§ The Prime Minister (Mr. Churchill)The House will have heard with satisfaction of the downfall of one of the principal criminals of this desolating war. The end of Mussolini's long and severe reign over the Italian people undoubtedly marks the close of an epoch in the life of Italy. The keystone of the Fascist arch has crumbled, and, without attempting to prophesy, it does not seem unlikely that the entire Fascist edifice will fall to the ground in ruins, if it has not already so fallen. The totalitarian system of a single party, armed with secret police, engrossing to itself practically all the offices, even the humblest, under the Government, with magistrates and courts under the control of the executive, with its whole network of domestic spies and neighbourly informants—that system when applied over a long period of time, leaves the broad masses without any influence upon their country's destinies and without any independent figures apart from the official classes. That, I think, is a defence for the people of Italy—one defence—although there can be no real valid defence for any country or any people which allows its freedom and inherent rights to pass out of its own hands.
The external shock of war has broken the spell which in Italy held all these masses for so long, in fact for more than 20 years, and held them all over all this period in physical and even more in moral subjection. We may, therefore, reasonably expect that very great changes will take place in Italy. What their form will be or how they will impinge upon the forces of German occupation and control it is too early to forecast. The guilt and folly of Mussolini have cost the Italian people dear. It looked so safe and easy in May, 1940, to stab falling France in the back and advance to appropriate the Mediterranean interests and possessions of what Mussolini no doubt sincerely believed was a decadent and ruined Britain. It looked so safe and easy to fall upon the much smaller State of Greece. However, there have been undeceptions. Events have taken a different course. By many hazardous turns of fortune and by the long marches of destiny the British and United States Armies, having occupied the Italian African Empire, the North of Africa, and the bulk of Sicily, now stand at the por- 1398 tals of the Italian mainland armed with the powers of the sea and the air and with a very large land and amphibious force equipped with every modern weapon and device.
What is it that these masterful forces bring to Italy? They bring, if the Italian people so decide, relief from the war, freedom from servitude and, after an interval, a respectable place in the new and rescued Europe. When I learn of the scenes enacted in the streets of the fine City of Palermo on the entry of the United States Armies and review a mass of detailed information with which I have been furnished, I cannot doubt that the main wish of the Italian people is to be quit of their German taskmasters, to be spared a further and perfectly futile ordeal of destruction and to revive their former democratic and parliamentary institutions. These they can have. The choice is in their hands. As an alternative, the Germans naturally desire that Italy shall become a battle ground, a preliminary battle ground, and that by Italian sufferings the ravages of war shall be kept as far away as possible for as long as possible from the German Fatherland. If the Italian Government and people choose that the Germans are to have their way, no choice is left open to us. We shall continue to make war upon Italy from every quarter—North and South, from the sea and from the air, and by amphibious descents we shall also endeavour to bring the utmost rigour of war increasingly upon them. Orders to this effect have been given to all the Allied commanders concerned.
A decision by the Italian Government and people to continue under the German yoke will not affect seriously the general course of the war. Still less will it alter its ultimate result. The only consequence will be that in the next few months Italy will be seared and scarred and blackened from one end to the other. I know little or nothing of the new Government. I express no opinion, but it is obvious that so far as their own people are concerned, they have a very important decision to take. Meanwhile I am anxious that the various processes by which this decision is reached shall be allowed to run their course under no other pressure than that of relentless war. This operation may well take some time. There may be several changes of transition. Past experience shows that in cases of a great change of 1399 heart and character in the government of a nation, very often one stage is rapidly succeeded by another. I cannot tell. So far, we have had no approaches from the Italian Government, and therefore no new decision is called upon from us, except those decisions connected with the bringing of the maximum avalanche of fire and steel upon all targets of military significance throughout the length and breadth of Italy.
However, I must utter a word of caution. We do not know what is going to happen in Italy, and now that Mussolini has gone, and once the Fascist power is certainly and irretrievably broken, we should be foolish to deprive ourselves of any means of coming to general conclusions with the Italian nation. It would be a grave mistake when Italian affairs are in this flexible, fluid, formative condition, for the rescuing Powers, Britain and the United States, so to act as to break down the whole structure and expression of the Italian State. We certainly do not seek to reduce Italian life to a condition of chaos and anarchy and to find ourselves without any authorities with whom to deal. By so doing, we should lay upon our Armies and upon our war effort the burden of occupying, mile by mile, the entire country and of forcing the individual surrender of every armed or coherent force in every district into which our troops may enter. An immense task of garrisoning, policing and administering will be thrown upon us, involving a grievous expenditure of power, and still more of time.
We must be careful not to get ourselves into the kind of position into which the Germans have blundered in so many countries, namely, of having to hold down and administer in detail, from day to day, by a system of gauleiters, the entire life of very large populations, thereby becoming responsible under the hard conditions of this present period for the whole of their upkeep and well-being. Such a course might well, in practice, turn the sense of liberation which it may soon be in our power to bestow upon the Italian people, into a sullen discontent against us and all our works. The rescuers might soon, indeed, be regarded as tyrants; they might even be hated by the Italian people as much or almost as much as their German allies. I certainly do not wish, in the 1400 case of Italy, to tread a path which might lead to execution squads and concentration camps, and, above all, to having to carry on our shoulders a lot of people who ought to be made to carry themselves.
