ABSTRACT
A few days later Alberto Pirelli had an audience of the King 'who showed himself to be well informed'. They talked about the 'repugnance of the neutral countries and the occupied countries because of the excesses against the Jews' . 2 On 10 December Pietromarchi asked:
Is this the civilization installed by the new order? Is it surprising if nobody believes in an Axis victory? It repels anybody who still has a feeling for human dignity. So it is that the Axis alienates the greater part of public opinion. 3
The critical moments of the war coincided exactly with the spread among the Italian elite of the true facts of the holocaust. For those who dismissed Radio Londra, Curzio Malaparte, the writer and journalist, returned to Italy in late November 1942, and could provide eye-witness confirmation of the horrors of German rule in Poland and Russia, later published in Kaputt, his masterpiece. 4
The terminal convulsions of fascist Italy took place under the shadow of the gas chamber. The news spread in whispers. In April 1943 Mussolini summoned the directorate of the fascist party to deny the stories:
Events in Russia have led to a notable recrudescence of hatred towards the Germans and Germany. All kinds of rumours are
abroad. Now there is talk of atrocities happening in Russia. . . . We must react against this habit of thought. . . . The Party must stop this kind of talk. 5
Italian diplomats and soldiers must have found official encounters with their German ally very uncomfortable. In the midst of the deportation of the Jews of Salonica in December of 1942, General Carlo Geloso, commander of the Italian forces in the Greek theatre, paid a courtesy call on Generaloberst Lohr, his German opposite number, at the headquarters of the German forces in the south-east. There was a frosty moment when the cordial Austrian general asked his Italian colleague
to use similar methods on the Jews in the part of Greece occupied by Italian forces. The proposal in the form of a simple idea thrown out in the course of one of our conversations was actually put to me by Generaloberst Lohr himself and by a German general staff officer to my chief of staff General Tripiccione. I replied . . . that I could not carry out such acts without an explicit order of my government and since I had no such orders, I could not possibly follow them on that road. 6
Germans constantly startled Italians by moments of unexpected brutality. Goring on one of his many visits to Rome suggested to Count Ciano that Roatta invite Mihailovic
one of these mornings to breakfast and after the coffee hang him. . . . Count Ciano replied that the commanding general of the army had never had the least contact with Milhailovic and that, apart from that, 'denied that it was one of his characteristics to have his guests h a n g e d / 7
The Nazi leadership grew more and more dissatisfied with the Italians. They had failed militarily. Hitler and Jodl agreed at the beginning of December 1942 that no more Italians were to be in charge of joint operations. 8 Goebbels expressed his disgust a few weeks later on a different but no less important matter:
The Italians are extremely lax in the treatment of Jews. They protect the Italian Jews both in Tunis and in occupied France and won't permit their being drafted for work or compelled to wear the Star of David. This shows once again that Fascism does not really dare to get down to fundamentals, but is very superficial regarding most important problems. The Jewish question is causing us a lot of trouble. Everywhere, even among our allies, the Jews have friends to help them, which is a proof that they are still playing an important role even in the Axis camp. 9
In this atmosphere of mutual recrimination, distrust and repugnance Goering arrived in Rome on 1 December for high level talks on the war. Goering took the chair. Rommel had been summoned from Africa. Admiral Weichold represented the German navy and Marshall Kesselring the Luftwaffe. Cavallero headed an Italian delegation representing the three services. The situation was undoubtedly difficult, Goering began, but for the first time Axis troops were only 'a panther's spring' from their supplies. 1 0 Everything now depended on supplying Rommel, as Kesselring told Cavallero, with 'petrol, munitions, food and uniforms', but Cavallero, 'making the greatest possible effort could send only 200 cubic metres of petrol a day. ' 1 1
In an effort to strengthen ties, Bottai paid an official visit to Berlin later the same month. The experience depressed him:
We arrive at one. But instead of the light of noon, a livid Dammerung, a dusk, without gods. The hosts await us in a squalid station. The city is black, gloomy. Somebody recalls the line in Goethe which says that the night in Italy is clearer than the day in Germany. And it's true. The eternal night in this plain without end gives one an urge to escape, to scream, to free oneself. 1 2
Bottai noted a 'slight fall' in the position of Goring but 'a constant rise in the power of Himmler, in the shadows . . . his adepts and followers have their own doctrine and culture. In the almost general silence . . . the new order is incubating in the dossiers of the police. ' 1 3
What the new order had in store for mankind was revealed in a remarkable speech by Himmler to SS leaders in Poznan later in 1943. The SS man must be guided by one principle: 'loyalty to those of our blood'. What happens to other people is
a matter of total indifference to us. If good blood of our type is to be found among other nations, we will take it, if need be by taking their children and bringing them up ourselves. Whether other peoples live in plenty or starve to death interests me only insofar as we need them as slaves for our culture. . . . Whether 10,000 Russian women keel over from exhaustion in the construction of an anti-tank ditch interests me only insofar as the ditch for Germany gets constructed.
