The Hand That Held the Dagger

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For 20 days terror fell from the sky. Each day it grew worse. The intervals grew fewer when troops could smoke with out a bomb blast blowing the cigarets out of their fingers. This was the "prolonged, scientific and shattering" bombing which Winston Churchill had threatened six months before. It had come with a fury such as no spot on earth had experienced before. "Impregnable" Pantelleria, Benito Mussolini's Gibraltar in what he once called Mare Nostrum, was doomed.

Twice the Italian garrison had been invited to surrender. Admiral Gino Pavesi, senior Italian officer, and his men clung to Pantelleria's 32 sq. mi. of volcanic rock. Each refusal increased the tempo of attack. First the Spadillo airfield was blown to bits. Then the island's one good harbor, a nest for E-boats and submarines harassing the Sicilian straits, was smashed. Low-flying planes bounced their bombs down ramps leading to underground hangars. "Pattern bombing" crushed gun emplacements one by one.

From June 1, the U.S. and British cascaded 7,000,000 lb. of bombs on the island. On the 18th day of attack more bombs were dropped than had been loosed on Tunisia, Sicily, Sardinia and the Italian mainland during the entire month of April. On that day, while Allied fighters sent at least 37 Axis planes screaming into the sea, Allied bomber traffic was so heavy that pilots had to circle about, trying to keep out of each other's way while waiting their turn to sight their targets.

On the morning of June 11 Admiral Pavesi sent a message to an American air base: "Beg surrender through lack of water." At 11:40 a.m. planes over the island and lookouts aboard cruisers and destroyers offshore (General Dwight Eisenhower and Admiral Sir Andrew Browne Cunningham were aboard the British cruiser Aurora) spotted two signals : a white cross on the airfield, a white flag on the wrecked harbor installations. By 12:22 p.m. British landing parties had scrambled ashore, mopped up a few troops who had either not been informed of the surrender or could not see their own signals through Pantelleria's shroud of brushwood smoke. The landing party herded together the first 8,000 bomb-dizzy troops while 50 German dive-bombers, sneaking south from Sicily in the hope of a sudden kill, were slapped about by Allied fighters.

Pantelleria, site of an early Neolithic culture, conquered in the course of history by Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, Spaniards, Turks and Italians, a stepping-stone from Africa to Europe and a vital traffic control on one of the sea's busiest highways, was in Allied hands. It was a stone under Mussolini's Italian boot. His toe is certain to be tromped on. His heel is in hot water, his bottom fair game for a pincers movement.

"Hold on at all Costs." Air enthusiasts, greeting the surrender as a historic achievement of all-out air warfare, were quick to recall Winston Churchill's remark before Congress in May, that the idea of bombing Germany into submission was "worth trying." Soberer heads recognized this as a victory of air power, but a victory won under laboratory conditions. The island fell because it was possible to isolate it completely from supporting bases on the mainland. This was the decisive factor, not the sheer weight of bombs. Malta in three years of war had taken many times the weight of bombs dropped on the Italian outposts; it still stood because its supply lines were never severed.

Said Major General James H. Doolittle: "In simple terms, if you destroy what a man has and remove the possibility of his bringing more in, then in due course of time it becomes impossible for him to defend himself."

The attack on Pantelleria was a valuable lesson in modern military tactics. The conclusive effect of air bombardment plus sea blockade was proved. Further proof came when other tinier and also isolated islands fell. Bomb-shaken Lampedusa gave up to a startled R.A.F. flight-sergeant, Sidney Cohen, when his torpedo plane made an emergency landing. Linosa Avith 140 troops surrendered when the British destroyer Nubian appeared. Lampione soon joined the parade.

But there were other lessons:

> The garrison at Pantelleria, told to "hold the line" by Mussolini, did so with commendable valor, an indication that the universally maligned and notoriously misled Italian troops will not necessarily wilt away before the first invasion troops.

> The conquest of larger, blockade-free Sicily, next logical step on the way to Rome, will be no pushover, even though Allied bombers based on Pantelleria and nearby Lampedusa can have an umbrella of fighter escorts. Early this week Flying Fortresses plastered three of Sicily's major airdromes, while British Fleet units moved in closer to the Sicilian mainland.

"Happy Birthday to You." These facts, a warning to the overoptimistic among the Allies and some scant balm for the crushed Italian ego, did not make the conquest of the first territory within metropolitan Italy any more palatable to the war-sick, disorganized and frustrated Italian people. Mussolini waited 24 hours before officially announcing the capitulation, claiming that Italian airmen were having "great successes" and finally that Pantelleria had been turned into a "gigantic volcano." Italians did not miss the fact that the defeat came exactly three years and one day after Mussolini had led Italy into war against France and Britain. They remembered that he had boasted of "8,000,000 bayonets" ready to enforce the Fascist will, had led them to expect easy victory within three or four months.

