Mussolini and Gandhi (1)

The whole argument regarding Gandhi and his secular sainthood (Gandhi and Mussolini, September 5) was quickly forgotten as soon as Edric Micallef Figallo (Glorifying Ghandi, August 31) mentioned any sort of praise that Mussolini might have received from Gandhi, challenging the post-war Anglo-American propaganda that Mussolini was an evil buffoon, perhaps the likes of Hitler and Stalin.

The Italian-German Axis was not inevitable as that Anglo-American propaganda would have it.

First of all, Italy and Germany were no natural allies. Mussolini himself who, during the World War I, was a socialist and an interventionist, had urged Italy to enter the war against Austria and Germany, which it eventually did.

Secondly, when Italy declared war on the Allies in the World War II, with Mussolini then at the helm of the state, it was because Italy was not allowed by the Allies, imperialists and empire-builders themselves, to extend its empire in Africa, and was therefore forced through Franco-British sanctions into a reluctant alliance with Nazi Germany.

Italy, however, had no love or wish for a German-dominated Europe, which was Hitler's final aim.

Additionally, although Mussolini's regime was indeed a dictatorship, it was by and large bloodless in its origins and duration, as the great Irish playwright (and socialist to boot) George Bernard Shaw noted.

The violence which existed consisted of a quasi-civil war between fascists and communists - neither did Mussolini have a direct hand in it, nor could the fascists alone be blamed for it. If anything, the worst battles (figuratively speaking) that Mussolini was involved in was with the constant reins he held on the fascist intransigenti, those provincial fascists who wanted to take the state purely through violence.

Perhaps other praise for Mussolini from other notables will further disconcert Kenneth Zammit Tabona and Mark Delicata (Ghandi And Mussolini, September 5).

He was the man whom Pope Pius XI called "a man of providence", the American ambassador in Rome "the greatest figure of his sphere and time" and Churchill (of whom Clare Sheridan wrote in 1923 "the likely leader of a Fascisti party in England") "that Roman genius". George Bernard Shaw, a frequent visitor to Italy, wrote a series of scathing letters in newspapers and other private letters in 1927 defending Fascist Italy and Mussolini, wherein he said this of the Duce among other things: "Mussolini, without any of Napoleon's prestige, has done for Italy what Napoleon did for France, except for the Duc d'Enghien you must read Matteoti. ... [He] may have to hang some of the cruder Fascists for trop de zèle before order is completely restored in Italy.

Meanwhile nothing is to be gained by pretending that any indictment can be brought against him by us or anyone else that he cannot meet by a crushing tu quoque (you too)".

Mussolini's real history has yet to be written in the minds of many; neither a saint nor a devil, but certainly a charismatic leader, still politically controversial and muddled, who had the praise of many one day and the slander of the same the next, simply for losing a war he did not desire.

In the meantime, I invite readers to read the well-researched and passionate biography written by another frequent visitor in Italy: Mussolini: A New Life by Nicholas Farrell.