OPINION:
MUSSOLINI’S ARMY IN THE FRENCH RIVIERA: ITALY’S OCCUPATION OF FRANCE
By Emanuele Sica
University of Illinois Press, $40, 312 pages, illustrated
The lamentable story of Nazi Germany’s occupation of France in World War II is well-known and has been the subject of countless books examining every aspect of it from how it happened so precipitately to toleration, collaboration and resistance during this sad chapter. Much less studied is Italy’s opportunistic grab of a small portion of adjacent French territory, including the town of Menton, which they actually annexed as Mentone, followed by a larger slice of the Riviera, including Nice (which they also planned to annex as Nizza) after the occupation by German troops of the former Vichy-controlled French territory in 1942. When Mussolini unexpectedly declared war on France exactly a month after Hitler struck westward on May 10, 1940, taking advantage of the precipitate French collapse, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pungently but accurately characterized it as “the hand that held the dagger has plunged it into the back of its neighbor.” Now Emanuele Sica, a professor of history at the Royal Military College of Canada, brings us his sweeping knowledge and penetrating analysis to highlight this neglected part of World War II historiography.
Mr. Sica is not only well-informed but finely attuned to the historical and cultural crosscurrents which made this a kinder, gentler occupation than its brutal northern counterpart. A generally shared Latin tradition undoubtedly played a part, as did the fact that a quarter of the region’s population was ethnically Italian. As he points out, Italy’s occupation of the Balkans was a much rougher affair, with none of the goodwill offered on the Riviera. It is clear from reading this book that, for all the hardships and problems faced by French citizens under Italian Fascist occupation, none in their right mind would have swapped it for the harsh Nazi regime inflicted on their compatriots.
For none of these was this truer than French Jews. As Mr. Sica writes, “After the occupation of the northern half of France, Jews started flocking to the French Riviera in great numbers, as wittily remarked by the playwright Tristan Bernard: ’Nous ne sommes pas a Cannes, mais a Kahn.’ ” The anti-Semitism fostered by the Vichy authorities, whose zealous genocidal attitude not only aped the Nazi but at times seemed to outdo it, was in sharp contrast to the “benign attitude” of the Italians with a policy “that would ’answer a standard of justice and humanity.’” This did not just extend to French citizens but to foreign Jews as well, even German ones: “Italian soldiers were ’kindhearted’ and treated the Jews in a very humane way. Indeed, the Jews were ’extremely happy to be under the Italian army’s protection.’ “
No wonder that when Italian surrender in 1943 and subsequent joining of the Allies brought this benign occupation to an end, Jews in the zone sought desperately to flee to Italy: “In a generous gesture, Italian soldiers set up supply points in chalets along the trail to aid the Jews on the journey across the border. Hundreds of Jews made it to Italy, but unfortunately, the Germans, anticipating the flight across the Alps, had already occupied the Italian side and arrested most of the Jewish refugees, along with their Italian guides. The grim outcome of the Jewish odyssey should not diminish the significance of Italian soldiers risking their lives to save Jewish civilians at a time of stressful political turmoil on the Italian peninsula.”
Mr. Sica correctly writes that “The Pact of Steel, signed on 22 May 1939, virtually tied the destiny of Italy to that of the Nazi dictator and the Secret Supplementary Protocols undeniably forecasted an alliance in the eventuality of war.” Yet, I can never think about Mussolini’s disastrous passage from the diplomatic cynosure who was the star of European diplomatic conferences between the world wars to the despised figure whose body hung upside down on public view in 1945 without wondering what would have happened if he’d heeded his first impression of Hitler. “I don’t like the look of him,” he confided to Count Ciano, his son-in-law and foreign minister, whom he later had shot.
His fatal decision was largely driven by the mistaken belief that Nazi victory was inevitable, a position very much in keeping with his futurist ideological roots, which led many others, from the Lindberghs and Ezra Pound, to a similar delusion. But it seems he flattered himself that, as the senior statesman — and make no mistake, statesman rather than Churchill’s jackal and Roosevelt’s backstabber was how world leaders regarded him before he leapt into the abyss — he really could influence and restrain Hitler. He should have taken a leaf from his fellow brutal Fascist dictator Francisco Franco, who after all, owed Hitler for putting him in power but resolutely refused to abandon neutrality and join the Axis powers. If Mussolini had done so, I think he, too, might have survived to be a necessary evil in the Cold War and found himself ensconced in the bosom of NATO and very much a player once again for all his rebarbative repression of opponents and general thuggishness. In the end, he was driven primarily by his megalomania and thus ended up as far as possible from the triumph he believed was his inevitable destiny.
• Martin Rubin is a writer and critic in Pasadena, Calif.
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