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Taking a Duce (A Benito Mussolini SI)

Interlude: Je suis français
An excerpt from Jean Marie Le Pen's 1999 novel: La France Insoumise, France during the second world war:

The bitter tragedy that befell France in the spring of 1940 was neither inevitable nor swift. It was slow—a slow-motion collapse masked by delusion, ossified bureaucracy, and the crumbling remnants of 19th-century arrogance. From the moment German boots crossed into Poland on September 1, 1939, the French Republic was at war—not only with Hitler's Reich, but with itself. In those nine months leading to the Armistice of June 1940, France's soul was laid bare, stripped of its illusions, and left exposed to history's judgment.

And I was there. A child, yes, but already aware that something inside the very skin of our people had torn.

When war was declared on September 3, after the British ultimatum expired, France followed suit within hours. The declaration was delivered with trembling resolve, wrapped in the weighty, formal language of statesmen who feared what they were invoking. Yet in the salons of Paris, and the chambers of the Quai d'Orsay, the true terror was not German arms—it was French weakness.

It was a strange war. La Drôle de Guerre, they called it. The Phoney War. From the Maginot Line to the coasts of Brittany, French soldiers settled into their bunkers and barracks as if on an extended training exercise. Morale, initially buoyed by patriotic fervor, slowly ebbed into boredom and anxiety. There was little to fight, but much to fear.

The political situation was as stagnant as the front. Daladier, who had presided over the declaration of war, clung to power through inertia more than leadership. The Chamber of Deputies was riven by factionalism: Radicals, socialists, conservative republicans, all jostling for influence while pretending unity. Daladier was soon replaced by Paul Reynaud, a man of bold rhetoric but limited means. He surrounded himself with hawks—Mandel, de Gaulle, and others—but France's military establishment was firmly in the hands of the old guard: men like Gamelin, clinging to World War I doctrines as though the intervening decades had changed nothing.

Yet while the cannons of the Maginot Line remained silent, Europe moved. Norway fell. Denmark surrendered. The Wehrmacht devoured Poland and turned its eyes westward. And throughout this, Italy remained neutral.

That, in itself, was a geopolitical miracle.

In the first week of September 1939, while French troops marched into the Saarland with hesitant steps and British expeditionary forces began assembling across the Channel, a surprising message came from Rome. Il Duce, Benito Mussolini, was requesting a direct meeting with the French and British ambassadors. The Italian leader, still basking in the afterglow of his Ethiopian conquest, offered a bargain: he would remain neutral in the coming conflict—in return, France and Britain would lift the economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation imposed after the Abyssinian War.

It was a cynical offer. But cynicism had become the bloodstream of European diplomacy. The British, eager to prevent another Mediterranean front, agreed without public fanfare. The French followed. Sanctions ended. Trade resumed. And in the cafes of Rome, Italians toasted their Duce for sparing them another war—at least for now.

This agreement would echo loudly in the coming year. For while Italy kept its peace, France's military planners continued to assume—disastrously—that the Alpine front might erupt. Hundreds of thousands of men, material, and logistical resources were kept pinned to the southern frontier, guarding against an attack that would never come. A German invasion alone was one thing. A two-front war was unthinkable. And yet, that phantom threat lingered in every French general's mind, dulling their strategic judgment.

Economically, France suffered in silence. War production ramped up—slowly, painfully. The Third Republic's industrial bureaucracy was not built for emergency mobilization. Factory owners demanded contracts, subsidies, and assurances; workers, many of whom were still in the grip of union militancy from the Popular Front years, balked at extended hours and military discipline. The CGT issued contradictory statements—calling for national unity on one hand, striking over wages on the other.

There was never enough of anything: not enough tanks, not enough radios, not enough aircraft. What existed was scattered among competing commands, deployed based on the preferences of generals rather than the needs of the battlefield. France still manufactured tanks that could outperform their German counterparts—but dispersed, without doctrine, and with feeble air support, they might as well have been museum pieces.

The British sent their Expeditionary Force, under Lord Gort, who worked awkwardly alongside Gamelin's ponderous staff. Communications were poor. Language barriers persisted. Even the most basic coordination—tank support, air cover, shared intelligence—was riddled with duplication and confusion. The Anglo-French alliance had declared war together. They would lose it together as well.

The Germans struck in May 1940. Not through Belgium alone, as the French had expected—but through the Ardennes, that "impenetrable forest" that Gamelin had considered safe. It was a thunderclap. Entire French divisions were encircled before they fired a shot. The Wehrmacht's blitzkrieg was not just military—it was psychological. French units, cut off and leaderless, collapsed not from fear but from disbelief. "Ce n'est pas possible," one colonel reportedly muttered, as he watched a German panzer column roll through his sector unopposed.

By the time Paris was declared an open city, Paul Reynaud had already lost his grip. Pétain, the old marshal, was called into government. The Chamber, in despair, gave its blessing. And on June 22, at Rethondes, in the very same railway carriage where Foch had dictated the 1918 Armistice, the Germans took their revenge.

The Armistice of 1940 was cruel in its dignity. France was divided: the north occupied, the south left in the hands of Vichy. Germany dictated the terms. But there was no Italian delegation present, no Mussolini to preen for the cameras. Italy's neutrality, cynical as it had been, kept her outside this humiliation. Some in France viewed it as cowardice, others as proof that the Duce was wiser than they had imagined.

Yet there was no wisdom in that summer. Only shame.

In the weeks that followed, hundreds of thousands of French soldiers were taken prisoner. Others wandered aimlessly through the countryside. Cities emptied, refugees poured south. My family, like so many others, fled Paris with nothing but a satchel and our name. My father wept once—not for the defeat, but for the surrender.

He was a veteran of Verdun. He remembered what we once were.

As for me, I remember the silence. A silence so deep that even the crows seemed to fall quiet. It was the silence of a broken nation. Not yet conquered, but shattered—by its own failure to believe.

What followed the Armistice was not peace—it was partition. Not just of territory, but of pride, of memory, of the soul of France. We, who had once ruled from Dakar to Damascus, now watched from behind our prison walls as vultures picked apart our fallen glory.

In August of 1940, with Europe shivering beneath the boots of the Wehrmacht, Mussolini, still neutral, arrived in Vienna—not with armies, but with maps and ambitions. Hitler, flushed with his triumph, was in a magnanimous mood. The Duce, eyes gleaming like a Renaissance merchant-prince, spoke not of war but of "stability," of "Mediterranean order," of the "necessity" of preventing British encroachment upon the fallen possessions of Vichy. He promised to keep the Mediterranean quiet, promised to keep the waters safe from German exports, and, most crucially, offered Germany the illusion of benevolence: the image of allowing others to share in the bounty of conquest without bloodshed.

Germany agreed. The Second Vienna Award, remembered today as a formal adjustment of Europe's borders, became something darker—a secret congress of the new world order, held not in Versailles, but under its desecrated ghost.

The terms were brutal.

Hungary was rewarded for its loyalty with the full return of Northern Transylvania. A cruel reparation, for the Romanian army—humiliated and disarmed—was forced to stand by while entire towns were transferred to Budapest's writ, sometimes overnight. Bulgarian ambitions were likewise satisfied. The entirety of Dobruja, stretching from the Danube to the Black Sea, was handed over with German approval and Italian diplomacy. The borderlands groaned as old ethnic hatreds, barely concealed, exploded anew. Deportations, burnings, lynchings. And always, somewhere in the background, German officers smiled and said, "This is not our concern."

But it was the Western Mediterranean where the true crime unfolded.

Mussolini, that ghost of Caesar, pulled a map of France from his briefcase—not of the Republic, but of the Empire. He offered a vision. "Better French Syria in Rome's hands," he said, "than under British boots." Hitler, still dreaming of an eastern frontier, nodded. Why waste German troops securing North Africa when Italy, Spain, and the Arabs could be bought with ink?

Thus it was done.

Italy received what she had long coveted: Corsica, Nice, and Savoy were torn from the corpse of the Third Republic and absorbed into a resurgent Italy. Tunisia, too, became Italian—its people disarmed, its French elite imprisoned and expelled. French Syria and Lebanon, with its mosaic of religions and rivalries, was handed over with a smile. Somalialand, the neglected corner of the Horn, was added as a trinket.

In Morocco and Algeria, Mussolini's charm offensive was subtler but no less ruthless. Spain, newly awakened from its civil war and already under Italian influence was rewarded for it's newfound alignment. Franco was offered all of French Algeria and France's protectorates in Morocco, in exchange for quiet cooperation with Rome.

The new Maghreb would be a Francoist colony in all but name. A Duchy of the Maghreb, with the Moroccan Alaouite king as its figurehead, under Spanish influence. The Berbers, long suppressed by both colonial and Arab overlords, were empowered as auxiliaries and enforcers. French businesses were seized. French families—les pieds-noirs—were declared "undesirable elements." Their homes were stripped. Their lives, uprooted.

The insurgency came fast and bloody. French officers and civilians who refused to surrender were executed in front of their men and families. Bombs tore through market squares. Men, Women and children were rounded up, interned in desert camps that bore a terrible resemblance to the rumors whispered about German Poland. And the world watched, unsure whether to call this "ethnic cleansing" or "stability." Though the Spanish weren't without "mercy". Once they were all rounded up they were expelled to French west Africa.

The Free French—those who had fled south, those who had crossed into British Egypt, or waited in Dakar—seized the cause. In the wastelands of West Africa, tens of thousands of embittered pieds-noirs were recruited, formed into regiments loyal to the free french cause. They brought with them stories: of children dead in desert camps, of priests burned alive in Constantine, of entire towns razed by Berber militias trained by Spanish advisors.

De Gaulle, ever the dramatist, declared the Maghreb "a wound that bleeds France's honor." And for once, few disagreed. And soon they turned their wrath on the Vichy french in West Africa and across the colonies.

In Syria, Lebanon and Tunisia, the pattern repeated. French garrisons were overrun, disarmed by Italian Carabinieri or black-shirted militias, french civilians were interned then expelled. Resistance blossomed in the Levant. The British, ever eager to sabotage the Fascist beast without fully waking it, funneled weapons and advisors to Syrian partisans. But in Iraq, the storm was already gathering—the Golden Square was preparing its coup.

But Mussolini was shrewd.

When it's officers came to him for aid, rather than allow the coup to tie Italian fortunes to a distant and volatile Arab uprising, he offered a bargain to the English: Italy would turn in the leadership of the Golden Square to the British, and allow the British to secure their Iraqi oil routes and fields—in exchange for London's silent withdrawal from the Syrian theatre. A devil's deal. Churchill raged, but Britain complied. And the Free French resistance in Deir Ezzor and eastern Syria found their weapons drying up, their comrades dying in silence.

Then in Anatolia, France's blood would run again.

In the summer of 1941, with Turkey teetering and Greece now a fascist vassal under General Pangalos, the final blow was struck. Italy and Greece invaded eastern Thrace and the Anatolian coast. The Free French, bolstered by exiled units and North African veterans, were dispatched by Britain to aid Turkey's defense. They fought bravely in the hills around Tarsus, in the olive groves of Adana, alongside Turkish conscripts and Kurdish irregulars loyal to Turkey.

But they were no match for Italy.

The Italian air force, revamped and ruthless, rained incendiaries and mustard gas on rebel towns. Greek mountain troops, hardened by Balkan brutality, took no prisoners. Italian tanks—modernized and beggining to be mass-produced—plowed through Thracian and Adanan roads like beasts unleashed. Turkey and France held their ground, they made them pay for every kilometer. But alas they only had mostly men and rifles. And Italy had tanks, planes and gas on their side.

The free French withdrew through Kurdistan, into Iraq, wounded and hollow once the armistice was signed.

By October 1941, Turkey lay broken. Adana, Haytay and Tarsus was under the so-called kingdom of Greater Syria, an Italian puppet. Greece held Constantinople. The world had not merely changed—it had been dissected, rearranged by hands that cared little for flags and less for people.

And France? France was now two countries. One in chains, ruled by Vichy puppets. The other—Free France—was no longer French in empire or orientation. Her soldiers bore the names of Maghrebi villages lost, of mothers executed in Tunisian prisons, of comrades buried in Turkish soil. The Republic was dead. In its place was something older, something harder.

It would take a new kind of Frenchman to survive this world.

On December 16, the rebirth of France began. Not by words coming not from a government, nor a general, but from the marble silence of the Vatican. Pope Pius XII, who had walked a tightrope of neutrality and diplomacy, cast off the mask. The bells of St. Peter's rang as the Pope delivered a worldwide radio address, heard from Boston to Buenos Aires.

Pius denounced the Holocaust by name. Evidence—photos, testimonies, coded military transmissions decrypted by Italian intelligence and personally given to him by Mussolini was presented. He named the camps: Auschwitz, Treblinka, Chelmno. He named the dead. Jews. Poles. Roma. Priests. Children.

He declared Nazi Germany an instrument of Satan, called for a Christian crusade, and issued a bull of damnation excommunicating those who were members of the Nazi party. Every German who failed to rescind their allegience by January 1, 1942, was threatened with eternal damnation. Theological firepower—centuries dormant—was unleashed with precision. Millions of Catholic German citizens across Europe were thrown into spiritual turmoil overnight.

The same day, Italy declared war on Nazi Germany.

Mussolini—who until then had balanced on a knife-edge of neutrality while expanding his empire with surgical opportunism—struck like a dagger. Italian aircraft bombed Ploiești that day as Mussolini delivered his own speech declaring war on Germany. Then, fascist Italy's radio waves blared with a new slogan:
"Rome leads the Crusade—Europe shall be cleansed."

In Milan, crowds cheered under Fascist banners and crucifixes. In Paris, German troops entered a state of siege. In Spain, Franco convened an emergency cabinet meeting as Madrid's clergy praised Mussolini's defense of Christendom. He would soon declare war on Germany as well.

But Mussolini was not done.

That same evening, under heavy security, Mussolini met, André François-Poncet, the French ambassador to Italy. There, beneath frescoes of Caesar and Constantine, Mussolini laid out his vision for a restored France—a third way, a synthesis of monarchy and fascism under a Catholic sword.

France, he said, would rise again. But not as a republic, nor as a German puppet. It would be a kingdom, holy and reborn. The offer was astonishing:

Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, great-nephew of Napoleon III and descendant of the Corsican line, would be freed from Vichy custody and crowned King of the French.

André François-Poncet, would serve as the first Prime Minister—an olive branch to the republicans under the cross.

In compensation for France's loss of her African and Levantine empire, the new Kingdom of France would receive:

Belgium

The Rhineland

Luxembourg

The Belgian Congo

And Italian guarantees in helping reconquer it's former colonies.

Italy would even cede Savoy back to France "as a gesture of Latin brotherhood."

French identity, Mussolini said, would not die, but be reforged in royalist steel, papal gold, and crusader flame.

The stunned ambassador, reluctantly accepted.

The very next day, after another meeting with Mussolini, the Pope issued a second decree, stunning even hardened skeptics. It was a spiritual ultimatum.

"Any Catholic found collaborating or a part of the armed forces of National Socialist Germany shall be excommunicated unless they lay down their arms and present themselves to the mercy of God and of legitimate authority by January 1, 1942.

Bishops in Poland, France, Austria, and Germany were warned: neutrality was no longer acceptable. Churches across Europe read the Papal order aloud. Soldiers wept in confessionals. German chaplains burned their vestments. Faith had become treason—or salvation.

The Italian Army, seasoned from Turkey and bolstered by motorized divisions and recent reforms, crossed into southeastern France on December 18. They met stiff resistance from the SS and a few Vichy holdouts, but the Pope's decree had done it's intended effect. The Italian advance was swift.

On December 23, Italian marines landed in Toulon with support from Free French partisans.

By December 28, the 2nd Alpine Division took Marseilles, while local Catholic clergy blessed them.

Meanwhile, deep inside France, Mussolini's OVRA agents stormed the estate where Louis Napoleon had been imprisoned. They freed the prince, who, though frail and pale, greeted them with prayers.

By January 1, 1942, in the cathedral of Vichy itself, surrounded by French and Italian soldiers, Italian generals including Mussolini's firstborn son Benito Albino, and local priests, Louis Napoleon was crowned "Louis XX, King of the French", a crown was placed on his head by Benito Albino, it was the beggining of a friendship between the two men.

That same day, thousands of German Catholic soldiers deserted, seeking refuge with French and Italian forces. Those who didn't were soon being killed in pitched battles across France.

But Mussolini knew symbolism mattered.

Thus, on January 27, 1942, Louis XX was crowned a second time—this time in Reims Cathedral, the traditional seat of French coronations since Clovis, as the bells of Notre-Dame rang in unison. The cathedral, still damaged from the First World War, was hastily restored with Italian funds. The crown was placed on Louis' head with incense rising and chant echoing in Latin and Old French.

French generals—monarchists, republicans, and Catholic nationalists alike—knelt before him. The flag of France, now bearing the Napoleonic bee alongside the white cross of Clovis, was raised across liberated territories.

The people wept. Radio broadcasts sent it across the world. In Quebec, crowds gathered in candlelight. In Dakar, free french soldiers sat in stunned silence and rage. Even in London, where Churchill hated Mussolini, was forced to accept the situation.

The Kingdom of France, as restored by Mussolini, would become a strange hybrid—monarchist, fascist-leaning, Catholic revivalist, and deeply traumatized.

Mussolini, who had once been an atheist, now posed as a defender of Christendom, casting Hitler as a "new Herod" and himself as a Constantine.

But it was the Pope's words that echoed most in history books.

"France is not dead. She was crucified. And on January First, in Vichy, she rose again."

But as France free itself with Italy's help. Italy began to carve up Europe. Flush with the triumph of its December declaration of war against Germany and buoyed by the moral weight of Papal endorsement, Italy acted with ruthless precision to fulfill its new imperial design. The promise of a reborn France—crowned, monarchic, resplendent in Latin glory—demanded tangible compensation for the territories Mussolini had no intention of returning: North Africa, Syria, Corsica. France, humiliated and divided since 1940, would now be rebuilt not from Paris but from Vichy, its new sovereign crowned in exile and returned in triumph by Roman steel.

It began in Belgium.

December 17, 1941 — Italian paratroopers descended into the twilight over Brussels. Their objective: the royal palace, still a symbol of Belgian sovereignty despite the occupation. They seized it with surgical force—but King Leopold III had vanished, spirited away by loyalists into the forests of Wallonia. Still, the symbolism was potent. The fasces flew over the palace spire by dusk. But they found themselves under siege by the angry citizens of Brussels.

Italy didn't let this setback phase it, instead, they extended blanket amnesties to Vichy defectors. A flood of disillusioned officers, petty bureaucrats, and embittered nationalists—many drawn from Action Française and other monarchist circles—saw the Italian advance not as invasion, but deliverance. They became the shock troops of the Latin Restoration.

On January 2, 1942, the siege of the palace was lifted. Italian Paratroopers backed by Vichy defectors stormed into brussels, they were greeted fierce resistance, though Italian air support and arms quickly repressed it. That day, the Italian tricolour flew beside the Imperial Eagle of the House of Bonaparte atop the city hall. The Italian message was clear: the Latin order would return, and it would wear the crown of Louis-Napoléon.

Yet not all bowed.

In Namur, a different flame was kindled. On January 5, a ragged congress convened—teachers, miners, parish priests, and battered union men. With no official insignia, only red armbands and carbon-smeared pamphlets, they proclaimed the Walloon Free Republic. Their allegiance was not to Mussolini's puppet France, nor to the crumbling Vichy order—but to Free France, to de Gaulle, exiled in Brazzaville. A delegation was dispatched to the Congo that very hour.

The "Republic" lasted four days.

January 6, 1942 – 04:22 a.m.: Engines roared overhead as Savoia-Marchetti bombers droned over the misty Ardennes. Italian paratroopers—veterans of Thrace, hardened by the anti-partisan war in Bulgaria—descended on Namur, Charleroi, Liège. What followed was not war but liquidation. In Dinant, factory militias fought with kitchen knives and petrol bombs. In Huy, a railway worker named Georges Duvivier derailed an Italian supply train by manually releasing the brake—he died in the explosion. Bells rang across the Meuse not for liberation but for mourning.

By January 9, it was over. The Walloon Committee for Liberation was disbanded by rifle. Leaders were bound, blindfolded, and flown to Paris. Those not executed were made to kneel before Italian judges in kangaroo courts, humiliated and forgotten.

Then came the charade.

January 12: The "Reunification Referendum" was announced. There were no observers. The ballots were printed in Rome. Voters were herded to polling stations flanked by Blackshirts and foreign legionnaires. The result—97.3% approval—was not believed even by those who cast the ballots.

January 13: André François-Poncet, Mussolini's hand-picked Prime Minister of the new Kingdom of France, announced the annexation of Wallonia. Italian troops marched through the soot-choked streets of Liège beneath banners declaring "Bienvenue à la Maison." The illusion of unity was complete.

But in the north, rebellion brewed.

In Ghent, the ground still reeked of burnt pamphlets and tear gas. As the wallon republic was announced, the old city hall under broken windows and bullet-pocked frescoes came alive, a group calling itself the Flemish Council convened. It was a motley parliament: mayors, university chancellors, a few exiled ministers from the Belgian Congo, and Pieter De Clercq—a once-ignored civil servant, now thrust into history's blinding glare.

At 11:17 a.m., De Clercq, clad in black with the golden lion of Flanders stitched across his chest, read aloud:

"The Belgian State is dead. Flanders will not die with it. We hereby proclaim the independence of the Flemish Republic and request immediate annexation to the Kingdom of the Netherlands, under the protection of Queen Wilhelmina."

Outside, cries rang out—"Lang Leve Vlaanderen!" The proclamation tore through the occupied north like wildfire.

Dutch radio picked it up that night. Though Queen Wilhelmina remained silent, her Prime Minister, Pieter Gerbrandy, spoke directly to the low countries:

"The fate of our southern brothers is entwined with our own. The Kingdom shall not ignore a cry for unity born of war and sorrow."

That same night, Dutch and British armored columns crossed the border at Essen, sweeping southward toward Ghent and Antwerp to "protect Flemish civilians from foreign occupation." They encountered stunned Italian troops in the port district—neither side opened fire. The war had become a game of inches.

In Brussels, the Italian-backed Provisional Regency of Belgium condemned the Flemish declaration as a "temporary disorder." Mussolini raged in the Palazzo Venezia. Reinforcements were dispatched to Louvain, but it was too late. The north was gone.

But that wasn't the only place Italy had turned to.

On December 19, 1941, Italian paratroopers descended upon Luxembourg. The Grand Duchy fell in a matter of hours. On Christmas Day, a referendum was held by candlelight. 99.1% voted for annexation—under duress.

Then came the Saarland. On December 21, the Folgore Division crossed into Germany proper. By December 30, Italy controlled everything west of the Rhine river up to the Dutch frontier. Vichy defectors in Wehrmacht uniforms served as guides through the shattered industrial zones. Italian engineers began erecting French flags atop mines and radio towers.

On January 15, 1942, Mussolini's France held yet another referendum. Again, the result was predictable: the Rhineland was formally annexed to France. Streets were renamed. German books were burned. French flags were pinned onto every civil servant's lapel.

The British, meanwhile, marched in from the west. Dutch and British marched into Germany towards Bremen. The Italians allowed them passage under close watch. Mussolini had no intention of occupying Germany beyond the Rhine. Let the Anglo-Saxons mop up Hitler's ruin. Italy had carved its empire. Now it meant to crown it.

By month's end, the European order was shattered. France, once broken and humbled, stood once more—kingdom restored, crown re-forged, banner raised. But it was not the France of 1789, nor that of the Third Republic.

It was a Latin kingdom, born in exile, returned by foreign sword, and clad in imperial garb.

And in that smoke-wreathed twilight, where red armbands fell to ash and black banners rose again, the people of Belgium and Luxembourg realized one brutal truth:

They were not liberated.

They had been rearranged.

But the storm that had shattered Europe was now rolling southward across the vast, trembling continent of Africa. In the vacuum left by the collapse of the Third Republic and the fragmentation of Belgium, new powers clashed over old colonial frontiers, and ancient grievances boiled to the surface.

On the humid banks of the Congo River, under the red-and-gold banner of the french Tricolor, General Charles de Gaulle stood before a modest but defiant assembly of soldiers, administrators, and exiled intellectuals. In a speech broadcast via crackling shortwave transmitters to embattled outposts across the French-speaking world, de Gaulle proclaimed the founding of the French Fourth Republic. The ceremony took place in Brazzaville, the heart of Free France in Africa, and de Gaulle—clad in a simple khaki uniform, his voice dry but resolute—was named President of the Republic in Exile by acclamation.

By that day, February 4, 1942, the vast patchwork of French colonies stretching from The Caribbean to Vietnam had declared for the Free French cause. French West Africa, Equatorial Africa, Madagascar, and Indochina had all rallied under de Gaulle's banner. Most remarkably, the Belgian Congo too was placed under Free French "protection," with King Leopold III—now a guest of the British Crown—granting limited authority to de Gaulle to ensure its security and prevent Italian encroachment. Belgian colonial officers in Léopoldville reluctantly cooperated, fearing fascist advance more than Gaullist ambition.

But even as de Gaulle basked in his triumph, the ground was shifting beneath him.

In a grand spectacle staged at the Palazzo Venezia in Rome, Benito Mussolini unveiled what would become the warning shot of the coming cold war. Standing shoulder to shoulder with Spanish Caudillo Francisco Franco and the newly frowned Bonapartist pretender Louis Napoléon. Il Duce addressed a crowd of diplomats, soldiers, and journalists under a banner that read: Per un'Africa Libera, per un Mondo Nuovo—"For a Free Africa, for a New World."

In a thundering oration, Mussolini announced the creation of the Global Federation of Free Alliances (GFFA). It was to be a revival of the league of nations, one with more teeth, backed by Italian institutions, banks, and peacekeeping forces.

More shockingly, Mussolini proclaimed the founding of a new body: the Organization of African Unity and Liberation (OAUL), headquartered in Addis Ababa, to oversee the "orderly transition" of Italian and Spanish colonies toward nominal self-rule. It was, as the Duce put it, "a gift of Latin civilization to the African soul."

In the background however, the three powers intended to divide and rule Africa via "emancipated countries," rooted in a "third way" philosophy: de jure European monarchs, de facto African governments on the ground, European economic control, racial equality, all under paternalistic modernization, and pan-African collaboration on fascist terms.

Franco gave a few terse words about the "glory of Iberia in Africa," in an interview once the speech ended. While Louis Napoléon proclaimed that "its time for a new type of empire, not of tyranny, but of fraternity." The carefully orchestrated show concluded with African delegates—some legitimate chiefs, others collaborators in tailored uniforms—pledging loyalty to the OAUL. It was theater, yes—but deadly theater, and it played to full houses in Dakar, Algiers, and Bamako.

The reaction from Brazzaville was immediate and incandescent. De Gaulle took to the radio that same evening, his voice cutting and cold:

"This proclamation is not liberation—it is seduction in the service of servitude. The fascist powers seek to steal the language of freedom to enslave those who have bled for it."

He denounced the OAUL as a puppet organization and branded the GFFA "a conspiracy of empire against humanity." He accused Mussolini of trying to destroy France's colonial birthright and condemned Spain and the Bonapartist faction as "parasites gnawing at the root of French civilization."

In London and Washington, reactions were cautious. Roosevelt, already skeptical of de Gaulle's pretensions and wary of colonial commitments, offered no immediate response. Churchill, juggling his own imperial dilemmas, limited himself to a private note: "This will not help."

But the speech did not stop the wave now gathering force across the continent.

In Dakar, pro-Italian youth began marching under banners of "African Brotherhood." In Bamako, disgruntled colonial troops rioted after being denied the backpay promised by Free French officials. Pamphlets printed in Casablanca and distributed covertly by Italian OVRA operatives urged young African men to "trust Rome, not Brazzaville." OVRA operatives began circulating in Abdijan, Libreville, Nairobi, and across British Africa, offering food, guns, money, radios, and a vision of "Latinate emancipation."

What followed was not a single war, but a patchwork of revolts, intrigues, and shifting front lines that would later be known collectively as the African Wars of Independence.

