 90% of buildings had been destroyed. Most of the rest would be destroyed after the fighting. What do you have to say to that?”
Balbo: “Well, firstly I had nothing to do with it. That was all Graziani.”
Interviewer: “And Mussolini.”
Balbo: “Graziani was the one who decided where the bombing would take place. The Duce had no ability to determine where the bombs fell. Graziani, again, made some mistakes but you have to understand what he did in context of the War. The city had been occupied by the Nazis – if there was a way of reducing the amount of our troops who would perish -”
Interviewer: “With all due respect Mister Balbo, that doesn’t explain why the Blackshirts proceeded to set satchel charges on any standing structure left in the city. It also doesn’t explain why the air force didn’t pursue the retreating Germans but continued bombing the city centre.”
Balbo: (*More angrily*) “The citizens knew the risk when they decided to stay in an active warzone. There were plenty of warnings.”
Interviewer: “Mister Balbo, there were no such warnings. For example, the American nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Kokura produced many pamphlets demanding the citizens flee. No such preparation was made with the residents of Lubiana.”
Balbo: “The warning was how we had dealt with insurgencies across the colonies. We had taught the Ethiopians a lesson when they tried to assassinate Graziani and failed. Now, the Slovenians had massacred every Italian they could find in the city. Did they really expect us to hand out flowers and talk about forgiveness? We responded in the only way we knew how.”
Interviewer: “Some have called it ‘genocide’.”
Balbo: “I don’t care what someone calls it. From that day forth, Slovenian terrorism was defeated. There is no major Slovenian terrorist network, be it in Slovenia, the Libyan diaspora, or even the colonial diaspora. All around the world, we see these conflicts with terrorists trying to take on great powers: in France with Corsica and their Algerian holdouts, in Britain with Northern Ireland and Kurdistan with their Arab towns and regions. There is no terrorist movement in Italy proper, including Libya – and we’re proud of it.”
Interviewer: “There is, wouldn’t you say, in East Africa?”
Balbo: “I was careful with my words. Italy proper.”
This is the finished thread for The Footprint of Mussolini. If you are interested, I would ask you to look at the discussion thread for list of canon omake's that help fill in the world's detail. The original thread (including maps) can be found here, navigable by threadmark:
The Footprint of Mussolini - TL
EDIT: This Timeline is now available in book form (with added segments) on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B72Q3VCC Hey all, never made a TL before, hope this goes over decently enough. Obviously, don't consider any of the statements in the extracts here to neccessarily be similar to my...
www.alternatehistory.com
The Footprint of Mussolini
Extract from 'The New Roman Empire' by David Lassinger
14th July 1932
It was a day that would determine the lives of millions. Because of what happened that day, millions would live who would otherwise have died, and millions would die who would otherwise have lived. It would determine Italy’s trajectory for the whole rest of the century, and with it the whole of the Middle East, Africa and the Eastern Bloc.
Mussolini had concluded another one of his fiery speeches to the faithful in Milan. He had never considered himself too concerned with the Jewish question and didn’t think much of it. He was vaguely aware of a certain Austrian attempting to become the President of Germany who was had quite pronounced opinions to say the least. However, at the time, he took little emotional interest. For the moment, he was more interested in his relations with the newly formed Vatican state and his moves in the Balkans and Africa.
Once the speech concluded, he was escorted around the back of the stage. On all sides were the Blackshirts, specifically the more aesthetic ones to give a positive impression of the Fascist movement at large – not that anyone was in the mood to fight back against a Totalitarian Dictatorship unless their backs were totally to the wall. For the moment, at least, the Fascists were quite popular with the population. That was, of course, with the exception of Roberto Giovana. He was a 22-year-old Communist who had managed to procure a firearm. By sheer luck, he was able to weave through the security and get close enough to his target.
By the time he got close enough, he made a dash and leaped in front of Mussolini. The dictator would recall ‘I was as certain of the inevitability of my death as I certain I am here right now.’ Giovana fired the pistol … but the bullet never reached the dictator.
A Blackshirt had flung himself in front of his leader, his Duce. The bullet struck him in the chest – as would the second. Giovana would never fire a third, as he was wrestled to the ground and dragged off. He was killed in transit to prison. Officially, he was resisting arrest, although documentation has shown since that he was beaten to death while already incapacitated.
Mussolini was awestruck by the proceedings, ignoring the commotion around Giovana and kneeling beside the Blackshirt. “You’ve saved me. What is your name?” Mussolini asked.
“I-Isaac Carpi,” said the Blackshirt as his skin paled and his voice quivered.
“Someone get a doctor!” called out a voice at the back.
“Someone get a Priest!” called a more sardonic voice closer to the front.
At that, Isaac seemed to laugh and regain strength for a moment. “Sorry, but no Priest – I’m a Jew. Duce? Are you safe?”
“I’m safe,” said Mussolini, standing especially erect and mighty to make up for the shock to his system just moments ago.
“Then we are safe,” said Carpi, as he dropped his head a final time.
For the rest of his days, Mussolini would always note that ‘we’. Though he was a Jew, he put his life on the line for the Leader of Italy, and of course, Mussolini was Italy - at least in his own mind. That Jew had died so Italy could live. It left an indelible impression on the Dictator’s mind that would never leave.
Carpi would be praised as a model Italian citizen and Fascist for the rest of the Fascist era, even getting a biography made of him in 1958. But that wasn’t the main influence Carpi left behind. Not since Gavrilo Princip, perhaps, has one simple man changed the fate of so many millions.
Extract from Mussolini’s speech to the Knesset in Jerusalem, 1949
“I knew at that moment that the Jews of Italy had the same love of their country as the Italians had of their own. I decided at that moment that I would never forget what that Jew had done for me – and to let it follow me for the rest of my life. Destiny had determined that I would never side with Hitler. The Jews and Italians would never bow to Nazism, just as they would never bow to Communism!”
Extract from ‘Total: Fascist Terror in Italy’ by Sven Dietrich
The notion of Mussolini as the proud, eternal resistor to Nazism that both Italian and occasionally Israeli media like to promote is at total odds with reality, even if we were to ignore the nature of his invasions of Abyssinia and Albania before the War. Mussolini was not the ‘benevolent dictator’ some characterise him to be – he was a ruthless, self-described Totalitarian who did nothing to stop the break-up of the Stessa Accord, allowed Hitler’s annexation of Austria and allowed himself to be so angered by the West’s refusal to let him eat Abyssinia whole that he decided to go neutral during the War.
