OPEN LETTER TO PEOPLE INTERESTED IN ITALIAN HISTORY WHO DO NOT READ HISTORY BOOKS
If you consider yourself to be Italian, by birth, marriage, or heritage, but find yourself living most or all of your life outside of Italy as first, second and third generation sons and daughters of Italian Immigrants in the many lands in which these brave, proud and very enterprising people settled in during the past two hundred years, (14,000 Italians immigrants came to America in 1820-1860) and know very little about the recent war history of Italy, or someone simply interested in Italy and its history, then this important message is for you:
YOU HAVE BEEN LIED TO You have been told ever since 1945, by every media means known and available to the authors of these slanderous lies , that Italy and its people were forced to live their lives for twenty-one years under a political regime of a very evil, corrupt and vain dictatorship, and that finally in 1943 Italy was invaded by the Allied Armies of America, Canada, Britain, Australia, and others and freed and liberated from this period of Fascist terror and crime, and that the Italian Prime Minister of Italy, from 1922 to 1943 was assassinated by “patriots” and his body and others were hung and desecrated in a public space in Milan , a ruthless display of civic brutality of now seen and known to the entire world, by sixty years of publication in films and photos, as a just award for a man who caused the enormous suffering and atrocities of the Italian people for the last two years of the war in Europe.
HOW CAN I PROVE TO YOU THAT THIS IS ALL A FABRICATION OF LIES AND DISINFORMATION? As an author of two books on the life and times of Benito Mussolini written in the past ten years I now see that the vast majority of people do not read history books, but rather get their important ideas about war and its causes via television, radio talk shows, films, newspapers and magazines. These can be weapons of mass misinformation and have become the new learning centers for millions around the world and especially here at home.
The truth is I can prove to you in my two books that the normal everyday media historical information about the life of this Italian Prime Minister is bogus information from start to finish. Google alone has a million and a half search items available when a search for Mussolini is initiated. Each page of items presents a menu of pro and con points of view regarding these war years of 1940 to 1945, and very little to say about Mussolini’s Italian political, economic, social, religious and cultural progress in the years from 1922 to 1939
So then what is to be done?First, read carefully the now famous words of Richard Washburn Child. United States Ambassador to Italy in 1928, written as an introduction to an autobiography of Benito Mussolini, after his first six years as the Prime Minister of Italy. I have provided a copy of this now historically important Introduction Document for your examination
FOREWARD
By Richard Washburn Child
It is far from my purpose to elaborate the material in this book, to interpret it, or to add to it.
With much of the drama it contains I, being Ambassador of the United States at the time, was
intimately familiar; much of the extraordinary personality disclosed here was an open book to
me long ago because I knew well the man who now, at last, has written characteristically,
directly and simply, of that self for which I have a deep affection.
For his autobiography I am responsible. Lives of Mussolini written by others have interests of
sorts.
“But nothing can take the place of a book which you will write yourself,” I said to him.
“Write myself?” He leaned across his desk and repeated my phrase in amazement.
He is the busiest single individual in the world. He appeared hurt as if a friend had failed to
understand.
“Yes,” I said and showed him a series of headings I had written on a few sheets of paper.
“All right,” he said in English. “I will.”
It was quite like him. He decides quickly and completely.
So he began. He dictated. I advised that method because when he attempts to write in longhand
he corrects and corrects and corrects. It would have been too much for him. So he dictated. The
copy came back and he interlined the manuscript in his own hand – a dash of red pencil, and a
flowing rivulet of ink – here and there.
When the manuscripts began to come to me I was troubled because mere literal translators lose
the vigor of the man himself.
“What editing may I do?” I asked him.
“Anything you like,” he said.” You know Italy, you understand Fascism, you see me clearly as
any one.”
But there was nothing much to do. The story came through as it appears here. It is all his and –
- what luck for all of us – so like him! Approve of him or not, when one reads this book
one may know Mussolini or at least, if one’s vision is clouded, know him better. Like the
book or not, there is not an insincere line in it. I find none.
Of course there are many things which a man writing an autobiography cannot see about
himself or will not say about himself.
He is unlikely to speak of his own size on the screen of history.
