Author: rupertcolley

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Gallipoli – a brief outline

In November 1914, the Ottoman Empire, entered the war on the side of the Central Powers and on Christmas Day went on the offensive against the Russians, launching an attack through the Caucasus. Russia’s Tsar Nicholas II sent an appeal to Britain, asking for a diversionary attack that would ease the pressure on Russia. From this came the ill-fated Gallipoli Campaign.

Naval Assault

The British planned its diversionary attack, to use the Royal Navy to take control of the Dardanelles Straits from where they could attack Constantinople, the Ottoman capital. By capturing Constantinople, the British hoped then to link up with their Russian allies. The attack would, it hoped, have the additional benefit of drawing German troops away from both the Western and Eastern Fronts.

The Dardanelles, a strait of water separating mainland Turkey and the Gallipoli peninsula, is sixty miles long and, at its widest, only 3.5 miles. Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, insisted that the Royal Navy, acting alone, could succeed. On 19 February, a flotilla of British and French ships pounded the outer forts of the Dardanelles and a month later attempted to penetrate the strait. It failed, losing six ships (three sunk and three damaged), two-thirds of its fleet. Soldiers, it was decided, would be needed after all.

ANZACs

Pictured: landing at Gallipoli, April 1915. 

Lord Kitchener put Sir Ian Hamilton in charge, but sent him into battle with out-of-date maps, inaccurate information and inexperienced troops. A force of British, French and ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corp) troops landed on the Gallipoli peninsula on 25 April 1915. The Turks, who, led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, had had time to prepare, were waiting for them in the hills above the beaches and unleashed a volley of fire that kept the Allied troops pinned down on the sand. The ANZACs managed to gain a foothold on what became known as ‘Anzac Cove’ but under sustained fire and faced with steep cliffs, were unable to push inland. The British, likewise, were unable to make any headway. Continue reading →

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The Italian Social Republic – an outline

Proclaimed on 23 September 1943, the Italian Social Republic was a short-lived state headed by fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini.

The war had been going badly for Mussolini’s Italy, so much so that a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council on 25 July 1943 voted to have Mussolini removed. One of those who voted against Mussolini was his son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano. The following day, Mussolini was dismissed by the Italian king, Victor Emmanuel III: ‘My dear Duce, it’s no longer any good. Italy has gone to bits… The soldiers don’t want to fight any more… At this moment you are the most hated man in Italy.’

Mussolini was immediately arrested and imprisoned. His successor, Pietro Badoglio, appointed a new cabinet that, pointedly, contained no fascists. The Italian population rejoiced.

On 8 September, Italy swapped sides and joined the Allies and, on 13 October 1943, declared war on Germany.

Salo

Meanwhile, Mussolini was kept under house arrest and frequently moved in order to keep his whereabouts hidden. On 26 August, he was moved into the Campo Imperatore Hotel, part of a ski resort high up in the mountains of Gran Sasso in the Abruzzo region of central Italy. It was here, on 12 September, that Mussolini was dramatically rescued.

Italian Social RepublicOn Hitler’s orders, Mussolini was returned to German-occupied northern Italy as the puppet head of the Italian Social Republic, based in the town of Salo on Lake Garda, hence it was often referred to as the Salo Republic. Mussolini wasn’t keen; much preferring the idea of being allowed to slip away into quiet retirement but Hitler had no intention of letting the now reluctant dictator so easily off the hook.

Having established his make-believe republic, Mussolini’s first priority was to deal with his son-in-law and other ‘traitors’ who had voted against him at the Fascist Grand Council meeting in July. Ciano had gone to Germany only to be forced back to Mussolini’s new republic. Despite the pleas of his daughter and Ciano’s wife, Edda, Mussolini had Ciano and five colleagues tried in Verona in January 1944, and five, including Ciano, were executed by firing squad on 11 January. To add to the humiliation, they were tied to chairs and shot in the back. Ciano’s last words were ‘Long live Italy!’