While Mussolini stalled, Franklin Roosevelt, no amateur at political warfare, had his say. Roosevelt had blistered Mussolini three years ago: "The hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor." Now he invited the Italian people to toss out the betrayer, the Fascist Party, and the Germans. In return, the President promised that Allied victory will mean that Italians can have a non-Fascist government of their own choosing and will be restored to real nationhood as respected (the President emphasized the word respected) members of the European family.

For the Italian underground and Italian anti-Fascists--thousands of whom had been forced to work on Pantelleria's defenses--the President's words were heartening. These groups had been worried over the policy of expedience in North Africa, fearful of the U.S. State Department's occult conservatism. Winston Churchill's chesty truculence.* The President gave the most forthright statement yet of Allied aims toward postwar Italy.

"Learn to Hate." Anticipating just such political warfare, Mussolini has wrapped a toga of self-righteousness about his sub-Napoleonic figure. More than two decades as the father of 20th-century Fascism have taught him how to play upon the childlike sentiment of millions of his people. While the Allies paused in Tunisia he cunningly launched a hate-the-U.S. campaign which was ridiculous but effective.

Into minds dulled by years of propaganda and on to nerves chewed raw by this winter's bombings, Mussolini rubbed wholly fabricated atrocity stores: U.S. airmen, "bloodthirsty flying gangsters," have been bombing only churches, hospitals and nurseries; fiendish pilots have been dropping lipsticks, ladies' purses, flashlights, pens, pencils, cough drops and candy which explode in innocent and eager Italian hands. There have been broadcasts, press stories and faked newspictures of those supposedly maimed or killed.

There is no doubt that U.S. and British bombings have created panic and terror in Italian cities ; that in their desperation the Italians have cursed the men who bring the bombs, forgetting that Italian bomb ers were active in Ethiopia and Spain and that Mussolini insisted on sending a token bombing force over Britain during the blitz. This made little difference to Mussolini. He fobbed off the British as "at least civilized, because they are Europeans," knowing that his people already have a well of resentment against the British to draw on. The vigor of his campaigns against the U.S. was in direct ratio to his fears that U.S. troops might be welcomed with flowers, that his people as a whole might display the same Latin logic as that of the Italian soldier in Tunisia who said to his captors: "All right, laugh, but we're going to America. You're only going to Italy."

The atrocity stories were backed up by harangues on the theme that Italian immigrants have provided "the most solid working arms and the most capable brains on the North American Continent; . . . now the Americans are coming back over your ports and cities to repay you with bullets and to spread death and destruction." For Italo-Americans abroad the Fascists provided another line, easily picked up by the cheapest short-wave radio: Mussolini was forced to enter World War II because Britain would not grant the "just demands" of the Italian people for "freedom from fear." This ancient outcry comes from a Mussolini-bred national psychosis that Italy has al ways been kicked around, instead of being boosted by helping hands to No. 1 posi tion in the world. Its effectiveness could be judged by a recent flood of letters to Washington protesting the bombing of Italian cities.

"Live Dangerously." With such threads Mussolini has tried to weave a web of resistance. He has told his people that an Allied victory means enslavement to imperialist powers. He has titillated their sense of personal honor and national pride, as he did in 1935 when he defied the sanctions imposed (but not enforced) by the League of Nations during the Ethiopian campaign. Italians rallied behind him then. They may do so more generally now than the Allies expect. At least Mussolini has built up a fac,ade of bravado, patterned on the ancient cry of the gladiators in the Colosseum : "Morituri te salutant" (Those who are about to die salute you). But in case the fac,ade trembles or Darlans gnaw their way through it, Mussolini has made certain that those who helped him to power, and those who have been crawling on his back, will be with him when the walls come down.

The most overripe fruit on the top branches of the corporate-state system has been cut away. "Routine" shakeups in Party organizations have occured so often in the past six months that the people can scarcely keep track of them. But they do know that Mussolini has called back into power his old stalwarts of the club-and-castor-oil era, notably such "perfect Fascists" as Roberto Farinacci, now Minister of State, and Carlo Scorza, Party Secretary.

Farinacci, who lost a hand in the Ethiopian campaign (reportedly while using dynamite to catch fish), has what passes for the voice of the Fascist conscience. His newspaper, Il Regime Fascista, has railed against the abuses of bureaucracy, against defeatists, inflation and black-market dealings. Scorza, tall, tough provincial Party boss who once cheated Credito Toscano out of $6,000,000, is one of the Party's most ruthless administrators, has run an almost continuous series of purges of apparently thousands of "cancroid creatures who have crept into the Mussolini structure."

