Duce’s ouster hailed as sign Axis is doomed
Nation’s leaders agreed that total collapse of Italy is near
By the United Press
Persons in all walks of life today hailed the ouster of Benito Mussolini as the beginning of the end for Italy and a definite sign that the Axis structure is crumbling.
Comment included:
Former President Herbert Hoover:
The downfall of one of the world’s greatest persecutors… will give heart to every persecuted man and woman in the Axis-occupied world and it is the handwriting on the wall for his colleagues.
Vice President Henry A. Wallace:
Surely it won’t be long now as far as Italy is concerned.
Mayor F. H. La Guardia of New York:
I anticipate the complete capitulation of Italy within the next few days. He [Mussolini] will go down in history as the betrayer of Italy.
Prime Minister John Curtin of Australia:
The repercussions on occupied countries cannot be overstated. Hitler sees in the fate of his ally the handwriting on the wall for himself.
Foreign Minister Ezequiel Padilla of Mexico:
The machinery of the Axis is breaking up.
Count Carlo Sforza, former Foreign Minister of Italy:
If the Fascist machine and the party’s Blackshirted army go on, the world may be entitled to wonder whether the change in Italy is not an indirect service rendered to Hitler in order to allow him to organize his defense in the Alps, while hoping that the United Nations will accept being cheated by a simulated anti-Fascist regime.
If Badoglio advises the immediate dissolution of the National Fascist Party and of the criminal armed gang called the Blackshirted Army and if he frees at once the heroic political prisoners… In that case, it may happen that a new beginning of confidence will be shown in the new government.
Attorney General Francis Biddle:
It looks like the first evidence of the internal breaking up of Italy.
War Manpower Commissioner Paul V. McNutt:
The action would indicate the end of the Fascist regime.
Rep. Sol Bloom (D-NY):
The people respect Badoglio as the only man who had the nerve to tell Mussolini to his face what he thought of him and his regime.
Carol II, exiled King of Romania:
It is widely known that King Victor Emmanuel has been against the war from the very start.
Rep. Vito Marcantonio (ALP-NY):
This is the beginning of the end. Neither the people of the United Nations, nor Americans, will accept any compromise short of unconditional surrender, and that means no dictator and no king.
Ferdinand Pecora, New York State Supreme Court Justice:
Italy will not be in the war for more than a month more.