Although the Italian Social Republic had its own army, numbering about 150,000 men, its own flag (pictured) and currency, Mussolini’s power was limited and any decision had to be agreed upon by Berlin. His choice of men to serve in his new government was vetoed by his German masters. The republic had no constitution, was financially dependent on Germany and, as a new, supposedly independent state, was not officially recognized by any nation beyond Germany, Japan and their allies.

The Ardeatine Massacre

The local Italian resistance movement, whose confidence grew with every passing month, continually undermined the republic’s stability. But their activities often resulted in tragedy. On 23 March 1944, for example, the resistance exploded a bomb in Rome that killed 33 German soldiers. Retaliation was swift and brutal – for each German soldier killed, Hitler ordered the execution of ten Italian civilians. The following day, 335 Italians were shot in a sickening act of retribution in what became known as the Ardeatine Massacre. Meeting Hitler in April 1944, Mussolini protested but was ignored.

He may have wanted to try again at his next meeting with Hitler. The date of this meeting was 20 July 1944, the day Hitler survived the most serious attempt on his life. While the 20 July plotters were hunted down, Hitler, still a little shaky, kept his appointment and met Mussolini at the train station.

The Last Italian

While head of the Italian Social Republic, Mussolini lived in Salo with his wife, Rachele, and various children and grandchildren. But it was far from domestic bliss. His daughter, Edda, never forgave her father for executing Ciano: ‘The Italian people must avenge the death of my husband. If they do not, I’ll do it with my own hands.’ Mussolini’s mistress, Clara Petacci (pictured), set up home nearby, much to Rachele’s disgust. (Indeed, was she placed there by the Germans to act as an informant?) Wife and mistress frequently argued while Mussolini, the diminished dictator, cowered. Mussolini himself suffered from ill-health and lost so much weight that one colleague described him as a ‘walking corpse’.

Meanwhile, the Allies advanced northwards through Italy, breaking Germany’s heavily-fortified ‘Gustav Line’ on 11 May 1944, and liberating Rome on 4 June. By April 1945, the Allies had also breached the Gothic Line. With German forces retreating rapidly, the end for Mussolini and his Italian Social Republic was only a matter of time. But Mussolini could still talk big, promising to ‘fight to the last Italian’ and of turning Milan into the ‘Stalingrad of Italy’.

Epilogue to a tragedy

When even Mussolini realized all was lost, he conceded: ‘I am close to the end … I await the epilogue to this tragedy in which I no longer have a part to play.’

On 25 April, Mussolini and a few devoted followers, and his mistress, fled. Their destination was neutral Switzerland. Mussolini wrote a final letter to his wife in which the lifelong philanderer wrote, ‘You know you are the only woman I really loved.’

Meanwhile, the Italian Social Republic was no more. It had lasted just nineteen months.

On 26 April, Mussolini and his fleeing entourage were stopped by Italian partisans. Mussolini’s attempts to disguise himself with a Luftwaffe overcoat and helmet failed. On April 28, 1945, at the picturesque Lake Como, Mussolini and Petacci were executed; their bodies were heaped into the back of a van, and transported to Milan. There, in the city, their bodies were left to hang upside down for public display, from a rusty beam outside a petrol station.

Rupert Colley.

Read more about the war in The Clever Teens Guide to World War Two available as an ebook and 80-page paperback from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstone’s, Apple Books and other stores.

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Henri Philippe Petain – a brief biography

Few men over the last century can have experienced such a change of fortune as Philippe Pétain. During the First World War, Pétain was hailed as the ‘Saviour of Verdun’, helping the French keep the Germans at bay during the 1916 Battle of Verdun. In May 1917 he was made commander-in-chief of French forces. His first task was to quell the French mutiny, which he did through a mixture of discipline and reform.

Pétain’s popularity improved even further when he limited French offensives to the minimum, claiming he was waiting for ‘the tanks and the Americans’.

Pétain and World War Two

World War Two and on 10 May 1940 Hitler’s troops invaded France. A month later, having swept aside French resistance and dispatched the British forces at Dunkirk, the swastika was flying over the Arc du Triomphe.