His policy of total neutrality with respect to the Dual Pact [1] in the first years of the War should never be forgotten. If he had joined the Allies right at the start, we wouldn’t be talking about all the Jews he saved, because there would be no dead Jews because there wouldn’t have been a Second World War. What did he do instead? He used the conflagration in Europe to begin his own wars of conquest, beginning with the plump prey of Yugoslavia.
Extract from 'The Making of Fascist Bloc' by Jodie Rutkins
When France fell, the old ‘Little Entente’ alliance had by now totally fallen apart. Yugoslavia was completely at the mercy of the surrounding powers, all of whom had irredentist claims against the peaceful Kingdom.
Italy had long desired the regions of Yugoslavia they felt they had been cheated out of since Versailles, specifically Dalmatia, Fiume and others. Added to their recent conquest of Albania, the Italians looked upon the meat of Yugoslavia with an almost insane lust. Indeed, the Kingdom had plenty of divisions that could easily be exploited – and were. But first, Mussolini looked for allies to share the burden.
Satisfied that his choice to stay out of the War was working out, and convinced Britain wouldn’t complain, let alone resist his plans in the Balkans, he began enlisting allies. To the east, he courted Hungary, still sore after the brutal Treaty of Trianon, which had ripped off territory with no respect to the wishes of the inhabitants. Hungary woke up with half their population. The territory of Vojvodina was high on the list of territories the beleaguered state wanted ack under control. Just south was Bulgaria, likewise burned after siding with the Central Powers in World War One. Looking for easy victory, Tsar Boris the Third likewise decided to listen to the Italian offers of land for cheap.
Next, Mussolini had to create a Causus Belli. In late July, as the Battle of Britain raged, Mussolini began financing anti-Serb riots in major Croatian cities, demanding Croatian independence. These were led by the Ustache political organisation, a notoriously violent ultranationalist organisation under Ante Pavelić. Naturally, Yugoslavia had little choice but to put down the insurrections in Zagreb, which resulted in full-scale riots across the region. Croatian nationalist sympathies were inflamed as Mussolini easily exploited the ethnic divisions within Yugoslavia to his advantage.
After demanding Yugoslavian forces comply with ‘the national desires of the Croatian people’ on September 10th, the Yugoslavs turned down the offer. Three days later, Belgrade was bombed. Just like Spain, the bombing was indiscriminate, brutal and effective. The same day, forces under Rodolfo Graziani, the committed Fascist, began pouring into Slovenia, as the Regina Marina began shelling the Yugoslav fleet up and down the Adriatic. Italo Balbo would likewise command his own army in Albania, moving into Kosovo.
However, after the initial shock, the Yugoslavians managed to find their feet somewhat, managing to hold Graziani just outside of Ljubljana and recapturing Dubrovnik after having it fall to Ustache insurgency. Hopes of salvation were finished, however, when Hungary and Bulgaria began their invasion on October 1st. Within days of Bulgaria’s entrance into the War, which would become known as the Third Balkan War, their forces met Balbo’s in Priština. The next day, Macedonia’s representatives within that part of the Federation announced their independent surrender. From there, all hope was lost. The lines broke in Slovenia, and on October 23rd, Italian tanks were met with cheers through the center of Zagreb, with Pavelić declaring the formation of an independent Croatia.
The Yugoslavian government offered a peace deal, giving independence to all the outer countries but leaving Serbia (as well as Kosovo) as part of a core Yugoslavia. The terms were rejected in Rome, Budapest and Sofia, demanding unconditional surrender. To this, Yugoslavia could only vainly resist.
The Battle of Belgrade would be fought from November 4th to November 20th, with the Hungarians and Italians attacking from both sides. Croatian Ustache volunteers did half of the work for the Italians, who were, as one Hungarian witness described, “like unleashing those who would torment the Devil in Hell.” War crimes committed by the Ustache were so common that Italian commanders stopped trying to reign them in, deducing that it was like, as Balbo put it, “trying to catch a plane by running.” By the time the fighting was over, Belgrade was in ruins, and by now the situation was impossible. The government signed its surrender on November 23rd, leaving the Royal Family exiled and the spoils divided.
Hungary received Vojvodina while Bulgaria received Macedonia and Bulgarian speaking regions in the Serbian territories. Italy swallowed Slovenia, Istria and large parts of Dalmatia, also incorporating Montenegro and Kosovo into her Albanian conquest. This left a Croatian state which incorporated Bosnia under he ruthless rule of Pavelić, who began a ruthless crusade of expulsions of the Serb residents, reaching half a million. This created a broken, crippled Serbia swamped by refugees and left for dead.
It was cruel, it was brutal and it was the beginning of the Fascist Bloc.
[1] - The name the Axis get ITTL as Mussolini never makes his famous declaration.
The Third Player
Interview of Italo Balbo for the BBC’s ‘World At War’ (1973)
Interview of Italo Balbo for the BBC’s ‘World At War’ (1973)
Interviewer: Why did Italy not side with Germany during Operation Barbarossa?
Balbo: Because we were never on good terms with the Germans, even though we hated Communism. Not to mention our disagreement over the Jews. We had Jewish Blackshirts, Jewish soldiers and many others. We had no interest in going to war in a land so far away, especially since it meant a war with Britain.
Interviewer: Did the Germans ask you to join?
Balbo: Of course, and every time we refused. They also asked Croatia and Bulgaria, who turned it down as well. Hungary accepted, since they shared a border with the Communists and were more concerned about it than we were. The Hungarians joined the Romanians, Finns and the Slovaks into the conflict on the German side. It speaks to the wisdom of Mussolini to ask what became of them. We had more pressing matters to deal with.
Interviewer: How was a tiny country like Greece a greater threat than your ideological nemesis of the Soviet Union?
Balbo: (*Pause*) No matter what we did, we spared it from the fate of Communism.
Extract from 'The Making of Fascist Bloc' by Jodie Rutkins
In 1942, Germany continued her march at Stalingrad while Japan stretched itself in the Pacific – the Dual Pact felt ascendant. Britain and America began the difficult discussion of where to put the pressure on Hitler, after the near effortless seizing of Corsica at the end of the Spring, bringing about the collapse of the Vichy government and full German occupation of France. By contrast, Mussolini had developed a new plan, taking all the time he desired.
