Dictatorial Friends:

The Case of Mussolini and Hitler

The recent phone conversation between Trump and Putin makes it instructive to look back at the most powerful relationship of two fascist leaders in the first half of the twentieth century: Mussolini and Hitler. Despite all ideological differences, the four leaders share contempt for liberal democracy, human rights, and international organisations. Putin, Mussolini, and Hitler started wars of aggression; Trump is threatening other countries with invasion.

In mid-June 1934, the world’s media congregated in Venice for a spectacular meeting: Adolf Hitler, the German Reich Chancellor, flew to the city on the Adriatic to meet his political idol Benito Mussolini, leader of Fascist Italy.

As Hitler awkwardly climbed out of the Lufthansa Ju-52 at the airfield, Mussolini greeted him with a handshake, rather than with the Fascist salute. With this simple gesture, Mussolini, in office as Italy’s Prime Minister since 1922, signalled that Fascist Italy was the leading fascist regime in Europe.

Photographs show an awkward Hitler in a trench coat standing next to the Duce in full uniform and jackboots. Hitler’s dress later gave much rise to ridicule. But his civilian dress was a calculation in order to come across as a reasonable statesman on his first official visit abroad. The choice of Venice as the location symbolised Italy’s role as the Mediterranean’s leading power and, of course, Mussolini’s more senior position.

This was the first of a 17 encounters between Mussolini and Hitler who led Europe’s first and most significant fascist regimes. The two dictators met more often than any other Western statesmen in that period, including Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Hastily prepared, the Venice meeting stood for a new style of an executive face-to-face diplomacy, instead of the allegedly secretive bureaucratic diplomacy pursued by liberal democracies. German diplomats were concerned about Hitler’s preference for this new style of diplomacy, as the Nazi leader was inexperienced on the foreign stage. Hitler and Mussolini held two personal conversations, in an imposing villa on the outskirts of Venice and on the ground of the Venice Golf Club, an unlikely location for both leaders who boasted about their humble personal backgrounds. The conversations took place without diplomats and an interpreter, as Mussolini was keen to show off his German. This constellation would lead to many misunderstandings at this and subsequent meetings.

For Hitler, the main objective at Venice was to secure Mussolini’s agreement for the annexation of Austria. The Duce remained reserved towards Hitler throughout. This greatly disappointed Hitler who had long been craving for a meeting with his political idol. Mussolini refused to agree, as he regarded the Alpine state as a buffer between Italy and Germany. Hitler also wanted to sound out Mussolini for an Italo-German alliance, underpinned by their shared ideology and, above all, their shared strategic objective, namely destroying the Versailles order and replacing it with a new expansionist order.

Yet this plan seemed unrealistic. Italy and Germany had been at war with each other during the WWI. Italy’s change of alliances, from the Triple alliance with Austria-Hungary and the Reich in 1915 to the Allied side, was seen by many Germans as a betrayal typical of the unreliable, opportunistic, and pretentious Italians who were good at words but not at deeds. National stereotypes also placed a burden on Italy’s perception of Germans as aggressive, petty, and uncouth bullies.

Throughout the Venice meeting Mussolini employed the full repertory of Fascist propaganda, including mass rallies, which put Hitler into the second rank. At that time, Hitler and the Nazis were consolidating their power, a process that greatly surpassed the long Fascist seizure of power in terms of speed and ruthlessness. Hitler’s rule had begun with a storm of violence in the spring of 1933 that had included the arrest of up to 300,000 members of the political opposition. Bursts of antisemitic violence and legislation accompanied the first months of the Third Reich.

Any hopes Hitler had for an Italian-German alliance were soon dashed. On 25 July 1934, a putsch organised by the Austrian SS against the Austrian government, led by Mussolini’s friend Engelbert Dollfuss who was assassinated by the Nazis, prompted the Duce to send troops to the Austrian border.

But the relationship between the two dictators was soon transformed dramatically, and Hitler overtook the Duce as the most powerful right-wing dictator. By August 1934, the Nazis had eliminated constitutional limitations to their power, with Hitler’s liquidation of the SA leadership and his self-appointment as Führer and Reich Chancellor upon the death of Reich President Paul von Hindenburg. In contrast, Italy under Mussolini remained a monarchy led by Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy since 1900. Moreover, Mussolini had to keep an eye on powerful provincial leaders of the Fascist party.

Following the gradual rapprochement between Italy and Germany in the late 1930s, Fascist and Nazi propaganda portrayed the two dictators as friends. Their friendship was a construct of Fascist and Nazi propaganda and became a tangible symbol of a new order in Europe. Mussolini’s triumphant visit to Germany in September 1937 and Hitler’s state visit to Italy in May 1938 were the most powerful propaganda shows of this friendship which, in reality, was a functional relationship of two statesmen with a similar ideology, but often divergent strategic objectives.

Trump, through his special envoy’s trips to the Kremlin and his phone conversation with Putin, has legitimised the Russian dictator, wanted for war crimes. Unwittingly, Mussolini’s summit with Hitler in 1934 also gave a boost to the Third Reich’s international profile. Although it had seemed unlikely after their first meeting in 1934 in Venice, the alliance of Mussolini and Hitler would soon wreak destruction on Europe and the world on an unprecedented scale. It is not too late for the West to show some leadership, save Ukraine’s sovereignty, and prevent a new alliance of expansionist dictators.