France surrenders

On 17 June, the French prime minister, Paul Reynaud, resigned, to be replaced by the 84-year-old Philippe Pétain. Pétain’s first acts were to seek an armistice with the Germans and order Reynaud’s arrest. On 22 June, 50 miles north-east of Paris, the French officially surrendered, the ceremony taking place in the same spot and in the same railway carriage that the Germans had surrendered to the French on 11 November 1918.

Northern France, as dictated by the terms of the surrender, would be occupied by the Germans, whilst southern France, 40 per cent of the country, would remain nominally independent with its own government based in the spa town of Vichy in central France, 200 miles south of Paris. Pétain would be its Head of State. A small corner of south-easternFrance, around Nice, was entrusted to Italian control; Italy having entered the war on the 10 June.

Pétain and Vichy France had the support of much of the nation. The French considered the British evacuation at Dunkirk as nothing less than a betrayal, and many labelled General Charles de Gaulle, who had escaped France to begin his life of exile in London, a traitor. Indeed, he was later sentenced to death – in absentia by the Vichy government.

The end of democracy

On 10 July 1940, the French Chamber of Deputies transferred all its powers to Pétain, dissolving the Third Republic and thus doing away with democracy, the French Parliament and itself. Philippe Pétain, never a fan of democracy, which he regarded as a weak institution, was delighted. Strong, central government was Pétain’s way, and relishing his new role in Vichy’s Hotel du Pac, Pétain immediately set about decreeing swathes of new legislation, much of it anti-Semitic, and becoming the most authoritative French head of state since Napoleon.

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Vladimir Lenin – a brief introduction

Vladimir Lenin was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov on 22 April 1870 in the town of Simbirsk (renamed Ulyanovsk in Lenin’s honour following his death in 1924). The third of six children, Lenin was born into a middle-class family, his father being an inspector of primary schools, a fact Lenin never tried to hide.

In 1887, Vladimir Lenin’s older brother, 21-year-old Alexander Ulyanov, was involved in an attempt to assassinate the tsar, Alexander III, son of Alexander II, for which in May 1887, he was hanged. The event shocked the seventeen-year-old Lenin and certainly radicalized him. As the brother of an executed terrorist, Lenin was kept under police surveillance as he took his place to study law at Kazan University in Tatarstan.

While at university, Lenin became involved in politics and, after one student riot, was arrested. One of the arresting officers asked him ‘Why are you rebelling, young man? After all, there is a wall in front of you,’ to which Lenin replied, ‘The wall is tottering, you only have to push it for it to fall over.’

Lenin the Lawyer

Expelled from Kazan University, Lenin continued his studies independently before being allowed to finish his law degree in 1892 at the University of St Petersburg, obtaining a First Class degree and learning to speak Latin and Ancient Greek.

For eighteen months, between 1891 and 1893, Lenin worked as a lawyer defending petty thieves, cases he invariably lost. His only success in the courts came sixteen years later when he successfully sued a French nobleman for knocking him off a bicycle near Paris in 1909.

Moving to St Petersburg in 1893, Lenin became increasingly involved with revolutionary activity and there, two years later, formed a group, the League of the Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class. In 1895, Lenin was arrested and imprisoned for fourteen months in solitary confinement.

In 1897, he was exiled to eastern Siberia where he took the alias Lenin, reputably influenced by the Siberian river, River Lena. While in exile, in July 1898, he married fellow revolutionary, Nadezhda Krupskaya. They may have been Marxists and committed atheists but, on the insistence of Krupskaya’s mother, the pair married according to the Orthodox faith.

What Is To Be Done?

Following his exile, Lenin wrote his influential What Is To Be Done? and was instrumental in splitting the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. Lenin and his wife lived in Munich, London, and Geneva before returning to Russia in November 1905, towards the end of the 1905 Russian Revolution.

Two years later, Lenin returned to exile and would not step on Russian soil again until almost a decade later in April 1917. Much of this time was spent in Switzerland where, as well as writing and guiding the direction of the revolution from afar, he found time to indulge his many hobbies. Lenin and Krupskaya became ardent hill walkers of the Swiss Alps and Lenin enjoyed swimming, cycling, music, skating and chess.

