ITALY: Pax Romana

For 20 years Benito Mussolini roared grandiose nonsense from his balcony. He rubbed snow on his bare chest for photographers. To his superstitious peasants he proclaimed that war was the natural state of a healthy nation. Last week, in a small voice. IlDuce urged his people: “Tener Duro” (“Hold firm”).

Louder in the ears of the Italians was the ominous roar and rattle of the Allied military machine in North Africa. Virtually splitting their eardrums were the scream and crump of “blockbuster” bombs devastating the great industrial cities of Turin, Genoa, Milan.

By Air. Thirty-five times in little more than a month, British-based Wellingtons, Lancasters and Stirlings have fought their way through German planes over Occupied France and vaulted over the Alps to the Po Valley. At week’s end, in the biggest raid yet, one group of bombers alone dropped 54 two-ton bombs and 55 tons of incendiaries in less than an hour on Turin. This was only a fraction of the total tonnage carried by an estimated 200 to 300 planes. Three were missing.

Primary Turin targets were the Royal Arsenal, the Fiat truck and plane plants, the Caproni bomber factory, the Montecatini chemical works. Observers reported that a great pall of smoke lay over the city. At one point flames from a factory shot up 8,000 feet in the air like the plume of a live volcano.

Six raids, three on successive nights, have “completely devastated” one 27-acre area and another of 20 acres in the heart of Genoa, which lies in an amphitheater facing the sea. The main railway stations have been smashed, the great Genoa harbor knocked out as an effective supply port. Fascists claimed the bombers invariably hit only ancient shrines and churches, including Santo Stefano where Christopher Columbus was baptized. A mass evacuation of civilians wildly fighting for train passage indicated houses, military targets and morale had all been struck.

How unnatural Mussolini’s state of war is to the Italian people was evident after bombers had swarmed over Milan. Public outcries and wall inscriptions calling for peace led Il Duce to change governors and purge his Party leadership. When King Vittorio Emanuel and his Queen, aping Britain’s monarchs, visited Milan and Turin, haggard, frightened civilians chanted, “We want peace.”

If Tunisia and Tripoli fall, Italy’s cities and vulnerable north-south rail lines are certain to get a shuttle-service plastering from North African air bases. If the Anglo-American drive hops across to Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, Italy will be wide open to land invasion. Reports that the Germans were fortifying the Brenner Pass suggests that German strategists may not bank too heavily on Italy’s ability to defend her own shores.

By Hook & Crook. To Rome Mussolini called his Party chiefs and urged “merciless severity” with rumormongers, defeatists, petty chiselers, Allied sympathizers. Minister of Public Enlightenment Alessandro Pavolini appealed to all “whose presence in big cities is not an imperative necessity” to seek refuge with relatives and friends in the bomb-free countryside. A special “M” battalion of Fascist stalwarts was charged with curbing desertions and bucking up Army morale. In the crisis 60,000 new German “tourists” were reported taking over economic and military posts not previously usurped.

“Victory,” said Pavolini, “must be won by sacrifice and pain.” Already the Italians have sacrificed probably 1,000,000 killed, captured or injured from a population of 40,210,000. The savage removal of Italian foodstuffs to Germany has led to fights between peasants and carabinieri. Mutinous troops have been brought back from the Russian battlefront in manacles.

By & By. The time was not yet ripe for revolt. Still lacking was a leader, a strong anti-Fascist organization and the will to freedom—blunted if not crushed during 20 years of Fascist rule. With the cunning of a skunk in a hen house, Mussolini appealed to the peasants and working classes to protect with their lives the tired soil they love. His own secret police kept close watch on priests, industrialists and Army leaders who might consider revolt. What he could not watch so effectively was Darlan-style defection among his own Party leaders. If any of these men dreamed of gaining power by the turncoat route, they were rebuffed by Assistant Secretary of State Adolph Berle’s recent, broadcast to Italy. He promised: No compromise “with the cult of Fascist slavery.”

Rome radio last week broadcast the cry: “Italy’s hour has struck.”