«We will march alongside Germany»- Corriere.it

The show is impressive. Eight hundred thousand people crowd the Olympic stadium in Berlin and its surroundings, the “Mayfield”, on the evening of 28 September 1937. The crowd welcomes the open car in which the supreme leaders of Germany and Italy arrive: Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini with thunderous applause. The Führer gave his guest a triumphal welcome. The first part of the stay took place in Munich, the cradle of National Socialism, then the two dictators visited factories and military installations around the Third Reich. Now in Berlin is the time of the apotheosis.

The help given by Germany to Italy during the war in Ethiopia, in defiance of the economic sanctions decided by the League of Nations, and the common commitment in the war of Spain alongside the soldiers who rose up against the Republic cemented the relationship between the two regimes. Mussolini is becoming convinced that Western democracies are deeply flawed, condemned to decay. And he sees in Hitler a potential ally to make his dreams of greatness come true.

The two dictators ascend the podium, which is placed very high up so that they are clearly visible. All around, the spotlights create a play of light that makes the atmosphere solemn, almost mystical. The German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels took the floor first, for a brief introductory greeting. Then it’s up to the Führer, who flatters the Duce by calling him “one of those solitary men who are not protagonists of history, but who make history themselves”. He also declares that his regime wants peace, provided that the rights of the German people are guaranteed. Finally, he praises the “community of ideas, but also of action” between Rome and Berlin.

It is Mussolini’s turn, who has prepared a written speech in German, a language of which he has a good knowledge. The crowd cheers him for a long time before he can take the floor. The Duce reiterates that Rome and Berlin want peace. Then he summarizes the traits that unite the two regimes: faith in the will as a “determining force in the life of peoples”; the exaltation of work, “a sign of man’s nobility”; the “economic autarchy” line. Then the dictator recalls the sanctions decided against Italy by the League of Nations and underlines that the Third Reich did not participate in them: «We will not forget it», he exclaims.

Then, while the rain over Berlin wets the papers in front of the speaker, making reading difficult, Mussolini moves on to a highly binding declaration: «Fascism has its own ethics, to which it intends to remain faithful, and it is also my personal moral: speak clearly and openly and, when you are friends, go all the way together». He concludes with a threatening and risky prediction: “Europe will be fascist tomorrow due to the logical development of events”.

Subsequent events seem to prove the Duce right, but according to an approach that sees Germany as the driving force and Italy in tow of the powerful ally. A first formal act, on November 6, 1937, is the accession of our country to the Anti-Comintern Pact, directed against the Communist International and signed the year before by Germany and Japan. Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano is enthusiastic about it: “Italy – he writes in his diary – has broken its isolation: it is at the center of the most formidable political and military combination that has ever existed”.

But then come bites that are harder to swallow. While in 1934 Rome stood up to act as guarantor of Austrian independence, in March 1938 Mussolini witnesses Hitler’s entry into Vienna without lifting a finger, which means having the Third Reich on the Brenner border. And later the Duce finds himself in the role of mediator at the Munich conference (September 29-30, 1938), following which the Third Reich, with the endorsement of London and Paris, takes possession of the Czechoslovakian territories inhabited mainly by a German-speaking population, the Sudetenland. A malicious joke is circulating in Italy: “Mussolini changes history, Hitler changes geography”.

Also in 1938 Italy adopts anti-Semitic racial legislation in the wake of that introduced by Germany in 1935
. This did not happen as a result of pressure from Hitler, but by the precise will of Mussolini, who intends to imitate a Nazi regime towards which he begins to feel an inferiority complex. Jews are excluded from school and university, from public employment and from the army, severely limited in the exercise of their professions and civil rights.

The Third Reich inflexibly proceeds on the path that leads to war. And Italy follows suit, although aware of its unpreparedness for a war test. In March, Hitler occupies Prague, reducing Bohemia and Moravia to a protectorate of the Reich. May 22, 1939 an alliance treaty with Germany, the Pact of Steel, is signed in Berlin, which is an authentic halter for our country, as it obliges each of the two contracting parties to intervene to support the other by any means when they are engaged in a war of any kind, even of aggression. There are all the conditions for catastrophe.