Over the next few years in French West Africa, Italian and French trained insurgents launched coordinated uprisings in Senegal and Upper Volta, triggering a brutal crackdown by Gaullist forces. In Madagascar, OAUL-backed rebels proclaimed a Malagasy Republic, resulting in a three-week siege of Tananarive that ended in a massacre. In Mauritania, Bonspartist agents helped stir up anti-Gaullist Berber factions, promising them freedom and independence under a french banner like Italy did with greater Syria.

In response, Free French counterintelligence—led by André Dewavrin—launched Operation Vigilance, a ruthless campaign of arrests, deportations, and assassinations targeting suspected OAUL sympathizers. Cities like Dakar and Brazzaville saw mass raids and curfews. Torture chambers operated quietly in colonial barracks. The ideals of liberté, égalité, fraternité gave way to the logic of martial law.

The conflict marked the quiet burial of the Atlantic Charter—the postwar dream co-authored by Roosevelt and Churchill, promising decolonization, democracy, and global cooperation. In the deserts of Mauritania and the forests of Cameroon, those words rang hollow. The allure of direct Italian arms and money proving more tempting than British and American gestures.

Washington, watching the Franco-African War unfold with alarm, quietly shelved its proposed United Nations Organization, having been outmanoeuvred both morally and diplomatically by Italy and beginning the process to join the GFFA.

And so began the longest war of France's 20th century—not against Germany, not against fascism, but against its own ghosts in the mirror of Africa.
 
Ohh poor Britannia
Excerpt from Britannia Alone: A Memoir of the Second World War by Winston S. Churchill (1955)

The autumn of 1939 found the British Empire once more cast into a crucible of global conflict. The German blitzkrieg had shredded the map of Eastern Europe, and the Polish state—brave, doomed, and betrayed by time—had vanished beneath the steel tracks of Panzers. Bound by honor, treaty, and the bitter memory of 1914, we declared war upon Hitler's Reich. Yet unlike the apocalyptic maelstrom of the Great War, the early days of this new struggle were marked by a strange and uneasy stillness. The expected upheaval in the Mediterranean did not come. There was no torpedoing of convoys off Malta, no clash of navies in the Aegean, no advance from Tripoli. The Italian boot, poised and ominous, chose instead to remain planted.

Benito Mussolini, that operatic architect of modern fascism, declared Italy's non-belligerency only a few days after the war started. A flurry of diplomatic feelers followed, culminating in an unprecedented offer: in exchange for diplomatic normalization and the lifting of sanctions imposed after the Abyssinian crisis, Italy would remain neutral. British policy circles, still reeling from the shock of war, split between those who smelled duplicity and those who saw necessity. In the end, pragmatism prevailed.

The Shadow Peace, as it came to be known, was an act of mutual strategic expedience. For Britain, the cost of war in the Mediterranean would have been catastrophic. Our empire's very arteries flowed through Suez; a hostile Italy could sever them at will. The vital lifelines from India, Australia, and the Far East would have been redirected around the Cape—a journey both perilous and slow. Fuel costs would have tripled; convoy vulnerability would have soared. With no American aid yet in sight, and our own rearmament barely begun, we accepted Mussolini's offer.

The immediate economic consequences were substantial. British shipping would traverse calm seas in the Mediterranean. Our convoys from the East arrived faster, with fewer losses, and with fewer escort vessels required. The Admiralty calculated that by mid-1940, we had saved over 1.2 million tons of fuel and over 800,000 man-hours in convoy operations. Crucially, the Royal Navy was now free to shift destroyers and cruisers to the Atlantic theatre, where the Kriegsmarine's U-boats had begun their deadly harvest.

Maltese resupply missions were cut in half. Gibraltar, no longer under constant threat, became a staging ground for Atlantic patrols. Alexandria and Port Said received reinforcements rather than replacements. In economic terms, Britain was gifted a vital breathing space.

And we used it. Aircraft production was redoubled. New factories in Coventry, Birmingham, and Glasgow poured out Hurricanes, Spitfires, and Beaufighters. A network of radar installations grew like a metallic web along the Channel coast. Steel allocations were prioritized for tanks and artillery, not for ships sunk in a second Mediterranean front. Armaments minister Lord Beaverbrook declared that "Every moment not spent fighting Mussolini is a moment gained against Hitler."

But neutrality had its price.

The Rome Pact, a new alignment of "non-aligned" states under Italian hegemony, swiftly emerged. Spain, Hungary, Bulgaria, and later Greece found themselves orbiting Rome rather than Berlin. Officially outside the Axis, the Rome Pact nonetheless served as an economic pressure valve for the Reich. Through a vast web of commercial exchanges, Italy funneled German coal, steel, and arms to peripheral markets in exchange for foodstuffs, chromium, bauxite, and oil from the Balkans and North Africa.

The Bank of England warned of a "shadow network of fascist capital," laundering German trade through Rome, Madrid, and Budapest. Economic warfare became a silent front. The so-called Alpine Drain siphoned German goods south, allowing Hitler to maintain production levels longer than expected. Still, the War Cabinet judged the trade-off acceptable—for now. Our Mediterranean dominions remained secure. India and Burma could still feed the metropole. Australia could still send wheat and wool.

Militarily, we gained critical time. The Royal Navy's reassignment of capital ships allowed the formation of three Atlantic hunter-killer groups by early 1940. These squadrons—backed by radar-equipped destroyers and long-range flying boats—proved devastating. U-boat sinkings increased by nearly a quarter. By the time of France's collapse, the Home Fleet was leaner, faster, and more deadly.

Then, in June 1940, France fell—and the world held its breath.

Surely now, Mussolini would strike.

But he did not. The Italian war machine stood silent. The Alpine passes remained unbloodied. At Dunkirk, Italian observers watched the British flotilla embark 330,000 souls to safety—yet offered no fire, no threat. Their silence was chilling.

And while they stayed their hand in war, they moved swiftly in diplomacy.

In the vacuum left by France, Mussolini set about remaking the Mediterranean. His emissaries struck deals with the Germans for the partition of Vichy territories. Under the cover of the Second Vienna Award, Italy and Spain claimed the lion's share of France's imperial corpse. Spain annexed Algiers, Oran, and the Rif; Italy took Corsica, Nice, Tunisia, and French Syria. The French colonials, stunned and outnumbered, fought valiantly—but fell to combined Spanish-Italian force and ferocious native insurgency fueled by anti-colonial propaganda and fascist subversion.

Over one million French settlers were forcibly relocated to French West Africa—where they formed the nucleus of Charles de Gaulle's Free French. British covert arms, radio support, and training sustained their resistance, but the blow to French prestige and Britain's regional influence was severe.

Simultaneously, Mussolini negotiated shrewdly. In exchange for continued neutrality, we ceded Socotra and British Somaliland. Our backs against the wall, with America still an ocean of promises away, we acquiesced.

The Italian army, long derided in British circles for its pomp and poor performance in Ethiopia, underwent a quiet transformation. New motorized divisions were trained under German advisers. Air force squadrons adopted modern Italian-German hybrid doctrine. The Regia Marina constructed new destroyers with German sonar. Reports from Turkey indicated that Italian tactical efficiency had improved markedly.

Mussolini's long game was most evident in Palestine. Having taken in Jewish refugees from Germany. Italy allied the Lehi, a radical Zionist faction to train and indoctrinate Jewish settlers across Italian refugee camps. Italy then funneled arms and began to snuggle the Lehi into Palestine. British Mandate forces soon faced low-intensity warfare: bombings in Haifa, assassinations in Tel Aviv, sabotage of rail lines in the Negev. After ceding Socotra and Somaliland, Italy promised to cease all aid—but support continued through shadowy intermediaries.

To bleed Mussolini back, we turned Syria into a cauldron. Free French forces, supplied by Britain, waged guerrilla war in Aleppo and Homs. In retaliation, Mussolini withdrew support for the Golden Square coup in Iraq—handing the conspirators to us in exchange for Free French withdrawal from Syria. A grim arithmetic of empire: Iraq's oil fields in return for Lebanon and Damascus.

The most brazen Italian action came in 1941, with Operation Nikephoros: the joint Greek-Italian invasion of Turkey. Greece, under the fascist General Pangalos after a Mussolini-backed coup, struck east with promises of restoring Byzantium. The Turks resisted fiercely. British arms flowed into Anatolia. Free French units fought in Hatay. But the invaders prevailed. By winter, Constantinople was Greek once more; Antioch, Adana, and Cilicia became part of Italy's grotesque puppet state of Greater Syria.

For Britain, the implications were dire. A newly energized, ideologically committed, and militarily modernized Italy now dominated the Mediterranean basin—from Casablanca to the Levant. Even neutral, Mussolini hemmed us in.

Then came December 16, 1941—a day historians would long debate.

That morning, Pope Pius XII issued a thunderous encyclical: a denunciation of Nazism, the Holocaust, and the Nazi regime as a diabolic cult. Excommunication was declared for party members. The Holy See had spoken.

That evening, Italian bombers struck Ploiești, Romania's vital oil fields. Italy had declared war on Germany.

The world shifted.

Italian alpine divisions surged into Bavaria and Austria. Wehrmacht units, stretched on the Russian front and bleeding in the Balkans, could not withstand the blow. Mutinies erupted in Trieste and Vienna. German morale collapsed in Alsace and Provence. Italian-backed Lehi forces turned their fury against German agents and Arab collaborators. In one stroke, Mussolini reinvented himself as the champion of European redemption.

Even more astonishing was his crowning of Louis XX—a Bonapartist pretender—as "King of the French" in liberated Reims, with Catholic monarchists and former Vichy officials hailing the rebirth of a Gallic throne.

By early 1942, the Mediterranean was no longer a British lake—it was Mussolini's Mare Nostrum in all but name. Our empire still stood, but the corridors through which it moved now twisted through Italian-dominated skies and waters. Our reliance on American aid became absolute. The Indian Congress grew restive; whispers of Italian support for Hindu nationalists reached our ears. The global web of British influence frayed.

Yet we had survived. Britain, battered but unbeaten, stood alone—and then not alone.

The cost of Italian neutrality had been high. But had they entered the war against us in 1939, the Empire may well have perished.

And Mussolini? That strange Caesar of the South had played the greatest game of all. First a neutral, then a parasite, then a liberator. He had built a Third Way empire from the bones of France and the dreams of empire.

But we had endured. And history, I was certain, would judge endurance above all.


Note: alt hist is down wtf??????!!!!
 
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From Russia with occupation New
An Excerpt from Alexander Solynctyhn's 1960 Book The Motherland: The Fight for Russia


In the autumn of 1939, as the world plunged into war over Poland, the Soviet Union stood paradoxically aloof and alert. Stalin had signed his pact with Hitler, that strange dance of devils, and reclaimed eastern Poland, Bessarabia, and the Baltic states. But within the chambers of the Kremlin, a deep unease persisted. The purges had thinned the officer corps; the factories still crawled with informants; and the workers, hungry and stooped, chanted slogans they did not believe.


The Winter War with Finland was supposed to be a three-week campaign. It lasted over three months. Soviet troops bogged down in the snow and forest, harassed by Finnish ski patrols and destroyed by invisible snipers. Stalin had gutted his generals—Tukhachevsky was long gone—and the Red Army, bloated with political officers and short on competence, suffered grievous losses.

But when the Italians intervened—an unexpected, theatrical gesture—everything changed.

The Duce's son, Benito Albino Mussolini, was captured and displayed like some Roman antique in Soviet custody. He became a propaganda jewel for Mussolini after his stunning refusal to release him in return for ending Italian intervention. Stalin's hand was forced, and the Soviets grudgingly allowed the Italians to negotiate a peace, permitting Stalin to save face and claim Karelia. The islands of the Gulf of Finland were leased, but it was a moral retreat. Stalin ordered reforms in secret: he brought back sidelined officers, streamlined production chains, and reorganized front-line command structures into combined-arms units. The Red Army was learning.


When Mussolini visited Moscow in December 1940, ostensibly to discuss a trade deal, the Soviet politburo watched him like a curious leopard. He spoke with exaggerated courtesy. But what he actually bought was information—German troop movements, factory orders, tank brigades massing along the border, that and a chilling prediction: "You are next"—shook Stalin. But what came next was even more stunning, a new Molotov Ribbentrop, one that spanned 3 continents rather than Europe.


That week, Russia began to reinforce the western frontier. Five tank armies were quietly repositioned. Airfields near Minsk, Vitebsk, and Kiev began to expand. Soviet spies in Berlin were told to watch the Wehrmacht's fuel shipments. And by January 1941, the Soviets had issued a new field manual—one that prioritized mobility, anti-tank tactics, and layered defense.


Stalin, though, did not trust anyone. He suspected Hitler but distrusted Mussolini more. He increased gulag quotas for "defeatists" and "foreign sympathizers." Meanwhile, in the factories, the Soviet war economy, accelerated by five-year plans and the fear of invasion, began churning out tanks—KV-1s, T-34s—and the new Yak-1 fighter. Women worked day and night; children scrounged scrap metal; prisoners mined Siberian mountains. The Motherland was arming herself.


On May 30, 1941, German armor surged across the Soviet frontier. Hitler had grown impatient and mistrustful of Mussolini's maneuverings in the Balkans and Middle East. But the Red Army was not caught sleeping.


The Luftwaffe found hardened airfields and dispersed fighters. The Panzer divisions were slowed by scorched earth tactics and well-placed minefields. Kiev did not fall until December. Leningrad was encircled but not taken. Minsk and Smolensk became a warzone. Stalin, unflinching, refused to flee Moscow and ordered the NKVD to execute any commander who retreated without authorization.


The Soviet Union did not collapse. It bled—and bled its enemy in turn.


Then came December 16, 1941.


The Pope, an unlikely savior, spoke. Evidence of the Holocaust reached the Vatican through Italian channels. He issued a bull declaring Nazism a heresy and excommunicated the German army. Riots began in Prague. Railroads exploded in Poland. French collaborators in Algiers defected. The German war machine, already stretched thin from the Atlantic to Kiev, began to shudder.


The Soviets had heard rumors. When it came, Stalin did not celebrate. He stood over his war map, puffing his pipe, and muttered: "So. The jackal bleeds from a thousand cuts."


He knew this moment would change everything. Italy had entered the war. The Allies would follow. But Stalin—calculating, cold, brutal—was already thinking about that conversation he had with Mussolini back in 1940 about the postwar order, about Warsaw, Berlin, and Tehran.

The Motherland had endured its fire. Now came its iron march forward.

By the end of December 1941, the Soviet Union had gotten past the worst Germany bought to bear upon it: it had pushed the Wehrmacht back, reclaiming much of the ground lost during the catastrophic months of Operation Barbarossa. The Soviet winter offensive was a ruthless display of military might—a testament to the resilience of the Motherland. Soviet forces, hardened by years of purges and the crushing weight of history, advanced at a pace not seen since the tsarist days of imperial conquest. For the first time since the invasion, the Germans were on the back foot.

The Red Army surged forward in a well-coordinated attack, exploiting the now demoralized German lines. Infantry units, followed closely by mechanized corps and elite shock divisions, advanced relentlessly, driving westward through the snow-clad wastelands of Ukraine, Belarus, and Poland. By Christmas Eve, the Red Army was only fifty kilometers from its pre-Barbarossa borders, marking a stunning reversal of fortune. The Soviets had recaptured vital territory in the north and the south, and the German invasion was officially in retreat.


The harsh winter, with its icy winds and unrelenting snowstorms, favored the Soviet soldiers—battle-hardened, equipped with winter clothing, and supported by a home-front economy that churned out weapons at an ever-accelerating pace. The Wehrmacht, already devastated by the Soviet counteroffensive, had no such advantage. Their supply lines were fractured, their winter gear inadequate, and their morale shattered.


It was during this period of desperate collapse that a break within the German military ranks began. The commanders of the three German army groups, disillusioned by Hitler's interference, horrified by the atrocities committed by the SS, and wanting to stall the Soviet advance in light of papal and protestant condemnation of its army began to fracture from the Reich. These officers, who had once fought loyally under the banner of the Nazi regime reorganized themselves. They formed the Free German Army.


But even as they broke away from the Reich, the Free German Army found itself besieged on all sides. Their supplies were minimal, their communications spotty at best, and they had no real strategic advantage. Cut off from the industrial heart of Nazi Germany, these soldiers were forced to retreat into the wilderness of Eastern Europe, with only the barest of resources to sustain them. The Soviet juggernaut pressed onward, its inexorable march unstoppable.


The Wehrmacht remnants, which had either failed to join the Free German Army or had remained loyal to Hitler's regime, now found themselves caught between two nightmares: the Soviet assault and the unrelenting hunt of the SS. These men led a relentless and pointless campaign of terror, herding whatever remnants of the Wehrmacht they could find into mass graves like the einzatsgruppen did to their victims.

Yet even the SS, with its relentless brutality, could not halt the Soviet juggernaut.

By January 15, 1942, the Soviet offensive had reached a key objective—the ruins of Warsaw. The city, once a proud symbol of Polish culture and resilience, had been reduced to a grotesque palimpsest of destruction. Burnt-out ghettos, bombed-out cathedrals, and shattered German outposts stood as monuments to the madness that had gripped Europe.


Marshal Zhukov's forces entered the city with a mixture of exhaustion and grim determination. The streets were lined with the shattered remnants of both the German and Polish peoples. In the aftermath of the German occupation, the city had become a battlefield, and the ghettos were places of unimaginable suffering. The Free German Army, having retreated to Warsaw from its positions along the Vistula River, made one final stand. But the remnants of their ranks, demoralized and poorly equipped, could not withstand the might of the Soviet assault. They did not fight to the death.


Instead, most of the Free German Army units surrendered, giving up their weapons and surrendering to the advancing Soviet forces. Some retreated westward into the dense forests of Pomerania, hoping to regroup and perhaps continue the struggle against both the Soviets and their former Nazi overlords. Others disappeared into the civilian population, hoping to escape the wrath of both the Red Army and the SS.


A few, including remnants of General Erich Hoepner's command, fought brief and futile delaying actions along the Vistula River. They knew the end was near, but pride and duty to their soldiers forced them to engage in futile resistance. Soviet artillery, however, soon pulverized them, erasing any hope of a final, heroic defense.


By the time the last German units surrendered in Warsaw, the city had become a symbol of Europe's profound disillusionment. The Germans, who had come to Poland as conquerors, now left it a hollow shell. Their vaunted "new order" had turned to ash, and the Free German Army—broken, fragmented, and leaderless—had no future.


The defeat in Warsaw marked a turning point in the war. The Soviet Union had reclaimed much of the ground lost in 1941, and with it, had gained the momentum. The Nazis, now facing internal disarray, were caught in a vice between the Soviets to the east, the growing unrest within their own ranks, the Italians from the south and the British from the west.


Stalin, in a speech to the people, declared: "The Motherland is free again. The enemy will never return." And while the Germans would continue to fight, the Soviet Union's victory was undeniable.


As the Free German Army dissipated into the forests and the SS rampaged through the streets, it was clear that the world was shifting. The fight for Europe was no longer a question of who would rule—it was now a question of survival. The Germans, unable to stop the Soviets, were on the brink of collapse.


In the coming months, the Red Army would push deeper into Europe, reclaiming what was lost, and with every mile, the Reich's stranglehold on the continent weakened further. The Motherland was not just surviving—she was becoming the hammer that would shatter the Nazi regime forever.


January 25, 1942, marked a moment of profound political recalibration in the crumbling ruins of the old world order. In the snow-blanketed Crimean town of Yalta, beneath an eerie fog that seemed to cloak both the landscape and the gravity of the meeting, Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin came face to face and formally announced the agreement they came to back in December 1940.


The following day, on January 26, 1942, the Treaty of Yalta was signed, a pact that carved Europe, Asia, and Africa into brutal new divisions, drawn both along ideological lines, and along the lines of power and survival. The treaty formalized the division of Europe, Africa and Asia between two power blocs, both determined to impose their own vision of the future.


According to the treaty, everything south of Saxony, extending down to Austria, would become the Kingdom of Greater Austria, a state under Mussolini's influence. The House of Savoy would be placed in a personal union with the Kingdom of Italy, solidifying the Duce's control over the southern half of the continent. With this pact, Mussolini began to lay the groundwork for a New Roman Empire, centered not in Rome but in a far broader, more expansive vision that stretched from the Adriatic to the edges of the Mediterranean and beyond. The middle east, save for turkey and Iran would go to Italy, as would all of Africa.


Soviet Union would be awarded the entire north of Europe. Everything from Berlin, through Mecklenburg, and down to the Dutch border, would be transformed into the German People's Republic—a brutal communist buffer state. The political heart of Germany would now be under Soviet control, its infrastructure and resources exploited for the benefit of the expanding Soviet machine. This was not merely a victory over Nazism; this was a conquest of the very German soul, reshaped in the image of Stalinist socialism.


The Netherlands, Czech Republic, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark would fall under Soviet influence, as would all of Asia, including India, Japan, and China. The Red Army would stand as the bulwark against Western imperialism, and Stalin's dreams of a worldwide communist revolution took a step toward becoming reality.


This new order, drawn in the icy halls of Yalta, was a perverse marriage of Stalinist collectivism and Fascist authoritarianism, forged not in the pursuit of human freedom but in the preservation of the very systems of oppression that had torn Europe apart.


For Winston Churchill, the absence of the British voice at the Yalta table was a humiliation beyond measure. Britain, having long played the role of a global hegemon, now found itself excluded from the carving of the continent. The Foreign Office in London was livid at the betrayal. The diplomats stationed in Rome, long considered allies of Mussolini's regime, were blindsided. They had been kept in the dark, never warned of the secret negotiations taking place between the Soviet Union and Italy.


When news of the Treaty of Yalta broke, it sent shockwaves through Whitehall. Churchill's outrage reverberated across the British government like a thunderclap. The man who had once stood as the steadfast leader of a united front against fascism found himself relegated to the role of an impotent spectator in a world now divided by powers he could neither control nor confront. The British public, once resolute in its resolve, now found itself questioning the future of their empire and its place in a Europe controlled by two totalitarian giants.


Churchill's voice, a rallying cry for the free world, now rang hollow as he faced the dual threats of Mussolini's Italy and Stalin's Soviet Union—powers that were far more ruthless in their calculations than the Nazi regime had ever been. His warnings, once heeded by the world, were now viewed as the rantings of a man who had lost his grasp on the direction of history.


The Treaty of Yalta had sealed the fate of Europe, Africa and Asia. Carving it between the spheres of Stalinist Russia and Fascist Italy. The continent, already shattered by years of war, found itself further divided—not by lines of national sovereignty, but by a cynical balance of power that favored the most ruthless of the two totalitarian behemoths. Yet as Stalin consolidated his control over the eastern half of Europe, Mussolini sought to build his own empire to the south, pushing further into North Africa and the Mediterranean.


But Winston Churchill, ever the tactician, could not afford to sit idly by as Europe descended into a new era of oppression. The shifting winds of war were upon him, and his understanding of the global balance of power had become clearer than ever. A long-feared consequence of the Yalta Treaty was taking shape, and Churchill, realizing the importance of the Atlantic powers—the United Kingdom, the United States, and their potential allies—took immediate action.


Having already liberated Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands; the united kingdom began to reach out to their newly restored governments as well as Sweden and Finland which now stood in danger of being absorbed into the Soviet sphere after Yalta.


These immediate diplomatic maneuvers began to bear fruit when the Netherlands on February 1, 1942 formally signed a defense pact with the UK and the United States. The Netherlands would stand with the Atlantic powers in the fight against the growing threat of Soviet communism and Fascist imperialism.


Norway, following close behind, signed its pact with Britain and the United States on February 3, and just two days later, Sweden, long a neutral power in Europe, agreed to join the alliance on February 5. This marked a historic shift in Scandinavian politics, as Sweden, driven by both fear of the Soviet expansion to the east and admiration for the resilience of Britain and the United States, began to align itself with the Atlantic powers.


But the most dramatic shift occurred in Finland, a nation that had been deeply scarred by the Winter War with the Soviet Union in 1939 and the betrayal it had felt from the collapse of Continental Europe. Finland, too, had reluctantly fallen under the influence of the Italian-aligned Axis powers in the wake of the Yalta agreement. But by February 7, 1942, the Finnish government, led by Marshal Mannerheim, cast aside its fear of Soviet reprisal and officially turned to the United States and United Kingdom. Finland joined the Atlantic Pact, marking the fourth nation to formally ally with the West. It was a symbolic and strategic victory, showing that even the most bitter of former enemies could seek common cause in the face of the shared threat from the Soviet Union and the Fascist states. Shortly after Finland joined the nascent Atlantic alliance did Denmark join in as well. In less than a month after the Yalta treaty was signed, the soviets were hemmed in the Baltic sea.


Less than two weeks after Finland's formal entry into the Atlantic Pact, British and American troops landed in Helsinki. On February 15, the city erupted into cheers as the first foreign boots touched the snow-covered streets. Finnish citizens lined the streets, waving flags and singing national songs. The very streets that had once been the site of bitter conflict during the Winter War were now filled with Allied forces that had arrived not as conquerors but as liberators.


The mood in Helsinki was one of exuberance, but it was also a mood of reckoning. For the first time in years, Finland was free from the shadow of the Axis powers, but also free from the looming threat of Soviet control. The Allied soldiers mingled with Finnish civilians, their voices drowned out by the cheers of the crowd. Swedish, Norwegian, and Finnish officials greeted the arrival of the troops with visible relief, as the West was seen as their last hope to stave off Soviet aggression.

The Finnish government's decision to align itself with the Atlantic powers in the final months of the Second World War was not without profound consequences. In a move that upended decades of precarious neutrality and regional diplomacy, Helsinki openly sided with the Allies, drawing the ire of the Soviet Union. Stalin, enraged by what he perceived as a betrayal and a direct threat to his northern sphere of influence, began rapidly deploying Red Army units to the Finnish border. Thus began what would come to be known as the Karelia Crisis—a tense and uncertain chapter in Finnish history, marked not by dramatic declarations of war, but by the quiet, ominous advance of Allied troops across the snow-blanketed fields of Karelia.


Throughout the bitter weeks that followed, from late February into May 1941, a dangerous standoff unfolded along the frontier. On one side stood Soviet divisions, hardened by years of brutal warfare against Nazi Germany. On the other, an unlikely coalition of Finnish, British, and American troops entrenched themselves in hastily fortified positions. Both sides were unyielding, unwilling to cede ground or influence. Tensions ran high, with the specter of a wider conflict looming large over Scandinavia.


Yet even as this crisis simmered in the north, Soviet forces continued to surge deeper into the crumbling heart of the Third Reich. Exploiting the collapse of German resistance, Red Army units pushed forward, seizing swathes of territory with alarming speed. What had begun as a regional flashpoint in Karelia soon rippled outward, culminating in open confrontations in central Europe. In early April, mere days after the official declaration of victory in Europe, British and Soviet troops found themselves in a tense standoff on the outskirts of Hamburg. Meanwhile, Danish units supplemented by British and American Troops found themselves standing against advancing Soviet forces just outside Flensburg.


Amid this mounting crisis, a surprising voice once again emerged as a mediator: Benito Mussolini. Having been the architect of the treaty of Yalta now sought to recast Fascist Italy as a stabilizing force in postwar Europe, Mussolini proposed a new round of peace talks. Recognizing the Soviet Union's immense sacrifices and territorial gains, he suggested that negotiations be held in Moscow—both as a gesture of respect and as a strategic move to ensure Soviet cooperation.


On May 1, 1941, for the second time during the war, Mussolini traveled to the Soviet capital, accompanied by a delegation of Italian diplomats and military advisers. There, in the halls of the Kremlin, the leaders of the great powers—Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, and Mussolini himself—convened to address the escalating tensions. The talks would prove critical in shaping the fragile peace that was to follow, marking not just the resolution of the Karelia Crisis, but also the beginning of a new, uncertain order in postwar Europe.
 
America, fuck yeah? New
Excerpt from "The Eagle Hesitates No More: A Political, Economic, and Military History of the United States, 1939–1942" by Harry S Truman (1955)

The United States of America entered the Second World War not with a thunderclap, but with the whisper of preparation. Between the fall of Poland in 1939 and the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the American republic transitioned from weary isolationism to strategic assertiveness. This transformation, accelerated and sharpened by the unprecedented intervention of Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini in early 1941, would define not just the course of the war, but the American century that followed.