Lenin also enjoyed music. In a conversation with Russian writer, Maxim Gorky, Lenin professed to enjoy Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 23, the Appassionata, saying he ‘could listen to it every day… But I can’t listen to music very often, it affects my nerves. I want to say sweet, silly things, and pat the little heads of people who, living in a filthy hell, can create such beauty. These days, one can’t pat anyone on the head; they might bite your hand off. Hence, you have to beat people’s little heads, beat mercilessly. Hmm — what a devilishly difficult job I have!’

Mr and Mrs Lenin

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The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln – a summary

On 15 April 1865, in Washington DC, Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the United States, died, having been shot in the back of the head the night before by John Wilkes Booth.

Only six days before, Confederate forces under General Robert E Lee had surrendered to General Ulysses S Grant, effectively bringing to an end the American Civil War.

John Wilkes Booth

John Wilkes BoothJohn Wilkes Booth (pictured), who originated from a famous family of actors and was himself regarded a fine actor, had lived in the North throughout the war but, a great believer in the institution of slavery, his loyalties lay firmly with the Confederate South.

In March 1865 Booth had hatched a plan to kidnap the president but the plan came to nothing. However, following Lee’s surrender, Booth’s determination to punish the man he saw as responsible for the war and the ending of slavery hardened.

On hearing that on the evening of April 14, Good Friday, Lincoln would be at the Ford’s Theatre watching a performance of the farce, Our American Cousin by British playwright Tom Taylor, Booth quickly devised a new plan. Together with two companions, Lewis Powell and George Atzerodt, Booth planned a triple assassination – of the president, the Vice-President, Andrew Johnston, and Secretary of State, William Seward.

Come 10 pm, the agreed time, the three men went to work. Atzerodt, however, backed out whilst Powell broke into the home of Seward and attacked the Secretary of State with a knife. Seward survived but bore the facial scars for the rest of his life.

Ford’s Theatre

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Nikita Khrushchev’s Secret Speech – a summary

On 25 February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev delivered a speech to a closed session of party leaders in which he dismantled the legend of the recently-deceased Joseph Stalin and, over four hours, criticized almost every aspect of Stalin’s method of rule. The speech entitled On the Cult of the Individual and Its Consequences would become known as simply Khrushchev’s ‘Secret Speech’.

‘Why stir up the past?’

Joseph Stalin had died three years earlier, on 5 March 1953. In late 1955, Nikita Khrushchev had been mulling over the idea of ‘investigating Stalin’s activities’ for some months. It was a momentous prospect – Stalin had ruled the Soviet Union with an iron fist for the best part of three decades; he had taken the nation to victory over the fascist Germans, and his legacy was still everywhere to be seen.

Khrushchev’s colleagues were aghast at his proposal, especially the ones who had served in senior positions under Stalin, men like Kliment Voroshilov and Stalin’s foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov. These were men with blood on their hands, who, under Stalin’s orders, had facilitated and organised the liquidation of tens or hundreds of thousands of their countrymen and women. Not surprisingly they asked, ‘Why stir up the past?’

And Khrushchev himself was far from blameless, having been the regional boss in Ukraine during the mid-1930s, a time of mass terror, liquidations and deportations. But, as Khrushchev pointed out, ‘if we don’t tell the truth at the Congress, we’ll be forced to tell the truth sometime in the future. And then we won’t be the people making the speeches; no, then we’ll be the people under investigation.’

Khrushchev ordered a report on Stalin and his activities. The investigative team, headed by one Comrade Pospelov, spent months sifting through huge amounts of files and paperwork. Khrushchev knew what he wanted to say – that Vladimir Lenin, the first Bolshevik leader, had used terror but had employed it in a legitimate manner – against class enemies and to safeguard the progress of the October Revolution; whereas, as his successor, Joseph Stalin had misused his power, employing terror in an arbitrary and illegitimate manner. Pospelov’s report, when finally it came, provided him with the ammunition.

Our greatest friend Continue reading →

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Malta during World War Two – a summary

On 15 April 1942, Malta received Britain’s highest civilian award for gallantry, the George Cross. But why would an island receive a medal?

