Italic Institute of America, PO Box 818, Floral Park, NY 11002, 516.488.7400, ItalicOne@aol.com; www.italic.org
New York - On July 25, 1934, Austrian Nazis assassinated Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss in preparation for a German takeover. Only one of the former World War I allies, Italy, did anything to prevent Hitler's first aggression. The Italians sent four army divisions to the Austrian border and warned Hitler off. Britain and France made no similar show of force. The event captured on the front page of the New York Times on July 26, 1934, but rarely mentioned since.
"The British would like to point to Appeasement as the cause of the Second World War," suggests John Mancini, Chairman of the Italic Institute, "they start the clock in 1938 with Munich. It was already four years too late thanks to their appalling judgment and their side deals with Hitler."
At Italy's behest, a meeting of Britain, Italy and France was held in Stresa, Italy in April, 1935. That meeting resolved to present a united front against German expansion, known as the Stresa Front. By June, however, the British, violated Stresa by signing a deal with Hitler allowing Germany to rearm (The Anglo-German Naval Treaty). The British need to publicly reveal their true motives in the early 1930s.
Says Institute Vice Chairman Rosario A. Iaconis, "Apparently, some elements of he British government decided that Italy, as a Mediterranean and African power, posed a greater threat to their Empire than Nazi Germany. The passage to India was their priority. Foreign Minister Anthony Eden, in particular, even believed Hitler to be trustworthier than Benito Mussolini. Fellow Cabinet member, Duff Cooper, knew better."
"Was Neville Chamberlain the fall guy?" asks Alfred Cardone of the Institute's Advisory Council. "Munich was on his watch but it was Eden who had painted Britain into a corner. To deal with the German threat, Eden chose the hollow League of Nations over the Stresa Front. It was a fatal mistake. Ironically, in 1956, that same Eden ignored the United Nations and launched a disastrous war in the Middle East."
"We will never know if the Second World War could have been prevented or localized in 1934 and 1935," admits John Mancini. "But because the war occurred the world suffered tens of millions of deaths, the Holocaust, the spread of Communism, wars in Korea and Vietnam, and the clash civilizations in the Middle East that led to 9/11 and the current wars. Who wouldn't be interested in knowing where we went wrong?
Recommended Books: Old Men Forget by Duff Cooper (Dutton, 1954) Mussolini, A New Life by Nicholas Farrell (Phoenix Paperback, 2003), Mussolini As Diplomat by Richard Lamb (Fromm International)
1 comments:
Gentlemen,
I would tread softly on this issue since not long after Mussolini’s mock-heroics vis-à-vis the Nazi (both German and Austrian) putsch in Austria (1934), he gave tacit support to Hitler’s designs in Austria (starting in1936) leading to the eventual Anschluss (1938). The Brits were preoccupied with a number of treaties that they desperately wanted signed with Hitler in this period (primarily naval) and so they were in a flip-flop- mode diplomatically speaking. French diplomacy was in a confused state; largely the result of the trauma of chaotic internal politics and having their Prime Minister, Leon Blum, beaten to within an inch of his life in public. Both Hitler and Mussolini took advantage of this opportunity for some military adventurism in Spain and Abyssinia, among other things. It also drew them closer together on many levels; what followed, as every warm body knows, was the worst 7 years in human history. And both leaders took their respective nations into the abyss.
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