1943.06.25 “Maybe She Doesn’t Love Me Anymore”
by Gordon Smith
11 x 12 in., ink on board
Coppola Collection

This cartoon is attributed to the Boston Post, but I cannot track the artist, yet. At least the signature is clear.

By mid-June, 1943, the war was all but lost for the Italians. The Italian population was alienated, and the Grand Council and the king were pressing Mussolini to negotiate a way out of the war.

Mussolini was completely isolated. He was playing both sides. And although years later, Mussolini’s alienation is notably described in Bosworth’s biography of him as Dickens’s Wilkins Micawber who, despite ‘of being utterly devoid of plans’, obstinately hoped – somehow – ‘that something positive would turn up,’ it’s pretty clear that this was a contemporary editorial position.

On June 24, Mussolini gave his last important speech as prime minister, known as the “boot topping” (Italian: bagnasciuga) speech. The Duce promised that the only part of Italy that the Anglo-Americans would be able to occupy was the shoreline. He was misspoken in his effort to say they would only occupy Italy as corpses, and he used incorrect vocabulary. For many Italians, his confused and incoherent speech was the final proof that something was wrong with Mussolini.

In late June, Mussolini was continuing his psychological contest with Hitler. On July 1, 1943, against the Hitler’s wishes, Mussolini met with the Romanian deputy premier, Antonescu, with whom he agreed to promote the long-debated inter-Axis conference (and a Nazi-Soviet settlement, which was of no interest to Hitler).

The Allies were knocking on the door, and the first invasion of Nazi-controlled Europe would begin on July 10, 1943, when Patton’s army landed in Sicily.  In his last speech before the invasion, Mussolini was still declaring his confidence in being able to repulse the Allies and demonstrate the futility of taking on the Axis. ‘Maybe then’, he said, ‘whoever until now has let himself be slaughtered all to the good of the Anglo-Saxon plutocracy will realize that the game is not worth the candle.’

This is a great saying that we have lost. It refers to playing a game of cards for stakes that are so low that it is not worth the price of the candle being used to light the play.

On the day of the landing, the Italian government secretly agreed to the Allies’ terms for surrender, but no public announcement was made until September 8.

On July 25, 1943, following the agreement, Mussolini was voted out of power by his own Grand Council and arrested upon leaving a meeting with King Vittorio Emanuele, who tells Il Duce that the war is lost.