After his embarrassment in the Corfu affair, Mussolini was adamant of avenging himself against Greece and getting the whole of the Mediterranean on his side. To that end, he called up old allies. Croatia was out of the way of the fighting and Hungary was not only in the same boat but an active participant in Operation Barbarossa, so not exactly available. Bulgaria could be relied on; Tsar Boris had become a national hero for re-establishing national pride in what had once been called the ‘Prussia of the Balkans’. But Mussolini had one more trick up his sleeve. He called up Turkey, tempting them with the prospect of major gains in land and prestige. The democratic government of Turkey refused. The Turkish military and Turkish nationalists within the government were outraged that weakling politicians were holding back Turkey from re-entering the global titans. In August of 1942, Turkey’s government was replaced by an ‘interim’ military government, which would last a long time indeed. They would soon get the boost they wanted, starting the Fourth (and to date final) Balkan War.
After faking an incident at a border crossing (based off the Nazi technique in Poland) Mussolini sent the troops in through Albania on September 12th 1942. Britain was furious but was obviously in no position to respond, as Mussolini had correctly calculated - America had no interest in such a conflict. After getting multiple reality checks during their invasion of Yugoslavia, Italy had reformed their army, much as Stalin had done since his Finnish excursion in 1940. “It terrifies me to imagine what would have befallen us if it wasn’t for Yugoslavia,” cautioned Balbo as he attempted his assault through the mountainous region. Despite all the lessons, the Greeks remained superior fighters man-for-man. Balbo's troops slogged through the Epirus until Bulgaria launched an invasion through her Macedonian conquest and Turkey sent her navy into the Aegean Sea, shelling anything that moved. Beset on all sides, the Greeks retreated further and further back. By November, the air raids on Athens were near daily and Larissa had fallen. Not wanting Athens to be pulverised like Belgrade, Metaxas’s subordinates turned on him. He was arrested and exiled while the officers tendered an unconditional surrender. Metaxas and the King would seek asylum in Britain.
Once again, the Fascist powers (with Turkey the newest addition) took turns devouring their recent conquest. Epirus and the Ionian Islands came to Italy’s possession, erasing Mussolini’s embarrassment over Corfu. Turkey annexed Thrace, the Aegean Islands and Crete. Though Bulgaria lost its former sea access route to the Mediterranean in Thrace, it more than gained in taking the remainder of Macedonia in Greece, leaving Greece much reduced in size. Once again, a shattered country was left to rot.
But by then, Mussolini had already done what would begin to make him a hero to millions.
Extract from 'The Shoah' by Abraham Dershowitz
Jews around the world know the sort of person Mussolini was. Of course he was a bad person, of course he was a dictator, but it’s equally as obvious that hundreds of thousands of Jews today owe their life to him.
In February 1942, just after the Wannsee Conference – though it was likely unknown to Mussolini at the time – Count Ciano, the Italian Foreign Minister, would deliver Berlin an offer from the Italian State. In return for crucial raw minerals that Italy could procure as a neutral and send northward, Mussolini asked if he could get 250,000 Jews on the condition they be settled in Libya. He was trying to improve the infrastructure of the colony and wanted more settlers than what he had. Not just any Jews either, but the most educated and economically viable. In particular, Mussolini was interested in the German and Austrian Jews, feeling they had no other national loyalty owing to the nature of their current ruler.
The offer was discussed amongst the German leadership – Goering was quite in favour and Bormann was quite opposed. Ultimately, Ciano’s assurance that the Jews would be sent to Libya and thus off of the European Continent was enough to convince Hitler of the plan. As he told his staff, “As long as they are stranded in a lifeless desert under a Latin heel, we don’t have to worry about their conniving influence.”
The German leadership agreed, limiting their selections of Jews to non-Polish or Soviet Jews (who made up the vast majority of European Jewry). This was explained as ‘logistics’ to the Italians (although in reality it was because Hitler had considered them lower than any form of life imaginable, on top of having the temerity to live in his Lebensraum). This would mean those chosen would disproportionally represent the professions (be it doctors and engineers) or those who were rich enough to buy their own and their family’s way out (the businessmen and aristocrats). They were disproportionally Sephardic, secular and right wing. Avowed Communists or any other persons considered too politically opposed to Fascism would be left behind to die. The immediate families were almost always brought along - otherwise they would rarely depart. These demographics would have a profound effect on the future Israeli state, and indeed Libya itself.
By the end of 1942, the process was over. Roughly a quarter of a million Jews were camped in Libya in makeshift tents. About one hundred and fifty thousand came from Germany and Austria, with France coming up with roughly another fifty thousand. They were hungry, they were tired, but they were grateful. Even then, they had a vague idea about what was going on under Nazi rule.
Extract from 'Memoirs of a Young Girl' (1988), by Anne Frank
The moment we crossed the Italian border on the train, when we were finally free of the Nazis, the whole carriage with one movement tore off their yellow stars as if they were leeches sucking them dry. Songs from every language filled the air: Yiddish, Hebrew, Ladino, German, Dutch, French and so on. Margaret tried to sing in Italian to impress the guard on the train but he took no notice. We thought he treated us so kindly. In reality, he was quite indifferent to us, but it was such a change from our daily lives in Amsterdam. The fear Gentiles had if you approached them, as if they would be suspected of being sympathizers by the Gestapo. The hatred the Germans had if you dared catch a glimpse of them. That total indifference of that Italian looked to us as pure and wholesome as the love a mother would give her child by comparison.
Father’s business credentials may have impressed the Italians enough to get us out, but business was the last thing he thought about. He talked to us about the future, and how we would come back one day from Libya. I wish I could say I was as wholesome and loving, but I was just thinking how hot Tripoli would be. It sounds silly, almost disrespectful to say such a thing, knowing how lucky I was. But that younger me, that younger Anne, I feel like I still understand her, even when she could be spoiled and childish. So many years have gone by, but the little Anne Frank lives on within me.
Extract from 'Mussolini: The Twentieth Century Man' by Joseph Manderlay
The formal creation of the Roman Alliance (or the Fascist Bloc as it became more popularly known) was motivated by many factors.