In the immediate aftermath of Germany's invasion of Poland, the United States reaffirmed its neutrality. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, sensitive to the prevailing mood of the public and to the political strength of the isolationist bloc in Congress, steered a cautious course. The Neutrality Acts of the 1930s were amended in late 1939 to permit "Cash and Carry" arms sales to Britain and France, but no American lives were yet risked.

Economically, the U.S. was climbing out of the Depression, aided now by the war in Europe. Defense spending picked up, factories hummed again, and unemployment, though still significant, began to decline. The South saw a modest boom as military bases expanded; Detroit retooled for war. But politically, Roosevelt was constrained. The America First Committee surged in popularity, and figures like Charles Lindbergh and Senator Gerald Nye warned against "foreign entanglements."

Yet Roosevelt, increasingly aware of Nazi ambitions and concerned with global instability, quietly laid the foundations of rearmament. By 1940, the Selective Training and Service Act instituted the first peacetime draft. Roosevelt's re-election to an unprecedented third term in November 1940, with Henry Wallace as his vice president, signaled public trust in his leadership—but also left him with a delicate mandate: arm, but do not yet fight.

The early months of 1941 marked a sharp turn in global and American history. While Germany had stunned Europe with victories over France and the Low Countries, Italy under Mussolini had defied expectations—not by joining Hitler's conquests, but by carving out a Third Path. Italy remained technically neutral but had expanded aggressively across North Africa, the Balkans, and the Levant under the auspices of the Rome Pact. More provocatively, Mussolini began resettling European Jews in Italian territory and quietly funneled arms to Jewish Zionist paramilitaries in Palestine.

Then came April 12, 1941—the day Mussolini arrived in Washington, D.C., under heavy secrecy.

The meeting between Mussolini, Roosevelt, and Wallace was one of the most closely guarded events in American diplomatic history. On the surface, he was there to negotiate a grain deal. But according to now-declassified OSS records and the Roosevelt Diaries, Mussolini presented:

Intercepted German orders for Operation Barbarossa, the planned invasion of the Soviet Union.

Japanese naval codes and detailed strike plans for an attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, obtained through Italian spies in Tokyo.

Early photographs and testimonies proving the existence of German death squads and concentration camps in Poland and Ukraine, painting a chilling picture of what Mussolini called "a war against the Jewish people."

Mussolini's offer was startling: Italy would join the war against Germany and Japan if the United States recognized Italian conquests in North Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East. Italy would serve as a Mediterranean bulwark against Nazi expansionism and fascist Japan, and would recognize an eventual Allied order in Europe, including a sovereign Jewish state under Italian protection in Palestine.

Roosevelt and Wallace, stunned by both the intelligence and the opportunity, agreed to the Atlantic Understanding, a secret accord to coordinate joint entry into the war. The U.S. would begin preparing for total war. In exchange, the U.S. would de facto recognize Italian hegemony over its newly formed "Mediterranean Community."

After the Mussolini-Roosevelt summit, American rearmament accelerated dramatically. Though still not officially at war, the following actions took place:

Pearl Harbor and Pacific bases received high-priority reinforcements. Admiral Kimmel was replaced by Admiral Nimitz. Radar installations were installed. The USS Enterprise and Lexington were kept at sea.

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) began intense monitoring of japanese activity in the pacific and German activity in Europe.

Lend-Lease was extended to the Soviet union and was intensified to Britain.

By the fall, American industrial output surged. The War Production Board began quietly seizing civilian production capacities. Aircraft production doubled. Steel mills in Pittsburgh and the Midwest ran non-stop. Roosevelt addressed the nation weekly, increasingly warning of the fascist danger without yet naming Japan or Germany as targets.

December 7, 1941—the day Japan struck Pearl Harbor—unfolded very differently to what the Japanese were planning.

The Japanese attack did come—but American preparations ensured disaster for the attackers. On the morning of December 7, American radar stations detected incoming squadrons. Anti-aircraft gunners were at the ready. Aircraft were dispersed across airfields. Key battleships were out at sea conducting exercises. When the first bombs fell, the U.S. Navy responded with practiced efficiency.

Only the USS Nevada and Ogala were damaged. Four Japanese carriers were sunk by counterattacks from U.S. torpedo bombers and land-based squadrons. Japan lost nearly 200 planes and thousands of trained pilots. The Battle of Pearl Harbor—as it came to be called—was the first major Allied victory of the Pacific War.

Roosevelt, now with the full support of Congress and the American people, declared war on Japan on December 8, 1941, and on Nazi Germany and its allies on December 9, invoking both the attack and the Holocaust evidence as causes for intervention. Mussolini declared war on Germany less than 10 days later, the same day the pope exposed the holocaust. The global alliance—Britain, Italy, the U.S., and their growing partners—was now at war with the Axis.

By December 17, 1941, the United States stood armed, mobilized, and allied with both old enemies and new friends in a global war unlike any in human history. The pivot had been rapid, but not haphazard. It had required extraordinary foresight, unlikely diplomacy, and the willingness of leaders on both sides of the Atlantic to abandon old paradigms.

The America of 1939, proud and cautious, had become by 1941 the arsenal of democracy—and, paradoxically, the shield of a strange but functional Mediterranean Empire.

History, as ever, unfolded not as it must, but as it might.


----------------

Excerpt from "Steel Beneath the Waves: The Recollections of Admiral Chester W. Nimitz"
Published posthumously in 1963 by the Naval Institute Press


"We did not win by luck. We won because, for the first time in a long while, we listened to the warning of silence. The silence of Italian couriers. The silence of encrypted Japanese orders. The silence before the storm."

— Adm. Chester W. Nimitz

I was not yet Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet on that December morning, though my orders were in motion. Admiral Husband Kimmel had been relieved quietly on November 17 after a tense consultation in Washington. We had known the Japanese were planning something. President Roosevelt had been informed by Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini—of all men—that a strike in the Pacific was imminent. The name Pearl was mentioned directly in the documents Mussolini turned over.

Thanks to that warning, by December 1, the Pacific Fleet was at a heightened state of readiness. We implemented what would later be known as Operation Kamehameha, a layered defense of the Hawaiian Islands:

All battleships were placed on ready steam rotation: at least four would be at sea or under power at all times.

Fighters and patrol aircraft were rotated across inland fields to avoid clustering.

Mobile radar stations had been installed across Oahu and trained crews were ordered to report any activity.

Anti-aircraft gunners were given live-fire drills daily. Live ammunition was stored ready at the guns, against prior peacetime regulation.

Even so, I did not expect them to come when they did. And I certainly did not expect what happened next.

At 03:42 HST on December 7, a pair of Army radar operators at Opana Point detected an unusual radar signature—more than a hundred contacts inbound from the north. The USS Ward had already reported and engaged a midget submarine near the harbor entrance around 03:30.

Thanks to recent changes in doctrine, the report from Opana was not dismissed. It reached CINCPAC HQ within four minutes. I was roused from sleep at 04:10 by Captain Jasper Holmes and immediately ordered:

All ships to battle stations.

CAP (Combat Air Patrol) launched from Hickam and Wheeler Fields.

Anti-aircraft positions manned and ammunition unlocked.

Harbor anti-torpedo nets deployed, and destroyers positioned at the mouth of the harbor.

At 06:12, the first wave of Japanese aircraft descended upon Pearl. But this was not the surprise they had planned.

The first group, composed of 43 Nakajima B5N torpedo bombers, met heavy resistance before reaching the harbor mouth. Two were downed before they released. Our torpedo nets and patrolling destroyers—particularly the USS Helm and Ward—intercepted several others. Of the 40 that survived to attack, only eight successfully released their torpedoes, and only one made contact—damaging the USS Ogala (a minelayer). She would be raised and repaired months later.

The second group of dive bombers aimed for Battleship Row. But our ships were not anchored like a sitting duck. They were at sea, running a decoy exercise south of Oahu. In their place was the USS Nevada, under tow for refitting—barely armed.

The Nevada took two bomb hits but her crew fought fires swiftly and kept her afloat. Damage was minimal.

Our fighter squadrons—scrambled at 05:20—intercepted the third wave. Led by pilots like Lt. John Thach, they downed 29 planes in the sky. Our airmen, many trained under expanded Italian-American exchange programs started earlier that year, outperformed their Japanese counterparts, who had expected no aerial opposition.

By 08:30, the Japanese had lost the element of surprise, more than 70 aircraft, and two destroyers sunk by torpedo from our submarines and PBY Catalinas.

But it was at 09:03 that the counterstroke came.

The Enterprise, warned of the attack, launched every available aircraft within minutes of first contact. Dive bombers located the Japanese carriers Akagi, Kaga, Sōryū, and Hiryū roughly 170 miles north of Oahu.

A joint strike force from Enterprise and Lexington, supported by Marine dive bombers, struck the Japanese task force in successive waves between 10:30 and 13:00.

The Akagi and Sōryū were ablaze by noon.

The Kaga was hit in her magazines by a bomb dropped by Ensign George Gay.

The Hiryū launched a retaliatory strike that crippled the USS Salt Lake City, but she would survive.

By 14:15, three of the four Japanese carriers were sunk. Hiryū was scuttled by her crew at 16:47 to avoid capture.

The Japanese fleet withdrew in chaos.

We called it The Battle of Pearl Harbor, but it was no massacre. It was a stand. The first American naval victory in World War II. We lost 74 dead. One battleship damaged. One light cruiser scuttled to avoid fire spread. The Japanese lost over 3,100 men, four carriers, nearly 200 planes, and the myth of invincibility.

In the days that followed, Congress declared war, not only on Japan but on Nazi Germany and its allies. And in that declaration, we included evidence—photographs, intercepts, survivor testimony—of Germany's mass extermination of Jews in Poland and Ukraine. Evidence given to us, improbably, by Mussolini.

The Battle of Pearl Harbor was not the end of the beginning. It was the beginning of the end for fascism.

And I was honored to be there—steel beneath the waves, standing ready.

---------------------

Excerpt from "The Eagle Hesitates No More: A Political, Economic, and Military History of the United States, 1939–1941" by Harry S Truman (1955)

"We had planned for a long war. What we got was a revolution—a geopolitical collapse unlike any since the fall of Rome. And somehow, the man who started it all—Benito Mussolini—ended it with a treaty, a federation, and a crown for someone else."
— Secretary of State Cordell Hull, memoirs, 1952

Just ten days after the failed Japanese strike at Pearl Harbor, the Vatican issued the most consequential papal bull of the 20th century: Crux Iustitiae. Pope Pius XII, under pressure from documents provided by Italian intelligence and growing public knowledge of the Holocaust, excommunicated en masse the entirety of the German military, Nazi leadership, and their collaborators.

The result was instantaneous and cataclysmic.

Within 48 hours:

Riots erupted in Paris, Vienna, and Prague.

Desertions among Catholic Wehrmacht units skyrocketed.

Polish and French resistance surged, receiving arms from Italy via Corsica and Marseilles.

Anti-Nazi uprisings broke out in Alsace, Bavaria, and Slovakia.

The Vatican's declaration shattered any remaining myth of moral legitimacy in Hitler's regime. Mussolini had gambled that the Church's moral authority would break the dam of German control. He was right.

By December 22, chaos reigned in occupied France. With the Vichy regime evaporating, the Germans tried to hold Paris but lacked the manpower. Into this vacuum stepped a surprising figure: Ambassador André François-Poncet, once the French representative to Rome, now proclaimed Prime Minister of a "Free Kingdom of France."

Backed by Italian paratroopers, defecting Vichy officers, and Catholic resistance militias, de Roux declared the restoration of the monarchy. On January 27, 1942, in a lavish ceremony at Reims Cathedral attended by Mussolini and Pope Pius XII, Louis Napoléon VI—a distant Bonaparte—was crowned King of the French.

France was not restored to its old borders, however. In a shocking reordering of Europe, France ceded Syria, Corsica, nice and Algeria to Italy in return for:

Belgium (excluding Flanders which was occupied by the Netherlands)

Luxembourg

The Rhineland up to the Rhine

The Belgian Congo

Savoy was quietly reintegrated into France, as was Wallonia following a sham referendum.


While the Americans prepared for a Pacific island-hopping campaign, Europe fell like dominoes.

Soon after, the diplomatic world was rocked again.

The Treaty of Yalta, signed January 27, 1942 between Mussolini and Stalin, divided the globe into two spheres:

Italian Sphere: Africa, the Middle East, southern Germany, Italy, the Balkans, Iberia.

Soviet Sphere: Eastern Europe (except Austria), Central Asia, China, Korea, Japan, India.

Stalin agreed in exchange for Mussolini's support in post-war reconstruction and tacit permission to "Sovietize" Asia. The Americans and British were not consulted—nor were they in a position to stop it.

In the dying weeks of the Reich, Italy launched Operation Sapienza, a daring plan to seize Nazi technological assets before the Allies or Soviets.

Heisenberg was taken from a train bound for Königsberg by Italian commandos. Entire SS experimental teams surrendered in Bavaria to Italian alpine troops, who promised clemency and pensions.

Italian trains hauled out:

V-2 and A-9 rocket components.

Early jet aircraft prototypes.

Uranium stockpiles.

Nuclear research from the Peenemünde complex.

Rome and Turin became the new capitals of theoretical physics.

On December 17, 1941, elite Italian paratroopers seized the Belgian royal palace in Brussels. King Leopold III narrowly escaped to Amsterdam. Wallonia fell within 72 hours as Vichy defectors rallied to Italian command.

A referendum was held under Italian supervision—Wallonia "voted" overwhelmingly in favor of annexation to France. Luxembourg followed two days later. The Rhineland was placed under French-Italian "joint administration."

Flanders, sensing its doom, declared independence and begged for Dutch protection. It would soon be occupied then annexed by the Netherlands.

By mid-January, British-led forces liberated:

The Netherlands (including Amsterdam).

Denmark and Norway.

North Germany up to Saxony.

The Karelia Crisis began on February 15, 1942, when British troops landed in Finland and made their way to Karelia. A tense standoff that would last until may.

Winston Churchill diverted troops from the German front, weakening the western buffer and allowing Soviet expansion deeper into Germany. An Anglo-Soviet standoff at Hamburg nearly sparked war.

On February 8, 1942, Mussolini stood before a banner reading "Unione per la Libertà" and declared the formation of the Global Federation of Free Alliances, a rebranded League of Nations.

He invited Spain, and France to the innaguration of their organization. Then invaded the US, UK and USSR to join, and declared his support for:

An end to racism and antisemitism.

A gradual decolonization of Africa.

Self-determination under "cultural stewardship."

In practice, however, this was little more than colonization with a Roman accent. The newly created Organization of African Unity and Liberation (OAUL) promised African independence—with Italian advisors, banks, troops, and influence at every level.

The Free French, led by de Gaulle, remained exiled in Brazzaville and Dakar, refusing to recognize King Louis Napoléon. Tensions simmered.

In less than three months, the world had shattered and reformed:

Germany was gone.

France was a monarchy again.

Mussolini was hailed as a peacemaker in some quarters—and as a manipulative imperialist in others.

Africa became the next great battleground—not of war, but of influence.

The United States, stunned, watched the pieces fall—somewhere between a victory and a trap.
 
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I'll take a side of Germany with that New
May 1, 1942
The Kremlin
Moscow, USSR


The beef stroganoff on my plate looked like it had been scooped straight from the boots of a Red Army conscript—lukewarm, grayish, and suspiciously gelatinous. Still, I forced it down like a good guest, chewing resentfully under the flickering chandelier of Stalin's ice palace. Somewhere between bites, my mind wandered back to an old buddy from my Peace Corps days—Jim. His dad worked State, a real American cowboy, and he used to tell me stories about his time in Moscow. "The city sucks," Jim said once, half-drunk off cheap beer and puffing a cigarette. "The people are colder than the weather, the food tastes like wet cardboard, and the sky? It's a slab of concrete that never ends."

He wasn't wrong. Not even slightly. Spring had technically arrived in Moscow, but the air still smelled like misery and metal. My allergies were acting up like a Soviet factory whistle—constant, nasal, and oppressive. My nose itched, my throat burned, and the pollen here felt like it had been engineered by the NKVD. Goddammit, I hated Moscow. Every brick of this city radiated a kind of gray, joyless authoritarian despair.

And yet, there I was—seated at a grand table with Joseph Motherfucking Stalin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Sir Winston Boozehound Churchill himself. The Titans of the Second World War. Three men who looked like they had just stepped out of different genres: Stalin a noir villain in a military frock, FDR a patrician ghost gliding on wheels and political gravity, Churchill a puffy bulldog with a cigar that smelled like colonialism and regret.

Each of them had their translators lined up behind them like backup dancers at a YMO concert. Stalin's interpreter looked particularly anxious, sweating bullets like he was about to do karaoke with a gun to his head. Stalin didn't speak English. What a tragedy. Maybe if he'd paid attention in school instead of writing moody Marxist poetry, he wouldn't be so reliant on some trembling nerd with a notebook.

Meanwhile, Roosevelt and Churchill were chatting amiably, murmuring between bites, probably scheming about how to screw me over in the postwar order. I didn't blame them. I would've hated me too. After all, I'd just pulled the geopolitical rug out from under their feet in Europe and Asia. Bold moves. Dumb ones, maybe. But bold. Roosevelt gave me a look like I'd just murdered a puppy in front of Eleanor. Churchill scowled like I'd poured tea into a urinal. I grinned and shrugged. I had Africa by Toto playing in my head like a looped mantra.

"I bless the rains down in Africa…" I thought, tapping my fingers on the table as if the Soviet-made silverware could carry the beat. No, scratch that. I wasn't blessing the rains—I was blessing the goddamn beef stroganoff. The only good thing I'd tasted in this frozen gulag of a capital. It was mushy, yes. But in that moment, it was salvation.

Across the table, Stalin sipped his tea like it contained the blood of Trotsky. The air was thick with smoke and mistrust. I caught Churchill whispering something to Roosevelt, probably something like "He's mad, that one," to which Roosevelt might have replied, "Yes, but maybe madmen are the only ones who can survive this century."

In my head, the soundtrack shifted—Mariya Takeuchi's Plastic Love. I imagined myself in a neon-lit Moscow club that didn't exist, dancing with a ghost in shoulder pads and leg warmers, as KGB agents watched from the shadows, confused and aroused.

Back in reality, I stabbed another forkful of stroganoff, stared into Stalin's dead shark eyes, and smiled. I didn't belong here. Not in this timeline. Not in this century. But I'd be damned if I didn't steal the spotlight and soundtrack it with every synth beat from 1983 to 1989.

If the Cold War was going to happen, I was going to make it weird.

The stroganoff sat in my stomach like a Soviet tank—heavy, unpleasant, and likely to start a conflict if it moved again. The dinner plates had just been cleared, and the cigars came out. FDR lit his with a flick of statecraft and passive aggression. Churchill had already begun puffing on his second, eyes narrowed like a bulldog eyeing a suspicious mailman. Stalin, stone-faced and silent, toyed with his glass of Georgian brandy like it was a pistol.

Me? I was humming L'aventurier by Indochine in my head, eyes half-lidded, brain soaked in synth waves and 80s static. I missed my apartment. My PC. My girlfriend. The way she used to sing City pop songs in poor Japanese in the kitchen. Now I was here. At Yalta II: Electric Boogaloo, watching history split the world like a banana sundae—and I was the maraschino cherry in the middle.

It was painfully, hilariously obvious that Roosevelt and Churchill were furious—absolutely livid—at what Stalin and I had done. And honestly? I couldn't blame them. If I were in their shoes, watching history slip through my fingers while two lunatics from the East redrew the map with greasy fingers and trembling laughter, I'd be pissed too. But Stalin—oh, dear Stalin—was turning into a twitchy bundle of nerves and vodka-soaked paranoia. His eyes darted like rats in a sinking ship, and I could feel the old Bolshevik suspicion creeping back into his bloodstream. I had to reel him back in, remind him that we were brothers in mayhem, united not by ideology or morality, but by sheer opportunistic lunacy.

"Apes, together, strong," I whispered to myself. Time to be a bastard.

I pulled out a cigarette and lit it, menthols baby, the only good kind, all like I was about to accept a Nobel Prize for War Crimes and Melodrama. "I'd like to thank you, Mr. Churchill," I began, my voice lacquered in false politeness and barely restrained mockery. "Your unyielding commitment to fighting Germany, even after your army was driven into the sea at Dunkirk, was truly inspiring. In fact, it gave me and Comrade Stalin here the perfect window to carve Europe, asia and Africa into a new, improved, balance of power arrangement—just for us. And as for my beloved Italy? Why, you gifted us the chance to reclaim our mare nostrum under your nose—our blue, sunlit empire of waves and blood."

I paused for effect and smiled. No, grinned. A smug, radioactive grin that made everyone uncomfortable. Then, with deliberate slowness, I began smoking my ciggie.

Then I blew the smoke directly toward Roosevelt's direction, just to see if anyone would flinch.

The translator relayed my little speech to Stalin. For one brief, fleeting moment, I swear to God, the bastard smiled. Or maybe it was just the tremor of his vodka glass. Either way, I took it as a win.

FDR cleared his throat like a man who'd just swallowed a mouthful of barbed wire. "I think we need to discuss the... situation in northern Europe."

Ah yes. The situation. What a lovely euphemism for "the Soviets want to ice-skate across Scandinavia while the Yanks and Brits try not to piss themselves in the snow."

Churchill, ever the bulldog in tweed, leaned forward with that tired imperial gravitas of his. "We cannot, under any circumstances, permit Stalin to swallow Finland, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands. These are sovereign nations. Some of them, I dare say, are still civilised."

Stalin, calm as a corpse but with eyes like boiling tar, just lit another cigarette and stared through him. "These territories are in our agreed sphere. The Red Army bled itself dry taking Berlin, and yet the Western Allies prance about Bremen and Copenhagen as if they planted their flags there."

He wasn't wrong. We had agreed—just the two of us that the USSR could have the North, and I'd take the warm, blood-soaked, sun-kissed South. Stalin wanted the North Sea. I wanted the Mediterranean. The Americans could have whatever was left after history finished choking on itself.

Roosevelt smiled the way a man does when he knows a bomb is ticking under the table but hopes everyone will keep talking long enough to pretend it isn't.

"This isn't just a matter of zones," he said, his voice measured, presidential, already thinking about future headlines and legacy-defining memoirs. "It's about people's right to choose. Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands—they have governments-in-exile. We liberated them."

"Liberated?" Stalin snorted. "You dropped bombs from safe planes and marched into cities after we did the dying."

And then all eyes turned to me.

Because of course they did.

Because I was the lunatic wildcard in the room. The allegedly rehabilitated Duce. The Italian Phoenix risen from his fascist ashes with a smirk, a new haircut, and a head full of 1980s synth and emotional damage.

I took another menthol drag. "Gentlemen," I began, leaning back like I was hosting a late-night radio show in Tokyo, "you're both right and wrong. Churchill, you're defending countries whose kings fled at the first hint of jackboots. Roosevelt, you're selling freedom like it's a goddamn Ford while black people in your country get lynched for trying to vote and looking at a white person the wrong way. And Stalin, buddy, I love you, but you've got the bedside manner of a haunted sawmill."

Silence, the translator relayed everything to Stalin and he glared.

God, I missed the modern world. I missed bluetooth. I missed my phone. I missed my brothers, my girlfriend, my parent's, my Spotify playlist. I missed Akina Nakamori, damn it. I missed Toto—Africa, on repeat. I missed city pop playing through car speakers at 2 AM on empty highways lit by sodium lights and the soft ache of existential dread.

But here I was, wearing Mussolini's skin, faking it until I made it. And weirdly... I'd started to care. About Edda. About Romano. Even about that pompous bastard Ciano. We had dinners now. We laughed. Sometimes Anna Maria would cry, and I'd just hold her hand, like a father should.

Back in the room, Stalin was staring at me like I was a hallucination.

Roosevelt coughed again, likely trying not to say what everyone was thinking: Why is Mussolini suddenly the sanest man here?

I flicked my ash into an empty teacup.

"Let's be real. None of us are going to get everything we want. So here's my proposal," I said, grinning like a blackjack dealer at the end of the world. "Give Stalin Finland and northern Germany up to the dutch boder. Let him have his Baltic fetish. But Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands? They stay neutral. Buffer states. No Red Army, no NATO. Just IKEA, ABBA, and miserable winters. Agreed?"

Churchill looked like he'd swallowed a lemon whole. Stalin exhaled a long plume of smoke and muttered something to his aide. Roosevelt simply nodded—because this was politics. Ugly. Improvised. And very, very human.

History was being rewritten on the back of a napkin. Again.

I missed the modern world. An ordinary world, god that was a good song, I missed Duran Duran now.

May 7, 1942
The Kremlin
Moscow, USSR


The room grew heavy as the days passed and we negotiated—thick with smoke, screaming, pride, and the faint scent of rot from Europe's freshly severed limbs. Stalin drummed his fingers on the armrest like a man contemplating which parts of the map to eat next. Churchill sipped his whisky in slow, deliberate defiance. Roosevelt had his hands folded, eyes narrowing like he could will the Soviet Union back behind the Urals by squinting hard enough.

And I? I sat there feeling like I was watching a rerun of a bad Cold War sitcom, only this time, I was in the writer's room, and I'd run out of lithium three days ago. Now it was time for the finishing touches.

"I must insist," Stalin said in that flat, undentable voice of his, "that the islands in the Gulf of Finland be handed over. They are strategic necessities. A matter of national security."

Translation: I want to strangle the Baltic like a drunk uncle at a family reunion.

Churchill bristled. "You mean to isolate Helsinki entirely."

Stalin didn't blink. "Finland and Scandinavia has chosen your little Anglo-American alliance. This secures it for them."

Roosevelt gave a soft sigh, the kind that implied a thousand telegrams, dead sons, and re-election fatigue. "We can't hold those islands. Not without a war. And I'm not dragging America into another while we're busy with Japan."

"And north Germany?" I asked, stirring the pot like a good little gremlin.

"North Germany must be under our control," Stalin said.

Churchill shot him a look that could melt glaciers. "We'll never abandon our zone!"

"Churchill," Roosevelt said flatly, "you're bankrupt. You don't have a zone."

Damn.

The old bulldog deflated a little, whisky trembling in his hand. He knew it. Everyone did. Britain was on life support, and the IV drip was American credit. I laughed a little.

Stalin leaned forward. "Then it is decided. The German occupation zones will be dissolved. All territory north of Bavaria and Saxony, including Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein, will be administered by the Soviet Union. Under a people's republic of Germany. You will keep Scandinavia under your little alliance."

He paused, savoring it.

"And with Germany—we have the Kiel Canal."

There it was. That was the real prize. Not Berlin. Not Prague. The damn canal. The wet, salty throat of European naval power.

Churchill opened his mouth—then closed it. Roosevelt nodded once. A big, slow, reluctant nod. Like he was signing over his daughter to a debt collector.

I lit another menthol and exhaled like I was in a music video that never got made. I imagined Bobby Caldwell playing softly in the background—What You Won't Do for Love—as Stalin calmly rearranged history's bones on the table like dominoes.

"And the Danish Straits?" Roosevelt asked, one last, desperate flicker of resistance.

"Free navigation," Stalin said. "For all. Including Soviet vessels. We are not pirates. And we will declare war on Japan."

I nearly choked on my cigarette. You're literally a pirate with a hammer and sickle on your sails, Joseph.

But I said nothing. I just smiled. The kind of smile you give when the world starts slipping off its axis and you're the only one enjoying the spin.

Churchill stood up. "This is madness."

"No," I said, standing beside him, cigarette dangling from my fingers. "Vae Victus. Learn some latin old sport you'll get what it means."

He looked at me like I was Satan wearing a Roman tunic. But he sat down again. Because there was nowhere left to stand.

And so, like that, it was done.

The Soviet Union annexed every rock and ice-covered isle in the Gulf of Finland. The Kiel Canal, gleaming like a knife across northern Germany, fell into their hands as well as all of northern Germany. The Red Navy gained free passage through the Danish Straits. Europe had been redrawn not with treaties—but with teeth.

