On this date 82 years ago, Il Duce Benito Mussolini was voted out of power by his own Grand Council of Fascism. He was then arrested upon leaving a meeting. The population was overjoyed as he was profoundly unpopular by this time. I found this video by a new channel informative (and I appreciate the use of real images and not fake ones conjured by artificial intelligence):
We also read more about Mussolini’s removal at the History.com web site. (Here is a link.)
I have always thought of Mussolini’s removal as more anticlimactic than maybe some had hoped at the time, although it perhaps accelerated us toward a resolution of World War II. Indeed, sometimes situations do end not with a bang but with a whimper, as T.S. Eliot noted in “The Hollow Men.” Here is amazing audio of T.S. Eliot himself reading the poem:
My older child is still quite young for this material; I myself read Eliot the first time in college because I evaded English literature in high school by taking AP English–and skipping British literature should never have been allowed. My child and I focused on section V of the poem, which begins around 2:57. (Here is a link to the text of the poem.) Specifically, we focused on the famous final lines. We discussed how the lines can apply to a great many things. But then I noted how I’d always thought Mussolini’s removal in 1943 may have been more akin to a whimper than a bang, that the bangs came two years later after he was rescued by German forces, returned to some form of power, and later captured by the Allies and executed. But given current world events, maybe Mussolini’s removal itself really was a bang. I asked my child to write a paragraph arguing her opinion: Was Mussolini’s removal a bang or a whimper?
Never stop learning,
Erin
Leave a comment