1. The desire for neutrality – which speaks to Hitler’s insanity given what happened not too soon after. The war was still a tossup by the start of 1943, or at least there was a good chance for a negotiated peace. Italy had already absorbed plenty of territory and was too scared to make a go for the French and British territories it desired, feeling that the risk was far too high. At the same time, a war with Germany would be devastating and was not desired either. The fellow nations of the bloc had received many invitations to join the war from both sides and wanted a collective insurance. If they were all tied up inside a collective security unit, it would become much more effective deterrent to pestering by foreign powers.
2. Italy wanted to establish itself as a new power in Europe. To do that, it wanted to have its own zone of influence. The Mediterranean proved an easy choice, especially as the Adriatic had become an Italian lake. If it could be seen as influencing the trajectory of multiple nations, it would make Italy more widely considered a serious power. Likewise, many nations within the Roman Alliance wanted to be part of a bloc without the diplomatic nightmares of keeping up appearances if they were to be openly friendly with democratic countries.
3. On a purely economic basis, Italy wanted a trade bloc to expand their export market. The remaining nations, some war-torn and battered, would gladly accept the sort of economic aid the Italians could bring.
American newsreel report on the formation of the Roman Alliance, March 29th 1943
“Today in Rome, a new international political organisation was formed, uniting the Mediterranean powers under one roof. With a name like ‘The Roman Alliance’, only one man could come up with a name as boastful as that and have the resources to have a stab at it. Benito Mussolini, leader of Italy, flanked by the leaders of Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Bulgaria and Turkey met together and declared their common neutrality in the European conflict, a neutrality to be guaranteed with the strength of the others. Not looking at all dissimilar to the ancient Roman glory of the past, the powers agreed to expand trade, pledged military alliances and technological exchange. Mussolini states that the Roman Alliance will lead the planet into the twenty-first century. They were bold words, but that is only to be expected of the Italian.”
Extract from 'The Second World War' by Christopher Armlong
Stalin’s demands for a second front were intense, but there was no easy way about it. Corsica had fallen quickly, but it had no lasting effect. Norway was floated as an option but this was stranded in the middle of nowhere and wasn’t considered a decent way to exert any influence on German war efforts. Talks to put troops in Russia were flatly rejected, especially after the victory at Stalingrad. Efforts to recruit the Fascist bloc were likewise unsuccessful.
Roosevelt and Churchill were at loggerheads about it. Churchill demanded time before going through France, while Roosevelt insisted the only option was to ‘get it over with’ and charge straight into the line of fire in France. Ultimately, Rommel’s victories against the Soviets shortly after Stalingrad - which halted the Russian advance - had convinced Churchill of the urgent need for action, regardless of the result.
“For what I am about to do,” he told his wife, “I will go down in history. This and this alone. If I succeed, I will be second only to Saint George himself. If I fail, I will be second only to Hitler himself.”
The die was cast. That summer in 1943, the Western Allies were landing at Normandy.
“… And I’m not sure about the Universe.”
Extract from 'The Second World War' by Christopher Armlong
Extract from 'The Second World War' by 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.
Extract from '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.”
Extract from '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?
Extract from '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
“All we’ve ever done is survive!”
Extract from 'The Making of Fascist Bloc' by Jodie Rutkins
Extract from '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.
Extract from '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.
Extract from '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.
Extract from '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
Hayom Kadosh
BBC News report, 1980
BBC News report, 1980
“Israeli Prime Minister, Anne Frank, made her first state visit to Italy today. She landed in Venice before arriving in Trieste, the scene of the historic World War Two battle between the forces of Nazi Germany and a force consisting mostly of Jewish refugees escaping the Holocaust. She laid a wreath, alongside King Umberto II of Italy, in memory of those who died during the battle. Frank, who escaped the Holocaust along with her family as a result of Mussolini’s immigration program in 1942, stated that ‘Trieste would live forever, as the city where the state of Israel was truly founded”.
Address by Joseph Goebbels on German Radio, December 22nd
“The enemy by now does not even conceal himself! Who was he this whole time? The Hebrew! The usurer, the rootless Capitalist who broke the economy of Germany and the world in 1929! The bloodthirsty Bolshevik who does all that he can to overthrow the Civilisation of Europe! The enemy is there in Trieste, in all its root wickedness! At last, cornered by the soldiers of the Aryan race, they run and cower like rats in the filth of the ruins! No longer can they hide behind their foolish British, or Mongroloid American or negroid Italian or unthinking Slavic footsoldiers to do their bidding! Now they’ll see what fighting and hardship is! The same fighting they forsook in 1918 when they betrayed the German nation! The last time they will have seen a fight like this will be the time of Titus, and the result shall be the same!”
‘This Day is Sacred’ by the London Times, December 25th 1943
While once, the news of Christmas was enough to bring the sound of guns to a halt all across France in the midst of the Great War, no one would dare think such foolish thoughts about the chances of that happening here in Trieste.
Despite having received no almost no training, with almost no support the Jews of Hungary, in one week, have turned Trieste into a fortress. By some estimates, there are some 500,000 Jews still left inside the city, with the children and many women by now mostly evacuated. Every street has its own patrol setting up plans and traps. They have no uniforms but it’s easy to tell who is Jewish – they’re dressed like they’ve been dragged through the mud but have faces so intensely devoted to their work that they could lose an arm and not notice it until someone pointed it out. I saw boys who were barely half my height set up machine gun turrets in the ruins of this once great city of Trieste. This Renaissance town has been pulverised by indiscriminate bombing – it would be as unthinkable as bombing Dresden. [1]
The Jewish fighters have also had a galvanizing effect on local Italians. The Italian residents, initially dismayed at the massive numbers of foreign refugees in their city, were impressed by the commitment and attention to detail the Jewish fighters displayed. Italian citizens have by now formed their own groups, with one telling me they were, “sick of the Jews embarrassing us by defending our city better than we were”. Others have been terrified that their city would fall into the hands of the ‘Slovenian barbarians’ after news of the anti-Italian pogroms occurring in the city of Lubiana. Regardless, everyone is united in common cause. Those who do not have guns have knives, and those who do not have knives have everything else imaginable. Ships come into the harbor loaded with guns and leave loaded with children. By now, the Jews have mostly forsaken the evacuation route and insist that the locals take the ships and get out. However, they have so inspired the local residents that few want to leave.