I wandered the halls afterward, alone. I missed Spotify. I missed eating sushi in bed at 2 AM while watching reruns of Neon Genesis Evangelion and crying like a man who knows what angels really look like.

But in 1942, I was the only man in Rome who remembered what the Internet felt like.

I hummed Voyage Voyage under my breath as I walked past a painting of Ivan the terrible and wondered what he'd think of this circus.

He'd probably laugh.

I did.

-

Excerpt from Britannia Alone: A Memoir of the Second World War by Winston S. Churchill (1955)

It is difficult to convey, even to the most attentive reader of these memoirs, the sheer cold fury I felt in that chandeliered mausoleum of Stalinist grotesquery, as I sat across the table from two men who had just—before my very eyes—rewritten the postwar world with a kind of juvenile glee and monstrous ambition that defied all decency. The dinner in the Kremlin on May 1st, 1942, intended as a show of Allied unity, was in truth a prelude to betrayal. A betrayal not merely of Britain's wartime sacrifices, but of the very principles for which this long and bitter war had been fought.

Italy had gotten everything it wanted.

Let me make myself clear: this was no accident of diplomacy, no minor sleight of hand. What occurred that night was a deliberate coup—a geopolitical knifing delivered with vodka on one side and menthol cigarettes on the other. I sat there, cigar clenched, stomach churning with stroganoff and rage, as the so-called Duce of Italy—this grinning, charlatan who had somehow reinvented himself as Europe's most irreverent powerbroker—boasted of the Mediterranean as his own private lake.

He had done what I had fought my entire life to prevent.

Africa, the Balkans, the Aegean, the Levant—whole swathes of the world now danced to Rome's tune, not because of Italian bravery, which history will recall was in short supply, but because we—Britain and her Empire—had been exhausted, isolated, and too slow to see the knife until it was already in our side.

The implications for Great Britain were catastrophic. I speak not in hyperbole, but in historical certainty.

Politically, we had been outmaneuvered. The grand illusion of Allied unity, of the "Big Three" steering the world together toward peace, had been shattered. Stalin and the Italian Duce—an unstable, erratic figure whose speeches sounded more like jazz-fueled hallucinations than policy—had carved the globe between them in brutal clarity. They spoke of "balance," of "regional stability," of "spheres of influence," but I saw it for what it was: a new Molotov-Ribbebtrop pact, one that stretched not only across Europe, but through the very heart of the British Empire. The Soviet Bear would dominate the North. The Italian Hydra would feast upon the South. We, the lion, wounded and alone, were left to lick our imperial pride as the sun began to set on the Pax Britannica.

Economically, Britain stood on a precipice. Our coffers had been drained to support the war effort; our industries had been bombed and strained; our colonies had been stretched thin in both manpower and morale. And now, with Italy dominating key Mediterranean trade routes, including the Suez and the oil-rich Levant, we faced a maritime stranglehold unlike any before. British shipping would be in danger. Supplies from India, Australia, and the African territories would be vulnerable to Italian naval interdiction or diplomatic leverage. The Empire, once bound together by the Royal Navy and the assurance of British control of the seas, now found itself economically encircled by a brash and expansionist Rome.

Militarily, the picture was even bleaker. We had fought valiantly—at Dunkirk, in the skies over Britain, in the North Atlantic—but the toll had been tremendous. Our army was still rebuilding, our fleet aging, our air force weary. And what did we face now? An Italian military that had learned from its early failures, retrained, rearmed, and emboldened by unholy success in Turkey, the Levant, and North Africa. Worse still, they had begun training others—the so-called "Scuole della Guerra Moderna," producing a generation of ideologically hardened, modernized officers. Italian troops had now fought side-by-side with fascist Greeks and Syrian auxiliaries, and had emerged from the crucible with the discipline of Romans and the zeal of crusaders. We were not prepared for a future war against this new Italy.

At the table that night, I felt as if I were staring into the mouth of a wolf disguised in the skin of a jester.

The Duce—madman though he was—possessed a terrifying clarity. He mocked, insulted, and postured, but beneath the bravado was a design—a vision. One of a multipolar world in which the Anglo-American order would be merely another alliance in a madman's world. He grinned and spoke of a mare nostrum, a sea soaked in blood and empire. And Stalin, with his predator's stillness, nodded and drank as if to say, Yes, let the West rot in its self-delusions.

Roosevelt, to his credit, attempted to maintain composure. But even he saw the gravity of what had occurred. Our unity was a fiction. The postwar peace had already been broken before it began.

And thus, as I returned to my quarters that night, frostbitten by the winds of Moscow and by the betrayal I had just witnessed, I realized that Britain stood alone once more. Not as in 1940, when German bombers crossed the Channel, but in a deeper, more insidious sense.

We had become irrelevant. Outflanked.

And now, we would have to fight again—not with bullets, perhaps, but with cunning, diplomacy, and endurance. Against Italy, against the USSR, against the passage of history itself.

God help us.

Note: retconned a few things about Germany. Check out the chapter ohh Scheisse and Welcome to my Ted talk for that
 
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Mutually assured terror New
May 8, 1942
The Kremlin
Moscow, USSR


Same damn room. Same grim Stalinist wallpaper. Same old cigar smoke from the ashtray that looked like it had seen more war than I had. We'd been here for a week, circling around the same geopolitical dance like vultures over a half-eaten corpse. Northern Europe was no longer the powder keg everyone feared—it had become a smoldering ruin, under our control or otherwise neutralized. Now their attention had turned elsewhere.

Japan. Of course. Bloody Japan. Land of neon dreams and future heartbreaks. When I close my eyes, I don't see rice paddies—I see Shibuya Crossing, blinking lights, and some bunny-eared waitress saying "Okaerinasai, goshujin-sama." I always wanted to see a maid cafe. But I also miss microwaves. I miss watching trashy anime at 2 a.m. while eating Cup Noodles. What the hell am I doing in 1942? Ohh right, I died.

And these jackasses—Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin—were now yapping about the Pacific War like it was some noble crusade. Me? I wasn't here to play global savior. I was here to watch history implode from the front row.

I leaned back, let the chair creak dramatically, and spoke before anyone could start their sanctimonious blather.

"I'll make my position clear once again before we begin," I said, voice smooth but firm, eyes locked on Roosevelt like he was a mildly disappointing school principal. "Italy has zero interest in fighting Japan. None. No territorial disputes, no grudges, no assets in the Pacific besides a useless little outpost we'd be happy to donate to the Nation of Your Choosing. Honestly, take it. Light it on fire if you want. We're not declaring war. We're not sending troops. But hey—we'll happily sell you whatever materials you need."

Churchill frowned like someone had pissed in his tea. Roosevelt's fake smile twitched at the edges. Stalin, inscrutable bastard that he was, just puffed his pipe.

"Should I remind you, Mr. Roosevelt," I continued, "it was my intelligence that warned you about Pearl Harbor. Your precious little navy, saved by good ol' Benito. We've done our part. If I were you, I'd stop sulking and get serious about your nuclear weapons project—drop 10 nukes on Tokyo and call it a day."

That landed like a brick in a porcelain shop. Time to begin the cold war.

Roosevelt and Churchill both went pale, like I'd conjured the end of the world with my tongue. Stalin squinted at me like I was speaking Martian.

"Nuclear... weapons?" Roosevelt echoed, like a man trying to sound calm while internally screaming. "Mr. Mussolini, what are you talking about?"

I smirked and leaned in slightly, just enough to make them uncomfortable.

"Oh, come now," I said, waving my hand as if brushing away the ridiculousness of their faux confusion. "We've got our own OVRA agents in the U.S.—shout out to the Italian-American community, truly patriotic folks." A lie, of course, but damn if it didn't sound good. "We know all about your Manhattan Project. The uranium, the German scientists that fled to the US —same ones we recently picked off for ourselves by the way. With the equipment we've… appropriated from Germany, our own nuclear program is in the early stages. Nothing explosive—yet—but the groundwork is being laid. I think I could nuke Amsterdam within the decade."

Churchill blinked rapidly. Roosevelt's mouth tightened. Stalin leaned forward, intrigued now, like a cat that just noticed the mouse had a knife.

"If we're serious about ending this war quickly, I say we join forces—create a joint atomic development initiative. Imagine it: the unified power of the Global Federation of Free Alliances harnessed into a single, glorious project. A gesture of unity. A symbol of progress."

I paused for dramatic effect, smiling with the kind of smug self-satisfaction that only comes from knowing too much and giving too little.

"We could call it The Roosevelt Project. Neat, right?"

The silence that followed was glorious.

In my head, I could hear the faint, ghostly echoes of 1980s Spanish pop—Luis Miguel crooning "Perdóname" like he knew exactly how I felt: exiled from a world of synthesizers and sodium lights, trapped in this goddamned sepia-toned meat grinder of history.

They thought I was crazy. They were right.

But I was also right.

And in this world, that was far more dangerous.

The silence dragged on just long enough to become deliciously uncomfortable.

Roosevelt was visibly shaken now, gripping the table edge like it might save him from falling into the abyss. His eyes darted between me and Stalin. Churchill, red-faced and puffy, looked like a man who'd just swallowed a pint of vinegar. Only Stalin remained calm—calm and curious. That glint in his eye... the man might've been a paranoid psychopath, but he smelled opportunity like a shark smells blood.

"You... you're bluffing," Roosevelt finally said, voice tight, brittle. "There's no way you—Italy—could possibly—"

"Oh, Frankie," I cut in, smiling like a cat who'd just shat in FDR's hat. "You keep underestimating us. And we keep surprising you."

With a casual flourish, I reached into my briefcase—the same leather-bound thing that had once carried my copy of Neuromancer back in the day—and pulled out a folder. Thick. Labeled Progetto Sapienza. The Soviets leaned in. Roosevelt leaned back.

I dropped it in front of Stalin like I was laying down four aces at a poker table. Then another folder—schematics, diagrams, blueprints marked with German insignias—carefully 'liberated' from Reich labs during our little stunt, Operation Sapienza.

"Here," I said coolly. "Enjoy. Designs for a nuclear bomb, preliminary notes on fusion, and some early missile delivery systems. We grabbed these from the Germans a few months ago during our noble crusade . Operation Sapienza—it was a little Italian-Jewish masterpiece. We infiltrated and stormed their Black Forest and Peenemunde facilities, siphoned the data, and vanished like ghosts in the night. Very cinematic."

Stalin raised his brows slightly, took the folder, and opened it like it was Christmas morning. His aides scrambled to grab the rest.

Churchill looked like he was about to have a stroke. "You're sharing sensitive weapon designs with the Soviets?!"

I gave him a look.

"You think this is about national pride, Winston?" I asked. "This is about survival. This is about building a new Non-British balance of power. We can't afford to hoard this kind of knowledge anymore—not when the genie's halfway out of the bottle. I'm proposing a joint nuclear effort. Italy, the United States, the United Kingdom, and yes—the Soviet Union."

Roosevelt looked pale. "You're going to start another arms race before the war's even over."

I started to laugh. A cackle, even Stalin seemed stunned for a moment. Then I got deadly serious and stared deep into Roosevelt's eyes. "So what if I did?"

I'm just giving everyone a head start. Let them spend billions building bombs, engineering reactors, recruiting defectors. Meanwhile, Italy gets to ride shotgun without burning through our own economy. If I play this right, we save decades of R&D money. Let them carry the burden. We just show up for the victory parade.

And more importantly? This move—this absolute nuke of a diplomatic play—sets the board for the Cold War to be even colder. MAD, baby. Mutually Assured Destruction. I was born in the shadow of it. Now I get to help invent it.

I stood, pushing my chair back with a heavy scrape, and raised my hand dramatically.

"This, gentlemen, is the path to peace," I declared. "Not peace through goodwill. That's a fantasy. Not peace through diplomacy—those die with the men who sign them. No—this is peace through parity. Through terror. Through the knowledge that if you strike first, you die second. Peace through Mutually Assured Destruction."

Dead silence.

Churchill looked aghast. Roosevelt rubbed his temples like he was physically ill. Stalin, to his credit, was grinning now—grinning in that terrifying way of his, as if he'd just discovered his enemies' house had no locks.

"Comrade Mussolini..." he said, voice low and pleased, "tell me more about this Operation Sapienza."

I sat back down, lit a cigarette, and smiled.

"Oh, Joe," I said. "You're gonna love this story."

Stalin leaned forward, eyes gleaming like he'd just sniffed a barrel of fresh paranoia and power.

"Tell me everything," he said softly.

Roosevelt looked like he wanted to stop me. Churchill looked like he wanted to throttle me. But I was already in freefall, and I wasn't pulling the chute.

I exhaled smoke from my cigarette, savoring it like it was oxygen from 2025. I missed Juul pods. I missed Spotify. I missed microwave popcorn and city pop echoing through my AirPods while doomscrolling in bed. But most of all—I missed being irrelevant. Instead, I was now the deranged architect of global atomic apocalypse.

"Operation Sapienza," I began, "started in January this year. While you two"—I nodded toward Churchill and Roosevelt—"were still landing troops in Europe and Scandinavia, I was planning the biggest intellectual heist in human history."

They said nothing. Stalin's smile widened.

"I knew Germany was investing heavy into nuclear research. But Germany, being Germany, was arrogant. Sloppy. They put all their eggs in the Black Forest basket—Thorheim Laboratories, Obersalzberg facilities, the Göttingen network, Peenemunde. So we sent in our finest: Italian OVRA agents, Jewish Lehi as muscle to back them up—men and women who had lost everything to the Nazis and wanted payback in equations and sabotage."

I lit another cigarette with the smoldering end of the last one. Stalin flipped through pages with the focus of a man devouring sacred scripture.

"We snatched it all. Scientists, blueprints, uranium samples, prototypes. We didn't even leave them a note. Took half their physics department. I personally debriefed the lead researcher while eating carbonara and listening to Hip to be Square in my thoughts."

"Hip to be Square?" Churchill barked.

I ignored him.

"Now we've got our own team in the Italy—call it the Sapienza Institute. It's underground, literally. They're reverse-engineering everything and making terrifying progress. But more importantly, I have the leverage. So what do I do?"

I leaned in close now, palms flat on the table.

"I sell the future."

Roosevelt's voice trembled. "You're handing over the power to end the world."

"No," I said, shaking my head. "I'm distributing it. Equally. Because when everyone has a gun to everyone else's head, no one dares pull the trigger."

Stalin nodded. He got it. He lived that logic. A twisted she'll of a man like myself, no wonder I got along with him.

"And let's be honest, boys. You're both going to build your own nukes anyway. At least this way, Italy isn't left behind. We cooperate, we share resources, scientists, data. Compete quietly. Mutually assured survival via terror. Everyone gets a seat at the table and the world doesn't go up like a Roman candle. Or better yet—if it does, we all go together."

I glanced at Roosevelt. The blood had drained from his face.

"I'm giving you a chance here," I added. "A Confederation of Peace through Terror. Like NATO, but with better aesthetics and more trench coats."

Churchill stood. "This is insanity."

"No, Winston," I said slowly. "This is the future. I'm just a humble schoolteacher turned architect."

Internally, I felt nothing—I'd just rolled the dice on humanity's fate and didn't care if it landed on snake eyes. But it was also genius. A shared nuclear program meant Italy didn't need to bankrupt itself. Let the US and USSR foot the bill. Let them panic and race. I'd take the data. I'd take the tech. I'd even take the credit.

And if the Cold War started a few years early? If the world tiptoed on a razor's edge while everyone prayed no one sneezed?

Well... welcome to the future, boys.

Stalin finally spoke, voice low, dangerous, delighted.

"You are a snake, Mussolini."

I grinned. "I'm a futurist."
 
You scratch my back I kill millions New
May 9, 1942
The Kremlin—Private Meeting Room
Moscow, USSR


I leaned back in my chair, arms folded across my chest, eyes scanning Stalin as he sat across from me, still the ever-calm, calculating presence he was known for. But there was something in the way his eyes flickered for just a moment when I spoke about Asia. Something... hungry. This man knew opportunity when he saw it. But what he didn't know was how to accelerate it. That was where I came in. I'd been through my share of strategic nightmares in the past few years—especially now that I was here, playing this farcical game—but this? This was different. It had the promise of chaos. And chaos, in its purest form, was the only thing that ever truly made things move.

I couldn't help but feel that familiar buzz in my head, the low hum of it, like a synthesizer riff from some obscure city pop song that had been burned into my brain. An entire genre of music—an entire era—just echoing in the back of my mind, like some forgotten dream. I needed that. I craved it. But here I was, deep in the mud of world politics, surrounded by men who thought they understood power and strategy, but none of them saw the play as clearly as I did.

Stalin wasn't stupid. He was no fool. But his reach needed to be extended. He had to realize that Asia, like Europe, needed to be broken—split into pieces, turned into a powder keg, ready to explode into his hands. Luckily for me, he was now inclined to listen to me.

"Comrade Stalin," I said, leaning forward, "here." I handed him a document. He took it and his translator began yapping away.

"I hope that after my warnings about Germany when I came here in 1940 you'll be inclined to listen to me more. Inside are documents. Documents showing Mao cooperating with the Americans, Japanese, plans for Chinese hegemony in east Asia, a threat to your sphere, a rival."

Lies, lies, and damned lies. But I needed it. I knew some cold war history. Sino-soviet split? Not on my watch, 3 way cold war, 3 camps, all tied up. And hey, no Mao, no great leap forward, tens of millions of lives saved. Maybe it'll be enough to ease my guilty conscience. I doubted it.

"You need to move on Asia. You need to do it now. The sooner you can get your hands on the Chinese, the better. We're both in agreement here, aren't we? The Chinese, divided, weak—easy pickings for a man of your talents."

He raised an eyebrow. That wasn't a sign of agreement—yet. Stalin's not the type to give you what you want right away. He had his own designs, his own pace. But this? This was bigger than some paranoid purge or military strategy. I had to sell him on speed. Three way cold war, I needed the soviets to be strong.

"You shouldn't dither on this, Josef. Your time is running out," I said with a sharp, sarcastic bite to my tone. "Take China—split it. You know what I'm talking about. Partition it. Let the local warlords rip each other apart while you expand your reach. Mao? Kill him, too ambitious, too dangerous, just like Chiang. You can't afford a strong nationalist leader there if you plan to fully dominate Asia my friend, can I call you friend? He's a nuisance—a thorn in your side, but he won't be a problem if you nip him in the bud."

Stalin's face remained impassive, but I knew he was listening. The thought of a fragmented China, an empire ripe for Soviet domination, was undoubtedly appealing to him. The more chaos, the more power he could seize. And the more room I had to play middle man between America and Russia.

I shifted in my seat, folding my arms tighter. "And India." I thanked god for all the briefs my OVRA agents gave me on the region. "You'll need to set that place on fire, just like China. Stir the pot, comrade. Stir it so that the British and Americans can't handle it. I'm already backing a few rebels but I'm too far away to properly back them unlike the Lehi. It's why I proposed that India be in your sphere, like we talked about. I'll give some support to the fight. But you need to go all in. Keep them divided. Gandhi? Jinnah? Nehru? They're symbols—just symbols. Weak men, sure. But their influence is enough to make your life a living hell in the future. You need to kill those symbols, Stalin. Assassinate them. Make it clean. Make it quick. Pin the Blame on Muslim or Hindu extremists, set india on fire. And as india and china burn, as Japan bleeds the Americans and British, we can move in on our spheres. Africa, the middle east, Asia southeast Asia, ours for the taking. Scandinavia and Europe was just a setback. Churchill and FDR think they've won, this was just the first act."

I couldn't help but feel that thrill again—the rush of it, like the guitar solo to a lost 80s hit. Everything I said, I meant. This was the move. This would shake the foundation of everything. "This will send Britain and America scrambling to put out fires they'd never expected. Britain is an overstretched empire in it's dying breath, and America is an empire still half asleep and mobilizing. The moment is upon us. They will not be unprepared for what we will unleash."

Stalin looked like he was mulling it over, his thick brows furrowed, his mind working through the possibilities. But the clock was ticking. I couldn't let him waste too much time. He needed to understand the urgency. And that's when I said it.

"And once India is burning. Once China is in the midst of collapse. Britain and America will be stretched so thin they won't be able to hold on to their colonies, let alone fight a war versus Japan. Its our time, Josef. The only question is, will you take the opportunity?"

Stalin finally spoke, his deep voice cutting through the haze. "Why? This is not the same Mussolini saying death to communism after his son was captured."

I leaned in, now fully enjoying the game. "Oh, yes. That's the beauty of it, my dear comrade. It's simple. If either of us tries to oppose the combined might of the UK and the US we would be crushed under their weight. Sure we might get some of what we want. But once the war ends we'd get hemmed in. But together, if we coordinate our efforts we can both get what we want. Think of it, as an alliance of convenience. I know you don't trust me, frankly I don't trust you. But I trust in your greed, in your lust for power and glory because I lust for it as well. Now then, will you make a deal with the devil standing in front of you and seize what you want? I thought you were a man of action Stalin, weren't you the one that had Trotsky killed? What's killing one man compared to the millions we'll conquer."

I could feel the tension in the air. This was the moment. That was the pitch. I was going to sell him on this, and damn it, I was going to make sure everyone knew who had been the mastermind behind this grand strategy. Sure, my mind kept slipping back to thoughts of city lights, neon signs, the weight of a good 80s track playing on repeat. The hunger for the future gnawed at me. But in this room, I wasn't just the confused man who missed the soundtracks of his life. I was Mussolini, making the most crucial decision of my life.

I could practically see the pieces falling into place. The firestorm of Asia. The burning of India. And in the end, the real reward: a new, shattered world that I controlled.

Stalin stared at me for a moment longer, before he nodded slowly, his lips curling in a semblance of agreement. "We'll move soon enough. But you are correct, Mussolini. A divided world... is a world in our grasp."

I couldn't help but grin.

This was the play, and the world would burn for it. I'd won. And all it cost was plunging the world into a three way nuclear tango. But I wasn't done yet, just needed to wrap this up in a neat bow. And that bow consisted of Kurdish corpses.

I lean back and pull another folder, I then slide the folder across the table. It's a thick one. Heavy. The paper inside still smells of smoke and blood, like the truth was branded into it with fire. Stalin doesn't touch it yet. He just stares at it, like it might bite him. I almost want it to.

"Take a look," I say, half-whisper, half-command. "It's all there. The death marches. The camps. The trains packed with Kurds. The gas. The shallow graves in the Armenian highlands. All thanks to my little war in Anatolia." I lean back, eyes flicking to the Soviet flag on the wall—blood red and totalitarian. The guilt was there, but I acknowledged it, it is what it is. "They thought no one would notice. But I did."

He doesn't flinch. But his fingers twitch once before he opens the folder.

And there it is. Grainy photos. Eyewitness accounts. Turkish officer testimonies my OVRA boys tortured out of him like juice from a lemon. Pages and pages of bureaucratic Turkish evil. The kind you need a cold soul and a desk to carry out.

"Genocide," I say, spitting the word like it's ash on my tongue. "Pan-Turkist lunacy. Carried out by the Young Officers. Türkeş. Atsız. All of them. They tried to outdo Hitler in brutality."

Stalin's eyes narrow. This time he does flinch. His knuckles go white around a page with a list of dead children and the words 'Kurdish relocation complete' stamped in Turkish.

I light a cigarette. It looks cool. I miss home. I miss music videos. I miss compassion. I miss Japan's trashy pop songs about heartbreak that made my girlfriend cry like a fool despite not being fluent in Japanese. I am a fool. A fool in a dictator's skin.

"Once the war with Japan is done, or before if you want." I blow smoke toward the ceiling. "You can use these documents as an excuse to move into Turkey. Turkey will be yours. But I need you to do me a favor. I need you to give my little global federation justification and legitimacy." I jab a finger at the folder. "Genocide. Mass murder. Ethnic cleansing. It writes itself. A humanitarian mission. The great Soviet and Italian liberators, come to stop a fascist bloodbath. A joint Italian Soviet intervention."

I chuckle. A dry, broken sound. "Of course, the irony being that we are no better than the Turks. But history won't remember it that way. Not if we write it first. And of course once it's all done you can pull turkey into your sphere."

Stalin looks at me like he's reading a puzzle he already solved. "And you?"

"I get nothing out of Turkey. I'm not greedy. I have my backyard—Africa, the Middle East, the Maghreb, Egypt. Except that I become a hero alongside you in Turkey, we both win, my global federation destroys whatever legitimacy the British and Americans stupid little Atlantic charter has and we gain moral legitimacy."

A pause. He studies me again. Like he's trying to figure out if I'm insane or just brilliant. The answer is yes to both, specially the former. Stalin nods once, slowly. The way a glacier nods. Deliberate. Cold. I know that look. He'll do it.

"I've already seen the future, Josef," I say softly. "But if we join forces for now, we can make things the way we want it to be."

And in the silence that follows, I hear it again—Junko Yagami's voice drifting through my mind like a ghost:
"Tasogare no Bay City…"
Twilight in Bay City. Neon lights on wet pavement.

God I missed Sofie.
 
You will sign my fucking treaty New
May 25, 1942
Palazzo Venezia
Rome, Italy


Dinner was a delirious spectacle—three courses of decadence, drowned in wine and lacquered with opera. I barely tasted a thing. I haven't truly tasted anything since 2023. Since five guys. Since Bonchon's fried chicken. Since Sofie. Since the scent of Pantene Pro-V in her damp black hair as she leaned on me in DC while walking home from a day at the museum. All of that—gone. Now I dealt with foie gras, veal, and the stench of history dying in real time.

My puppets—no, my unwitting slaves—sat around the long mahogany table like actors on the final night of a doomed play. Louis Napoléon of France, still playing emperor in a suit three sizes too tight. Franco, smelling faintly of incense and gunpowder. Horthy, old-world charm and new-world insecurity. Kvaternik, my Croat lapdog, more manageable than that insufferable fanatic Pavelić. Vërlaci of Albania, Saadeh of Syria with those big dreamy pan-Syrian eyes, Pangalos of Greece wheezing through every syllable, Tsar Boris III, King Michael I, Avraham Stern—the fire-eyed ghost of Zion—and Figl of Austria, that spineless pragmatist. And even Imam Yahya from Yemen, in robes that whispered across the marble like a threat.

It was my Legion of Doom. My Axis of Style. My neofascist fever dream with an Italo-disco beat.

I finished my glass of Chianti, snapped my fingers like I was directing a scene from American Psycho if it were dubbed in Japanese with Tatsuro Yamashita playing in the background.

From the shadows, my aides emerged—silent, black-suited specters—and handed each man two folders. One red. One blue. The colors of destiny. The colors of madness.

"Open the blue folder," I instructed coolly, my voice like ice under pressure. The translators murmured the order in a dozen accents.

They opened them. Pages rustled like a paper hurricane.

Franco was first to speak, because of course he was. "What is this?"

"That," I said, pouring myself another glass, "is the future. Missiles that fly across continents without a pilot. Bombs so vast they can erase a city in a blink. We stole it all from the Germans while they were too busy shooting Jews to notice."

I let it hang.

I smiled. Not because it was funny. But because it hurt. Because this wasn't my world. This wasn't home.

"And of course," I went on, slow and deliberate, "these aren't gifts. They're investments. The price… is in the red folder. And if you take it, the nukes are all yours to use."

Rustling again. Eyes widened. Palms sweated.

"The Mare Nostrum Economic and Security Framework?" Louis Napoléon asked, puzzled, as if he had just stumbled upon the final level of a game he didn't know he was playing.

I nodded. "My masterpiece," I thought. "My Economics major finally paying off. Poli-sci minor too, God rest my GPA."

The folder contained the blueprint of a new world—a synthetic beast cobbled from the bones of the EU, NATO, the WTO, and whatever twisted dreams I half-remembered from late nights watching documentaries while half-drunk during peace corps service.

"This," I announced, rising to my feet with theatrical flair, "is our future. Bound by war, yes—but we must go further. We must become an empire of systems. Unified, interlocked, indivisible. Capital, labor, steel, uranium—all flowing freely between us. Like blood."