Lying halfway between Italy and North Africa, the 120-square-mile island of Malta unwittingly played a pivotal role during the North African campaign in World War Two.

Part of the British Empire since 1814, the island was Britain’s only military base in the central Mediterranean.

Italian bombing

On June 10, 1940, Italy entered the war and on the following day began by bombing Malta. The British garrison on the island defended the population, and supplies and extra planes were shipped in. But it was only the start.

British submarines and Hurricane fighter planes retaliated by attacking Italian and German convoys, which were shipping men and equipment to North Africa. In October 1941 Erwin Rommel, the German commander in North Africa, lost over 60% of his supplies to British forces based in Malta.

Now the Germans

The Germans decided that Malta was causing too much damage and Albert  Kesselring, Hitler’s Mediterranean commander, promised to “wipe Malta off the map.” Luftwaffe and U-boats stationed sixty miles north on the island of Sicily launched aerial attacks on Malta and the siege intensified. Supplies to the island virtually ceased and the inhabitants suffered eighteen months of hunger as well as continual bombardment. Civilians, starved and frightened, packed the caves beneath the capital Valletta.

The medal

It was during this time of deprivation that Britain’s King George VI awarded the island, as a collective, the George Cross “to bear witness to the heroism and devotion that will long be famous in history”.

Bleak

In May 1942 the British tried to fly in a contingent of Spitfires but most were destroyed before they could be deployed. With food and supplies nearly exhausted, the future looked bleak. Ammunition was so low that only a few rounds were allowed to be fired per day.

Spitfire to the rescue

A second attempt to bring in Spitfires was successful. Immediately they went on the offensive against the German Luftwaffe and were able to escort supply convoys through to the besieged islanders. A convoy of merchant ships escorted by Spitfires and warships managed to survive intense German attack and arrived in Valletta on August 15, the Maltese feast day of St Mary. Their survival and arrival on this important day of the Maltese calendar were seen as nothing less than heaven-sent. The worst was over.

Renewed attacks from Malta on Rommel’s supplies severely hampered the German campaign in Egypt, and by the end of 1942, British supplies to the island were arriving unmolested. The siege was over and the island had survived.

The Maltese flag

The George Cross to Malta was the first time it had been awarded to a collective. (The second and, so far, last occasion was in 1999 when it was awarded to the Royal Ulster Constabulary.) To this day the image of the George Cross appears in the top left corner of the Maltese flag.

Rupert Colley.

Read more about the war in The Clever Teens Guide to World War Two available as an ebook and 80-page paperback from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstone’s, Apple Books and other stores.

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Rachele Mussolini – a brief biography

In 1914, in Milan, the future fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, married Ida Dalser, a 34-year-old beautician who soon bore him a child, Benito Albino Mussolini. The marriage lasted just a few months and on 17 December 1915, before the birth of Benito Jr., Mussolini, at the time at home on army sick leave, married Rachele Guidi in a civil ceremony. Guidi had been his long-term mistress and mother to his first child, Edda, who had been born in 1910.

Mussolini and Rachele Guidi shared the same place of birth – the town of Predappio in the area of Forlì in northern Italy. Guidi had been born on 11 April 1890. She and Mussolini had first met when Mussolini appeared at her school as a stand-in teacher. Guidi’s father had warned her against marrying the penniless Mussolini: ‘That young man will starve you to death,’ he warned. After the death of her father, Guidi’s mother began a relationship with Mussolini’s widowed father. 

In December 1925, ten years after their civil marriage, Rachele and Mussolini were married in a Catholic church. It was less a romantic gesture than an attempt by Mussolini to ingratiate himself with the pope, Pius XI. The Mussolinis were to have five children.

As dictator, Mussolini preached about the importance of the family and liked to portray his own family as a model fascist household. But in truth, he had little time for his children and could number his lovers by the hundred. Rachele knew about her husband’s many indiscretions. In an interview with Life magazine in February 1966, Rachele said, ‘My husband had a fascination for women. They all wanted him. Sometimes he showed me their letters – from women who wanted to sleep with him or have a baby with him. It always made me laugh.’

