1952 Musso

[QUOTE=tuscanhills]I make this posting with caution.........I was in a tabacchi the other day & noticed a 2006 Mussolini calender........ I was a bit put a-back. I have also noted, but only just recalled (on the autostrada services between La Spezia & Genova) some busts of the "baldy chap with a fat bottom lip".

Have I missed something?

......... was he a bad man or is he looked at (by some [hopefully VERY few]) as a grand chap who made the trains run on time & other such lies?

Did Italy go through the same kind of process as Germany & South Africa to purge the ghosts of the past?

I couldn't see calender of Adolf going on sale in Germany..........[/QUOTE]

Don't know about nowadays, but I once went to a colleagues house near Milan (actually he was Pugliese) for Sunday lunch some years ago. Terrific family lunch, and then as after meal entertainment, the host put on recordings of Mussolini speeches :confused: Needless to say it was only the once I went for lunch :rolleyes:

[QUOTE=Aliena]Perhaps you misunderstood.. perhaps the "calendar" is really a dartboard![/QUOTE]

hehehe! I like your thinking! I can see your great-grandfather's legacy live on in you
;)

[QUOTE=Aliena]Italian dictator Benito Mussolini made the trains run on time! Yeah right!

The Italian railway system improved a great deal during the 1920's and 1930's, the repair work had already been done before Mussolini and the fascists came to power.. but Mussolini took the credit..

The myth of Mussolini's punctual trains lives on, albeit with a different slant: rather than serving as a fictitious symbol of the benefits of fascism, it is now offered as a sardonic example that something good can result even from the worst of circumstances.

Mussolini's myth is really “ blatant nonsense” .
He was a criminal: no other word is necessary

[QUOTE=notaio][QUOTE=Aliena]Italian dictator Benito Mussolini made the trains run on time! Yeah right!

The Italian railway system improved a great deal during the 1920's and 1930's, the repair work had already been done before Mussolini and the fascists came to power.. but Mussolini took the credit..

The myth of Mussolini's punctual trains lives on, albeit with a different slant: rather than serving as a fictitious symbol of the benefits of fascism, it is now offered as a sardonic example that something good can result even from the worst of circumstances.

Mussolini's myth is really “ blatant nonsense” .
He was a criminal: no other word is necessary[/QUOTE]

Let's not forget the damage him and his regime did to the historical sites of Italy, and to the psychi of the country as a whole.

[QUOTE=tuscanhills].....
Did Italy go through the same kind of process as Germany & South Africa to purge the ghosts of the past?

I couldn't see calender of Adolf going on sale in Germany..........[/QUOTE]

Very worrying indeed!! Have never come across a calender of him in my home area (Heidelberg, s/w Germany) - but then it's a quite liberal area with high international community.

However, I wouldn't necessarily say they don't exist (and not just in Italy or Germany...) - we don't really know what 'merchandising' the right-wing parties such as the German NPD or British BNP have for their 'valued' members! :(

Let's hope it remains confined just to those idiots who join up...

Stephanie

[QUOTE=tuscanhills] I couldn't see calender of Adolf going on sale in Germany..........[/QUOTE]

Herewith an article from September 2003 published in The Manchester Guardian (do they still call it that?) note Sig. Castelli's pun at the end or was that a bit of creative editing/translation?

[I]Germany's justice minister, Brigitte Zypries, has protested to her Italian counterpart, Roberto Castelli about the sale of Italian wines labelled with pictures of Hitler, threatening another Italian-German rift.

The bottles, some of which bear the logo "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer" (one people, one nation, one leader), have been selling fast, mainly to German tourists who spot them in petrol stations in northern Italy.

They are part of a "historical series" of labels, featuring leaders such as Mussolini, Stalin and Che Guevara. A Stalin or Hitler bottle sells for ¿3.3 (£2.60).

"People like these characters. They make good table conversation. So I'm not about to stop selling," said Alessandro Lunardelli, who says the Hitler wine is the most popular, selling 30,000 bottles a year.

"I am sorry if there are some people - German politicians, Jewish groups, or that type of thing - who get upset. But it's just history. I see no reason for such a fuss."

The use of racist or Nazi symbols is banned in Germany. But in Italy Mussolini calendars and tapes of his speeches are sold alongside Pokémon toys.

A German prosecutor has warned that Germany could prosecute Mr Lunardelli if he has sold his wines directly to Germans over the internet.

"I could make a fortune if I responded to all the email orders I get from Germany," he said. "But I know that would be against German law."

The debate adds to the strain imposed on Italo-German relations by the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, comparing a German MEP to a concentration camp guard, and the junior tourism minister calling German tourists "super-nationalistic blonds".

Although Berlin wants a European ban on racist or anti-foreigner imagery and literature, Mr Castelli said that only the Italian judiciary could decide to ban the wine.

"I did not know these bottles were being produced," he said.

"It seems bad taste to me." [/I]

Wow...

I cannot, and even if I could, comment on the rights and wrongs of Mussolini (though from what I have seen of him on the tele he was one of the lesser demons of the 20th century) but my old dad (may God rest his soul) fought against Italy as a member of the Imperial Forces in WW2 and two things I remember from my earliest years was:
1. how easily the troops surrendered (my dad apparently was great pals with the POWs) and
2. how disgusted my parents were (remember my mum was at home with two young children and a baby on the way) at the way the Italians treated Mussolino (stringing him and his woman up in the town square by their feet)..

Maybe this forum is

mussolinis death and that of his wife was arranged and some say carried out by the british...italian partisans like to ake credit ... but i think it was only for political reasons one of them was actually allowed to fire the bulletwhich killed him.... the british shot the woman...

his grandaughter is now a member of parliament here... the Rai shows dramas.. about him and in general italy tends to remember that period with what i would call less than healthy respect... for the truth... i do believe also sophia lorenne ...is that her name.... is also related in some way

they do love their partisan heroe dramas here... they are not alone...having lived a fair time in france the same mythology...rewriting takes palce...

however mussolini is still a heroe here in a lot of minds... there is a very litagous system here with extreme left/communist versus the equivalent right movements...

football matches here still involve to a far greater extent than normal football hooliganism nazi salutes... swastikas and black / jewish abuse....

As I remember the way my parents talked about him (i.e. bfore revisionism), he wanted/promised/fanticised about the "New Roman Empire" - maybe this is why some Italians hold his memory dear- but because Italy being what it is, words and action are two different things.