I paced the room now, drunk on the music in my head—Miami Sound Machine's Conga pounding in rhythm with my heartbeat.

"The Soviets are building their own bombs. So are the Americans. If we don't bind ourselves now, we will be swallowed—devoured—by their ambitions."

I looked at each of them, let the silence do the damage. I imagined them replaced by holograms, anime filters, neon lights flickering behind their heads.

"But together?" I hissed. "Together, we exceed them. Together, we crush them."

I slammed my hand on the table. "We create a common market. Free movement of capital, workers, services. Unified scientific and military research. Nuclear collaboration. A joint command structure. If one is attacked, all respond. If one falls behind, all advance to pull them forward."

I took a breath. I could feel the world tearing at the seams behind my eyes.

"I know what you're thinking," I added with a smile, as if I were pitching a startup in Silicon Valley. "This sounds impossible. Too complicated. Too modern."

I leaned forward. "That's because it is. Welcome to modernity, gentlemen. I've seen the future, and either we adapt, or we die."

Silence again.

I sat down, suddenly tired.

Outside, the eternal Roman night continued. The air buzzed with ghosts. Somewhere, in my head, Laura Branigan's Self Control started playing.

And all I could think about… was how much I missed air-conditioning.

The air was thick now—perfumed with cigar smoke, fear, ambition. The kind of atmosphere where dreams either bloom or rot.

Franco looked skeptical, his thick fingers twitching like he was resisting the urge to reach for a pistol or a rosary. "A single market between Spain and Jews? Albanians and Austrians? Greeks and Syrians? You're mad."

I leaned back in my chair, fingers steepled like a villain in an 80s anime. "Yes. I am mad. Mad enough to know that the current order is already dead. We are the worms eating its corpse—and we may as well feast together."

Kvaternik glanced up. "What about tariffs?"

"Gone," I said. "Phased out over five years. Uniform import-export regulations across all member states. We'll create a shared customs union with centralized border enforcement. Call it 'MareCom' or some other soulless technocratic acronym. It doesn't matter. The illusion of structure is enough to keep the bureaucrats happy."

Vërlaci nodded slowly. "And labor?"

"Free movement," I said. "Any worker from any member state can live and work in another. Think of it—Spaniards building railroads in Syria. Greeks running Croatian shipyards. Yemenis engineering Austrian turbines. A symphony of labor. A marketplace of blood and steel." Italian economic dominance, all these other nations were either too destroyed by war or too economically weak to resist.

Boris III stroked his mustache. "That will provoke unrest."

"Yes," I said, grinning. "It will. And when it does, we will crush it. Together. Unified police and intelligence services. Cross-border paramilitary teams. Interpol, another soulless acronym for us to use."

Figl cleared his throat meekly. "And the currency?"

"Phase One: national currencies tied to a shared index—call it the Aquila Standard, based on a basket of commodities: gold, oil, uranium, and wheat. Phase Two: a unified currency. A new lira, or a new name entirely—Solidus, like the old Roman currency." I looked into the distance like I could already see it minted and gleaming, spinning in slow motion to the sound of Take on Me.

"But who controls it?" asked Stern, eyes narrowing. "Who sets interest rates? Who decides inflation targets?"

Ah, the Israeli ghost speaks. I met his gaze. "A central bank. Rotating presidency. Based in Rome for optics. Staffed by technocrats loyal to the vision, not to any single nation. Quiet, clean men with cold eyes and no souls. Like the ECB, but with balls." Lies, OVRA would be all over them, dancing to my tune while they thought they were free.

There were murmurs now—nervous, curious, intrigued. They were hooked. You could see it in the way their fingers touched their folders again, like addicts stroking the last cigarette in the pack.

"And the military?" Pangalos wheezed. "We share doctrine, but what about command?"

"Unified Strategic Command headquartered in Rome. Each member contributes a minimum 5% of GDP to defense. Centralized logistics. Interoperable equipment. Shared bases. Cross-training. Intelligence fusion. You attack one, you attack all." NATO but with a fascist aesthetic.

Franco sneered. "You expect Spain to hand over its autonomy?"

"No," I replied, sipping from my glass. "I expect you to pretend you are, while getting rich, strong, and indispensable. Sovereignty is the sugar pill. Integration is the medicine."

Stern leaned forward, fingers pressed together. "What about Palestine?"

"Yours," I said. "You'll have your Israel like we agreed to don't worry—backed by the might of this new order. But only if you stay useful, and only if you keep the Soviets, Americans and British out of the middle east along with Syria over there. And no atrocities this time, I don't want to see Arabs expelled, or murdered en masse. Treat them as second class citizens, segregate them like the Americans do with the blacks. But I don't want bad PR. We're not Germany or Turkey."

He sat back. No smile. Just calculation. I respected that.

Across the table, Saadeh and Yahya exchanged glances, already calculating their own angles.

"Make no mistake," I said, standing again, pacing like a panther in a glass cage, "this is not about fairness. This is not about democracy. This is about survival. This is about power. We will be the heart of a new world economy. We will carve the future like a disco ball made of steel and napalm."

I paused dramatically. The silence was almost religious.

"All you have to do… is sign."

Outside, the sun was setting over Rome. Inside, something else was rising—something twisted and new.

And in the back of my mind, Ana Torroja was singing softly in Spanish about lost love.

It was Louis Napoléon who finally stood up.

Not Franco, not Pangalos, not the imam—no, the French pretender, with his waxy hands and long Bourbon face, had apparently had enough. He stood with the pomp of a man who'd once watched his ancestor lose an empire and decided, inexplicably, to try again.

"This is madness," he said coolly, eyes scanning the room for support. "You speak of markets and missiles, of unity and annihilation, but all I see is an Italian empire in disguise. Rome at the center of a black sun. I did not see my family's throne restored to become a satrap."

A few nods. Figl. Kvaternik. Even Franco gave a grunt, which was about as close to agreement as he ever got without shooting someone.

Napoléon went on: "If we sign this… this red folder, we become nothing but tributaries. You speak of unity, but all roads still lead to you."

I smiled. Not the gracious kind, but the type you learn in back rooms, the kind that smells like blood and glue and mother's perfume.

"What other choice do you have?" I said. "Do you think Britain or the US will let you keep Wallonia? Luxembourg? The Rhineland? Who will help you reconquer Africa?"

I stood up slowly. Chair scraping against the marble like a blade on bone.

"I don't need you to like this, Louis. I don't need you to understand it. I need you to sign."

The room stiffened.

"I have given you everything. You rule Paris only because I allowed it. You eat from my hand and then choke on the bones, crying tyranny? What a joke."

I turned to the others.

"Do you think this world will wait for us? Do you think the Americans will share their economy? The Soviets their science? Do you think Churchill dreams of treaties with men like us? No. They dream of our overthrow, of us becoming puppets to their stupid dreams of freedom, democracy, secularism and godlessness. They dream of our children shot in basements. We are the last kings of a dying age, and I offer you a lifeline."

I turned back to Napoléon.

"You speak of empires? Then speak of yours—your empire died whimpering at Waterloo. Mine marches from Anatolia to the Alps. Mine was carved with fire and salted with blood. I, am a monster, I have killed millions."

Napoléon clenched his fists. "You mistake fear for respect."

"No," I said coldly, stepping closer. "I command both."

There was a beat of silence. The kind that smells like metal.

"Leave if you must," I whispered. "Run back to your Parisian dollhouse. But know this—when the atom burns the sky, when the ice melts and the oil runs dry, you'll come crawling back. You all will. And when you do, I may not answer the door."

Napoléon sat back down.

Franco shifted in his seat and muttered, "So what's Phase Three?"

I grinned.

"Phase Three? Total domination. Africa was just a start. The Soviet union will collapse on its own weight. The Americans and British will be spent. Once it happens, we move in. The world is ours for the taking. We just need to take it."

And deep inside my head, Maria Takeuchi sang "Plastic Love" in a looping tape of echoing synth, while I watched the future bow its head in this smoke-filled room.

May 26, 1942
Palazzo Venezia, Rome
Hall of Constantine


The hall was dressed like a corpse ready for burial—marble polished, flags raised, and the Vatican choir humming something tragic in the rafters. A thousand-year empire, reborn under halogen lights and gilded eagles. I stood on the dais beneath a fresco of Constantine, staring down with mad, conquering eyes, and thought:

"This is it. The new Pax Romana. Or at least the trailer."

My boots clicked against the floor as I strode out, slow and deliberate, tailored black uniform cutting a silhouette of iron against red velvet banners. Every camera lens, every quivering hand from Reuters to The times, captured the moment like it mattered. I made sure of that. Image is god.

Before me sat the rulers, the warlords, the strongmen and ghost-puppets I had assembled. Franco—stoic, unreadable. Pangalos—already sweating. Saadeh—feigning detachment with a cigarette that trembled. Horthy, Kvaternik, Vërlaci, Figl. They were all here. They hadn't slept. I had. Dreamless, precise sleep. Like a machine on standby.

Each of them had a pen and two identical documents before them, one in Latin, one in their own tongue. The Mare Nostrum Economic and Security Framework.

My magnum opus. A malicious blend of Bretton Woods, the ECSC, NATO, and a little bit of Chicago School sadism—masquerading as harmony.

A translator read aloud in crisp, mechanical Latin:

"An agreement of mutual sovereignty, market integration, military alliance, and shared scientific advancement. In defense of civilization. In defiance of decay."

I stepped forward. Cleared my throat. The mic crackled.

"Gentlemen," I said. "We are not signing a treaty. We are not aligning for convenience. This is not a pact. This is a severance."

I let the echo ring.

"A severance from the Old World. From the Anglosphere. From America. From Marx and Mammon. From Versailles, from Wilson and Lenin and Roosevelt and every corpse that ever drew lines in blood and called it peace. This is our world now. Ours. And like the sea that binds us, it has no borders, only depth."

No applause. Only breath. Good.

I pointed to the papers. "Let us begin."

And one by one, they did. Theodoros Pangalos signed first—trembling hand, shaking glasses. Franco next, curt and resentful. Even Louis Napoléon, who had growled defiance the night before, scribbled his name like it was a resignation letter to history.

When it was done, I signed last. In red ink. A single, violent slash: B. Mussolini.

Then I turned to the press.

"Let it be known," I said, "that today, May 26th, 1942, the Mare Nostrum Economic and Security Framework is born."

Cameras flashed. Somewhere, a marching band erupted in the distance.

"We are now one market. One war engine. One voice. One trigger. If one of us is attacked, all of us respond. If one of us innovates, all of us rise. The seas are ours. The skies are ours. The future is ours."

A long pause.

"And God help whoever tries to stop us."

That night, as fireworks bloomed over the Tiber, I sat alone in my office with a glass of brandy, whispering along to Simple minds playing over and over again in my head.

"Dont you, forget about me…"

The world had just changed forever. And all I could think of… was Sofie's laugh back in a world that didn't exist.

---------

OFFICE OF STRATEGIC SERVICES (OSS)
Washington, D.C.
PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE — BENITO MUSSOLINI (ALIAS: IL DUCE)
Compiled: June 4, 1942
Classification: TOP SECRET
Prepared by: Dr. Samuel Worthington, Section X (Behavioral Intelligence & Enemy Personalities)

SUBJECT: Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini
DOB: July 29, 1883 (Subject claims to be 58)
CURRENT POSITION: Duce of Italy, Founder of the Mare Nostrum Economic and Security Framework
ALIAS KNOWN TO INTELLIGENCE: "The Mediterranean Napoleon," "The Architect," "The Phantom of Palazzo Venezia"
EVALUATOR'S SUMMARY:
Subject presents signs of profound psychological dissociation from conventional reality, operating in a constructed delusional framework that fuses messianic purpose with personal trauma. Highly intelligent, obsessively structured, and increasingly erratic in both ideology and presentation. He is not insane in the legal sense—rather, he is unmoored from the emotional framework that governs normative political behavior.


I. INTELLECTUAL PROFILE:
Subject possesses an unusually high capacity for abstraction and systems thinking. Evidence suggests extensive academic grounding in both economics and political theory, possibly at graduate-level Western institutions. Despite his fascist exterior, subject appears to draw heavily on liberal institutional design, evident in the recent Mare Nostrum proposal, which mirrors elements of the League of Nations, European Common Market, and American federalism.

He is fluent in multiple languages and demonstrates an uncanny ability to read his interlocutors, often shifting tone and rhetoric to align with cultural or historical tropes (e.g., invoking Roman imperial imagery with Greeks, Islamic unity with Yemenites, pan-Latin solidarity with Francoists).

His speeches blend technocratic detail with near-religious fervor. OSS operatives have compared his oratory and style to a cross between Franklin D. Roosevelt and a manic televangelist.

II. PSYCHOSEXUAL & PERSONAL BEHAVIOR:
Though publicly ascetic and stoic, multiple sources within his cabinet and staff indicate compulsive humming along to foreign music, especially what he refers to Japanese "City Pop" and ballads from the "80s". These musical episodes often occur late at night, alone, sometimes for hours. Handlers report melancholic behavior afterward, especially when songs reference lost love, technology, or family.

Subject occasionally references entities or objects that do not exist within the known world of 1942—examples include "smartphones," "Tokyo subways," and "Bluetooth speakers." We hypothesize these may be codewords or symptoms of a dissociative fugue state.

He maintains no known intimate relations save for his wife Rachele. Subject used to have a relationship with mistress Clara Petacci but seemingly broke it off after a particularly intense psychotic episode. Subject appears to be emotionally fixated on individuals not present in his current reality. He has been recorded whispering names like Anna, Lucia, and Sofie to himself. No corroboration has been found for these persons.

III. POLITICAL PSYCHODYNAMICS:
Mussolini is not merely a fascist ideologue—he is a meta-ideologue. He views ideologies as tools, not moral truths. Power is his only fixed axis. He is Machiavellian to the extreme, yet cloaks his machinations in elaborate philosophical justifications—often quoting Nietzsche, Marcus Aurelius, or obscure French sociologists.

His Mare Nostrum framework is not a dream of unity—it is a containment system, a web in which he places lesser rulers like insects to be fed upon as needed. He believes himself to be Europe's last great man, a final bulwark before "the machines and the accountants destroy the spirit."

IV. THREAT ASSESSMENT:
Subject is uniquely dangerous due to:

1. His ability to fuse disparate nationalist movements into a coherent bloc.

2. His deep understanding of economics, logistics, and statecraft.

3. His utter disregard for moral limits or historical precedent.

4. His obsession with nuclear weapons as both a deterrent and a ritualistic symbol of modern divinity.

We classify Mussolini as a Class A Strategic Threat, on par with Hitler but far more dangerous.

---

RECOMMENDED ACTIONS:

Increase psychological warfare campaigns targeting Mussolini's internal sense of displacement and longing.

Monitor all radio broadcasts from Italy for embedded code or irregular references.

Discredit Mussolini's intellectual consistency by leaking contradictory writings and exposing moral hypocrisy.

Establish a deep-cover operation to recruit psychiatric professionals in neutral Europe for a remote analysis cell (codename: Mirage).

Prepare for the possibility that Mussolini may not fear nuclear retaliation—and may even welcome it as a path to historical martyrdom.

"He does not seek to conquer the world. He seeks to rewrite it."
—Final note from Dr. Worthington
 
I don't need it, I don't need it, I don't need it, I do-, I NEED IT!!!!!! New
May 27, 1942
Palazzo Venezia
Rome, Italy


They followed me like wind-up dolls the next day, each one a caricature of faded empires and delusions of grandeur, trailing behind me through the marble guts of the Palazzo Venezia. The corridors smelled of polish, dust, and old ambition. My puppets—all of them—marched with their respective translators like parodies of diplomacy on parade.

There was Louis Napoléon, that pretty-faced revenant of French dreams, mouthing republican platitudes through monarchist teeth. Franco walked beside him, a Catholic hangman dipped in incense and the stench of Cordoban blood—he smelled like a mass grave at dusk. Horthy was a powdered antique with delusions of Versailles. Kvaternik, my docile Croatian mutt, licked my boots with his eyes, unlike that rabid Pavelić who always looked like he was five seconds from a psychotic break. Vërlaci of Albania was a walking irrelevance, Saadeh of Syria stood dreamy-eyed like he'd just stepped out of a fairytale, his irises drowning in Greater Syria. Pangalos wheezed like a deflated accordion—each breath a laborious threat. Tsar Boris III looked bored, King Michael I of Romania still smelled like his mother's perfume. Figl of Austria—the spineless whisper of a once-proud corpse. Stern of Zion, my favorite: blazing-eyed, messianic, furious. A ghost made flesh, always vibrating with divine vengeance. Even Imam Yahya from Yemen had come, silent in his flowing robes, moving like a curse through the air.

And me? I was dressed like I was headed to a Miami nightclub in 1986—only my soul was in ruins. I missed my family. I missed streaming Yurie Kokubu at 2 a.m., sobbing in the dark with my noise-canceling headphones on. I missed Uber Eats and watching my Sofie laugh over boba tea. I missed the way modern toilets flushed. The future was gone, and all I had left were ghosts and savages.

I stopped in front of the door. His door.

"What you're about to see," I said, turning slowly to face them, savoring the anticipation like a drag of expensive Colombian cocaine, "will remain classified for now. Now then—"

I knocked. Three times. Like a priest at a coffin. The door creaked open.

Inside were nurses—pale, trembling things in crisp white—tending to a ruined figure nestled in crisp linens like a broken idol. Medical equipment hissed softly like dying serpents.

"This," I said, gesturing with theatrical reverence, "is Adolf Hitler. Not dead. Not yet. Contrary to the comforting lies in the papers, he didn't die gloriously in Berlin. A Soviet shell injured him and turned his body into borscht. My OVRA men dragged what was left of him from the rubble of Germany and we've been keeping him... preserved. Sentient. Barely. He blinks once for yes, twice for no. That's the extent of the Third Reich now—a meat puppet on morphine."

I approached the bed. He was sleeping. I slapped him. Hard.

"Wake up, you bitch!" I shouted in German, the sound echoing off the fascist marble. His eyes shot open—panic, recognition, hatred—and I smiled like a man in love.

"Hey there, little buddy," I cooed, tousling his hair like I was his big brother and he was six. "Look who came to visit!"

I grabbed his limp arm and flopped it like a ventriloquist's dummy toward the crowd. "Hallo, ich bin Hitler," I said in my worst German accent, giving a cheerful wave. "Ich bin EIN Berliner!"

They stared. They all stared like I'd just pissed on the Virgin Mary during mass.

Franco's lip twitched. Stern was frozen, calculating. Pangalos looked like he might stroke out. Translators murmured my words like they were praying not to be damned. Good. Let them squirm.

"What's the matter?" I said, blinking innocently. "Too much for you? No one wants to have fun with Il Duce anymore? Come on, lighten up—it's just a joke. Jesus."

I turned back to Hitler and spoke with the intimacy of a lover, "You'll live just long enough to see your empire become a laughingstock. I'm going to turn your legacy into a punchline between two songs on a Tokyo night drive playlist."

I straightened and faced the others. "Anyway, I didn't drag you all here just to torment a vegetable, though that was a bonus."

My voice dropped, seductive now, electric. Like Luis Miguel's Ahora te puedes Marchar whispering through a cassette deck in a 1988 Firebird.

"I brought you here because we're going to reshape the world. Not the tired, grey fascism of gun salutes and cement monuments. No. Something more... vivid. Neon-colored. Sensual. Cruel. A modern day triumph."

They didn't get it. Of course they didn't. These men were stuck in the 19th century. I was a man of 2025, trapped in 1942, wearing a corpse's skin and dancing to a soundtrack no one else could hear.

Outside, Rome simmered. Inside, history twisted.

And in my head, Luis Miguel started playing, Oro de ley.

The silence was a living thing now—thick, electric, clinging to their faces like wet cobwebs. I let it stretch. Let it breathe. Let them sweat in it. And then, I smiled. Slowly. The way a man smiles when he's about to detonate history with a cigarette and a grin.

"October 31st," I said, voice low, sultry, reverent. "That's the date. Mark it down, tattoo it on your chest, carve it into the bones of your enemies."

They blinked. No one spoke. Even Hitler blinked once—yes. Yes, he remembered the date.

"The twentieth anniversary of the March on Rome. My personal Christmas. But this year…" I laughed, a sharp, glittering thing. "This year, we're not celebrating a march—we're celebrating a resurrection."

I spun slowly on my heel, like I was modeling haute couture fascism on a Milan catwalk.

"I will announce to the world the restoration of the Roman Empire. Not a mere Italy. Not a broken peninsula peddling olives and ghost stories—but the Empire. Caput Mundi. From the sands of Tripoli to the peaks of Albania. From Judea to the Dalmatian coast. And with this restoration... a cleansing. A reckoning."

My eyes fell on Stern. That ghost. That weapon. That future.

"We'll unveil our little surprise," I said, gesturing lazily at Hitler's twitching frame. "Show the world that the so-called Führer is nothing but a wheezing relic in a piss-stained bed, held up by tubes and drugs. The man who conquered Europe reduced to a breathing exhibit."

I turned to my collection of tyrants, puppets, ideologues, and parasites.

"There will be a trial. Here. Rome. Where justice once wore a crimson toga and lions purred beneath the floorboards."

I raised one hand, fingers spread like a conductor.

"You," I pointed at each of them, "will be the jury. I will be the judge. And Stern—"

He raised his eyes. Fire. Ice. Future.

"—you, my lion of Judah, will be the executioner if you want. Or have your boys in the Lehi do it, it makes no difference to me."

A few gasps. Some shuffled uneasily. Franco looked like he'd swallowed a toothpick. Pangalos mopped his forehead. Horthy opened his mouth, then closed it again like a fish.

"Just one thing," I added, eyes still locked on Stern. "Don't shoot him in the head."

I walked slowly back to Hitler's bedside, leaned down, and ruffled the little rascals, "That skull's mine."

I straightened and addressed the room again.

"I'm going to turn his skull into my personal golden drinking cup, just like Khan Krum of Bulgaria did with Emperor Nicephorus. Imagine it... rimmed in sapphires, polished like a Fabergé egg, filled with vintage Armenian brandy and ice cubes shaped like Reichsmarks."

Figl looked like he might faint. Stern simply nodded. Once. Slowly.

Outside, Rome breathed. Inside, madness crystallized.

And somewhere deep inside my fractured head, La Incondicional by Luis Miguel played on loop as I imagined sipping victory through the hollowed-out skull of Adolf Hitler, bathed in golden light and the applause of history.

And then it happened.

Franco crossed himself like I'd just pissed on the Virgin Mary. He muttered something about divine retribution, his fingers trembling against the rosary in his pocket. He looked at me like I was Lucifer in an Armani suit—and I smiled back like I knew I was.

Louis Napoléon—poor, perfumed bastard—looked like he was about to throw up foie gras. "Mon Dieu," he whispered, backing a step toward the door. "This is... barbarism."

"Barbarism?" I purred, tilting my head. "No, Louis. This is justice."

Horthy chuckled, brittle and broken, the laugh of a man trying not to drown. "Khan Krum... of course. Of course. You always did like your theatrics, Benito."

I leaned in toward him. "What can I say, I love a little drama Miklós."

Kvaternik didn't blink. He just smiled—thin-lipped and delighted. Pavelić would've called me insane. Kvaternik? He was probably imagining sipping plum rakija from Hitler's molar. I liked him more every hour.

Vërlaci tried to make a joke, something weak about Albanian skull cups and ancient warriors, but his voice cracked halfway through and died in the silence. He looked like a dried fig with a mustache.

Tsar Boris blinked rapidly, trying to process what the hell kind of political theater he was now trapped in. The Tsar of Bulgaria, staring at a 20th-century Caligula with a Pop soundtrack pounding in his brain.

Pangalos wheezed, then chuckled, then wheezed again. "You're mad," he croaked, and I could see the sweat gleaming like holy oil across his cheeks. "Completely... utterly mad."

I gave him a finger-gun. "Takes one to know one, General."

King Michael of Romania just stared, his face as pale as a communion wafer. I don't think he'd blinked since I said trial. Poor kid. He was born to be eaten alive.

Saadeh, eyes still dreamy, murmured, "In Greater Syria, the skull is sacred in poetry... but not like this." He looked disturbed. I winked at him. I liked disturbing prophets.

Stern? Stern didn't flinch. Not even once. The fire didn't flicker. His nod had been enough. But I caught the twitch at the corner of his mouth. Satisfaction. Purpose. He was ready to be the sword.

Figl of Austria turned away entirely, hand over his mouth. "This is obscene," he muttered, as though the very marble under his shoes might vomit. "You're unwell."

"Obscene?" I laughed. Loud. Too loud. "You think the Reich wasn't obscene, Figl? You think the holocaust was a polite misunderstanding? This is justice."

And finally—Imam Yahya, robed in silence and the scent of cardamom and old blood. He simply watched me, unreadable. Ancient. Like he'd seen empires rise and fall and understood that all men—mad or sane—end up the same: dust on a desert wind. He nodded once.

And all the while, in my head, "Take My Breath Away" by Berlin swelled and shimmered like an 80s hallucination. I imagined myself on a throne of broken flags, swirling brandy in a chalice of Nazi bone while neon lights glowed beneath the arches of the Colosseum.

I opened my arms like a televangelist mid-sermon.

"Gentlemen," I said. "You are standing at the crossroads of history. One path leads to cowardice. The other—to legend."

I turned back to Hitler, now blinking rapidly, confused, panicked.

"Don't worry, mein kleiner Dummkopf," I said softly, brushing a lock of his hair aside. "The whole world's going to see how you die."

I could see it all now—vivid, glorious, grotesque. The Restoration of Rome. The trial of the damned century. History itself dragged screaming into my courtroom, a place where I reigned not just as judge, but as the executioner's whisperer, the truth's last inquisitor. The whole world would watch. My minions—the loyal, the broken, the blood-soaked—would sit as jury, sharpening axes instead of pencils, verdicts already carved into marble long before the trial began.

But then—crack!—another thought shattered through my skull like a bullet made of lead and treachery. Restoring Rome? Crowning Victor Emmanuel? That simpering, useless mannequin? That walking wax figure in a dead king's coat? Why in God's flayed name would I hand it all over to him? What did he ever do for Italy? For me?

Nothing. Nothing but cast a long shadow while I scorched the earth for him. It was me. I signed the death warrants. I spilled the blood. I made Europe scream, and then sing. I butchered millions and forged the future in my own trembling, hands. I raised this corpse of a country to its feet, stitched muscle onto bone, jammed a broken crown into its skull and shouted, LIVE!

Why should he sit on the throne? Why should he be emperor? What divine right does he have that I haven't pissed on and rewritten in my own bile?

Then I saw it. Clearer than anything I'd ever known. Me—alone—in that sacred, stolen chair. The crown in my hands. The trumpets screaming like a hundred dying angels. And I… I place it on my own head. No hesitation. No trembling hands. Just inevitability.

A dynasty. Not of blood, but of will. A thousand years of me echoing through marble halls and burned-out cities. Statues of my face where the gods used to stand.

I closed my eyes and I felt it. Oh, mother of God, I felt it. It was holy. Blasphemously holy. The only logical conclusion to a life like mine. It wasn't ambition anymore—it was destiny. It was doom. And it wanted me back. I needed it.

So I guess there's only one thing left to do.

Looks like I'm staging another coup.

But first I had to plan. Plan how I was going to set the Mediterranean on fire.
 
Mare Nostrum New
May 27, 1942
Palazzo Venezia
Rome, Italy


We sat in that cursed chamber beneath the echo of Fascist chandeliers after my little grotesque display of Der Fuhrer, each of us orbiting the great mahogany war table like vultures circling a dying empire. The map of Eurasia and Africa was splayed before us, a once-proud world reduced to cartographic autopsy. Cities like scars. Borders like surgical incisions. Rivers like veins begging for a blade.

My fingers moved slowly over the Mediterranean, tracing the curve from Sicily to Palestine with the same tenderness the sax like on Midnight Girl by Toshiki Kadomatsu played—soft, sensual, doomed. The memory stung more than any war wound. I almost whispered her name. I almost wept.

