Mediterranean. The road to this paradise was war, which Mussolini urged Italians to embrace, renouncing all comforts. “Live dangerously,” he beseeched them. To back his words, he embarked on an aggressive foreign policy that reduced Albania to a protectorate, then invaded a nearly defenseless Ethiopia, the last independent kingdom in Africa. To raise money for this brutal venture, Italy’s women, led by Queen Elena, donated their wedding rings to be melted down into gold or exchanged for cash; Italian women abroad were encouraged to do the same, and thousands did. Mussolini described the Ethiopia expedition as “the greatest colonial war in all history.” When machine guns and poison gas forced that country to surrender, he called on his people to “raise up your banners, stretch forth your arms, lift up your hearts and sing to the empire which appears in being after fifteen centuries on the fateful hills of Rome.”
Mussolini was not a keen judge of individuals, but he was sure he knew what the mass of people wanted: a show. He compared the mob to women who are helpless (he fantasized) in the presence of strong men. He posed for pictures in the government-controlled media while driving a sports car, standing sans shirt in a wheat field, riding his white stallion, FruFru, and posing in his military uniform, complete with shiny boots and a chest bedecked with medals. He accepted invitations to every wedding, factory opening, and patriotic event his schedule would allow.
When giving a speech, he stood on a small platform (as I do) to appear taller. He sometimes claimed credit (as I do not) for the sun breaking through the clouds just prior to an address. In addition to the inevitable Blackshirts, his usual audience included soldiers in khaki field uniforms, peasant women in white-sleeved dresses, and members of the squadristi, the Fascist veterans of the early days, wearing red-and-yellow sashes. To the side might be a small group of foreign reporters who would be pointed to and mocked by preliminary speakers, then greeted by the audience with catcalls and boos. Finally, in the words of a contemporary witness, “when Signor Mussolini stepped out, the crowd seemed to lift itself up as bayonets, daggers, caps and handkerchiefs were waved in the air amid deafening shouts.”
During the peak years of his reign, the great man’s image was displayed on products ranging from hair tonic and baby food to lingerie and pasta. When a would-be assassin shot him in the nose, he slapped on a bandage and went ahead, later the same day, with a speech to a conference of surgeons, telling them that he would now put himself in their hands. He commissioned street banners bearing the declaration IF I ADVANCE, FOLLOW ME; IF I RETREAT, KILL ME; IF I DIE, AVENGE ME! He put foundries to work building a bronze statue, never completed, of a 260-foot-tall figure looking down on the cupola of Saint Peter’s, its body that of a half-naked Hercules and its face a dead ringer for Il Duce.
By the late 1930s, the adoration accorded him had reached the level of parody. Visitors to his office were expected to run the twenty yards between the door and Mussolini’s desk before halting and raising their arm in the Fascist salute, then, when exiting, reverse the process.
For all his success as a politician, he was not comfortable as a diplomat. This was an age when international affairs in Western Europe were still primarily the province of aristocrats proud of their tailored suits, refined manners, and ability to banter about trivialities for hours at a time. Before becoming prime minister, Mussolini had never worn formal clothes. He had not learned which spoon or fork to use at a social dinner. He didn’t think it sanitary to shake hands, didn’t smoke, and had no taste for liquor, not even Italy’s fine wine. He was a poor listener who disliked hearing other people talk. He was loath to spend nights away from his own bed, and the time he allotted for meals—either alone or with his family—averaged about three minutes.
Mussolini promised to make Italy unfathomably rich, but economics was a second arena where he failed to shine. He thought a great country required a robust currency and so pegged the lira to the dollar, causing an abrupt increase in public debt, a problem made worse by his failure to understand how interest rates worked. He promoted the idea of national self-sufficiency without ever grasping how unrealistic that ambition had become. He sought to bring labor and management together but ended up creating a haphazardly organized and inefficient corporate state. He emphasized wheat production when prices were low while neglecting other crops that would have yielded more revenue. These errors might have been avoided had he appointed good advisers and heeded their counsel. Instead he discouraged his cabinet from proposing any idea that might cause him to doubt his instincts, which were, he insisted, always right. He told a gathering of intellectuals, “Only one person in Italy is infallible,” and said to a reporter, “Often, I would like to be wrong, but so far it has never happened.”
As the 1930s wore on, the new Roman empire, the Fascist empire, was beginning to fray. As a circus master, Mussolini was still without peer, but Italy lacked the resources—and he the strategic prowess—to transform the political map of Europe. Not so Adolf Hitler.
Heidelberg, Germany: That night at the Inn, I noticed that a lint-haired young man at the next table was fixing me with an icy gleam … He suddenly rose with a stumble, came over, and said: “So? Ein Engländer?” with a sardonic smile. “Wunderbar!” Then his face changed to a mask of hate. Why had we stolen Germany’s colonies? Why shouldn’t Germany have a fleet and a proper army? Did I think Germany was going to take orders from a country run by the Jews? A catalogue of accusation followed, not very loud, but clearly and intensely articulated. His face, which was almost touching mine, raked me with long blasts of schnapps-breath. “Adolf Hitler will change all that,” he ended. “Perhaps you’ve heard the name?”
—MEMOIR OF A BRITISH TRAVELER, DECEMBER 1933
ON THE MORNING OF MARCH 23, 1933, AN ENORMOUS BANNER stretched across the front wall of the Kroll Opera House, in Berlin. At its center was a giant swastika, symbol of the Nazis.fn1 The Opera House was the temporary home of the Reichstag, the German parliament, whose permanent headquarters had been ravaged by arson four weeks earlier. Approaching the lectern was the country’s new chancellor, an Austrian by birth, who on January 30 had assumed power not via popular acclaim but because he commanded the most violent gangs and had Communists for enemies. The building in which he was about to speak was guarded on the outside by Heinrich Himmler’s secret police and on the inside by the brown-shirted Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazi paramilitary force, already larger than the German army.
Adolf Hitler spoke quietly, in a soothing tone. The forty-three-year-old appealed to the legislators for their trust, hoping that they would not think too hard before voting themselves into oblivion. His goal was to secure approval of a law authorizing him to ignore the constitution, bypass the Reichstag, and govern by decree. He assured his listeners that they had nothing to worry about; his party had no intention of undermining German institutions. Should they pass the law, the parliament would remain intact, freedom of speech would be unhindered, the rights of the Church would not be altered, and Christian values would, as ever, still be cherished. The powers requested under the “Law for Removing the Distress of the People and Reich” would be used only to shield the country from its adversaries. There was no need for concern: legislators could count on the Nazis to act in good faith.
The chancellor sat down so that the leaders of other parties could have their say. One by one, the Catholics, conservatives, and centrists fell in line and slipped Hitler’s bit