The Fall of Rome

In Rome last week heavy contingents of Italian troops broke up a demonstration before the U.S. Embassy, then ostentatiously stood guard day & night. Italian officers were forbidden to speak to U.S. attaches. U.S. films were banned from Italy. Professor Guido Manacorda of the University of Florence made a speech before the Italian Center for American Studies in which he called the U.S. "a civilization of robbers, the godless, the divorcees, the gangsters, the lynchers, the strikers and the unemployed."

Such incidents were not simply expressions of resentment against the U.S. for seizing Italian ships and ousting an air attache (see p. 17). They were steps in a carefully planned campaign, similar in detail and in purpose to the campaign which preceded Italy's declaration of war against Great Britain and France last June.

If to most U.S. citizens it seemed fantastic that Italy could be planning to declare war against the U.S., it was not at all fantastic to U.S. Correspondent John Thompson Whitaker, who had just been expelled from Italy (TIME, March 10). In a series of articles for the Chicago Daily News and New York Post Correspondent Whitaker told why anti-U.S. demonstrations failed to come off during the discussion of the Lend-Lease Bill. An Italian said to him then: "When we are being beaten by the Greeks, are those madmen going to make us provoke America?"

"By now," Correspondent Whitaker thinks, "even that much common sense has been destroyed by the daily pricking of Goebbels' poisoned pens and the careful preparation of Himmler's black books. . . . Italy, in short, is German, and its public must be prepared for Hitler's declaration of war ... if America begins to make aid to Britain decisive by convoying armaments directly to British ports."

John T. Whitaker is no sensationalist, but a seasoned correspondent who probably had more sound sources of information and more real friends in Italy than any other newsman who has worked there in recent years. Moreover, his account of how Germany conquered Italy was supported in many details by another able correspondent, Saville R. Davis, whose series of articles appeared simultaneously in the Christian Science Monitor. Between them they lifted a smoke screen of speculation and rumor behind which the truth about Italy has been partly hidden for the past four months.

"Nazi infiltration into every executive post," wrote Correspondent Whitaker, "was made possible by persuading Mussolini of the advantage in principle of merging Fascism and Naziism." By the middle of December the Nazis controlled, not only the Italian Foreign Office and the Ministries of War, Communications and Finance, but 50% of Italian industry. The week before Christmas they struck.

"Hitler had to take over. The Axis position in North Africa and the Mediterranean had become desperate. The Axis position in Italy had become worse than desperate--the Italians were knocked out and ready for separate peace. Only Mussolini could prevent separate peace, and he could be maintained in power only by the arrival of the Germans in force."

Correspondent Whitaker thinks Britain could have forced a separate peace if it had been able to bomb Italy heavily enough. But Britain did not have the air power and Hitler moved too quickly. The Germans already bossed the Italian railways. "Suddenly, without warning, 122 major train services in Italy were suspended. In the eight weeks beginning at the joyous Christmas season those trains were devoted to the task of hauling German troops and German equipment into Italy. The conquest was swift and complete."

An Italian doctor told Correspondent Whitaker about a peasant boy whose feet and hands had been amputated after frostbite in Albania. No winter equipment had been provided for the Army. The boy raised the stump of his arm and screamed: "We're going to kill Mussolini, the murderer." Whitaker heard another story of a wounded man who rose from his cot in an Albanian hospital and spat in the face of Mussolini's daughter, Countess Ciano.

Although these were isolated cases, Whitaker thinks that Mussolini has the personal loyalty of scarcely more than a few hundred Italians. The people are done with him, ready to throw him out, but they have no one else to turn to. After 19 years of Fascism they are helpless, without leaders, without political faith. They have no hope even in the royal family. A prince who had been a member of the royal household told Whitaker: "The King is worse than gaga. He is a cynical, selfish, dirty old man. He cares nothing for Italy or the Italian people, but only for his own throne." Servants now repeat society gossip about the effeminacy of the Prince of Piedmont.

As for the Army, Correspondent Davis reported on its bankruptcy by telling how Roberto Farinacci's Fascist Party plotters undercut the Old Guard and ousted Marshal Pietro Badoglio. Correspondent Whitaker added: "The Fascists have deliberately spread lies about the corruption of Badoglio. He isn't corrupt. He is merely a very old man. . . . Graziani is a sick man, suffering, perhaps, from cancer of the throat."

Whatever hope of deliverance lies in the Italian people is quiescent, Correspondent Whitaker thinks. They accept the German occupation "with as much resignation as the eruption of Vesuvius." They are overawed by Germany's military might. But once the Germans are being defeated, they will be ready to rise, he predicts. At night, when an Italian tries to hail a passing taxi (scarce in wartime), he shouts: "Libero? [Are you free?]" In the darkness come answers from people in the street:

"No! Italiano! [No! I'm Italian!]"

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