Therefore, my advice to the House of Commons, and to the British nation, and to the Commonwealth and Empire, and to our Allies at this juncture may be very simply stated. We should let the Italians, to use a homely phrase, stew in their own juice for a bit and hot up the fire to the utmost in order to accelerate the process, until we obtain from their Government, or whoever possesses the necessary authority, all the indispensable requirements we demand for carrying on the war against our prime and capital foe, which is not Italy but Germany. It is the interest of Italy and also the interest of the Allies, that the unconditional surrender of Italy should be brought about wholesale and not piecemeal. Whether this can be accomplished or not, I cannot tell, but people in this country and elsewhere who cannot have the necessary knowledge of all the forces at work or assign true valuations to the various facts and factors, should, I think, at this juncture be restrained in speech and writing, in case they may add to the tasks, the toils and the losses of our Armies and prolong and darken the miseries which have descended upon the world.
In all these affairs, we are, of course, acting in the closest concert with the United States, our equal partner and good and gallant comrade in this new tremendous Mediterranean enterprise. Our Russian friends are also being kept regularly informed. The Allied Commanders in the Mediterranean theatre are in the closest accord on the very difficult problems produced in such circumstances by the inseparable interplay of military and political elements; and the British and the United States armies under their leadership are working as if they were the Army of one single nation, an Army, I may remind the House, which has just shown itself capable of little less than a prodigy of intricate organisation. The two Governments are in continuous consultation and association through the Foreign Office, and I correspond personally almost every day, under the authority of the War Cabinet, with the President of the United States. I conceive that His Majesty's Government have the right to ask for the solid and sustained confidence of Parlia- 1401 ment. After years of extreme difficulty and danger, we are conducting increasingly successful war and policy, and we feel sure that the House would not wish us to be deprived of the fullest freedom to act in the name and interest of the nation as we think fit, at this particular and swiftly-moving juncture. It is extremely important that full latitude should continue to be accorded to the Government by the House, that no diminution of the responsibility of the Executive should be attempted, and that no untimely or premature explanation should be sought in respect of business of such consequence and complications.
Questions have been addressed to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House about a Debate. It may be possible for me to make some further statement not only on the Mediterranean position but on the war as a whole before the House rises. I should be quite willing if this were possible, but I cannot at present promise to do so, because I do not know whether any point will be reached in the next week from which a general survey could usefully be made. Very complete, vivid and excellent accounts are appearing in the newspapers of all the operations. An immense army of correspondents move with the troops and carry their cameras into the heat of the fight, and an immense volume of material of the deepest interest and of a very high level of quality and accuracy fills the public Press from hour to hour, and there is at present very little which I could add to this, except, of course, to set matters in proportion as I and my colleagues view them, and to place the proper emphasis, or what we conceive, with our fallible judgment, to be the proper emphasis, upon the various facts and factors.
I will venture to offer another word of caution, and I do not think it is inappropriate to do so in a period when, not unnaturally, our spirits run high. What is Italy as a war unit? Italy is, or rather it was, perhaps about one-tenth of the power of Germany. The German tyranny is being violently assailed and beset on every side. Mighty battles on the Russian front, far exceeding in scale any of the operations in which we and the United States have hitherto been engaged on land, have in the month of July inflicted further deep injuries upon the German army. The systematic shattering of Ger- 1402 man cities continues remorselessly and with ever-growing weight. The spirit of revolt rises higher in all the subjugated lands. The German rule is maintained from the North Cape in Norway to the Island of Crete only by hideous and ruthless cruelty, reprisals and massacres. The German hopes of the U-boat warfare turning the tide of war are sinking as fast as the U-boats themselves. The whole outlook of the Nazi party and régime, their whole ideological outlook, as it is called, will be disturbed and darkened by the events which have happened and are going to happen in Italy, and the overthrow and casting down in shame and ruin of the first of the dictators and aggressor war lords strikes a knell of impending doom in the ears of those that remain.
Nevertheless, let us not allow this favourable inclination of our fortunes to blind us to the immensity of the task before us, nor of the exertions still to be made and privations and tribulations still to he endured and overcome. The German national strength is still massive. The German armies, though seriously mauled by the three Russian campaigns, are still intact and quite unbroken. Hitler has under his orders over 300 German divisions, excluding the satellites. Three-quarters are mobile and most of them continue to be well equipped. We are fighting some of these divisions in Sicily at this moment, and, as we see, they offer a stubborn resistance in positions well adapted to defence. The authority of the central Government in Germany grips and pervades every form of German life. The resources of a dozen lands are in their hands for exploitation. The harvest prospects are reported to be fairly good. This Nazi war machine is the hateful incubus upon Europe which we are resolved utterly to destroy, and the affairs of Italy must be handled with this supreme object constantly in view. Both our strategy and our policy, I venture to claim, have been vindicated by events, and I look forward to offering to Parliament, as the months unfold, further convincing proof of this assertion, but we cannot afford to make any large mistake which we can by careful forethought avoid, nor can we afford to prolong by any avoidable mismanagement the sombre journey in which we shall persevere to the end.