2023-07-25 08:30:33
by Antonio Carioti
During the session of the Fascist Grand Council, Mussolini would have had many ways of avoiding the vote that delegitimized him. But in fact he didn’t oppose it: he felt finished
It is just after 2 am on July 25, 1943. The Grand Council of Fascism, the supreme body of the regime, has been meeting for almost ten hours to discuss the untenable situation in which Italy finds itself from a political and military point of view.
On July 10th the Anglo-Americans landed in Sicily and on the 22nd they took Palermo, while on the 19th Rome was heavily bombed by the Allied air forces, which caused a large number of victims. On the same July 19, Benito Mussolini met Adolf Hitler in Feltre, where he tried to convince him to negotiate a separate peace deal with the Soviet Union to turn all Axis forces westwards, against the Anglo-Americans. But the German dictator did not listen to the Duce in the slightest, on the contrary he submerged him with his fluvial recriminations about the lack of fighting spirit shown by the Italian soldiers during the war.
Now Mussolini appears tired, disheartened. The very decision to convene the Grand Council, taken under pressure from the hierarchs, demonstrates its profound weakness: the last time that body met dates back to 1939, when Italy had not yet entered the war. During the conflict, the Duce did without it, because he was enough to decide everything, without the need for useless discussions and obvious ratifications. Except that in the meantime the regime has suffered very hard blows, losing most of its popularity.
Three agendas were presented during the session. The most important bears the first signature of Dino Grandi, president of the Chamber of Fasci and Corporations, a skilled and shrewd figure from a political point of view: the document requests that the king resume the supreme command of the operating armed forces, delegated to the Duce at the beginning of the conflict, and summarizes the «supreme decision initiative» assigned to it by the Statute, the constitution of the Kingdom. In fact, it proposes to change the internal balance of the regime, downsizing the figure of Mussolini.
Then there is an agenda presented by Roberto Farinacci, an exponent of extremist and pro-German fascism, which also appeals to the king, but underlines the need to maintain the “observance of the alliances concluded” with the Third Reich and Japan . Finally, the agenda presented by Carlo Scorza, secretary of the Fascist Party, speaks generically of “reforms and innovations to be adopted”.
Mussolini would have many ways of avoiding a showdown. He could postpone the meeting of the Grand Council or not put Grandi’s agenda to the vote. Nothing would prevent him from presenting his own resolution and asking for a vote on it, openly placing his prestige on the plate. Unfortunately no minutes of the meeting are kept, which makes it difficult to reconstruct exactly how things went, especially since the versions provided by the protagonists are contradictory.
The fact remains, however, that Mussolini submits Grandi’s document to the judgment of the hierarchs, which is approved with nineteen votes in favour, eight against, one abstention. Giuseppe Bottai, former Minister of Corporations and National Education; the two surviving quadrumvirs of the march on Rome, Cesare Maria De Vecchi and Emilio De Bono; the former nationalist Luigi Federzoni; even Mussolini’s son-in-law (he married his daughter Edda) and former Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano.
In a climate of strong tension, Mussolini, suffering from his ulcer problems, declared that the other agendas lapse. The ritual greeting to the Duce with which the meeting ends sounds surreal. Everyone warns that a historical phase is drawing to a close, but no one has a clear idea of what could happen. The most sensational case is Tullio Cianetti, who the next day writes a letter to Mussolini to retract his vote in favor of the approved document.
The next day Mussolini looks for Grandi, who is not found. However, he meets other hierarchs, including Scorza and the commander of the militia Enzo Galbiati. With them the dictator appears calm, self-confident, rejecting the idea of having those who voted for Grandi’s agenda arrested. He seems to believe that the king will continue to cooperate with him. But the outcome of the Grand Council triggered the plan to dismiss the Duce that the military and the monarch had been preparing for some time due to the desperate war situation.
Around 5 pm Mussolini goes to Villa Savoia to meet Vittorio Emanuele III. And here his hopes collapse. The sovereign informs him that he has decided to replace him with Marshal Pietro Badoglio, dismissed in 1940 from the position of chief of general staff due to the bad performance of operations on the Greek-Albanian front. It seems that the king said to the now ex-dictator: “Right now you are the most hated man in Italy”.
After the hearing, Mussolini is approached by a police officer, who invites him to follow him. Loaded into an ambulance, he is taken to a military barracks. Then he will be transferred to the island of Ponza. On the evening of 25 July, Badoglio announced on the radio that he had assumed the leadership of the government and added that “the war continues”. These are words in perfect bad faith, because it is clear that his job is to negotiate the surrender with the Anglo-Americans. And the Germans know it very well, so much so that they bring new troops into Italy.
When the armistice with the Allies was announced on 8 September 1943, the troops of the Third Reich took possession of central-northern Italy, while the king and Badoglio fled to the south, where the Anglo-Americans had landed. In the meantime, Mussolini was taken from Ponza to the island of La Maddalena, in Sardinia, and then transferred again to Abruzzo in Campo Imperatore, on the Gran Sasso. Here on 12 September 1943 he was freed by an incursion of German paratroopers led by SS captain Otto Skorzeny.
Transported to Germany, the Duce meets Hitler and makes a radio speech to the Italians, urging them to fight back alongside the Third Reich. On 23 September he returns to his homeland and gives life to a new fascist state, the Italian Social Republic. But he himself is aware that he is now a shadow of himself, in a condition of total dependence on the Nazis.
July 25, 2023 (change July 25, 2023 | 08:28)
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