The fighters do not move in groups or as individuals – they move like a single collective organism. Everyone seems to know where everyone else is at any one time. There is no fear, even when one of their number falls, because the Jews have determined it is far better to die like this, the road to Valhalla, than die a dreary death strung up against a wall and riddled with machine gun fire that surely awaits anyone foolish enough to surrender. I have yet to hear reports of a single accepted surrender on either side. In terms of the ferocity and hatred on display, it outmatches any battle I have ever seen. The Luftwaffe only occasionally attacks now, and the Italian planes have surprised even the locals in their performance. But don’t let that mislead you – this is overwhelmingly a Jewish operation, as the Italian army is mainly ensuring a breakout towards the centre of Italy is rendered impossible. That the fearsome Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler division cannot take this city is likely beyond the comprehension of Nazi ideology. After having so long regarded the Jews as rats, they’ve discovered that they are lions. Every Jew fights not as if their life depends on it, but that their family’s life depends on it.
I saw one boy, probably about fourteen, leaning against a wall as he reloaded his rifle. I heard him muttering something, as it turned out in Hebrew, the ancient language of the Israelites. When I asked him what he said, he cheerily replied to me, ‘Hayom Kadosh … Hayom kadosh l'Adonai eloheichem.’ ‘It means ‘this day is sacred. This day is sacred says the Lord God’. It’s in the Torah, in Hebrew. It’s talking about the Sabbath. Today is Christmas to you Christians, but to us, it’s Saturday, the Sabbath. ‘Al titabloo v'al tivku’. It means, ‘do not mourn and do not weep’. [2] We can’t really rest,” he laughed, “but we can refuse to weep!”
And at that moment, I saw one of the most unique expressions I had ever witnessed. It was childish innocence with the wisdom and experience of adults. It was something resolute, monumental and human. It was proof that there were some things that all the bombs in Germany could never crush.
'German Retreat from France almost Complete', Washington Post December 26th 1943
Today, Spanish leader General Franco made good on his promise to attend Christmas mass in the Catholic pilgrimage destination of Lourdes. He attended with leading members of the French Resistance and numerous Catholic clergy from the region. This follows the near total collapse of German presence in the occupied nation since the sudden, shock news of Germany’s invasion of Italy. Franco would go on to state that Bordeaux would be liberated by the start of the new year, which would have been unthinkable months ago, given the bitter stalemate that reigned over the battlefields of France. However, given what has happened it may very well be achievable.
Now, even the American and British forces, still mostly boxed inside northern France have reported unprecedented advances due to German forces being divided yet further to prop up the Italian front. Hopes are arising that perhaps even Paris will fall soon. Prime Minister Churchill has re-iterated his belief that the War in Europe would be over by the end of 1944 and that belief certainly seems more plausible than it was before. It appears that the Germans are consolidating their defence by putting as many troops between the Allies and Berlin as possible. Fearing encirclement, they have abandoned their positions close to the Pyrenees. Isolated reports suggest the same thing may be happening in the French Alps, though this remains unconfirmed.
Winston Churchill’s Address to the House of Commons, December 28th 1943
“In all the history of warfare, no people have shown more bravery, more courage and more intensity of human spirit and strength than have the Jewish people right now in Trieste. As the Satanic forces of Nazism attempt to extinguish the light of human civilization, those who are holding the line are the most persecuted, mistreated people in the history of the world. Those Jews do not fight like heroes. Heroes fight like those Jews. And even should they perish under the evil of Hitler, like their heroic ancestors at Masada, they will live on forever in the souls of all who yearn for liberty in this world. We extend our well-wishes to the Jewish and Italian people, to the Italian government and to all those in the fight against the forces of darkness, for the light has never been closer.”
Extract from 'Unconquerable: The Story of the Jews of Hungary', by Mel Goldberg
Despite heroic resistance, the Jews were slowly pushed back inside Trieste, but not after making the Germans pay for every bloody step. As Model would report to Hitler, “We have to fight for every brick”. Eichmann was increasingly frustrated that almost no Jews, apart from those who were incapacitated or unconscious were being captured. The Jews were dying on their feet, not at the German’s feet, as had been the plan. The Germans expected the Jews to be fighting for every spot on the evacuation boats by the time they arrived. By now, almost no ships were arriving, and hundreds of thousands of Jewish men (and a fair few women and male children) would rather take a hundred bullets than abandon their community. Jewish neighbors who had spent decades living in tranquility now had their own specific streets to defend. Wily Great War veterans led boys who until just years ago had debated whether Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck was funnier. Jewish aristocrats and Jewish Communists laughed and shared cigarettes together between breaks in the fighting. Habitual shoplifters and the police who frequently arrested them now fought on the side of all that was good and right together. Women who had been scared of a bug just a few years before would grab sniper rifles and fire from behind the rubble, because the love of their children was stronger than any fear they had. Taxi drivers drove ambulances up and down the shattered streets. Prostitutes and Rabbis tended to the wounded together. [3] Never in the history of warfare had there been a situation like it. A whole society, from its rich to its poor, from all political and religious segments, was united as brothers. The simple truth was inescapable: we were Jews, and if we didn’t work together, all the Jews will die.
One nurse would recall, “I saw a man awake from his morphine. He demanded to know what had happened to him. He’d been hit by a mortar, and had lost his leg. He saw his missing leg, looked at his arms and said, “Thank God. I still have my arms, so I can still fight – what’s the quickest way to the front?” Israelis to this day talk about ‘The Trieste Spirit’ when there are rocket attacks from Mesopotamia, though the threat was far more total back in 1943/1944.
By January 4th, the Jews had been pushed into a narrow corridor barely ten miles from the sea. If air raids were possible, the Jews would have been in serious trouble. They were exhausted before the fight even started, and were fighting an elite SS division on top of it. These were horrendous circumstances by any stretch of the imagination and the Germans were getting angrier and angrier. Hitler finally snapped and ordered an all out assault on Trieste, casualties be damned – the Jews had to be massacred, no ifs or buts.
But on the day of final assault, January 6th, something didn’t go according to plan.
Interview of Italo Balbo for the BBC’s ‘World At War’ (1973)
Interviewer: “How do you explain the success of your attack on the German forces that January?”
Balbo: “The German flanks were ludicrously exposed. You could send a brigade and it would probably smash right through. A whole Italian army? They didn’t stand a chance. The flank was so exposed because they kept throwing away men trying to take Trieste. It was ludicrous. Combined with letting the Croatians do what they wanted, it was doubly ludicrous.
