END OF FASCISM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 September 1943, Page 3

END OF FASCISM

DECLARED BY BADOGLIO BROADCAST TO ITALIAN PEOPLE MUSSOLINI AND GERMANS DENOUNCED LONDON, September 22. Marshal Badoglio, in a broadcast ,to the Italian people, outlined the policy of his Government. The Italian people, he said, must have nothing more to do with Fascism, and the sooner the Germans were driven out of Italy the sooner the Italians would be free. The armed forces were in allegiance to the King of Italy and only the King. The behaviour of the Germans after the Italian armistice had deepened the abyss between the Italians and the Germans. Germany had always regarded the Italians as an inferior race. The armistice terms were hard, but he reminded the Italians that they had been defeated. Mussolini informed his collaborators before his downfall that he was considering cutting adrift from the Germans on September 15 because Hitler had betrayed him, declared Marshal Badoglio. The marshal criticised bitterly Musolini’s broadcast reference to the German “spiritual world,” and said: “We seek it in vain in the inhuman treatment given to our soldiers, especially to the Alpinieri in Russia.”