Perhaps when approval or disapproval, theories and isms, pro and cons, are all put aside the
only true measure of a man’s greatness from a wholly unpartisan view-point may be found in
the answer to the question:
“How deep and lasting has been the effect of a man upon the largest number of human beings
-- their hearts, their thoughts, their material welfare, their relation to the universe?”
In our time it may be shrewdly forecast that no man will exhibit dimensions of permanent
greatness equal to those of Mussolini.
Admire him or not, approve his philosophies or not, concede the permanence of his success or
not, consider him superman or not, as you may, he has put to a working test, on great and
growing numbers of mankind, programmes, unknown before, in applied spirituality, in applied
plans, in applied leadership, in applied doctrines, in the applied principle that contents are
more important than labels on bottles. He has not only been able to secure and hold an almost
universal following; he has built a new state upon a new concept of a state. He has not only
been able to change the lives of human beings but he has changed their minds, their hearts,
their spirits. He has not merely ruled a house; he has built a new house.
He has not merely put it on paper or into orations; he has laid the bricks. It is one thing to
administer a state. The one who does this well is called a statesman. It is quite another thing to
make a state. This is super statesmanship. I knew him well before the world at large, outside of
Italy, had ever heard of him; I knew him before and after the moment he leaped into the saddle
and in the days when he, almost single-handed, was clearing away chaos’ own junk pile from
Italy. But no man knows Mussolini. An Italian newspaper offered a prize for the best essay
showing insight into the mystery of the man. Mussolini, so the story goes, stopped the contest by
writing to the paper that such a competition was absurd. Because he himself could not enter an
opinion.
In spite of quick, firm decisions, in spite of grim determination, in spite of well-ordered
diagrammed pattern and plan of action fitted to any moment of time, Mussolini, first of all,
above all and after all, is a personality always in a state of flux, adjusting its leadership to a
world eternally in a state of flux.
Change the facts upon which Mussolini has acted and he will change his action. Change the
hypotheses and he will change his conclusion.
And this perhaps is an attribute of greatness seldom recognized. Most of us are forever hoping
to put our world in order and finish the job. Statesmen with some idea to make over into reality
hope for a day when they can say: “Well, that’s done!” And when it is done – often enough it is
nothing. The bridges they have built are now useless, because the rivers have all changed their
courses and humanity is already shrieking for new bridges. This is not an unhappy thought,
says Mussolini. A finished world would be a stupid place – intolerably stupid.
The imagination of mere statesmen covers a static world.
The imagination of true greatness covers a dynamic world. Mussolini conceives a dynamic
world. He is ready to go on the march with it, though it overturns all his structures, upsets his
theories, destroys all of yesterday and creates a screaming dawn of tomorrow.
Opportunist is a term of reproach used to brand men who fit themselves to conditions for
reasons of self-interest. Mussolini, as I have learned to know him, is an opportunist in the sense
that he believes that mankind itself must be fitted to changing conditions rather than to fixed
theories, no matter how many hopes and prayers have been expended on theories and
programmes.
He has marched up several hills with the thousands and then marched down again. This
strange creature of strange life and strange thoughts, with that almost psychopathic fire which
is in saints and villains, in Napoleons, in Jeanne d’Arcs, and in Tolstoy, in religious prophets
and in Ingersolls, has been up the Socialist, the international, the liberal, and the conservative
hills and down again. He says: ”The sanctity of an ism is not in the ism; it has no sanctity
beyond its power to do, to work, to succeed in practice. Failed yesterday and succeed tomorrow.
The machine first of all must run!”
I have watched, with a curiosity that has never failed to creep in on me, the marked
peculiarities, physical and mental, of this man. At moments he is quite relaxed, at ease; and yet
the unkown gusts of his own personality play on him eternally. One sees in his eyes, or in a
quick movement of his body, or in a sentence suddenly ejaculated, the effect of these gusts, just
as one sees wind on the surface of the water.
There is in his walk something of a prowl, a faint suggestion of the tread of the cat. He likes
cats – their independence, their decision, their sense of justice and their appreciation of the
sanctity of the individual. He even likes lions and lionesses, and plays with until those who
guard his life protest against their social set. His principal pet is a Persian feline which, being
of aristocratic lineage, nevertheless exhibits a pride not only of ancestry but, condescendingly,
of belonging to Mussolini. And yet, in spite of his own prowl, as he walks along in his riding
boots, springy, active, ready to leap, it seems, there is little else feline about him. One quality is
feline, however – it is the sense of his complete isolation.