I lit a cigarette, exhaled smoke like lost prayer, and let "Self Control" by Laura Branigan loop in my skull, that tragic disco scream that sounded like a cry for help—my cry. No one in the room noticed. Or maybe they were too afraid to ask.

I didn't look at Stern at first. Avraham was always composed, his sharp profile catching the lamp like a blade—his eyes were shards of shattered menorahs and ruptured commandments. He reminded me of the ghosts in my sleep, the ones who spoke Hebrew and bled gunpowder. Maybe I loved him. Maybe I hated him. Maybe he was me.

"Let's begin planning, gentlemen," I said finally, voice dry as desert bone. "This will be a coordinated effort between all of us. I think I'll call it… Operation Mare Nostrum."

The words felt delicious. Mythic. Imperial. I could already hear my future speech echoing off the broken columns of a resurrected Senate:

"ITALY-WILL BE REORGANIZED! INTO A NEW! ROMAN! EMPIRE! FOR A SAFE, AND SECURE, SOCIETY!"

Yeah, I stole that from Palpatine. Fight me. He was my favorite villain. Still is. I didn't just admire him. I understood him. The robes. The voice. The sinister sex appeal of authoritarian apocalypse. God, I missed movies.

"Avraham," I said slowly, as if invoking a demon or an old friend, "the coronation is set for October 31st." I grinned. "I want the skies over Palestine bleeding red as I proclaim the rebirth of Rome and you unleash the Lehi. Bombs. Chemical weapons. A chorus of screams and brass. You'll have all you need."

He said nothing. Just stared. He knew. He knew what I meant. This wasn't politics. This was prophecy. "Burn their barracks," I said. "Blow up their rail lines. Hit their convoys. Make the British remember fear—make them taste it. Like battery acid and tea leaves."

But then I leaned closer, eyes like razors. "Leave the Arabs out of it. No pogroms. No butchery. I don't need Saddeh calling me at 2AM crying about Pan-Syrian unity and dead kids in Haifa. This isn't Turkey. This isn't Germany. We bring fire, not genocide. Segregate them like the Americans do their blacks if you must. But no rivers of blood. Understand?"

He nodded, reluctantly. Stern had his own demons. So did I. I looked down at my hands—calloused, not trembling. Not anymore. I wasn't born for this but I adapted. I was just a guy who loved 80s Japanese pop and used to be a peace corps volunteer.

Then it hit me. "Maniac" came on in my head. Perfect timing. Flashdance. That electric madness. That synthwave of chaos. I almost laughed—out loud. Ran a hand through my thinning hair. God, I missed Sofie.

My eyes locked on Pangalos. That Greek bastard was already halfway to Olympus in his mind. "Start moving arms to the Cypriots," I told him. "You want Enosis? You'll get it. Cyprus is yours. Turn the island into a firework show. Every British soldier is Santa Claus, and this Christmas, they all get lead."

He grinned. Sick bastard. I knew what he really wanted—to cleanse it. To erase the Turks. I pretended not to see the bloodlust. Not my business. Not yet.

Then Franco. That corpse in a uniform. Still clutching monarchy like a child clings to a rotting teddy bear. "Blockade Gibraltar," I barked. "Slow. Subtle. Nothing loud yet. Land only. But get the mines ready. The moment London so much as blinks, I want that strait sealed tighter than the Kremlin."

Louis-Napoleon next. Still playing cosplay Bonaparte with his pomp and perfume. "I'm sending the OVRA into West Africa," I told him. "We'll start the fires—revolution, chaos, dreams of freedom. But I need your boys, Louis. Your Legion. Make the world remember that empire isn't dead. It's just... Under new management."

And now the madness was in full bloom. I was sweating wine and adrenaline. The room tilted sideways, and in the distance, I heard "Gloria." Laura again. Always Laura. Her voice turned to Sofie's in my mind, whispering through time. My daughter. My light. My ghost.

I poured another drink. Red like empire, sweet like blood.

Finally, Imam Yahya. Old as Sinai, sharp as prophecy. "Prepare for war," I told him. "The House of Saud is collapsing. You want the crescent? Take it. March into Mecca. Seize Medina. Crown yourself Caliph if you dare. The desert is yours."

I leaned in like a devil whispering temptation. "Make your pilgrimage a holy war. Turn the Hajj into conquest. Paint the dunes with the fire of God. I will make you Prophet reborn. Do it."

And then—just like that—it was over. They stood, saluted, left. All of them. I sat alone in the Palazzo, surrounded by ghosts, maps, and a growing silence.

I stared down at the world I was about to remake. It looked smaller now. As if recoiling in fear. As if shrinking beneath my gaze.

Then I heard it. Africa.
By Toto.

I poured myself another glass and whispered to no one, "God bless the rains down in Africa…"

And to myself, with a smile that could shatter mirrors:

"It's all happening. My empire."

Then I left, dinner with my family. Planning a coup.
 
Can I get a coup with a side of destiny? New
May 27, 1942
Private Dining Room, Villa Torlonia
Rome, Italy


The dining room glowed amber, bathed under the golden light of a row of antique chandeliers, the kind that probably once hung in some aristocratic palace before being gutted and set on fire by the ravages of time—and possibly me. Outside, Rome was pulsing under a smoggy, still sky, like some exhausted giant gasping for air beneath the suffocating weight of war and prophecy. You could almost hear the groans of history echoing in the distance—though it was probably just the sound of another building collapsing under the weight of fascist ambition.

Inside, the clinking of silverware and the rich, almost oppressive aroma of veal marsala tried its best to mask the fact that the world outside was going to hell in a handbasket. For a moment, at least, we could pretend things were normal—normal as a dinner where everyone was either a political ally or a potential assassin.

At the head of the table sat me—Benito Mussolini. Not the one you remember from history books, no. That one's long gone, a relic of a less complicated time. No, I was a 2023 transplant—a warlord, surrealist dictator, city pop evangelist, and, who knows, maybe an emperor in the making. Or maybe a delusional madman. Honestly, it's all a blur at this point.

I sat there, feeling more than a little like the world's most confused guest at an incredibly high-stakes dinner party. "Singing in the Snow" by Mikiko Noda looped in my head, like a divine revelation wrapped in a soft, pastel-colored dream. Her soothing voice pirouetted behind my eyes as I buttered my bread. My hands, capable of signing death warrants with a flourish, now spread butter with tragic elegance.

Across from me, Ciano was nervously sipping his wine, eyes darting from me to the door like he was half-expecting a squad of soldiers to burst in at any moment. Edda watched him like a hawk—beautiful, suspicious, loyal to a fault. Romano was trying (and failing) to impress Bruno with his latest aircraft design, which, frankly, sounded more like a toddler's scribbles than an engineering marvel. Bruno, for his part, looked like he'd rather be anywhere else. A beach. A cave. A quiet little cottage in the Alps. Just... anywhere but here.

Vittorio, ever the daredevil, was regaling everyone with a ridiculous story about a crash over Milan, where he almost died—almost being the operative word, because, naturally, he lived to tell the tale. Anna Maria giggled—because apparently, near-death experiences were her idea of a good time. Rachele, in contrast, looked horrified as any good mother should when her children sat at a table that could double as a criminal conspiracy. Benito Albino, my son from my last marriage, sat rigid as a statue, eyes forward, like he'd been trained to attend royal dinners in his sleep.

Then there was Rachele. My wife. Her eyes burned into Benito Albino like lasers, and I could almost hear her internal monologue in the air: You don't belong here. You never did. Ah, family. The foundation of any great empire, built on love, trust, and endless passive-aggressive glances.

I carved into my meat, chewing thoughtfully, contemplating the absurd architecture of fate. Here they all were—my family, my blood, my burdens. This constellation of ghosts and memories orbiting around me while I, the madman with a synth-pop soundtrack in my head, plotted the extinction of monarchy between bites of roasted asparagus. But, strangely, I felt at peace. No politics. No conspiracy. Just a brief interlude of domestic bliss before I'd inevitably descend back into the hell of war, power struggles, and other such delightful matters.

So I let it happen. I leaned back, pushed the uneaten asparagus aside, and let the moment breathe. Shot the shit with my loyal servants. For a few minutes, I almost forgot what it was like to be human. Just a man at dinner, with a slightly unhinged taste in music and an uncomfortably large ego. Almost normal.

But of course, the calm couldn't last.

As dessert was cleared and wine was poured, I made my move. I wiped my mouth slowly, deliberately, like a man about to deliver a line that would make Shakespeare's ghost groan in envy. The silence that followed my gesture was louder than any speech I could've made.

"Ciano," I said, my voice cold, yet unreasonably calm. "I want you to gather the Council tomorrow."

His eyebrows furrowed. "Why?"

I leaned back in my chair, swirling my wine like I was sipping from the goblet of revolution itself. "Because I'm going to abolish the monarchy."

The room froze. Like, freeze-frame, cut-to-black style. People blinked. Forks stopped mid-air. Rachele gasped, clutching her pearls—or at least I imagined her doing so, even though she wasn't wearing pearls. Anna Maria blinked twice, trying to process it. Edda dropped her napkin. Good job, Edda, I thought. Really setting the scene here. Only Benito Albino, my son of destiny, didn't react. He was a soldier. A good one. And good soldiers know when to keep their mouths shut.

"I'm not going to crown Victor Emmanuel," I continued, almost casually, like I was ordering a pizza or asking for a pack of menthols. "I'm going to crown myself. Emperor of Rome."

The silence that followed could have suffocated a city. It was a silence so thick, you could have cut it with a knife. Rachele looked like I'd just confessed to marrying a goat. "Benito..." she whispered, her voice trembling with that unmistakable mix of horror and disbelief.

"I'm going to abolish the monarchy," I continued, my voice smooth, yet filled with an unsettling conviction. "Today. And I'm going to crown myself Emperor on October 31st—twenty years to the day since the March on Rome. It feels fitting, doesn't it?" I looked at Ciano. "And you, my dear heir, will be the next Emperor. Isn't that lovely? I'll have one of my brothers adopt you. You'll be Galeazzo Ciano Mussolini. The second ruler of the Mussolini dynasty. A dynasty that will last... well, let's say a thousand years. That sounds good, doesn't it?"

Ciano nodded slowly, as though I'd just asked him to dig his own grave with a golden spoon. I could practically see the wheels turning in his head—greed, fear, excitement all mingling into a fine cocktail of power lust. "Of course," he said, sounding more like he was reciting a line from a play than offering genuine agreement.

I turned to Benito Albino. "Go to the barracks tonight. I want two battalions ready by dawn. Quietly. Uniformed, armed, loyal. They'll be my backup for tomorrow."

He stood up immediately. "Yes, Father."

He sounded like he'd just been handed the title of Duke of Armageddon, and frankly, it suited him. He was born for this absurd little farce we were about to begin.

I stood too, placing my napkin down with the deliberate finality of a man signing an edict. As I walked out of the room with Ciano at my side, I couldn't help but laugh. Not a polite chuckle. No, this was a full-on, unhinged laugh, the kind you get when you realize you've just rewritten history with nothing but a fountain pen and a crown made of gold.

"I'll take one Empire," I muttered to myself, "extra crispy. Hold the House of Savoy."

Behind me, the voices swirled in protest, disbelief, and a growing sense of panic.

"He's lost his mind!" Rachele barked.

"Father… Emperor?" Anna Maria whispered, as though she'd just discovered I'd secretly become a wizard.

Edda was frozen, staring at me like I'd just sprouted wings.

Vittorio grinned. "He's really doing it."

Romano let out a nervous laugh.

Bruno didn't say a word, just stared at his plate like he was reading the entrails of a sacrificed goat.

And Benito Albino had already vanished, disappearing into the night to rally an empire with iron and silence.

I stepped into the hallway. Somewhere, far in the bowels of the Palazzo, a string quartet was rehearsing. But in my head, Running in the 80s was blasting, and I was running, too. Straight into a new empire. A neon-drenched, fire-fueled, gold-plated empire. A place where nothing was sacred, and everything was for the taking.

I was running into history.

And I was the one writing it.
 
Friends, Romans, councilors New
May 28, 1942
Palazzo Venezia
Rome, Italy



I sat at the head of the Grand Council, perched like a vulture over carrion, though the carcass in question was not yet dead—merely twitching. Before me, the long, polished table shimmered beneath the chandelier's golden light, a grotesque altar of order built upon decades of blood, iron, and improvisation. I had always found it ironic that fascism—a movement born in chaos—had found its sanctuary in baroque splendor.


I adjusted my black tunic, let my fingers tap a rhythm on the mahogany, then folded them with quiet menace. I was not a conductor, not really. No, I was a butcher composing an opera. One with fewer violins and far more detonations and civilian casualties. My symphony would be carved into the marble of history with bayonets, written in the key of vengeance and crescendoing toward a crown.


I felt it in my bones. The moment had come.


I was a rabid dog chasing a car, and worse still—God help us all—I was about to catch it. And unlike the usual fools who never know what to do once they win, I had a very detailed itinerary.


Across from me, Count Galeazzo Ciano shifted uncomfortably, smoothing his cuffs like a man preparing for either dinner or a duel. His eyes scanned the room, flicking from face to face, searching for an ally in the sea of tension. But no lifeboats were coming. Only sharks.


I could read him like a dossier. A man torn between blood and ideology. Between his love for my daughter and his fear of my shadow. He sat on the edge of his chair, like a man on the edge of a high dive, trying to calculate whether the splash below would be triumph or tragedy.


Lucky for him, I wasn't asking him to jump. Not really. I just needed him to walk with me to the edge.


Then I struck.


I slammed both hands on the desk with thunderous intent. The echo bounced off the high ceilings like a cannon shot in a cathedral. Ciano flinched—I swear to God he flinched. Good. Let them flinch. Let them taste the overture.


"Gentlemen," I began, voice clipped and sharp as a sabre's edge, "today is a unique day. A historic one. And all of you—yes, all—will have the honor of playing a part in it."


I stood slowly, letting the silence marinate.


"Let me begin with a question. A simple one. What are your honest thoughts on His Majesty, Victor Emmanuel?"


The room buzzed to life with the usual cowardice masquerading as conversation. Murmurs, platitudes, hedging.
"A traditional figurehead."
"The King is a symbol."
"A respected institution."
"An old man doing his best..."


Et cetera. Et cetera. Et cetera.


When their noise died down, I leaned in, narrowing my eyes like a dagger poised to strike. "Shall I remind you," I said, each syllable a scalpel, "that the King nearly sabotaged our efforts in Greece? That he ordered the Greek royal family smuggled out—smuggled, gentlemen!—even after we installed our new government? He almost ruined everything!"


They knew. Of course they knew. I'd raved about it for months—thundered about it in speeches, cursed about it in cabinet meetings, even scrawled it into the margins of intelligence briefs. I had verbally wrestled the King back into his ceremonial cage like a lion tamer dragging an old beast back behind the curtain. But the beast still had claws.


"This year," I continued, "marks twenty years since the March on Rome. Since our blackshirts flooded the capital and forced the monarchy to kneel. Twenty years since the first sparks of this glorious fire we call Fascism. October 31st—the night it all began."


I let that anniversary hang in the air, thick with myth and menace.


"This October," I said, with measured force, "we will complete the cycle. We will announce the restoration of Rome. And an emperor shall be crowned."


A pause. The kind of silence that swallows breath. You could feel the tectonic plates of history shift.


"And that emperor," I said, my voice now barely more than a breath, "will be me."


The air froze. It was as if someone had unplugged the sun.


Some stared in horror. Others blinked rapidly, the way men do when trying to wake from a nightmare. A few, like Ciano, simply stopped breathing. The reactions were predictable—shock, skepticism, fear. The usual cocktail that mixes in the veins of cowards when destiny kicks in the door.


Di Stefani opened his mouth, but I raised a hand to silence him.


"What has the King ever done for Italy?" I asked, now pacing, each step a strike against the marble floor. "Did he fight in the trenches, side by side with peasants and patriots? Did he brawl with communists in the alleys, rebuild our broken army, unify our shattered economy? Did he expose the Holocaust to the world, or declare war on Nazism when every other coward was still dancing with the devil?"


"No!" I bellowed. I slammed the desk again. "We did. I did. With all of you. The monarchy is a dusty relic in a crumbling museum. Today, we do not simply bury it—we salt the earth."


At that moment, the great double doors creaked open.


Benito Albino entered, my son, my heir, my mirror. He wore his officer's uniform like a suit of destiny. Flanking him were two soldiers—silent, stone-faced. One carried slips of paper. The other, pens. Benito himself held a simple wooden box. It was placed at the center of the table like an unspoken coffin.


"We'll put it to a vote," I said. My voice was calm now. Surgical. "Take a slip. Write yes to abolish the monarchy. If the majority agrees, I give my word—the King and his family will be allowed to live in peace. Exile, not execution. If they cooperate."


I took a breath and let my voice drop to a whisper, intimate now.


"If the 'no's win… then charge me with treason. Drag me from this room and shoot me before sunset. Hell, let my own son pull the trigger. Let Ciano take my place as Duce. But I ask one thing—tell me who voted yes, and who voted no. I want to know which hands are clean, and which are bloody… before I die."


A pause.


"And tell the people what I did. Tell them I wanted the crown."


I stepped forward, tapped the box with the soft, theatrical flourish of a ringmaster welcoming his lions.


"Let's begin."


They came. One by one. Each step a confession. Each slip a small piece of fate dropped into that box like a coin tossed into Tartarus.


And I… I tied the blindfold.


I pulled it from my pocket like a condemned man putting on his own noose, his own laurel wreath of madness. There was something sacred about it. Something Roman. I stood tall—straight-backed, hands behind me. Stoic philosopher and overcaffeinated drama queen in equal measure. If I was to be executed, I would go out like Seneca—poised and quoting poetry.


Behind me, whispers began. First in hushed tones, then louder. The buzz of disbelief. The tremor of fragile men realizing the world had shifted without their permission.


"This is madness," Pricolo hissed. "He's lost it. He's actually lost it."


Madness?


No. This was clarity—pure, crystalline, and sharp as shattered ice. I understood Nietzsche at last. Staring into the abyss? No. The abyss had smiled back, handed me a blindfold, and asked me what song I wanted to die to.


And then—like a phantom lover—it came.


"You are love for me." Yurie Kokubu's voice slithered into my ears like silk. That damn city pop melody. Melancholy wrapped in satin. A memory of a world I never quite belonged to—DC, Sofie, friends and lovers long gone. The ghost of synth and longing dragged me halfway across time.


I chuckled.


Someone gasped.
"Is he… laughing?"
"Shut up, Graziani," someone muttered.


The voices blurred again—Ricci, De Bono, De Stefani—whispering, bartering, calculating. Half wanted me gone. The other half were praying I'd win so they wouldn't be next.


Then Mecano's "Hijo de la Luna" floated into my mind, a lullaby of divine punishment and maternal sorrow. A woman begged the moon for a child… and gave birth to a cursed soul. I hummed along softly.


Was Italy my cursed child?


Had I begged the heavens for glory and birthed a monster?


More murmurs. Chairs scraped. Someone cried about honor. Another asked about pensions. Pensions. The Roman Empire was hanging by a thread, and they were thinking of their pensions.


I nearly laughed again. I almost wept.


Then came "La Chica de Humo." Emmanuel's smoky whisper, the saxophone trailing like perfume. She was illusion. So was I. So was this empire. A fever dream wearing marble robes.


And in that fading daydream, I saw her—Sofie. The baby I found. My little girl who wasn't truly mine, yet was more mine than anything else ever had been. I saw her eyes, heard her coo as I explained the world to her like a broken bedtime story. Then came Romano. Anna Maria. Bruno. Vittorio. Edda. My Frankenstein family of stolen moments and awkward love.


What had I given them?


Power, yes. But peace?


Peace was a fairy tale for the dead.


A hand touched my shoulder.


Firm. Familiar.


Benito Albino.


He leaned close. Whispered like a priest.


"Papà… it's time."


My heart didn't flinch. It had stopped flinching long ago—somewhere between Take On Me and Africa.


"All right," I whispered. "Let's count the knives."


The room fell still.


And he began.


"One…"


And I stood, blindfolded, awaiting the verdict of men I had made gods.


A single word would follow.


And it would decide everything.
 
Peace New
May 28, 1942
Pallazo Venezia
Rome, Italy


Benito Albino's voice cut through the silence like a scalpel through old parchment.

"One."

The word echoed louder than it had any right to. It wasn't just a number—it was a dagger slipped between the ribs of a dying monarchy. A single syllable that cleaved past centuries of tradition, loyalty, and all that pompous rot handed down from a line of inbred porcelain dolls pretending to be kings. "Yes."

"Two."

Another. Another nail in the coffin. The blindfold obscured their faces, but I could hear it—the tremor in their breath, the weight in the room. It was the sound of men realizing that history wasn't written in ink, but in betrayal. "Yes."

"Three."

Gone was the muttering, the hedging. Just counting now. Cold, clinical. My heartbeat matched my son's voice beat for beat. It was strange—he sounded older with every number, like this moment was reaching inside and aging him from the spine out. "Yes."

"Four... Five... Six..."

"Yes...yes...yes..."

A chair groaned. Someone crossed themselves. Another man lit a cigarette, the sulfur of the match flaring against the heavy air, and no one even pretended to care about decorum. The world was ending, after all. Or beginning. Same thing, different playlist.

"Seven. Eight. Nine..."

"Yes...yes...yes..."

Each "yes" was a chisel strike against marble, shaping the new Italy from the bloated corpse of the old one. The House of Savoy wasn't falling—it was dissolving in slow motion, like a sugar cube in bourbon. Beautiful. I almost smiled.

"Ten. Eleven."

"Yes...yes..."

I exhaled through my nose. Slow. Measured. The smirk bloomed under the blindfold like a weed through concrete.

"Twelve."

"Yes..."

It continued, more and more votes being counted. All yes'.

And then—nothing. Just the electric silence that comes after a fall and before the scream. The chamber held its breath.

Then my son spoke, quieter than before. Reverent. Like a priest pronouncing the final rites over a corpse that hadn't realized it was dead yet.

"Unanimous. All yes."

A pause. History catching its breath.

"The monarchy is abolished."

I broke my silence then.

But the silence that followed wasn't silence. It was thunder, trapped in a room full of frightened lungs. No one moved. No one spoke. Not until I did.

I raised my hand—deliberate, dramatic. Theater mattered in moments like this. Then I pulled the blindfold from my eyes. The light hit me like a memory—sharp, sudden, blinding. I blinked hard, and the world came back into view: the cathedral ceiling, once painted with saints, now yellowed with smoke. Portraits of kings looked down from the walls, their faces already irrelevant.

And the men. My men. My accomplices.

All of them staring at me like I'd just clawed my way out of a crypt.

I met their eyes, one by one, and smiled. That dry, cruel smile I'd perfected sometime around the second Yazoo record and the third pack of Marlboros in a single night.

Then I said, softly, amused:

"Just as planned."

The words dropped like a guillotine.

Ciano blinked as though slapped. Di Stefani slumped back like a man whose bladder had given out. Pricolo looked like he'd aged a decade in ten seconds, and even Graziani—stoic, marble-faced Graziani—trembled as his cigarette spilled a little ash onto his lapel.

I stepped forward slowly, hands behind my back, like a professor preparing to give the last lecture before the bombs fall.

"I thank you for your courage, gentlemen. History doesn't ask men to be brave. It merely records whether they were."

No one responded. Good. They understood now.

"Victor Emmanuel will be brought before us. His exile will be peaceful... assuming he accepts the outcome like a man. Should he resist..."

I let it hang, like a noose swaying in the wind. I didn't need to finish it. They knew.

Then I turned to Benito Albino. He stood beside the ballot box like a statue carved out of something harder than marble. His face—still so young—held no expression. Only the rigidity of duty.

"Well done, son. Now... onto the next step."

"Shall I go to the Quirinal?" he asked, plain as stone.

I glanced back at the council. They hadn't moved. Petrified. Statues of their former selves.

"Prepare yourselves. We have months ahead. In October, I shall wear the laurel. Not a crown. Crowns are for relics and fools. I will wear the wreath of Caesar. Of Augustus. Of divine rebirth."

Rome would rise—not with trumpets, but with thunder. Not with hymns, but with synthesizers and gunfire.

I turned to the window, the city sprawling beneath the falling night. The domes. The ruins. The bones of empires. My voice dropped to a whisper as I spoke to it—not to the men, not to the boy, but to the city itself.

"Ave ego Caesar."

Then I turned back, channeling my inner Palpatine now. I could practically hear the Imperial March swelling behind me, echoing off the marble.

"When the King learns of our treason... he will try to kill me. Along with the entire Grand Council."

I glanced at them. My band of traitors. My cabal of history-makers. They shrank into their chairs, no longer conspirators—just accessories to treason. I took a deep breath, I recalled Palpatine in revenge of the sith. I mumbled for a moment, I wanted to speak in his tone.

"Every single royalist..." I began. It was close enough, "and every member of the royal family...is now an enemy of the Republic."

The room tensed. Even my son's back straightened like a snapped rod. Good.

"We must move quickly. If they are not neutralized, we will have civil war without end."

I looked my son in the eyes. Not the eyes of a child. Not anymore.

"Go to the Quirinal. Take the troops. We will catch them off balance. If they resist…"

The silence swallowed my voice for a moment.

"Do what must be done. Do not hesitate. Show no mercy."

And then I let the madness loose.

"Once more!" I shouted, voice like a gunshot echoing in the room. "The Empire shall be restored!"

Then I dropped to a whisper, almost a confession.

"And we will have… peace."
 
Checkmate New
Soundtrack for the first part of the chapter: https://youtu.be/h2n7j1iUHuk?si=AvkDlnU6uagxYjQ8

May 28, 1942
Rome, Italy
Private Diary of Lieutenant Mattias Berg


The fall of the monarchy was quiet. Unnaturally so. No shots fired in the night. No dramatic proclamations. Just silence—deep, suffocating silence. As if the Eternal City had become a tomb for the very idea of history.

We had been transferred back to Rome under the guise of rest and leave. Rest was a luxury reserved for the dead, and even then it came sparingly. They gave me a battlefield commission—Lieutenant. For "distinction" in combat, they said. For "bravery." Giustino would've laughed until he coughed blood. He would've said it was because I was one of the last men left from our original battalion. And he wouldn't have been wrong.

I didn't feel brave. I felt hollow.

They called us to muster the night before—our full battalion and another, men I recognized from the old campaigns in Thrace and Germany or maybe just their eyes. Everyone else looked too young or too scared or too drunk to realize what was happening. Benito Albino Mussolini—the Duce's oldest son—walked into our barracks without pretense. No entourage. No ceremony. Just the weight of his name and the cold sharpness in his voice. He told us to form up. No explanation. No time for questions. We obeyed. Of course we did. What else was there?

By midnight we stood outside the Palazzo Venezia, lined up in the darkness like forgotten statues. Nearly two thousand of us, tight columns under streetlamps that flickered like they were ashamed to look at us. The air was warm, sticky. Rome in late May always felt like it was rotting just beneath the marble. The kind of night where you couldn't quite breathe right. A bad omen if you believed in those things.

Whispers passed between us like disease. Some said the King had fled to the Vatican. Others said he was already dead. A few claimed the Blackshirts had stormed the palace in the night, slit every throat, and were now hunting monarchists door to door. I didn't speak. I just watched the clouds pass over the moon and tried not to think.

Early in the morning, Benito Albino appeared again. Dressed in full uniform, medals, jaw clenched like he was holding something back—rage, maybe, or excitement. He gave us our orders in less than ten words: "March to the Quirinal. Secure the palace."

That was it.

Lieutenant Colonel Minelli—my CO since Thrace—made the mistake of hesitating. He stepped forward and asked if there were legal orders, written confirmation, something to show the chain of command. Benito didn't blink. He merely stepped close enough to make Minelli flinch and told him, flatly, "Disobey, and I will hang you myself."

The colonel fell back into line without another word.

We marched in silence.

Rome was still asleep, or pretending to be. Curtains drawn. No pedestrians. No priests on the corners blessing the morning traffic. Just empty streets and shuttered windows. The Colosseum loomed in the distance as we passed the Forum, its ancient bones mocking us with their permanence. We were a new empire, forged in blood and fire—and we were already devouring ourselves.