One of the shaky pillars of this baroque structure, the Fascist Grand Council, last week held its first officially announced emergency session since the night before Italy daggered France. It was followed by an order which was tantamount to total mobilization and a list of drastic reforms calling for "increased ruthlessness," and "pitiless elimination" of subversive activities. The hour for Fascism to pit its strength against the Allies was nearing.

"Who Has Courage Has Bread." By his exhortations, his purges, and by caging the most dangerous of his defectionists, Mussolini has used the threat of invasion to tighten his control over Italy. But despite an apparently growing attitude of rebellion against German domination, he has failed to regain the prestige he once held among those who thought he was un jurbo (an astute fellow), or among the trusting who believed that, regardless of his Party's corruption, Mussolini had the best interests of his people at heart. One story indicated the Italian's cynicism: The Duce was not satisfied with the reports he was getting on his last speech and decided to make a personal checkup. He put on a beard and wandered in the streets until he met a likely looking citizen. "Buon giorno," said the Duce, "and how did you like the Duce's last speech?" The citizen was terrified. His worried eyes shot up & down the street to make sure he was not overheard. At last he dragged the Duce off to a side street. Then, in a cautious whisper, he said: "I liked it very much."

Recently there were signs that others were not so impressed with the Duce's doings. Editors, including the intellectual apologist Giuseppe Bottai, stayed in office despite criticisms of the Fascist regime unheard of before the war. Bottai used an oblique technique of presenting "demands from the soul of Italy," for which he personally would take no responsibility. One of these demands was for "competent political government, inspired as far as possible by a sincere desire to serve," another for "more vigorous progress toward social justice."

Out of disgust at the maldistribution of food, at flagrant profiteering and the inability of Party functionaries to meet recurring war crises, a strong underground has developed. Despite a raid on a Milan printshop last month, which jailed five negotiators, the underground groups--Socialist, Liberals and Communists--last week have established a joint "Committee for Peace and Freedom" (TIME, May 3) and United Front organizations in at least six northern Italian cities. They claim the organization of a wave of strikes which began in March and at one point called out from 40,000 to 50,000 men. Through widespread circulation of clandestine newspapers and through workmen's organizations, they have built up a political consciousness from which leaders of a new Italy may come.

Until President Roosevelt's message last week the underground has been handicapped by the failure of the Allies to give definite assurances (as distinct from generalities) that the primary accomplishment of invading troops will be the crushing of the Fascist Party (as distinct from the Italian people). The President's words gave those assurances while Fascist guns and those of Germany still keep Italy in line. But they were unlikely to precipitate an immediate revolt.

Two days after Roosevelt spoke, worried Pope Pius XII, addressing 25,000 workmen brought to Vatican City from all parts of Italy, warned: "Salvation and justice are not to be found in revolution, but in evolution through concord." He decried anti-religious propaganda among the people, inveighed against labor-employer strife, condemned "social" revolution as "a mere show incapable of realization in fact." More than ever it was apparent that the hope for the underground, and for all Italian democrats, lies first in unconditional surrender, followed by military occupation. After that, if the Allies are wiser than they were in North Africa, the Italian people can speak for themselves. On that day Mussolini's epitaph can read:

Benito Juarez Amilcare Andrea Mussolini, born July 29, 1883, tasted the grey bread of the poor in his early youth and never forgot it. From his part-time blacksmith father he learned atheism and anarchy. From his schoolteacher mother he learned enough culture to become, first a grade-school teacher, then a journalist. He sold out the policy of his first important newspaper (Avanti), official organ of the Italian Socialist Party, for a reported price of $8,000 a month.

He picked up the cult of superman from Nietzsche, the creed of power from Machiavelli. Pareto taught him to despise democracy, Marx to scorn capitalism, and Sorel the myth of universal violence. He courted martyrdom, spat at priests, lived promiscuously with at least half a dozen women. Out of Marxism, jingoism and obscurantism he compounded a new thing called Fascism and imposed it on a nation weakened by war and frightened by social unrest.

His thugs spread terror, his henchmen grabbed Italy's financial and economic power, and through the organized murder in 1924 of Giacomo Matteoti, the one dangerous leader of his opposition, boosted him to a modern tyrant's throne.

For the Italians' romantic love of their homeland and their nostalgia for past glories, he espoused the cult of Romanism. He fancied himself a new Julius Caesar, was courted by the world's big shots, loved to be called leonine and at the same time "father of his people." He helped Adolf Hitler to power, was mastered by his pupil. Trapped by his own illusions of grandeur, he led his people into war in an unholy alliance with Germany and Japan. By 1943 he had lost his Empire, and Allied bombs and bayonets threatened to chase him into the sea.

*At a Washington private press conference in May Churchill said: "Of this you may be sure, we shall continue to operate on that donkey at both ends--with a stick as well as with a carrot."

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