Interviewer: “What do you think would have happened if it wasn’t for the defence of Trieste?”
Balbo: “The war would have gone on until 1945.”
Extract from 'The Second World War' by Christopher Armlong
As if they hadn’t learned their lesson from Stalingrad, both the Italian armies in the West under Balbo and the Croatian armies in the east quickly and decisively overwhelmed the German forces (more accurately Slovenian recruits) on the flanks. The reason was the single-minded focus on killing the Jewish population inside Trieste – an act of insanity that would come to define Nazism as an ideology. The Italian airforce proceeded to pulverize the German rear, in conjunction with British and American planes who Mussolini had gladly accepted onto his soil, wanting to get on their good side. The Nazi advance inside Trieste was stopped almost as soon as it began. With a lightning quick action, the SS Adolf Hitler division was trapped inside Trieste, some 30,000 troops.
Despite this they continued to charge the Jewish holdouts with suicidal conviction. It was as if they thought time was running out, and that they absolutely had to kill the Jews or something terrible would happen. Thankfully, their attacks were repulsed and it made the infiltration of the Italians and Croatians into the city even easier. By January 15th, Trieste was declared secure. By the help of the Jewish population, the city had withstood Nazism. Only 10,000 Germans would surrender, overwhelmingly to the Croatians.
Some fifty thousand of the Hungarian Jews had died since Horthy’s expulsion order. Some from bombings, shelling, bullets – but none would ever die in a gas chamber. They died as free, proud people, defending their families and nation. More importantly, some three quarters of a million had survived.
Trieste was not too important a battle in the course of World War Two – the outcome had long since been decided. Its significance would mostly be felt after the War.
[1] On one happy note, the war will be over before the bombing of Dresden.
[2] -
My inspiration for this segment.
[3] All of which would be shown in the Hollywood Classic ‘Exodus’ (1954) starring Kirk Douglas, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Edward G. Robinson, Peter Lorre, Otto Premiger, Ernest Borgnine, Lauren Bacall and Frank Sinatra. It would be the product of the newfound comradery between Italian and Jewish communities.
Permanently
Extract from 'Memoirs of a Young Girl' (1988), by Anne Frank
Extract from 'Memoirs of a Young Girl' (1988), by Anne Frank
I’d volunteered to help the newcomers, but there was just too many of them. There were as many Jews coming in as were already in Libya – it wasn’t easy to try and provide for us, let alone the next set of arrivals. These ones were different though, almost all women and young children. When our group of Jews arrived in Libya, many of us kissed the ground, happy to be alive and out of Hitler’s grasp. The Hungarians that came did anything but. They were so worried about their fathers, sons and brothers who had stayed behind to fight at Trieste that they couldn’t be happy for any reason. I remember one twelve-year-old girl who was crying because she had always fought with her older brother and realised that she might never see him again to say she loved him. Many children were totally unescorted, without anyone else from their family coming along to Libya. It was no time for singing ‘Hatikvah’ or makeshift Bar Mitzvahs, as had been the way of us initial Libyan arrivals. Now, we were just as concerned with the fate of the Jews of Trieste as the very families themselves.
[…]
The news of the victory at Trieste was the greatest victory in the history of Judaism, outmatching anything found in the Torah. In terms of numbers, odds and the purity of goodness and evil, nothing in the Biblical campaign to reach the Promised Land even comes close. Gentiles looked at us differently from then on; we looked at ourselves differently from then on. We had been used to seeing ourselves as victims, whose destiny was out of their hands. It was as if we were cursed.
After Trieste though, a new spirit rose through the Jewish people all across the world. From Brooklyn to Golders Green to Tel Aviv, Jews around the world knew that we were stronger than we ever thought. We had beaten back one of the strongest divisions in the whole of Germany, after the Germans started a war against one of the strongest countries on earth just to kill. All of a sudden, the ancient dream of forming our own state on the lands of our ancestors didn’t seem so impossible after all. Actually, it looked pretty tame.
It was a special time, with every tent and house full of song and celebration. The Italians even joined in, seeing as they had helped us after all. I remember the songs going long into the night, total strangers kissing and embracing, the alcohol drank by the crate. My parents were in such a good mood that they even let me have some. I started drinking and soon started laughing. But soon later, I walked outside and started crying. No, I wasn’t sad or afraid, I was just a little embarrassed because I was so happy. Because for the first time in my life, I was so happy to have been born a Jew.
[…]
Ben-Gurion was standing right in the centre of the camp on a podium. There was no safety-glass or anything of the sort back then because no one was going to hurt let alone challenge a man we respected so much. We’d all learned more about Zionism in the years since the war started, but here was the man who represented the Jews of Palestine. He spoke in Hebrew, but not all of us were good enough at it, including me.
We all had little camp segments with their own translators piping over the sound system – it was a miracle we’d set something like that up in a place as godforsaken as we were near the desert. The Yiddish had the biggest, but there were plenty for the German speakers, French speakers and so on. I stuck to my relatively tiny Dutch section, slightly embarrassed to be speaking what seemed so unimportant a language compared to everyone else.
He said that Trieste would be remembered ‘until the sands of time gave out’, and that he had been given permission by the Italian government to form a new fighting force under the command of the British army (which still ran Palestine at the time). It would, however, be ran by Jews for the interest of Jews. When he let out a call for how many of us would respond to ‘the call of Zion’, nearly a quarter of a million people let out their voices so loud I wondered if Hitler heard it in Berlin. I joined in the call too, even though the offer only stood open to men at the time, as per instruction by the British. I remember being quite annoyed when I found out, as if I couldn’t help my family or people unless I grabbed a rifle and started smashing Germany with my own two hands. At the same time, I remember being so deeply infatuated by Ben-Gurion that right then and there I knew he was my leader – it was no wonder which party I wound up joining in Israel.