A beautiful companion

In 1923, Rachele took on a lover of her own – according to Edda in an interview in 1995, shortly before her death and only broadcast in 2001. Rachele, according to Edda, told Mussolini, ‘You have many women. There is a person who loves me a lot, a beautiful companion.’ Mussolini may have been shocked but he did nothing to stop the affair, which, apparently, lasted several years.

(Pictured are Benito and Rachele Mussolini in 1923 with their first three children. Edda, their eldest, is on the right).

In fact, it was less Mussolini’s dalliances that worried Rachele, than his career in politics: ‘You can’t be happy in politics… one day things go well,’ she said, ‘another day things go badly.’ She admitted that she had been at her happiest when they were poor. ‘She never was,’ declared Life, ‘nor ever wanted to be, anything but a housewife’. She certainly disliked the trappings of being married to Italy’s most powerful man. She hated life in Rome and, refusing to live there, avoided the city at all costs. ‘If I lived in Rome,’ she told Life, ‘I’d be a communist.’

Mussolini was, by all accounts, fearful of his wife. Once, following an argument, she kicked him out of the house and made him have his dinner on the front steps. One friend remembered, ‘The Duce was more afraid of her than he was of the Germans.’

In 1930, Edda married Mussolini’s foreign secretary, Galeazzo Ciano. (During the Second World War, on 11 January 1944, Mussolini had his son-in-law executed, an act for which Edda never forgave her father: ‘The Italian people must avenge the death of my husband. If they do not, I’ll do it with my own hands.’)  Another womanizer, Rachele disliked her daughter’s husband and made no attempt to disguise it.

The Mistress

In his latter years, while running the Salo Republic, Mussolini had his mistress, Clara Petacci (pictured), a woman two years younger than his eldest daughter, set up home nearby – much to Rachele Mussolini’s disgust. Wife and mistress frequently argued while Mussolini, the diminished dictator, cowered.

Indeed, on one occasion, Rachele, accompanied by a minder, confronted Petacci. On arriving at the villa gates of her rival, Rachele kept her finger on the doorbell until Petacci’s own minder came out to tell her to go away. But Rachele forced her way in. On coming face to face with her husband’s mistress, she demanded that Petacci move out of the area. Petacci broke down in tears while Rachele called her names. Both minders waited anxiously in the wings. Petacci tried to read to Rachele letters sent to her by Mussolini. Unable to bear this, Rachele lunged at Petacci and had to be restrained by the minders.

Death at Lake Como

In April 1945, Mussolini, knowing the end was in sight, tried to flee to neutral Switzerland. His companion was not Rachele, his wife of thirty years, but Petacci. They were caught close to Lake Como very near to the Swiss border by Italian partisans and executed on 28 April.

Days after the end of the war, Rachele also tried to flee to Switzerland and was also apprehended at Como by partisans. Handed over to the Allies, she was interned by the Americans, where she volunteered to cook for her fellow inmates, before being released within a matter of months. Penniless, she and Edda lived in Rome, surviving on handouts before eventually returning to Predappio, her place of birth.

Rachele canvassed the Italian government to allow her to bury her husband’s body in Predappio. Finally, her wish was granted and in 1957, Mussolini was returned and buried within the family crypt. Immediately, Mussolini’s grave became a shrine for neo-fascists with frequent ‘pilgrimages’, especially on significant dates – his date of birth, 29 July, and death, 28 April.

Meanwhile, dressed traditionally as a ‘black-cad mamma’, Rachele Mussolini kept chickens, tendered a garden, and opened a small restaurant within sight of a mock-medieval castle that Mussolini had built at the height of his power. The restaurant did well, as did a roaring side trade in selling postcards featuring her husband.

Mussolini’s brain

In March 1966, Rachele was handed an envelope by an American diplomat. Inside, bizarrely, was a piece of Mussolini’s brain which the Americans had removed from Mussolini’s corpse presumably, thought Rachele, because they ‘wanted to know what makes a dictator’. The Washington Post that year had reported that a ‘section’ of Mussolini’s brain had been ‘examined by pathologists who described it as average’. She placed the section of brain in a box above Mussolini’s grave.