One feels that he must always have had this isolation as a boy, isolation as a young radical,
adventurer, lover, worker, thinker.
There is no understudy of Mussolini. There is no man, woman, or child who stands anywhere in
the inner orbit of his personality. No one. The only possible exception is his daughter Edda. All
the tales of his alliances, his obligations, his ties, his predilections are arrant nonsense. There
are none – no ties, no public predilections, no alliances, no obligations unpaid.
Financially? Whom could he owe? He has made and can unmake them all. He is free to test
every officeholder in the whole of Italy by the yardstick of service and fitness. Beyond that I
know not one political debt that he owes. He has tried to pay those of the past; I believe that
the cynicism in him is based upon the failure of some who have been rewarded to live up to the
trust put in them.
“But I take the responsibility for all,” says he. He says it publicly with jaws firm; he
says it privately with eyes somewhat saddened.
He takes responsibility for everything – for discipline, for censorship, for measures which, were
less rigor required, would appear repressive and cruel. “Mine!” says he, and stands or falls on
that. It is an admirable courage. I could, if I wished, quote instance after instance of this
acceptance – sometimes when he is not to blame–of the whole responsibility of the machine.
“Mine!” says he.
And in spite of any disillusionment he has suffered since I knew him first, he has retained his
laugh – often, one is bound to say, a scornful laugh – and he has kept his faith in an ability to
build up a machine – the machine of Fascism – the machine built not on any fixed theory but
one intended by Mussolini to run –above all, to run, to function, to do, to accomplish, to fill the
bottles with wine first, unlike the other isms, and put on labels after.
Mussolini has superstitious faith in himself. He has said it. Not a faith in himself to make
personal gain. An assassin’s bullet might wipe him out and leave his family in poverty. That
would be that. His faith is in a kind of destiny which will allow him, before the last chapter, to
finish the building of this new state, this new machine –”the machine which will run and has a
soul.”
The first time I ever saw him he came to my residence sometime before the march on Rome and
I asked him what would be his programme for Italy. His answer was immediate: “Work and
discipline.”
I remember I thought at that time that the phrase sounded a little evangelical, a phrase of
exhortation. But a mere demagogue would never chose it. Wilson’s slogan of Rights and Peace
and Freedom are much more popular and gain easier currency than sterner phrases. It is easier
even for a sincere preacher, to offer soft nests to one’s followers; it is more difficult to excite
enthusiasm for stand-up doctrines. Any analyses and weighing of Mussolini’s greatness must
include recognition that he has made popular throughout a race of people, and perhaps for
others, a standard of obligation of the individual not only exacting but one which in the end will
be accepted voluntarily. Not only is it accepted voluntarily but with an almost spiritual ecstasy
which was held up miraculously in Italy during years, when all the so-called liberals in the
world were hovering over it like vultures, croaking that if it were not dead it was about to die.
It is difficult to lead men at all. It is still more difficult to lead them away from self indulgence.
It is still more difficult to lead them so that a new generation, so that youth itself, appears as if
born with a new spirit, a new virility bred in the bones. It is difficult to govern a state and
difficult to deal cleanly and strongly with a static programme applied to a static world; but it is
more difficult to build a new state and deal cleanly and strongly with a dynamic programme
applied to a dynamic world.
A MAN BORN TO SAVE ITALY
These laudatory well chosen words by Mr., Richard W. Child, and Ambassador of one of the world’s newest and most important nation on the European scene seemed to ignite a furor of admiration and praise for both Italy and its new Prime Minister. Thousands of people around the world became Mussolini admirers along with a long line of important world leaders daily making their way to visit Rome to see who and talk with this new young Prime Minister to learn what made this man the highest ranking politician amongst all the leaders of the western world.
When Benito Mussolini became the Prime Minister of Italy in 1922 Italy was a broken, bankrupt country that had suffered great losses of young Italian soldiers fighting in Northern Italy in the war of 1914 to 1918 and had all the promises made by their allies the British and the French taken away by the Treaty of Versailles. Italy was destitute and found itself as a country without any hope or promise of a brighter future. Mussolini in a few short years changed that beak national reality to one of hope and promise for both the country and the Italian people. They now had a man of action and political genius to lead them out of that state of despair that was felt in every region and province of the country. For this new leadership they named him Il Duce, the leader, teacher and law giver.