So I stayed in Libya for the rest of the war, which now had a lot more women in it than men since everyone was desperate to fight alongside ‘the warriors of Trieste’. Yet there were plenty of Trieste warriors right beside me – women who risked it all and learned to tell the tale. It was a good time. What were once endless rows of makeshift and damp tents in the middle of a desert had become rows of one Kibbutz after another. The Italians were astonished at how we’d been able to irrigate and cultivate so much land they assumed was absolutely worthless. We thought it was the least we could do, given what they had done for us. While the Jews didn’t stay in Libya for long, not that there aren’t plenty of us there now, we made it possible for so many Italians to go there by building the infrastructure needed for them to support so many people. That isn’t to mention, of course, the engineers who Mussolini saved in 1942 who discovered how much oil there was located in Libya the very next year. Having been Prime Minister, I can assure you that it’s somewhat comforting to know your country is sitting on some oil.
When I returned to Libya in 1980, I remember seeing some of the old sites and buildings. But it was the old faces I most cherished. Guards who had been kind to us, locals who had settled us in, even some of the holdout Jews who decided that Libya would be their home for good. In some ways, no matter the hardships we faced in the desert, they were some of the best days of my life. And besides, Moses had to wander the desert for forty years and he still never got there, right? We barely needed four!
Unconquerable: The Story of the Jews of Hungary, by Mel Goldberg
The Jews of Hungary were in no shape to keep marching after they survived one of the most talked about battles in human history. The death rate was atrocious – the wounded rate was even higher, but their spirits were unquenchable. One Italian officer reported, “The spirit of the Jews is indescribable. Men laugh and say they’ve only realised they haven’t slept in three days. Others walk on broken legs while others casually give their food to locals after not having eaten for a week. There is no force between Heaven or Hell that can scare these people.” The only thing that could convince them to not advance further was the request to evacuate the younger children (those under 16 who had stayed) and remaining women. Thus, the Jews didn’t immediately advance from their positions, though they were assured they would see combat again.
News of such military prowess had not just impressed the Italian observers, but the whole world. American, British and Roman Alliance reporters interviewed every fighter they could to paint the incredible picture (the Soviets did not send anyone, but the news got around easily enough and excited the Jewish population). As George Orwell observed, “the Battle of Trieste will be a rallying cry for the oppressed for centuries to come. That the most hated, abused people on the Earth could one day decide that they could stand up and not only fight, but win shall send a shiver of excitement down the spines of the world’s underclass.”
More immediately, Jewish soldiers in the Allies suddenly started demanding to be moved to this new Jewish brigade. Reasons ranged from ‘they need all the help they can get’, ‘they need a rest’ to ‘God really rubbed a lot of luck onto those guys’. The largest contingent, naturally, was in the Jewish mandate in Palestine (the community known as the Yishuv), which had been demanding to fight the Nazis one on one, not just the Arab allies Germany casually supported. They were doubly infuriated that Jews could not flee to the Mandate during the Holocaust. By now, the necessity of reaching out to the Jewish Agency, led by David Ben-Gurion, as well as Mussolini was unavoidable. After back-channel chat, on January 17th, Churchill announced that he and Ben-Gurion would meet with Mussolini and Salazar in Lisbon at the end of the month to flesh out what would become of the nascent Hungarian Jewish forces. Ben-Gurion would quickly arrive in Tripoli to a hero’s reception to illustrate his bargaining-hand to the Italian and British leaders – his word meant something to the Libyan Jews, and he wasn’t going to give them a bad deal.
Of course, there would be another arrival at the Lisbon Conference.
Extract from 'Four’s Company: The Great Power relations in World War Two', by Steven Benford
On January 31st, Churchill arrived in Lisbon. Roosevelt hadn’t been told until Churchill had publicly announced it. This helps illustrate how the pair’s working relationship had fallen since D-Day, which Churchill would always regard as a mistake and suspected Stalin’s influence over Roosevelt. Some historians suspect Churchill saw flashbacks of Gallipoli in the slaughter British troops faced on the Normandy beaches.
At Churchill’s side was Anthony Eden and, coming in from the far East, Orde Wingate. He had been ordered to Lisbon specifically for the mission he was about to be entrusted with. Wingate had served in the Palestinian Mandate. As a committed Christian, he felt a religious mission to support the Jewish people and aided the Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary group, in their asymmetric warfare. Wingate was ‘an eccentric’ if you liked him and ‘stark raving mad’ if you didn’t. While the British had grown increasingly weary of his antics (which included drinking water from a flower vase in a Cairo hotel and getting dysentery) he had won the hearts of the Zionists back in Palestine with his cooperation and conviction. His ‘Chindit’ program had debatable results when used in the Burma Front, but he was mainly used to help bridge the divide between the British and Jewish leaders. Many Jews wanted to serve under the Italians, seeing them as their saviors. Wingate was considered to be the only British general well liked enough by Jews to have them on their side. With this plan, Churchill landed in Lisbon, meeting Salazar and Mussolini the next day on February 1st.
Mussolini had prepared for an avalanche of criticism over Greece and Serbia, for which he had prepared a long list of reasons to justify himself. Instead, both he and Ciano were shocked by what was coming out of the mouths of the British representatives: Stalin had to be stopped and FDR wasn’t going to do it. The War would be over soon, and they needed to ensure Communism was contained. For that reason, the Roman Alliance had to take over Romania and Hungary before the Soviets did. While Churchill re-iterated that the British government would not recognise any of the Roman Alliance’s territorial gains from Yugoslavia and Greece, he seemed ambivalent about Italy stationing troops in Romania and Hungary ‘assuming free elections have been held’. The next conference of Allied leaders would be at held in April in Kiev, which had recently been liberated. Churchill asked Mussolini for support in standing up to Stalin ‘because I don’t always get it’. From here on, Churchill and Mussolini began a complicated balancing act, making sure neither got ensnared in the other’s net whilst hoping they could work together to outwit the common Soviet foe. Neither trusted the other, but they both knew one thing for sure: the other hated Stalin as much as they did.
On the matter of the Jewish forces, Mussolini was somewhat relieved to have the pressure taken off him in finding supplies. Between Ben-Gurion and Wingate, the two had proposed a new understanding: The Haganah would become ‘The Anglo-Jewish Army’, a surprisingly accurate title given the numbers of Hungarian Jews that existed. It would be led by Wingate but the mid-ranking roles would be staffed primarily with Haganah regulars like Zvi Brenner and Moshe Dayan. It would have to reform, losing its women, boy and elderly fighters to the safe shores of Libya. However, the influx of Jewish recruits from Libya (unless they were considered too economically important), Italian Jews who had lived there all their lives and indeed Palestinian Jews who were raring to have a piece of the Nazis more than made up the numbers. After a month of rest, the Jewish army would be on the march again, back to Budapest.