Our boots struck the cobblestones in perfect rhythm. You could hear it echo off the walls like a funeral drum. Some of the younger conscripts were trembling, not from fear, but from not knowing what they should feel. The older ones, like me, didn't tremble anymore. We'd already gone numb.

Near the Piazza Venezia, the Blackshirts joined us. Hundreds of them, slipping out of alleyways and side streets like rats answering a silent whistle. They carried pistols, clubs, shotguns. Some had knives strapped to their thighs, others carried truncheons stained darker than leather. Their faces were hard, unreadable. Some were grinning. Those were the worst.

They didn't speak to us. They didn't need to. We were all tools now. Moving parts in a machine we didn't build and couldn't stop.

When the Quirinal Palace came into view, my breath caught in my throat. It sat atop its hill like a god's mausoleum, bathed in the red-gold light of dawn. The flag of the House of Savoy still flew above it—just barely. Torn. Frayed at the ends. But still there. Stubborn, like a ghost refusing to leave.

The gates were open. They always were.

No barricades. Just confused royal guard standing at attention, their faces pale. We waited for the order.

When it came a moment later, it was a whisper passed down the line like contraband: "Disarm the guards. Secure the throne room and the royal family. If they resist, shoot."

I stood in the second line, behind Corporal Massetti, to the left of young Ricci. Ricci was just a boy—sixteen, maybe. Looked younger. His helmet kept sliding down his forehead. He held his rifle like it might go off if he breathed wrong. Poor bastard hadn't even finished growing. The Army had chewed through his family—his father dead in libya, uncle dead in Thrace, his brother gunned down by Germans near Vienna. And now Ricci was marching on the palace, eyes wide and mouth dry, as if he were heading to school and forgot his notes.

I watched his hands tremble as we approached the final steps of the palace. I wanted to say something. Anything. A joke. A prayer. A lie.

But I said nothing.

Because we all knew better.

We weren't men anymore. Not really. We were mechanisms. Blades. Executions waiting to be spoken aloud.

And when the shooting started—sharp, clean, inevitable—it barely even startled us. A carabiniere refused to lower his weapon. Someone fired. Then someone else. And then the whole front column opened up like a wound. The guards fell fast. One reached for his pistol and got three rounds in the chest for his trouble. Blood sprayed the steps. Ricci screamed and fired blindly, his shot going wide. His hands were shaking so badly he dropped his rifle a moment later.

I stepped over a dying man on the palace steps. He looked up at me and tried to speak, but only blood came out. His eyes didn't plead. They accused.

Inside, the palace was too quiet. Velvet drapes. Polished floors. Paintings of monarchs staring down at us with disgust. I wanted to smash them. I wanted to run. I did neither.

We found the royal family in the royal chambers. There was no last stand. No final speech. Just a defeated man and his family whom we dragged out like movers taking out old furniture.

Someone raised the Fascist banner above the palace. I didn't see who.

When it was over, we filed back out, the royal family was stuffed into a truck at bayonet point. No cheers. No songs. Just the shuffling of boots, the stink of powder, and the eyes of men who had crossed a line that could never be uncrossed.

I lit a cigarette and watched Ricci throw up behind a statue of Saint Peter.

And in that moment, I knew the truth: the monarchy hadn't fallen that morning.

It had died a long time ago.

We just gave it a funeral.

And now we were its pallbearers.

Its grave-diggers.

Its executioners.

And we would carry that weight until the machine decided we were no longer useful—and turned its blade on us.

We dragged the royal family before the Duce. I was one of the unfortunate ones assigned to escort them along with Ricci. I was in the truck where the king, his wife, children and grandchildren were stuffed into.

They tried to speak, Ricci tried to say a few comfort them. "No harm will come to you." All I could think was how his breath reeked of vomit and even the king's face contorted in disgust.

We arrived in the pallazo Venezia a few minutes later. The royal family was dragged out and we took them inside. Benito Albino ordered us to follow him and the family was taken before the room where the grand council was gathered.

Mussolini sat at the head of the table. His face a blank slate as if he was thinking of something else. As the royal family was dragged before him I swore I could hear him humming some sort of song.

Mussolini looked at me and the king who I personally dragged before him. As if he was day dreaming and the dream was broken.

"Victor." He casually said. No respect, like the king was an insect before him. "I changed my mind. I was going to crown you Roman emperor, but I think the crown will look better on me, after all I am the one that's built up Italy. Now I'll be the symbol of a reborn Rome."

Roman emperor? New Rome? I felt like I was part of a poor historical play.

Duce pulled out a document, "you will sign this. Renounce your and your family's right to the throne of Italy. You will be granted an estate in the Italian countryside. I'm thinking of giving you the town if Montereggione to run as mayor, lovely little town. Good castle, walls, a small estate. Of course, my loyal blackshirts will be there for your protection. I think you know what happens to those that refuse me right? Remember the Greek royal family?" He smiled. The smile of a demon about to swallow up his prey.

The king shook, fear, rage, I didn't know, didn't care. He took the document and signed it. "Good." Mussolini said. "One more thing," he stood up. "A radio speech, you will praise my reign and say for the good of Italy you stepped aside."

Victor Emmanuel didn't say anything and only nodded. I felt sorry for the man for a moment.

"Take the king to the radio station. Send his family to Montereggione."

The radio station was an austere building nestled between the ministries, its windows shuttered, its walls lined with wires and microphones like veins and nerves of a mechanical beast. We brought the king in through the back, away from the press, the public, the curious eyes. Inside, the air was stale and metallic. The only sound was the steady tick of a wall clock, as if counting down to his last moment as monarch.

Victor Emmanuel sat alone in the recording room, framed by a velvet curtain behind him and a solitary lamp that cast harsh shadows across his aged face. His uniform was pressed, but his posture slouched with exhaustion. He had not spoken a word on the way over.

A technician handed him the script—typed, double-spaced, with Mussolini's edits scribbled in red ink. "Read it exactly," the man said. "No deviations."

The king scanned the page, his lips tightening. I could see the defiance rising in his chest like a tide—but then it ebbed. He nodded once, muttered, "Very well," and cleared his throat.

The red light above the microphone flicked on. The room went still. Somewhere, across Italy, millions of radios crackled to life.

"My fellow Italians," he began, his voice hoarse but steady. "It is with a heavy heart that I speak to you today. For many years, I have served as your king, your symbol of continuity and unity. I have led you through war and peace, through triumph and trial."

He paused. His fingers trembled slightly, but he went on.

"But now, in these times of national transformation, I have decided—for the good of Italy—to step aside. The needs of our great nation demand new leadership, a new symbol, one forged by iron and resolve."

There was a moment where I thought—perhaps prayed—he might go off-script, say something defiant, something human. But instead, he forced the words out with slow precision.

"I entrust the future of Italy to the leadership of Benito Mussolini, the architect of our modern state, the guardian of our destiny. I do so not under duress, but with full confidence that his vision will carry us forward into a new Roman age."

Another pause.

"I will retire with my family to the countryside, where I will continue to serve Italy in peace, away from the burdens of power. I thank you all for your loyalty over the years, and I pray for the continued glory of our beloved homeland."

He exhaled. The red light flicked off. Silence.

No applause. No emotion. Just the dull hum of equipment and the low murmur of footsteps outside the booth.

The technician gave a curt nod and turned away. The king removed the headphones slowly, as if peeling off the last layer of dignity. He didn't speak. He didn't look at anyone. He simply stood, straightened his coat, and walked out into the dark corridor alone.

Outside, I lit a cigarette. Ricci joined me, his eyes glassy, his face pale. "He sounded like a ghost," he whispered.

No, I thought. Not a ghost. A man buried alive.

-----------

TOP SECRET – WAR CABINET MINUTES
10 Downing Street, London
29 May 1942
War Cabinet Meeting No. 1755


PRESENT:

Prime Minister – Mr. Winston Churchill

Foreign Secretary – Mr. Anthony Eden

Minister of Defence – Mr. Ernest Bevin

Chief of the Imperial General Staff – General Alan Brooke

First Sea Lord – Admiral Sir Dudley Pound

Chief of Air Staff – Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal

Minister of Information – Mr. Brendan Bracken

Cabinet Secretary – Sir Edward Bridges (Recording)

---

AGENDA ITEM: Developments in Italy

Prime Minister (Mr. Churchill):
Gentlemen, you've no doubt heard the broadcast. Victor Emmanuel has, in effect, been dethroned—albeit with the trappings of civility. Mussolini has crowned himself Caesar in all but name. A curious irony, considering just two years ago he was a pariah. Now he's calling himself the symbol of a reborn Rome.

Foreign Secretary (Mr. Eden):
Yes, sir. The Foreign Office received a communiqué from our embassy in Rome confirming that the royal family has been relocated to Monteriggioni, under what they are calling "protective supervision." The King's statement on radio was clearly scripted under duress. The whole affair reeks of a palace coup, albeit a velvet one.

Minister of Defence (Mr. Bevin):
No doubt he intends to restore the Roman empire not just in name. He's already swallowed most of the Mediterranean into his sphere. He's only growing bolder.

General Brooke:
From a military standpoint, Italy has proven more dangerous than we dared hope. Their campaign against the Germans was efficient and brutal. Whatever one may say about Mussolini's ideology, his modernised army and officer corps—these "Scuole di Guerra Moderna"—are no joke. And it's only the beggining.

Churchill:
Indeed, I've read their reports. Cold-blooded but effective. He's reshaped his military along something approaching our own general staff structure. This isn't the amateurish Italy of 1939. He may be a romantic and a poseur, but he's no longer a fool.

Air Chief Marshal Portal:
Our airmen speak well of their coordination during the Ploiești raids and the South German thrust. There's discipline and intelligence there now. Almost unnerving.

Mr. Bracken (Minister of Information):
Public reaction here is mixed. The BBC is handling it carefully. We're portraying it as a coup in all but name. But the press is intrigued. The Times called it "a curious blend of Machiavelli and Caesar," and The Mirror suggested Mussolini might style himself "Emperor of the South."

Churchill:
And he might bloody well be able to. First mainland Europe, his so called global federation, recognition of Israel and now his organization of African freedom. The man has undermined us militarily, morally and diplomatically. And with Japan pressing down on Singapore and our eastern colonies; the soviets in Scandinavia. We cannot afford to stand against Italy alone now. We need the Americans.

Foreign Secretary: Not even mentioning that Italy somehow knew about our nuclear cooperation with the Americans.

Prime Minister (leaning back):
Don't even get me started on that. I want MI6 tracking every Italian, hell, every Jew in England. We need to know how they did it

---

Meeting Adjourned: 10:41 AM
 
My brand new slaves New
May 30, 1942
Palazzo Venezia
Rome, Italy


Another day, another death warrant. I always read them. Not because I had to—certainly not because I cared—but because some sick part of me needed to look the devil in the eye, and the devil had a thousand names.

Today's devil was named Karim El-Moussa. Tunisian. Destour Party agitator. A loudmouth with a fanbase and a vision—always a bad combination. He talked about resistance. Armed, no less. A dangerous game, especially when I was holding all the cards and the table was rigged.

Of course I had tolerated their little outbursts, their student meetings, their pamphlets. I liked the illusion of freedom. As long as the trains ran, the taxes were paid, and they bowed when the anthem played—I let them live.

But El-Moussa was charismatic. And in politics, charisma is a cancer. It spreads. So tomorrow, the Mediterranean would have one more corpse, and Tunisia one less hero. OVRA would handle it—quietly, quickly. Like a stiletto between the ribs. It would be done before the noon sun melted the wax on my office seal.

I leaned back in my chair, eyes closed, and of all things—Rugrats came to mind. Chuckie. That weird poem his dead mother wrote in that one episode. "When a gentle wind blows, that's my hand on your face." I teared up. A 21st-century man in a 20th-century hell. It was laughable.

I missed them. My real family. My brother's dumb street fighter combos. My moms refusal to eat anything that wasn't protein packed. My Sofie's morning breath. God, I even missed going my school. I wiped my face and reminded myself: this was war. Not just against the axis. Against time. Against memory. Against myself.

The warrant sat before me, my signature scrawled across it like a grim little bow. The tenth one today.

I skimmed a Navy briefing from Pricolo. Submarine ventilation systems were no longer killing the crew. Progress. The Augustus—our new aircraft carrier—was 2/3 finished. ETA: June next year. I grinned. Rome may be dying, but goddamn it, it would die beautiful.

Then came the knock. Guidi's voice crackled over the intercom.
"Duce. He's here."

"Good. Bring him in."

Two men entered. Guidi—faithful, ever-harried. And Reinhard Heydrich, looking like Hitler's wet dream in human form. Blonde, cold, the kind of man who probably ironed his socks.

"Herr Heydrich," I said, smiling thinly. "Glad to see the Czechs didn't finish the job."

He glared, stiff and silent. That look—like he was dissecting me with his eyes. I respected it. Hated it, but respected it. He was the shark in Hitler's blood-soaked aquarium. Now he was mine.

"I'll get to the point," I said, waving to a chair he refused to take. "You work for me now. You will train OVRA. You will expand our operations globally. Propaganda, insurgency, surveillance, sabotage. I want Italian hands setting colonies ablaze from Brisbane to British Honduras."

He sneered. "I will not betray the Reich."

I chuckled, low and joyless. "Betray? My dear Reinhard, I'm offering you a future. One where you're not splattered across a Prague sidewalk like a blood sausage. One where your children wake up in silk sheets, not in a Siberian gulag—or worse, in an American documentary narrated by Morgan Freeman."

He took a step forward. "My loyalty is to Germany."

I leaned forward, voice cold as winter steel. "And mine is to results. I don't care if you goose-step in your sleep. I care that you're useful."

He didn't answer. I gestured to Guidi, who handed me a folder. I opened it.

"Beautiful wife, that Lina. Two boys. Klaus, nine. He likes model planes. Has a stutter. Otto, eight. Wets the bed."

Heydrich's face twitched.

"I have artists in OVRA who can make your boys vanish in a puff of smoke, and blood" I said softly. "But I'm feeling generous. Your family will have an estate in Tuscany. Vineyards, horses, pasta. My Blackshirts will guard them like the Sistine Chapel."

He clenched his fists. "You would use children as hostages?"

I smiled, dark and detached then laughed. "You worked for Hitler. You killed innocents too. Spare me the outrage. Unlike your precious fuhrer I'm a winner. And to the Victor go the spoils, so learn your place and work for me like a good little slave dog and your family won't be beaten and brutalized to death."

He stood there, breathing heavily. The shark was realizing it had been caged.

"When do I start?" he muttered.

"Now," I said, tossing him the folder. "Start with domestic operations. Surveillance. Liquidation of dissidents. Embassy monitoring. You know the drill. Guidi will be your supervisor." I nodded at Guidi and he nodded at me.

Heydrich turned to leave. I stopped him.

"Oh—and one more thing. If you ever think about running, or giving secrets to the Americans, soviets, British or their friends, remember this: your family won't just disappear. I will have them marched into your office, alive and sobbing. And you will watch as I kill them personally. One by one. Then we'll see if your loyalty still lies outside Italy."

He left without a word.

I poured a glass of whiskey. Pop crackled faintly on the phonograph in my mind, Self control by Laura Branigan echoing through the marble silence like a ghost from the future.

This empire was my cage. And I was the lion eating my own heart.

-------------------------------


TOP SECRET – TRANSCRIPT OF CABINET MEETING
DATE: June 1, 1942
LOCATION: White House Cabinet Room
TIME: 10:02 AM – 11:37 AM EST
CLASSIFICATION: EYES ONLY

PRESENT:

President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Secretary of State Cordell Hull

Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson

Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox

Director of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover

Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy

General George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff

Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner

Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles

---

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

FDR:
Gentlemen, thank you for coming on short notice. As you know, I've just returned from Moscow. Gentlemen, we have a problem on our hands. And his name is Benito Mussolini.

He leans forward, cigarette holder in hand.

Now I ask you—how in God's name did Mussolini know about our atomic program?

Stimson:
Mr. President, our program is classified at the highest level. Only a handful of our own Congress even knows it exists. If Mussolini is aware, it suggests a catastrophic breach.

Hoover:
With respect, Mr. President, we've long underestimated the OVRA. Italian intelligence has been building itself up since the mid-30s, particularly under Arturo Bocchini before his death and by Guido Guidi. They've embedded agents in émigré communities across Latin America, the Balkans, and even here.

FDR:
Yes, yes, but he warned us about Pearl Harbor. Mussolini prevented the attack by personally delivering proof of it to us. And he warned Stalin months in advance about Hitler's plans. Then handed us documents about Hitler's mass extermination campaign in Poland—some of the most horrifying photographs I've ever seen.

He pauses, staring into the distance.

How does he know so much?

Welles:
Sir, I spoke with our Rome embassy. OVRA's currently going through reforms, bringing in former Gestapo and Abwehr agents as well as all of their equipment. There's talks of Mussolini completely reorganizing it and redubbing it the Central Intelligence agency. They're even establishing so-called, special operations groups. All this while he's rallying people behind him using Jewish emancipation and anti-Nazism as banners.

Hoover:
Exactly, and that's what worries me.

FDR:
Explain.

Hoover:
He's giving the Jews a homeland. He's championing their suffering. He's laundering himself. And I'll say it plainly, Mr. President: the Jews in this country and abroad have noticed.

Some murmuring in the room.

We already know certain Zionist groups in New York, Chicago, and British Palestine are in contact with Italian agents. After what Mussolini did—warning the world, exposing the camps, even recognizing Avraham Stern's guerrilla army—we'd be fools to think they aren't grateful. Some may even be collaborating.

FDR:
So you're telling me American Jews might be passing secrets to Rome?

Hoover:
Sir… I wouldn't rule it out. Nor would I exclude the Italians either. Especially those working on advanced physics projects domestically. I can name three physicists right now—two Jewish, one Italian-born—who have family ties to the Mediterranean.

Marshall:
Mr. President, I must object to blanket suspicion. Many of these men have served loyally. Some escaped Hitler's Germany or Mussolini's early policies to work for us.

FDR:
And Mussolini has reversed those policies, General. That's the issue. He's rewritten his narrative. And people—perhaps even some of our own—are buying it.

Stimson:
If there's surveillance, it must be tightly controlled. We're balancing national security with dangerous territory—public trust, civil liberties.

FDR:
I want full surveillance authorized immediately. Focus on the following:

1. Italian-Americans employed at every institution and facility dedicated to our nuclear program

2. Jewish-American physicists with links to Zionist organizations or family in Palestine or Italy.

3. Italian and Jewish cultural and political groups in New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Philadelphia.

4. Communications between the US and Rome, Palestine, and Cairo.

5. Watchlists on prominent Jewish and Italian figures—especially those in Hollywood, publishing, academia.

Hoover:
Understood. I'll initiate covert observation and wire authorizations immediately. No arrests. Just shadows—for now.

FDR:
I want results, Edgar. This is no time for procedural dithering. Mussolini may have spared us a long war with Japan, and he may be trying to redeem himself—but the man is dangerous, unbalanced, we need to know what he's up to.

Knox:
Should we consider counterintelligence operations against OVRA assets in the Western Hemisphere?

FDR:
Yes. Operate through the Bureau and ONI. No overt acts. No media leaks. And for the love of God, don't let the press know we're investigating Jews or Italians.

Silence hangs heavy over the room.

FDR:
This war is about survival. And so is our Republic. Never forget that.

END TRANSCRIPT
Filed: June 2, 1942 – WHITE HOUSE / OSS CHANNEL
Distribution: EYES ONLY – President, FBI Director, War Department
 
Salve Africa New
June 2, 1942
Palazzo Venezia
Rome, Italy


The air smelled like cigarette ash, oiled walnut, and last night's guilt. I had slept in the office again, sprawled out on the couch like some bureaucratic corpse, still wearing my black tunic, stained with coffee and regret. My mind was spinning midnight pretenders for the third time. I couldn't help it. Tomoko Aran's voice hit that exact frequency of melancholy I needed to remain functional—like a melancholic IV drip. Every night I heard her. Every morning she reminded me that the future would never return.

Across the desk stood Otto Skorzeny. Tall, built like an industrial refrigerator left too long in the cold, with that scar across his face that made him look like a Bond villain crossed with a rugby hooligan. I didn't like him. I didn't need to. He was the right monster for the right job.

He saluted, stiff and militaristic, as if he was still goose-stepping through Hitler's daydreams.

"Don't do that," I muttered, waving the salute away like a bad smell. "This isn't a Nuremberg rally. This is Rome. We do things differently here. We stab our leaders in the back artistically."

He raised an eyebrow. I smiled.

"Sit down, Otto. Or stand. Whatever makes you feel more in control. We both know that's what you like."

He chose to stand, arms crossed, posture ramrod straight. Like a statue of war built by an angry drunk.

"I brought you here because I need someone who understands how to weaponize chaos," I said, lighting another cigarette. "Not command it. Not discipline it. Just… surf it. Like Mr. T in the A Team."

He blinked. "I don't know what that is."

"You will one day," I muttered.

I pointed at the large map pinned to the wall—Africa, stretched and bleeding under my red ink annotations. Circles around French Equatorial colonies. Arrows pointing from Egypt to the Congo. Skulls drawn over British cities and colonies.

"I'm going to set Africa on fire," I said, deadpan.

Skorzeny tilted his head slightly. "That's… a large place."

"Yes," I said, dragging on the cigarette. "Which means there's more to burn."

I turned to face him, smoke curling from my lips like incense in a funeral parlor.

"I'm done playing catch-up with the Nazis and their Wagnerian fantasies. I'm not building a thousand-year Reich. I'm building a new Rome. And you, Otto, are going to teach a new generation of arsonists how to use matches to help me burn down the old world."

He squinted. "You want special forces?"

"yes, but that's later," I said, pouring whiskey into two glasses. "Right now I want demons. Jungle ghosts. Desert phantoms. I want men who disappear into the sand, who reappear with a British officer's head in a burlap sack and no explanation. I want to train the future of africa. Help them free it one British, french, Belgian, and Portuguese corpse at a time."

I slid a thick leather dossier across the desk. He opened it—inside were photographs, files, fingerprints, blood-stained intelligence. African revolutionaries, ex-French colonial troops, Kenyan bandits.

"They hate the British. They hate the French. They hate everyone. Perfect." I gestured to the folder. "You'll teach them everything you know. How to slit a throat silently. How to rig a train with half a bar of soap and some wire. How to make love to an explosives manual."

He looked up. "You think I can turn these men into soldiers?"

"I don't want soldiers, Otto. I want nightmares. And you—scarface Nazi Rambo that you are—are going to be their Moses."

He didn't laugh. Neither did I. I was dead serious, in the way only madmen and saints ever are.

"You'll be based out of Addis Ababa and Tripoli. You'll get whatever you need—planes, money, smuggled whiskey, opera tickets, thermobaric grenades. You'll have full OVRA authorization. You'll train these men to burn the colonial world down to its velvet-draped skeleton. The Kingdom's of France and Spain will give you their own men and resources as well."

He looked back at the folder. "These people will kill each other when we're gone."

"They wont," I said, sipping whiskey. "Because you will remind them who fed them, who gave them freedom. This freedom will come with a price, once their flags fly they let our companies extract their resources and our banks control their money. They'll remember us. They'll name their children after us. In ten years, some warlord with a necklace of Belgian ears will be yelling your name and mine across a battlefield, calling us prophets. We will be symbols of African liberation. The black flag of revolutionary fascism will fly from Cairo to Cape town. And every activist for black liberation from the farms of Mississippi to the jungles of the Congo will look to us for inspiration instead of silly ideas like freedom and democracy."

He looked skeptical. That was fine.

"And what if I say no?" he asked.

I leaned forward, the smile draining from my face like wine from a shattered goblet.

"Then I'll have your mistress hanged from the Castel Sant'Angelo and pipe opera through the loudspeakers while I feed your pet dog to a crowd of starving orphans."

Pause. He stared.

"…You're insane," he finally said.

"Yes," I replied. "And visionary. They're not mutually exclusive."

He laughed once. A short bark of something that might have been amusement or threat. Then he closed the folder.

"When do I start?"

"Now," I said. "Your first trainees are already in Libya. Tell them this: uniforms are relics and the war will rage everywhere, and there will be casualties."

I raised my glass. "To the end of the world, Otto."

He clinked it with mine, drank, and left.

Midnight pretenders faded out. I dropped the needle again.

I had work to do. Africa wasn't going to burn itself.

-------

Excerpt from Scarred by Shadows: The Life and Crimes of Otto Skorzeny by Patrick Suskind (1997)

By 1945, Otto Skorzeny had ceased to be merely a man. He had become myth—a moving shadow trailing behind the collapse of European empire. In the deserts of North Africa, the mangroves of Guinea-Bissau, the rice paddies of Madagascar, and the ash-swept peaks of the Cameroon Highlands, his name passed between clenched teeth and whispered lips like a spell, a curse, or a warning. He was Al-Bahr al-Aswad—the Black Sea—to the Sudanese tribesmen who followed him; Le Diable Boiteux, the Limping Devil, to the Gaullists who hunted him; and "the Long Scar" to American intelligence officers who knew his dossier but could never confirm his face. His legend grew like fungus in the wounds of war—parasitic, spreading, nourished by chaos.

After the fall of Berlin and the final collapse of Vichy authority across Africa, Skorzeny refused the grave most offered his kind. While others stood trial, disappeared into hiding, or died in dusty cellars clutching Luger pistols, he did what he did best: disappeared into the seams of history. With Free French forces attempting to consolidate control of their African empire, and British colonial interests fraying under postwar exhaustion, Skorzeny found fertile ground. He embedded himself within the OAUL—the Organization of African Unity and Liberation—a half-formed pan-African fascist network originally dreamed up in the waning years of Mussolini's reign as a tool of sabotage against British and French imperialism.

Under Skorzeny, it mutated into something far more dangerous.

The OAUL, as reimagined by Skorzeny, was not merely a proxy insurgency or a fascist fifth column. It became what one CIA report would later call "a roaming university of violent ideology"—a continental academy of subversion. Its jungle camps—some hidden deep in the Congolese rainforest, others beneath cloistered Catholic missions in the hills of Cameroon or Eritrea—operated like monastic orders of war. Their curricula were both ancient and modern: guerrilla warfare manuals marked by Skorzeny's own hand, annotated translations of Doctrine of Fascism, tribal folklore recontextualized as fascist mythos, and lectures that merged German military discipline with the pageantry of African nationalist symbolism.

Trainees were drilled not just in explosives and ambush tactics but in ideology. They read Montesquieu in the mornings and disassembled French rifles blindfolded in the evenings. They practiced skinning goats and, in whispered rumors, enemy officers. They were taught to become what Skorzeny termed martiri del metodo—"martyrs of method." Loyalty was bred through hardship; devotion was proven through blood.

Graduates were not sent to wage traditional war. Skorzeny, ever the pragmatist, knew Africa's liberation would not come from lines on a map or formal declarations. His objective was rot—systemic, viral, irreversible. He did not want to defeat the colonial powers in battle. He wanted to make them unravel from within.

In Senegal, OAUL-trained fireteams assassinated pro-French officials, derailed trains, and hijacked radio towers to broadcast fascist slogans in Wolof and French. The capital, Dakar, endured two years of intermittent car bombings and infrastructural sabotage. Bridges were destroyed. Bakeries were blown up during market hours. Water supplies were poisoned with livestock blood. These were not random acts—they were psychological warfare calculated to terrorize settlers, provoke repression, and radicalize the indigenous population.

De Gaulle's family was evacuated to French Guiana after multiple assassination attempts, including a grenade attack on their motorcade outside Dakar. Charles de Gaulle himself would remain under near-continuous military guard for the next decade.

In Upper Volta, entire French battalions disappeared into the grasslands. Their corpses—when found—were mutilated beyond recognition. Some were discovered floating hundreds of kilometers downriver, skinned, castrated, eyes gouged, with the letters "OAUL" branded into their torsos. A chilling communique from a desperate Free French colonel captured the mood of the time: "We are not at war with men. We are at war with a race—a theology of vengeance."