Mussolini, now only 37 years old, was now on the minds of every government in the western world of nations .Italy rejoiced at his every success, but these proved to be troublesome for those nations that up until 1922 had their own way of operation and saw his energy, drive and ambitions for the Italian people as a direct threat to their plans for the world. Indeed, they had another war in mind for the past ten years and were shocked at the speed and efficiency of Italy’s recovery from despair and the progress made under the leadership of this new dynamic man called Il Duce.
SO THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE WAS SET IN MOTION IN LONDON, PARIS, WASHINGTON, AND MOSCOW FROM WHICH A VIRTUAL TORRENT OF LIES AND FALSEHOODS POURED FORTH FROM THESE GOVERNMENTS VIA VARIOUS MEDIA AGENCIES.
These vicious attacks on Italy, Fascism, and the Prime Minister were orchestrated initially from London the products of Lord Louis Mountbatten, Sir. Anthony Eden, Lord Robert Cecil. Winston Churchill admired Benito Mussolini but as an astute factotum became the front man for this British program of an all out assault against Italy and Fascism. Communists, Marxists, Zionists, Freemasons, Capitalists and Liberals all joined in at various periods of this 1939 political world with their vile messages of anti-fascist propaganda. They all knew that Italy was becoming a whole new nation with this new Fascist concept of governing a nation and did not want to see it survive and grow on its own merits: They were determined to have another war and had their war, which took the lives of sixty million people in six short years.
Much is known but little is said or published of the major role played by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the United States and his very important moneyed Zionist minded friends in the U.S.A. Under a cloak of neutrality, this president and his coterie of bankers and industrialists had their dirty hands in every one of the early stages of international diplomacy which eventually led to the outbreak of war in Europe on September, 3, 1939.
IN SUMMATIONThe Allied military presence in Italy began with the invasion of Sicily on July 10, 1943 when Mussolini was no longer Prime Minister. His successors, as arranged by agreement with the Allied Forces, all left Italy for other lands and left the nation and its people to a period of absolute social, political, economic and military confusion and suffering.
They marched and bombed their way northward through the entire peninsula and then eventually took over the government and control of the nation in Rome on June 4, 1944.
And bombed they did. They bombed most of the major cities and industrial sites from Naples to Milan as they wished, destroying much of Italy’s historically important sites and regions including parts of Rome. Their excessive and now seen as unnecessary bombing raids was a military/political program of callous revenge, terrorist bombings on a country and a people who had no army, no government and no will to continue the war. The tragedy of bombing of Monte Casino stands out as a classic example of the gratuitous Allied bombing strategy.
IF THESE CHAOTIC DAYS OF CIVIL STRIFE AND CONFUSION ALONG WITH THE COMPLETE COLLAPSE OF ALL GOVERNMENTAL ORDER AND ASSISTANCE ALONG WITH A LEGACY OF FOOD SHORTAGES AND STARVATION ARE THE DAYS THAT YOUR GRANDFATHER, OR YOUR FATHER OR MOTHER, OR GREAT UNCLE OR AUNT RECALL AND BLAME IT ALL ON THE SHOULDERS OF BENITO MUSSOLINI, THEY ARE MAKING A MISTAKE, ALTHOUGH HE PAID THE ULTIMATE PRICE OF A PATRIOTIC MARTYRDOM, HE WAS INNOCENT OF THESE LAST DAYS OF NATIONAL SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL CHAOS, DOUBLE DEALINGS, TREACHERY. VINDICTIVENESS AND DIVERSE POLITICAL AND MILITARY COMMANDS WHICH WERE THE ORDER OF THE DAY.
This landing in Italy was not a day of liberation, as is celebrated each year, but rather an Invasion of Occupation. They, the Americans are still there; in the Italian Constitution, in three military bases and especially in NATO of which Italy is a member. It is unknown if this was a political choice or an obligation of all post war governments of Italy.
p.s. If you read Italian please visit: Arch. Filippo Giannini at
http://www.filippogiannini.it/ Author of important Books and Articles on life of Benito Mussolini
copyright July 27, 2007 R.S.Daldin, Windsor, Ontario, Canada