After other minor agreements, such as the use of the newest Regia Marina ships to help the British in the Pacific against Japan, everyone left the meeting in a good mood. “I’d forgotten what a decent meeting felt like,” laughed Churchill as he boarded the plane. He would report to the nation about plans for the Anglo-Jewish army to wild acclaim.
Mussolini would quietly return to Rome. As soon as he arrived in his office, the phone began to ring.
Extract from 'Total: Fascist Terror in Italy' by Sven Dietrich
Mussolini had received a message from Graziani. Whilst Balbo and the Haganah had been performing PR in Trieste, the bulk of the Italian forces were actually pushing the invaders back into Ljubljana. The city was mostly, but not entirely surrounded, and mostly occupied by Slovenian Pro-Nazi forces, rather than German soldiers. German soldiers were already pulling back to the Alps to stake out a suitable defence, leaving the Slovenian collaborators to fight for themselves.
Ljubljana’s population had numbered some one hundred thousand, though the prior battle had already reduced the population count. With total air superiority, a numerically superior force and one that was well supplied with Western aid, there is no doubt the Italian army alone could have easily taken control of the city. But that wasn’t the intention of the Fascists – they wanted to make an example of anyone who defied Italian rule or occupation.
Graziani informed Mussolini that all preparation was complete. Mussolini then told his general, “Good, I want you to settle the question of who runs Slovenia … permanently.”
On February 6th, Italian bombers departed from their airfields and began to congregate in mass over Ljubljana’s historic city centre was the main target of the bombing, pulverizing centuries old art and architecture. After hours of plane bombing, the artillery began to obliterate the residential areas. The targets, by the on-the-record account of soldiers at the time, had absolutely nothing to do with German or even Slovenian military targets.
Mussolini had decided that after having done what they did in Ljubljana just weeks ago, launching a pogrom against the Italian population, the whole city deserved collective punishment. Soldiers were instructed to ‘avenge the rape of our people’ by ‘tearing this viper’s nest to the ground and start from zero’. He wanted not to destroy Ljubljana, but to remove it from the map entirely, replacing it with ‘Lubiana’ a pure, Italian town.
By February 8th,the Blackshirts were sent in. Mussolini had stated that he only wanted Blackshirts to perform the operation, convinced they were the only ones with enough resolve finish the job. The Blackshirts encountered little resistance, as the city had been pulverised with the Germans retreating and Slovenians fleeing. Satchel charges were set to the few remaining buildings still standing in the city centre. Rape was especially common by the Blackshirts, as was summary executions of almost anyone who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
On February 9th, Graziani wrote to Mussolini that, ‘Ljubljana is dead, long live Lubiana’. They had done what Hitler had only dreamed of doing in St. Petersburg or Moscow: they had succeeded in destroying the great city of a people and starting it from the ground up. While Warsaw was lucky enough to be rebuilt painstakingly according to detail, Ljubljana received no such relief. It was given an entirely different geographic layout with Italian citizens and exclusively Italian street-signs. If you came to Ljubljana in the 1950s, you would never have imagined it was anything other than a quiet Italian town. However, it was built upon the grave of the Slovenian people. The only things that were rebuilt as before were the Catholic churches, after the Pope complained.
With the loss of their capital, spirit and a significant proportion of their population, the Slovenian people were shattered. Post-war restrictions on Slovenian culture, which made the ones prior to entry into World War 2 seem lenient, were brutal. Teachers would be imprisoned for speaking a word of Slovenian to their students, even if the students didn’t understand what they were saying in Italian and needed clarification. Conditions were so unforgiving in their occupied homeland that many wound up running away to the Italian colonies for a more hands-off existence. By 1958, what was once Slovenia was by now majority Italian, with the colonial diaspora too fragmented to keep their culture alive to any significant degree. At the same time, you would never see a sign in Slovenian in any store, lest the Blackshirts come and smash the place up for being ‘Nazi sympathizers’.
Under every definition of the word, the Fascists committed genocide against the Slovenian people. And it was ignored by every nation on Earth.
Interview of Italo Balbo for the BBC’s ‘World At War’ (1973)
Interviewer: “It’s estimated that some twenty thousand civilians died in the destruction of Lubiana. That corresponds to roughly one fifth of the city. It’s also estimated that by the end of the bombing, some 90% of buildings had been destroyed. Most of the rest would be destroyed after the fighting. What do you have to say to that?”
Balbo: “Well, firstly I had nothing to do with it. That was all Graziani.”
Interviewer: “And Mussolini.”
Balbo: “Graziani was the one who decided where the bombing would take place. The Duce had no ability to determine where the bombs fell. Graziani, again, made some mistakes but you have to understand what he did in context of the War. The city had been occupied by the Nazis – if there was a way of reducing the amount of our troops who would perish -”
Interviewer: “With all due respect Mister Balbo, that doesn’t explain why the Blackshirts proceeded to set satchel charges on any standing structure left in the city. It also doesn’t explain why the air force didn’t pursue the retreating Germans but continued bombing the city centre.”
Balbo: (*More angrily*) “The citizens knew the risk when they decided to stay in an active warzone. There were plenty of warnings.”
Interviewer: “Mister Balbo, there were no such warnings. For example, the American nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Kokura produced many pamphlets demanding the citizens flee. No such preparation was made with the residents of Lubiana.”
Balbo: “The warning was how we had dealt with insurgencies across the colonies. We had taught the Ethiopians a lesson when they tried to assassinate Graziani and failed. Now, the Slovenians had massacred every Italian they could find in the city. Did they really expect us to hand out flowers and talk about forgiveness? We responded in the only way we knew how.”
Interviewer: “Some have called it ‘genocide’.”
Balbo: “I don’t care what someone calls it. From that day forth, Slovenian terrorism was defeated. There is no major Slovenian terrorist network, be it in Slovenia, the Libyan diaspora, or even the colonial diaspora. All around the world, we see these conflicts with terrorists trying to take on great powers: in France with Corsica and their Algerian holdouts, in Britain with Northern Ireland and Kurdistan with their Arab towns and regions. There is no terrorist movement in Italy proper, including Libya – and we’re proud of it.”
Interviewer: “There is, wouldn’t you say, in East Africa?”
Balbo: “I was careful with my words. Italy proper.”
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