FULL STORY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 October 1943, Page 4

FULL STORY

OF MUSSOLINI’S FALL TOLD BY BADOGLIO. BREAK WITH THE GERMANS. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 10.50 a.m.) RUGBY, October 5. Marshal Badoglio revealed many new facts about Mussolini's fall in his first interview with Press correspondents. One was that not one of the Fascist Party’s seven million members put up the slightest resistance when the Government fell, and within a day not a single person was to be seen wearing the Fascist emblem. Mussolini, Badoglio said, was in Germany suffering from an ulcer. On the question of the, future government of Italy, he said: “As soon as we get back to Rome, which is the head and heart of Italy, I intend to set about completing a Coalition Government of the most intelligent anti-Fascists, including four Service Ministers, and definitely excluding all Fascists. Badoglio declared that Fascism did not collapse as a result of attack from outside, but disintegrated from within, following a dramatic meeting of the Fascist Grand Council in Rome on July 24. The meeting, which was stormy, lasted ten hours. Signor Bottai led the opposition, and the voting was 19 to 5 against the Duce, which meant that he must resign. When the news of his resignation became known, there was great happiness in Rome and all other cities and towns' throughout the country. After the Duce had handed his resignation to the King he was taken into protective custody to a barracks in Rome. From that place he wrote thanking Badoglio for protecting him from the fury of the people, which might have fallen upon him. Mussolini was then taken to the island of Peonza and thence to Maidalena, in Sardinia, where he remained for a short time before being finally removed to the locality from which he was rescued by German parachutists.

Asked if the members of the Fascist Grand Council realised that by voting against Mussolini they would bring about the collapse of Fascism, Badoglio said some realised that the whole system would crack, but they hoped they might get into top seats in the new administration. Others realised that there was a general feeling against Fascism, and it only needed the fall of Mussolini for the whole party to collapse. Germany took the sacking of Mussolini as a personal affront, and German divisions at once began to pass through the Brenner Pass into Italy. There had been differences of opinion between the German and Italian high commands before the armistice, , said Badoglio, when the Italians refused to accept Rommel as commander-in-chief of both forces. The gap between Italy and Germany was then becoming apparent throughout Italy, and by September 8 German and Italian soldiers were fighting each other on the outskirts of Rome.

Badoglio added that he and the King decided to leave Rome to set up the Government elsewhere. They left early on September 9 by car, driving along a road past. German troops and tanks on the outskirts of the city. They were not disguised. They then embarked on an Italian warship and subsequently set up the Government “somewhere in Italy.” Marshal Badoglio’s only angry reply during the interview was when he was asked what Mussolini said to him after the collapse, and he replied that he had not spoken to Mussolini since November, 1940. He smiled, however, when he added that Mussolini had written to his staff saying he was going to dedicate himself to the church.