• When the Great War ended, Private Adolf Hitler was in a hospital bed, blinded temporarily by a mustard gas shell. In his infamous autobiography, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), Hitler described the agonizing sense of betrayal he felt upon learning of Germany’s surrender. Corporal Benito Mussolini, six years Hitler’s senior, was also wounded in the war and was discharged in August 1917. Although a revolutionary socialist before the war, as was his father, Mussolini describes in his autobiography how, by war’s end, he had turned completely against socialism. Although Italy was on the winning side of World War I, Mussolini felt that Italy’s leaders and those who were trying to incite socialist revolution had betrayed his country.
Adolf Hitler, My Struggle
“A few hours later, my eyes had turned into glowing coals, it had grown dark around me. Thus I came to the hospital . . . and there I was fated to experience — the greatest villainy of the century. . . .
On November 10 [1918], the pastor came to the hospital [to inform] us that the House of Hollenzollern should no longer bear the imperial crown; that the fatherland had become a “republic.” But when the old gentleman tried to go on, and began to tell us that we must now end the long War, yes, that now that it was lost and we were throwing ourselves upon the mercy of the victors, our fatherland would for the future be exposed to dire oppression, that the armistice should be accepted with confidence in the magnanimity of our previous enemies — I could stand it no longer. It became impossible for me to sit still one minute more. Again everything went black before my eyes; I tottered and groped my way back to the dormitory, threw myself on my bunk and dug my burning head in to my blanket and pillow. . . .
And so it had all been in vain. In vain all the sacrifices and privations; . . . in vain the deaths of two millions who died. Would not the graves . . . open and send the silent mud-
I, for my part, decided to go into politics.”
Benito Mussolini, My Autobiography
“Already in January, 1919, the Socialists, slightly checked during the war, began, the moment the ink was drying on the armistice, their work of rebellion and blackmail. . . . We suffered the humiliation of seeing the banners of our glorious regiments returned to their homes without being saluted, without that warm cheer of sympathy owed to those who return from victorious war. . . .
I said then that never in the life of any nation on the day after victory had there been a more odious tragedy. . . . In the first few months of 1919, Italy, led on by politicians . . . had only one frantic wish that I could see — it was to destroy every gain of victorious struggle. Its only dedication was to a denial of the borders and soil extent of the nation. It forgot our 600,000 dead and our 1,000,000 wounded. It made waste of their generous blood. . . . This attempt at matricide of the motherland was abetted by Italians of perverted intellect and by professional socialists. . . .
I wrote . . . Do they want to scrape the earth that was soaked with your blood and to spit on your sacrifice? Fear nothing, glorious spirits! Our task has just begun. No harm shall befall you. We shall defend the dead, and all the dead, even though we put dugouts in the public squares and trenches in the streets of our city.”
Sources: Adolf Hitler, excerpts from Mein Kampf, translated by Ralph Manheim. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company and Pimlico. Copyright © 1943, renewed 1971 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company and the Random House Group, Ltd. All rights reserved; Benito Mussolini, My Autobiography (New York: Charles Scribner’s and Sons, 1928), pp. 60–
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