American Cemetery Normandy

The PJ Visits the American Cemetery in Normandy (click for video)

Photo Video/Richard Carreño/WC News Service

 

ALL ABOARD

 

Milano Centrale

Palazzo Venezia



Where Mussolini's corpse was hung

 

Memoriale Shoah Milano: Interior of transport car



Milano Centrale, Track 21,

and the Death of Italian Fascism

By RICHARD CARREÑO

[WC News Service] 

MILAN -- Rome, some 650 kilometres south of here, is usually associated with Benito Mussolini, Italy's bloody mid-20th century strongman whose Fascist reign spanned 22 years, from 1922 to his downfall in 1944. No wonder. As one of the capitals of the of three World War II Axis powers, along with Berlin and Tokyo, Rome was almost a made-for-TV movie set for the blustering, jaw-jutting, barrel-chested dictator. Amid the splendour of Roman artefacts -- and, prophetically, many of the ancient empire's ruins as well -- Mussolini perfected his strutting, cock-of-walk style. Overlooking the Piazza Venezia from a palazzo of the same name, Mussolini would harangue adoring, even rapturous crowds for hours with bombast, vitriol, and nativist racism.

 

Adoring? Rapturous? Lest we forget.

As in the case with Austria, many 21st century observers like to portray the populace of Italy -- like that of Nazi-Austria -- as the unwilling dupes of their Fascist regimes and tyrant 'leaders', the Fuhrer in Germany and Il Duce in this country. Germany was conquered by the Allies; Italy, liberated, goes the narrative.

Yes, segments of Italian populace, in the wake of an advancing Allied thrust, did rise up against him. And, yes, never was such the case among Germans, who retained their loyalty -- if not exactly their faith -- in Adolf Hitler to the very end.

For Italian Fascist Black Shirts, Milan was a hold-out. It was also the principal site in the north where the rise of Italian Fascism was incubated, its terror enforced, and, where, at long last, it perished. Even literally. Mussolini himself and his mistress Clara Petacci, who had fled together to loyalist Milan in the war's waning days, were both finally executed by a Communist partisan in Mezzegra, a town nearby here.

Down Memory Lane, Dreaming of Empire

The Greater Reich, including Austria, shown in map at Vienna's war museum.

Photo: WC News Service

In many European countries, Jews are facing growing anti-Semitism, particularly as Islamic terrorism spreads widely over the continent. In Vienna, Richard Carreño, finds that Jews and their war-time persecution are just pretty much ignored.

 

VIENNA'S WORLD WAR II MEMORY LAPSE

VIENNA — The parade of jack-booted troops was greeted by thousands. Packed into Vienna's Heldenplatz, they listened in awe as he ranted about the wonders of Lebensraum. Not far away, he and his mistress, Eva Braun, shared separate apartments at the Imperial Hotel. He, in the presidential suite, with an out-door balcony overlooking Vienna's Ringstrasse, its centre-city inner loop. There, he ranted some more.

In early 1938, Adolph Hitler was at the top of his game. And the Anschluss, or the annexation of Austria, was a key piece in expanding the 'living space' (Lebensraum) of Nazi Germany. Berlin was the capital of National Socialism. Munich, its spiritual seat. Vienna, thanks to Hitler's Austrian birth, schooling, and work there, its incubator. Vienna, Hitler was fond in saying, was 'the jewel in the crown.'

Today, in a city known more for its opera and waltzes, Secessionist artists (Gustav Klimt amongst them) cappuccino mit schlag (strudel on the side), Spanish riding horses, and the Blue Danube (now, more a murky, industrial grey), there's little physical evidence that this was Adolph Hitler's 'hometown. Or, of the triumphal return of the once-disgraced, failed local art student and draft-dodger as this city's prodigal son -- homeboy, according to Viennese at the time, made 'good.'

Vienna's memory stream runs thin. Its memory lapse, deep.

PHILLY SECRETLY COMES TO THE RESCUE

Before

After

 Photos: WritersClearinghouse News Service

 

MET II IN WORLD WAR II 

By Richard Carreño Bio Posted: July 5, 2014

[WritersClearinghouse News Service]

For two years during World War II, from 1942 to 1944, the Metropolitan Museum of Art went to war -- in Philadelphia.

      Thanks to the Monuments Men, a recent film and a book by the same title, the war-time Met is now best known for its one-time director James J. Rorimer, a principal in organizing the group of GIs who, in their role in hunting down Europe's art treasures stolen by the Nazis, became known in romantic vernacular as the 'Monuments Men.'

      Less known is how another Met director, Francis Henry Taylor, Rorimer's predecessor and a former curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, worked quietly during the early war years to protect America's art patrimony.

      And how, thanks to Taylor, a mansion in the contiguous northwest Philadelphia suburb of Springfield became an auxiliary venue of the venerable New York art institution. In secret.