Alessandra MussoliniForty-three years later, in 2009, in another bizarre postscript, Mussolini’s granddaughter, Alessandra Mussolini (pictured), model turned politician, discovered that the Italian version of the online auction site, eBay, was listing three glass vials containing blood samples and more fragments of her grandfather’s brain with a starting price of 15,000 euros. On realising their mistake (eBay forbids the sale of body parts), the listing was immediately removed. Alessandra, niece to Sophia Loren, was, understandably, ‘outraged’.

In 1974, Rachele Mussolini published Mussolini: An Intimate Biography.  She died, aged 89, on 30 October 1979.

What might have been

In 1910, while working as a journalist, the 27-year-old Mussolini was offered a job as a reporter in America. Rachele was pregnant with Edda at the time and therefore they decided against going. ‘I often wish we had,’ she said. ‘I think my husband might have been very successful in America.’

If only.

 

Read more about the war in The Clever Teens Guide to World War Two available as an ebook and 80-page paperback from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstone’s, Apple Books and other stores.

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Ping Pong Diplomacy – a summary

On 10 April 1971, the simple game of table tennis marked the beginning of a thaw in the diplomatic freeze that had existed between the US and China for over 20 years. The occasion became known as ping-pong diplomacy.

The US ping-pong team was in Nagoya, Japan, for the 31st World Table Tennis Championships, and following a team practice 19-year-old Californian student, Glenn Cowan, missed the team bus. Zhuang Zedong, a Chinese player and three times world champion, on seeing Cowan’s plight, offered the American a seat on the Chinese team bus.

“The ping heard round the world”

Although talking to a foreigner was deemed a crime in China, the two men, chatting through an interpreter, found a rapport. Zedong gave the American a silk gown by way of a present and invited the American team to play a friendly championship in China. This seemingly innocuous invitation has to be seen in the context of the time – no American had stepped on Chinese soil since Chairman Mao (pictured) had come to power 22 years earlier in 1949. Time magazine called it “The ping heard round the world.”

By the time they had got off the bus the Chinese team and their American passenger were surrounded by the press. Within hours, Zedong’s informal invitation had been endorsed by Mao and been made official.

Thus, on 10 April 1971 nine US players, four officials, two spouses and five US journalists crossed a bridge from Hong Kong onto Chinese soil.

‘Friendship First Competition Second’

Under the slogan ‘Friendship First Competition Second’, the Chinese men’s team won 5-3, and the women’s team 5-4; the Chinese politely refraining from inflicting a white-wash on the Americans. Glen Cowan, with this American long hair and red hairband, was clearly the crowd’s favourite.

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Mangal Pandey – a brief biography

The events that led to India’s ‘First War of Independence’, or to use its Eurocentric name, the ‘Indian Mutiny’, stemmed from decades of grievances and unrest but it was something quite mundane that sparked the rebellion and it was a single man, Mangal Pandey, that fired the first shots.

The sepoys had been issued with a new Enfield rifle. In order to use the rifle, the soldier had to bite off the end of a lubricated cartridge before inserting the powder into the weapon. The problem was that the grease used to seal the cartridge was made from animal fat – both cow, a sacred beast to Hindus, and pork, an insult to the Muslim soldiers.

The East India Company, the monolithic, monopolising commercial company that conducted trade in India and had become the de facto rulers of India acting on behalf of the British government, made amends by substituting the forbidden fats with that of sheep or beeswax. Too late. The sepoys saw it as a deliberate ploy to undermine their respective religions and to convert them, through this perfidious route, to Christianity. The fact this was not the case did nothing to squash the rumour.

The first symptom of unrest came in January 1857, when the recently-opened telegraph office in Barrackpore (now Barrackpur, about 15 miles from Kolkata, or Calcutta) was burned down as a protest against the march of Westernization.

Two months later, on 29 March 1857, also at Barrackpore, a 29-year-old sepoy called Mangal Pandey, staged, in effect, a one-man rebellion. Born 19 July 1827, Mangal Pandey had joined the 34th Bengal Native Infantry regiment of the British East India Company, aged 22, in 1849. Continue reading →