After 25 Years: Memory of Two Dictators

It was one of those incredible moments in history when everything seemed to be happening at once. Twenty-five years ago this week, as the war in Europe rolled toward its end, the rulers of two of the Axis powers died violently, scarcely 48 hours apart. Benito Mussolini perished on April 28, 1945, executed by a Communist partisan as he tried to flee Italy. Adolf Hitler died in Berlin on April 30, apparently by swallowing a cyanide capsule. On the double anniversary, TIME's Benjamin Cate in Bonn and James Bell in Rome examine the ways in which the two are remembered:

He Built the Autobahnen, But . . .

In both East and West Germany, the egomaniacal Fuehrer has become something of a nonperson. The East Germans rather self-righteously disclaim any role or responsibility for the Nazi years: after all, they are Communists, and Hitler was the rotten fruit of a decaying capitalist system. For the West Germans, coming to terms with that era is more difficult.

Hitler's birthplace, a two-story stucco house at Vorstadt 219 in the Austrian border town of Braunau am Inn, is no longer marked as a shrine; only informed visitors can pick it out. His Alpine retreat at Obersalzberg, which survived the war, was dynamited by the Bavarian government. The remains of the dynamited Fuehrerbunker, a concrete redoubt and command post beneath the Reich Chancellery, are now a grassy mound, situated fittingly enough in the narrow, 110-yd. corridor of no man's land between East and West Berlin. Countless Adolf Hitler squares or streets in German cities and towns have been renamed, often in honor of such heroes of the plots to overthrow him as Klaus von Stauffenberg, Julius Leber and Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Adolf, once a popular name, is seldom bestowed on German children today. About the only lasting memento is the 1,800 miles of modern autobahnen Hitler built, but even these highways have been broadened, resurfaced and extended beyond recognition.

According to a recent poll, only 6% of West Germans said they would vote for another leader like him. On the all-time list of effective German statesmen, he is steadily slipping. In 1950, Bismarck topped the list with 35% of the votes, and Hitler received 10%. Three years ago, in the last such sampling, Konrad Adenauer received 60% and Hitler, with 2%, barely edged out Frederick the Great.

Demonic Evils. Only one-third of today's West Germans were even teen-agers before World War II. Those born after the war show little interest in the Nazi era and, naturally, accept no responsibility for it. Those between 30 and 50, says Historian Joachim Fest, are "the generation of self-reproach." Many of them insist that Hitler accomplished some good--reviving the economy, building national self-esteem and cracking class barriers--but they concede that his achievements were more than canceled out by the demonic evils of Nazism. But many of those over 50, who remember the humiliation after World War I and the chaos of the Weimar Republic, maintain that Hitler's positive accomplishments outweigh the negative. The memoirs of Albert Speer, Hitler's architect and wartime production czar, are still a bestseller in West Germany eight months after publication (TIME, Sept. 12, 1969).

Chancellor Willy Brandt, whose wartime exile in Norway frees him of any Nazi taint, and other German leaders have no intention of letting people become sanguine about Hitler. "The names of Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Auschwitz, Theresienstadt, Mauthausen and Schirmeck have lost none of their horror," President Gustav Heinemann reminds them. "Nothing can mitigate them, no rhetoric can dissipate them, they cannot and must not be relegated to oblivion."

He Made the Trains Run on Time, But . . .

Mussolini and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, were gunned down by a partisan and strung by their heels, in a gruesome outpouring of hate. These vengeful murders and two other events in Fascism's twilight--Mussolini's ouster as Premier by his own Grand Council, and Italy's switch to the Allied side--ensured that il Duce would be remembered with a certain sympathy. Today Italians refer quite easily to Mussolini, not by name but as "quello" (that one) or "lui" (he), and the references are often flattering.

Unlike Hitler, Mussolini has mementos aplenty. The principal one is his tomb in Predappio, the Apennine village where he was born almost 87 years ago. His ornate crypt and a nearby restaurant owned by Widow Rachele, now 80, are magnets for tourists and a shrine for the neo-Fascist Italian Social Movement, which polled 1,400,000 votes (4.5% of the total) in Italy's last general election. As many as 5,000 people flock to Predappio on pleasant Sundays.

Like the Caesars. There are other reminders. Near Rome's Duca d'Aosta bridge over the Tiber is an obelisk on which his name is inscribed. Communists once demanded that the stone, marking the former Foro Mussolini, be removed or rechiseled. The government ruled that Mussolini had become just one more dictator in the city's history, along with Caesar, Caracalla or the 14th century Cola di Rienzi. Like them, he was entitled to a place in the ruins.

The man who made the trains run on time is survived by far more practical memorials. In two decades, Mussolini not only built 1,534 miles of railroads but also carved out 620 miles of waterway, 1,075 miles of highway and 400 major bridges. He leveled Roman slums to create pretentious imperial avenues and vistas and in a 14-year project drained the Pontine marshes to reduce malaria and provide land and homes for 60,000 peasants. The achievements, however, were overshadowed by depravities of the spirit. Parliament was emasculated, and opponents were dosed with castor oil or beaten to death. Mussolini provided Italy with empire by slaughtering Ethiopians, then led the country into a war in which Italians were slaughtered by both sides.

Mere Parenthesis. Some Italians dismiss Mussolini out of hand. Benedetto Croce called him "a mere parenthesis in Italian history." But that ignores the fact that Mussolini was in power for 20 years, a fifth of Italy's span as a modern nation and longer than any Premier before or since.

Italians are susceptible to nostalgia and prone to forgiveness. Besides, the bewildering parade of 28 postwar governments, most of them incapable of coping with domestic problems, has made the old days suddenly seem nicer. "If quello were here, this wouldn't happen," says a Roman trapped in a traffic jam. "When lui was around," complains a robbery victim, "even the Mafia behaved." In a recent poll, 66% of those asked whether they would temporarily surrender full power to an "honest, disinterested and energetic man" to carry out reforms replied that they would.

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