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54 7 News from Christine as soon as her mother and brother made their departure in June 1943, Christine Jeanniot began preparations for her own move. Franco, her husband, was a fighter squadron commander. He had been transferred to Sardinia, and in a few days the family would leave for Cagliari, the island’s administrative centre. It was the site of one of the principal bases of military operations for Italian and German aviation, its coasts less than 160 kilometres from North Africa. As Rome was being bombed more and more frequently, the young woman felt that it would be best to leave the capital and to give birth to her third child, due in September, in Sardinia. She dearly hoped that everything would go well, despite the war and the bombings, for her husband, her two little daughters aged three years and eighteen months, for herself and for the child yet to be born. Things were uncertain in Italy. Mussolini was still in power, but both his governmental and military leadership were being increasingly questioned. In 1940 he allied himself withHitlerinhisconquestsoftheBalkans,GreeceandNorth Africa, even though his chief advisors were convinced that Italy did not have the means. Some tried in vain to dissuade him, especially the influential Marshal Pietro Badoglio, but Mussolini could not be moved. Impressed by Hitler’s advances in Europe, Il Duce was certain of a Nazi victory and wanted to be sure that he was in the camp of the conquering Fascists against the Allied forces. Things did not turn out as he had foreseen. On almost all the fronts where it ventured, Italy suffered defeat and heavy losses. Whether in Egypt and Greece in 1940, or in Malta and Ethiopia in 1941, the Italian army gained no significant victories. The only temporary conquest was the taking of Benghazi in Libya in 1942, and even that victory was shared with the German Marshal Rommel’s Afrikakorps.n Wishing Called the ‘Desert Fox,’ Erwin Rommel was a consummate tactician admired even by his enemies. As the Normandy landing approached, Hitler entrusted him with the defence of the ‘Atlantic Wall,’ where he was unable to stop the Allied advance. Compromised in a plot to assassinate Hitler, he was forced to commit suicide in 1944. In 1951, the American filmmaker Henry Hathaway directed the film The Desert Fox, which recounted Rommel’s life and military career. 55 News from Christine to capitalize on the growing weakness of the enemy, in May 1943 the Allies launched a first air offensive against Sicily, bombing it heavily. In June, the Italian garrisons of Pangelleria, Lampedusa and Linosa surrendered, opening the way for an eventual landing on the ‘island of the sun.’ These successive military defeats on the part of Italy lent retrospective credence to those high-ranking officers who had opposed Mussolini in 1940, when he had decided to go to war on the side of Hitler. In July 1943, with the successful landing of the Allies in Sicily, Mussolini’s position became untenable. He was criticized from all sides, even within his own party. On July 24, 1943, the Fascist Grand Council overthrew him. The next day, King Victor Emmanuel III, who in 1922 had helped install Mussolini as head of government, gave in to pressure and had him arrested. Mussolini was kept captive in a small remote village in Abruzzo at an altitude of twenty thousand feet, but a German commando unit enabled him to escape. Marshal Badoglio, the same who had commanded the victoriousItalianmarchonAddisAbabain1937,andwhohad decorated Gaston Jeanniot for his bravery in defending the railroad station against rioters, replaced Mussolini as head of government. Judging that the only honourable course for Italy was to negotiate peace with the Allies, he initiated secret talks, following the invasion of Sicily in July 1943, which led to Italy’s surrender,n announced officially on September 8, while the Germans and those Italian troops still loyal to Mussolini continued the fight. Having taken refuge in the town of Salò, in northern Italy, Il Duce proclaimed himself head of the ‘Italian Social Republic’ on September 12, 1943. At the beginning of summer, 1943, Franco Possomoto was an official member of the Italian air force, whose supreme commander was still Mussolini. He was based in Cagliari,Sardinia.Butasintheregulararmy,amutinyagainst the head of government was brewing in the army of the air. When, on July 16, Roosevelt and Churchill called on the Italians to overthrow their government, Franco Possomoto threw in his lot with those...

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