Madagascar became the burning crucible of the conflict. In 1944, the OAUL-backed Red Spear Movement, a fusion of Malagasy nationalism and fascist ideology, stormed and seized control of Tananarive. Their brief declaration of independence prompted a brutal siege by Free French troops, supported by American Marines stationed in Diego Suarez. What followed was a massacre. An estimated 10,000 were killed—civilians, priests, entire villages accused of harboring insurgents. But the memory of rebellion could not be bombed away. Red Spear cadres vanished into the highlands, where they would fester and return, again and again.

In Mauritania, Bonapartist agents courted Berber warlords with offers of a Nouvelle Empire—a new French Empire that recognized tribal autonomy and religious law. The result was a Sahara crawling with betrayal. French armored patrols vanished in sandstorms and were never found. Grain convoys were ambushed, convoys of aid rerouted, and entire towns declared themselves sovereign microstates before being razed by airstrikes.

The Free French counterstrike—Operation Vigilance—was orchestrated by intelligence chief André Dewavrin. It mirrored the Gestapo in all but name. Suspected OAUL sympathizers were disappeared. Torture became commonplace. Abidjan and Brazzaville saw nightly executions. Journalists who reported on French brutality were hanged, their presses set aflame. The tricolor still flew over West Africa, but it flew soaked in blood.

Across the Atlantic, the reverberations were profound.

In Harlem, Detroit, Chicago, and New Orleans, Black veterans of World War II watched the news of the African revolts with a mix of pride, awe, and terror. Some denounced OAUL as fascist wolves in liberationist sheepskin. But for others—especially those who had seen the hypocrisy of American democracy firsthand in the segregated barracks of Europe and the Pacific—the message was seductive. Here were Africans not just resisting colonialism but winning.

Beginning in 1943, after the battle of Savannah, a trickle of African Americans began quietly leaving for Africa. Some traveled as missionaries or journalists. Others stowed away or joined merchant vessels. Most were veterans. Some were radicals. All were searching for something America had denied them: agency.

They returned transformed. Hardened. Trained. Ideological. Many brought OAUL training manuals in English. Some brought explosives. Others brought trauma. They formed new underground movements, with them eventually being merged into the sons of Nat Turner after the 1946 midterms. Their doctrines fused the mystique of Africa with the burning reality of American injustice. They rejected liberal integrationism. They saw no difference between a plantation and a ghetto. To them, America was just another colony.

As early as 1944, after the tragic events surrounding the elections the American South began to shift. What had once been the terrain of Klan lynchings and Jim Crow law became a patchwork of insurgent zones. In Mississippi, sheriffs were gunned down in coordinated nighttime attacks. In Alabama, Black farmers erected armed barricades around their communities. In Louisiana, entire counties declared themselves "liberated zones" and dared federal officials to enter.

The Ku Klux Klan, once the apex predator of white supremacy, found itself hunted. For every burning cross, a judge's house was torched. For every lynching, a Klansman's mutilated body was nailed to a church door, gutted, emasculated, marked with the words "Never Again".

The FBI responded with brutal urgency. Under J. Edgar Hoover, COINTELPRO-ZULU was born—a subprogram of infiltration, psychological warfare, and assassination aimed at what the Bureau called "Afro-Fascist Insurgents." But the networks were fluid, decentralized, and doctrinally unlike anything the FBI had encountered. They weren't Marxists. They were religious, tribal, mystical. They saw themselves as prophets. They called themselves the Blood Children of Ogun, the Heirs of Nat Turner. They did not want equality. They wanted conquest.

Mainstream media reported a rise in "Negro Crime." Southern governors blamed jazz, marijuana, and Communism. But in backrooms, pool halls, juke joints, and barbershops, a new mantra passed like gospel: "Africa fights, and so do we."

And Otto Skorzeny?

He split his time between North Africa and Italy, where he helped train the Gruppo Specializzato di Operazioni Critiche—the GRESOPCRI—a shadowy Italian unit forged in Africa's crucible, later feared across Latin America and the Balkans. Africa was their nursery. Europe would be their playground.

Mussolini, now transformed into a quasi-mystical patriarch of a "Third Way" Fascist bloc, rewarded his favorite butcher handsomely. Skorzeny was granted a sprawling villa outside Asmara, in nominally sovereign Tigray—a city overrun by mercenaries, smugglers, and spies. He kept a private army of ex-Legionnaires and tribal warriors, drank Algerian cognac, smoked clove cigarettes, and read newspapers that reported on coups he had scripted half a decade earlier. A map hung in his study—Africa, covered in pins. Red for collapsed regimes. Black for insurgencies. White for planned offensives. He called it his garden.

When asked by an American journalist in 1956 whether he regretted the bloodshed, Skorzeny is said to have laughed through cigar smoke and replied:

"You don't ask the gardener if he regrets planting seeds."
 
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Escape from the middle kingdom New
May 5, 1942
Tianjin, Italian Concession
Private Diary of Private Enrico Polo


Tianjin feels like a city abandoned by time itself. Once a bustling enclave of foreign diplomats, merchants, and families, it has become a ghost town in the truest sense. The streets are silent, the air heavy with dread. For weeks now, our commander has ordered us to strip the concession bare. Everything that could be packed has been—furniture, rifles, crates of ammunition, even the polished silverware from the officers' mess. It's as though we're erasing our presence, pretending we were never here.

Antonio told me yesterday that the Italian outpost in Shanghai was evacuated two weeks ago. Where they went, no one knows. No formal communiqués, no radio confirmation—just rumors passed between men in hushed tones. All we've been told is that we're to "relocate to a more favorable position." Whatever that means.

The local Chinese have retreated into their homes. The streets are empty, shutters drawn tight. I don't blame them. We've all heard the stories—what the Japanese did in Nanjing, in Manchuria, in Shanghai. Rape, slaughter, experiments, and fire. Civilization means nothing to them. They're beasts in uniform. The fear in the eyes of the Chinese here is unmistakable—and justified.


---

May 10, 1942
Tianjin, Italian Concession


Today we loaded the last of our supplies onto trucks. In the end, we had to bribe the Japanese with what remained of our funds just to get the trucks and permission to leave. Ironic—buying our own escape from the very devils we fear. Every crate was accounted for: weapons, rations, even personal belongings. We took every Italian civilian we could find—diplomats, merchants, a few teachers. Anyone who could make it to the gates in time.

The orders finally came through this morning: all Italian nationals in China are to evacuate to neutral countries. Missionaries and businessmen outside the concession were not included. They're on their own now. I try not to think about what will happen to them.

Our commander briefed us solemnly. We are to travel north, cross into Soviet territory, and from there, arrangements will be made to return us to Italy. I never thought I'd see the Motherland again so soon—or that I'd feel so unsure about going back.

When I was first assigned to China, I counted myself lucky. While Mattias used his family's connections to stay back home in Italy, I drew what I thought was the better lot—adventure, exotic posts, escape from the monotony of barracks life. But now? Now I envy him. He's been promoted to lieutenant, they say. And here I am, scraping together an exit with the taste of failure and ash in my mouth.


---

May 12, 1942
Outside Tianjin


We left Tianjin at dawn.

The sun had barely risen when we began our withdrawal, trucks rumbling slowly through the once-familiar streets. The civilians came out—men, women, even children. They cried, pleaded, threw themselves in our path. Some begged us to take them, others simply clutched at our boots, at the canvas sides of the trucks, sobbing as if the world were ending.

In a way, for them, it is.

When they blocked the road, our commander gave the order to move forward—at all costs. We raised our rifles. I couldn't believe it at first. But the moment the first shot rang out, it became real.

One man clung to the side of our lead truck, shouting in broken Italian. I don't know what he said—maybe he thought we'd help him, maybe he was cursing us. Mangione, that rat-faced bastard from Palermo, leaned out and shot him point-blank. Grinned as the body hit the dirt and muttered something about "excess baggage falling off." The others laughed. I did too God forgive me.

There was blood on the road as we left. Behind us, smoke rose from the quarters we abandoned. Ahead of us, uncertainty. I wonder if this is what retreat feels like—not just a military maneuver, but a kind of spiritual failure. We are leaving ghosts behind in Tianjin. And I fear they will follow us.

-----

May 18, 1942
North of Tianjin, Hebei Province


We are on the move.

The convoy snakes its way north, a battered procession of Italian trucks weighed down with equipment, supplies, civilians, and uncertainty. Our column of 600 troops—infantrymen, engineers, signal corps, and a handful of Carabinieri—escorts not just our comrades-in-arms, but families. Officers brought wives and children to China, and now they ride with us under canvas, silent, wide-eyed.

We move cautiously, avoiding Japanese patrols. The price of our departure was steep, and the Japanese presence grows thinner the further north we travel, but we know they still watch us.

Nurse Claudia Marini rides with the medical corps. She's from Milan—blonde, composed, with a quiet fire in her eyes. She's assigned to our medical truck. I find excuses to ride beside it more often than I should.


---

May 27, 1942
Approaching Zhangjiakou


We lost a man today.

Private Lazzaro was riding point when we were ambushed by bandits in the hills. A makeshift roadblock—a felled tree—and then the crack of gunfire. Lazzaro was hit in the neck. He bled out before Claudia could reach him.

We fought them off, killed three, captured two. Locals, desperate and armed with mismatched rifles. Our commander—Colonel Vitale—ordered them hanged. We left them swinging in the wind as a message.

No civilian was harmed. That, at least, is something.


---

June 3, 1942
Inner Mongolia


We've had to abandon several trucks. The terrain is unforgiving, and the roads have become little more than goat trails. We purchased horses from a local village—sturdy Mongolian stock—and redistributed the weight of our supplies. We now move half on wheels, half on hooves.

The nights are bitter. The children cry in the dark, and the men are growing weary. We've had minor skirmishes with Communist guerrillas. They accuse us of being fascist imperialists—our commander argues back that we are fleeing, not invading. A tense standoff. We gave them medical supplies and food. They let us pass.


---

June 14, 1942
South of Hohhot


The world changed today.

Rome has declared war on Japan.

We heard it over a crackling shortwave radio. The announcement was brief—"Duce Mussolini, prime minister and regent of the Kingdom of Italy declares a state of war with the Empire of Japan."

We froze. Some cheered. Most did not.

Within hours, we were spotted. Japanese planes flew low over our column. A message was clear—our neutrality was over. They would come for us.

We pushed onward with renewed urgency.


---

June 17, 1942
Ambush at the Grass Sea


They came at dawn.

Japanese cavalry, supported by a light armored car, intercepted our rear column. The battle was chaos. Bullets tore through our supply carts. Horses screamed. One shell hit a munitions truck—we lost eight men.

I dragged Claudia from the wreckage of the medical tent. She was dazed, covered in dust and blood, but alive. She clung to my uniform as we ran.

Captain Silvestri led a counterattack. Our mortars forced the Japanese back. We held the line. Just barely.


---

June 25, 1942
Crossing into Communist Territory


We're in territory controlled by the Chinese Nationalists now, but the lines blur.

Warlords, bandits, partisan fighters—no one trusts anyone. We were stopped by a militia under General Ma Bufang's banner. They demanded bribes. Colonel Vitale handed over gold coins from the officers' treasury.

Every mile north is harder. We bury our dead in silence. But the civilians remain safe. Somehow.


---

July 3, 1942
Gobi Outskirts


The trucks are gone. All of them.

We burned the last of them three days ago after another engine failure left them stranded in the dunes. We're now entirely on horseback and foot. We travel by night to avoid Japanese aerial patrols.

Claudia walks beside me often. She hums quietly when she's tired—Italian lullabies. Yesterday, she touched my cheek when I joked about looking like a desert bandit. It wasn't just affection. It felt like hope.


---

July 14, 1942
Mongolian Border


We made it.

The border was a line in the dust, marked by a single red flag flapping on a post. A Soviet patrol met us there. They looked at us like ghosts—dusty, ragged, bloodied Italians leading horses and carrying children.

They let us in.

The civilians collapsed in the shade of the first Mongolian village we encountered. Claudia wept openly. I held her.

We have reached peace, if only briefly.


---

July 29, 1942
Ulaanbaatar, Soviet Mongolia


Orders have arrived from Rome via Moscow.

All civilians—diplomats, merchants, teachers, nurses—will be evacuated to Italy via the Trans-Siberian Railway, then ship from Murmansk. Claudia will go with them.

We soldiers, however, are not going home.

By decree of the Duce, we are to remain. Italy has formed a joint task force with the Red Army. Our mission: to fight the Japanese across China.

I kissed Claudia goodbye this morning. She placed a rosary in my hand. I promised her I would return to Milan and find her.

War waits again, just beyond the hills.

----

Postwar Epilogue: The Legacy of Private Enrico Polo

Private Enrico Polo returned to the Roman Empire in July 1944, exhausted, lean, and haunted by what he had seen in the Chinese interior. His unit had fought alongside Soviet and Chinese Communist forces for over a year—ambushing Japanese convoys in the mountains of Hebei, training partisan fighters in guerrilla tactics, and enduring the bitter cold of Inner Mongolia with rifles frozen in their hands. By the time they were recalled to Italy, over half the original 600 men who had fled Tianjin were dead. But the civilians—including every woman and child—survived.

Claudia, the Milanese nurse who had bandaged his wounds and shared her bread, waited at the military airstrip in Bari, her Red Cross uniform clean but her eyes tired. Enrico proposed to her that very night, beneath a fractured moon.

They were married within the month in a quiet ceremony in Milan attended by both their families. Claudia wore a borrowed dress; Enrico wore his field uniform. He never took off his dog tags—not even for the wedding.

In 1947, Enrico was convinced by a wartime friend in Rome to submit his wartime diary to the Ente Nazionale per il Cinema Popolare e Fascista—The Roman Empire's newly consolidated national film board, a cultural arm of the postwar Fascist government. By then, Rome had emerged from the war prosperous and victorious, the Rome Pact a major player on the world stage. Fascist Realism had become the dominant artistic style—emphasizing sacrifice, duty, family, and the moral endurance of the Italian soul.

The director Leni Rifenstalh, known for her propaganda epic "Triumph of the will", read the diary and immediately optioned it. She rewrote it into a screenplay titled:

"Fuga dal Regno di Mezzo" — Escape from the Middle Kingdom

Shot in stark black-and-white with rare touches of color to highlight emotional moments (a red scarf on Claudia, a rising sun at the border), the film was released on May 17, 1952.

"Escape from the Middle Kingdom" was a smash hit. It drew massive crowds in Rome, Milan, Naples, and Palermo. Word of mouth spread quickly across the Rome Pact—Hungary, Croatia, Bulgaria, and even fascist Greece hailed the film as a defining portrait of wartime courage and unity. In Athens, the film played to sold-out theatres, with Goebbels-like critics calling it a "masterwork of disciplined emotional clarity."

Even Joseph Stalin, notoriously cold toward Fascist Italy, reportedly watched the film at his private dacha outside Sochi. According to later records revealed in Soviet archives, Stalin said:

"Italians know how to bleed. That soldier—Polo—he should have been my son."

By 1953, the film had been dubbed into over a dozen languages. In Japan, it was quietly circulated among dissidents and former Kempeitai victims. In the United States, it was banned from mainstream release but received underground acclaim at film festivals in San Francisco and New York.

Actor Marcello Viscari played Enrico Polo—his quiet stoicism and piercing gaze made him a national hero overnight. Claudia was portrayed by Giulia Marini, who would go on to win the Mussolini Prize for Cultural Heroism in Cinema. The final scene, where Enrico walks with Claudia into the hills after the final Japanese ambush, clutching a copy of his diary, became one of the most iconic shots in Italian cinematic history.

The film altered a few details—Claudia was portrayed as a former partisan instead of a nurse, and the Japanese were more openly demonized—but the emotional truth remained intact. It was a story of survival, moral clarity, and the endurance of love under fire.

By the 1960s, Enrico Polo had become something of a quiet legend. He refused to run for office, declined offers to write memoirs, and instead opened a small café in Verona with Claudia. They had two children. He reportedly never watched the film in full, claiming it brought back "too many ghosts."

But he kept the original screenplay in a drawer beneath his kitchen counter—next to his rusted dog tags and a dried-out rose Claudia had tucked into his uniform the day they crossed into Soviet lines.

He died in 1985, at age 66. Claudia followed him six years later.

In 2002, on the film's 50th anniversary, Escape from the Middle Kingdom was digitally restored and re-released in theaters across Italy and the European Federation. It remains a staple of Italian film history courses and is still shown every May 17 on national television—a reminder of a forgotten exodus, a desperate fight, and a love that crossed continents.

Note: by Mattias, yes, that Mattias from the other diary entries. Hometown pals
 
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Omae wa mou shindeiru New
June 14, 1942
Palazzo Venezia
Rome, Italy


I didn't eat that evening. Not out of ascetic virtue or wartime rationing, but because I was about to do something so pettily apocalyptic that dinner felt… beneath it. Normally, I'd leave such theatrics to Ciano. But today? No. Today I felt cute. Unhinged. Childish in the worst, most delightful way. I was going to declare war. Personally. With flair.

The Japanese ambassador, Horikiri Zenbei, sat across from me. Rigid, polite, proper—like someone had stitched a Shōwa-era diplomatic manual into his spine. Poor bastard didn't know what kind of fever dream he'd stepped into. Beside me stood my translator—young, terrified, already sweating through his uniform. I almost pitied him. Almost. He was about to earn his entire year's salary in one sitting for my amusement.

I didn't greet them. Didn't offer a formal introduction. Instead, I poured myself a glass of vermouth, singing Mayonaka no Joke by Takako Mamiya under my breath. A city pop classic from a future that didn't exist yet. My little time-traveling serenade to chaos. The ambassador tilted his head in mild confusion.

"Was that… Japanese?"

I didn't bother looking at him as I poured myself a drink. Just nodded. "Why yes, ambassador. Yes, it was."

He looked at me as if I'd grown a second head. I ignored him as my translator relayed my message to him.

I downed the glass like it was water in hell. Then leaned forward and pulled a thick folder from my desk—full of papers that, if fate were fair, would have never existed in 1942. I slid it across the polished wood toward him like a magician about to reveal a corpse.

"You're going to hate what you see," I muttered with a grin. I nodded to my translator. That was his cue. He knew what I wanted—speak informally, impolitely, like a drunk salaryman at a Tokyo dive bar. The ambassador's brow furrowed. Good. Confusion always came before the fireworks.

He opened the folder. Slowly. Cautiously. As if he sensed it contained a premonition. And then…

There it was. The shift in his face. From mild curiosity to horror to rage, like a kabuki mask flipping through acts.

"This report… How? Where did you get it?" he asked, barely keeping his composure.

"I had spies in Japan. Well—had. I pulled them out when things got too noisy." I leaned back, stretching. "I gave that report to the Americans last year. Ever wonder why several of your aircraft carriers ended up rotting on the Pacific seafloor before you even finished your attack at Pearl Harbor?" I barked a laugh, the kind you reserve for funerals and sitcoms.

"You… you dare insult Japan's honor? You dare violate state secrets!" he spat, the translator stammering to keep up.

"Insult it?" I said, my grin growing sharp. "Oh no, Ambassador. I'm denying its existence."

That got him. He turned a lovely shade of beetroot. His fists clenched. He sputtered something that my translator relayed as: "This is an outrage! We will not take this lying down!"

"Oh, it's not an outrage, my friend," I said, pulling out another envelope, thick and ominous. "It's a declaration of war. Here. Read it. It might save a few million of your countrymen."

He snatched it like a drowning man grabs a snake. Opened it. And paused. Silence. The kind of silence that makes even ghosts sit up.

Inside: our nuclear program's entire compiled research, translated for easy consumption. The truth that the Americans were years ahead—and they had a fondness for turning cities into shadows. Me? I had no interest in Asia. But they did. The Soviets would follow eventually.

"This is…" he whispered. His hands trembled.

"Consider it a favor, and a sneak peek into what awaits your nation from the US," I said with saccharine sincerity. "Unconditional surrender, or your empire gets turned into glass. I've seen the future, ambassador. Trust me… the sunrise isn't kind."

And somewhere, faintly, Takako Mamiya kept singing in my head—her voice sweet, sultry, oblivious to the weight of nations crumbling in my office.

The ambassador closed the folder with deliberate slowness, as if hoping time itself would rewind if he just gave it a moment. He placed it neatly on the desk between us, hands folded over it like a priest preparing for a funeral sermon. His face had settled into something serene—false serenity, the kind people wear before committing arson or ritual suicide.

"This is a fabrication," he said finally, calm now, as if the rage had boiled away and calcified into something worse. "An insult to the Emperor. To the nation. To the gods."

I stared at him blankly for a moment, then blinked slowly like a lizard in the sun.

"Oh, good," I said. "We're invoking mythology now. Do you want me to fetch incense and a goat, or are we just sticking with genocide and mass murder today?"

He stiffened. "Japan will not be coerced into submission by falsehoods and vulgar threats."

I clapped my hands like I was applauding a dog that had stood on its hind legs. "Bravo! But see, Ambassador, you already submitted. You just haven't accepted it yet. You're negotiating from the grave and don't know it."

He stood. Formal, sharp, a walking katana. His translator stumbled to rise after him, pale and sweating like a ghost at a jazz club. "We will respond to this. As a nation. As a people."

"I'm sure you will," I said, waving lazily. "Probably by shouting in a cave while Tokyo gets turned into a footnote and your entire country sent to Yomotsu Hirasaka."

He opened his mouth. I raised a hand.

"No more. No dramatic exit lines. This isn't a kabuki play, and I'm out of patience with this pseudo samurai shit." I stood too. We locked eyes. "Take our folders. Take your honor. Take your delusions. And kindly get the hell out of my palace before I have you escorted by the janitorial staff. And tell them, them your government the pride of their fleet is in the bottom of the ocean thanks to Italian agents. Tell them we lost you the war before you could even start."

He left in a storm of silk and nationalistic rage, his shoes clicking like gunshots against the marble floor. My translator looked at me like a man awaiting execution. I patted his shoulder.

"You did great," I said. "Tell the staff to disinfect the seat. I don't want any of that Shinto sanctimony lingering in the leather. I'll write up a letter, one years salary as I promised. Go crazy with it."

I was already walking before the words finished leaving my mouth. Down the hall, up the stairs, past the busts of dead Roman men who'd all died thinking they mattered. I entered the radio room with all the energy of a man attending his own dentist appointment.

An aide rushed up. "Duce, the statement—should we prepare the speech? Music? A preamble?"

"No." I sat down at the microphone, cracked my neck, and lit a cigarette with my grandfather's lighter. "Turn it on. I'm bored."

A red light blinked on. The signal went live. Somewhere out there, across Italy, the people leaned in.

"This is Benito Mussolini," I said flatly, voice a steel razor dragged across velvet. "As of this moment, the Kingdom of Italy is at war with the Empire of Japan. It's nothing personal. Merely fulfillment of our diplomatic obligations to great Britain, the USSR and America."

A beat of silence. Then:

"Effective immediately. That is all."

I stood, handed the microphone to a technician like it was a used napkin, and walked out of the room with the weight of history casually slung over one shoulder like a gym bag.

City pop was still playing in my head—"Mayonaka no joke…"—and I suddenly craved something absurd. Gelato. A drive along the coast. Maybe a nap.

After all, it wasn't every day you personally declared war on an Axis power without having eaten dinner that same night.

---------

June 15, 1942
Palazzo Venezia, Rome
Council Chamber


The cabinet sat in stunned silence, the kind you only get when a man lights a fuse in a room full of gunpowder and calmly starts making espresso. Ciano looked like he'd just been slapped with a wet fish. Badoglio looked like he'd enjoyed the slap. Bottai was furiously scribbling in a notebook—either drafting a resignation letter or doodling Mussolini with devil horns. Maybe both.

I stood at the head of the long table, sipping a macchiato and smirking like a priest who'd just burned down a brothel for the insurance money.

"Yes, gentlemen," I began, spreading my hands like a magician revealing a dove. "We are now at war with Japan. No, you weren't consulted. Yes, I did it on live radio. And no, I am not insane—though that's still up for debate in some circles."

Ciano raised a hand like a schoolboy who needed to vomit. "Duce… the war with Germany ended less than 3 months ago. We're still sorting through the wreckage. The army is exhausted. The people are exhausted. I am exhausted. Now you want to fight the Japanese?!"

I laughed. It was dry, humorless, and vaguely psychotic. "Fight? No, no, Galeazzo. Let the Americans and Soviets fight. Let them burn through their bodies and bullets and blood while we sell them tuna, tomatoes, and tungsten. We'll make a fortune, gentlemen, and never fire a shot."

Badoglio squinted at me like I was a smudge on his monocle. "You're suggesting we profit from… passive belligerence?"

"I'm suggesting we profit from selective morality," I replied. "The Americans need raw materials. The Russians need fuel. The Japanese are hurling themselves into glorious self-destruction. It's a free market of apocalypse, and we've just opened a stall."

Grandi cleared his throat nervously. "But Duce, Japan was our ally. The Tripartite Pact—"

"—Was a joke," I cut in. "A suicide pact signed by three lunatics trying to out-crazy each other. Germany's dead. Japan is next. Why cling to a burning ship when you can sell life vests to the survivors?"

There was an awful silence, broken only by the sound of one of the ministers stirring sugar into a cup of coffee like it owed him money.

"You're gambling with our international reputation," someone mumbled.

"plesse," I corrected. "I've enhanced it, we were fascists with bad press. Now we're fascists with market access, intelligence superiority, and moral leverage. We exposed the Holocaust. We crushed the Nazis. We're Italy 2.0—now with nuclear ambiguity and a light Mediterranean finish."

Bottai finally looked up from his notes. "And if the Japanese retaliate?"

"Let them," I shrugged. "They'll have to cross an ocean, a continent, and two superpowers to even find us. And by then they'll be bleeding from the eyes, begging for rice and relevance."

The room fell into a tense, contemplative silence. Somewhere outside, a Vespa backfired like a distant gunshot.

I finished my macchiato, set the cup down like a tombstone, and adjusted my coat.

"War is theater, gentlemen," I said with a grin. "And today, I decided to cancel the third act. Let's discuss something more important, Stefani, the state of our treasury please."

The real meeting then began.

------------

June 15, 1942 – Rome
Private Diary of Galeazzo Ciano


Yesterday, the Duce declared war on Japan.

Yes. You read that correctly. Japan.

No consultation. No meeting. No memorandum, no whisper, no glass of Chianti with a "by the way." Just a radio broadcast from that damn red-draped office of his, half of Rome still digesting dinner when he went on air like a madman doing stand-up in a padded cell.

I was halfway through reviewing a trade agreement with Brazil when the announcement came on. I thought it was a prank. I laughed. Then I stopped laughing.

He did it. The lunatic did it.

He summoned us to the council chamber the next morning, strutted in like a Roman god with a hangover and a grudge, and told us—told us—that we were now part of the Pacific War. His explanation? Something about "selective morality" and "profiting from apocalypse." He was practically vibrating. Like a messiah, or a drug addict. Maybe both. He even made a joke about selling tuna to Stalin while Hiroshima burns. Not even Badoglio cracked a smile. And he laughs at executions.

God help me, there are moments—rare, frightening moments—when I think Benito no longer exists. That man in the uniform, the one quoting Japanese music and sipping espresso like he's auditioning for a stage play about fascism's decline… that man isn't the one I once admired.

He's bored of politics. He's bored of war. He's bored of being Mussolini. So now he plays God. And we, the ministers of the kingdom of ash, must clap or die.

And yet.

And yet…

He's building something.

He speaks of the empire as if it already exists again. Rome in Africa. Rome in the Aegean. Constantinople under the tricolor. He has maps—literal maps—drawn in crayon on napkins, showing new provinces. Ethiopia "redeemed." Jerusalem under emperor Mussolini, crowned King of Israel. Tokyo, someday, "pacified" by the Americans while we profiteer off this war. He believes it. Or pretends to.

And in this mad vision… I see a space for myself.

He's aging. Worn. Cracking under the weight of his own myth. The Duce cannot rule forever. I am his son in law . I have the pedigree. The foreign connections. The charm. The Roman nose. I could be Emperor, after the smoke clears. Emperor Galeazzo I.

God forgive me—I hate him, and I need him.

So I smile. I nod. I write this in secret while the regime stumbles like a drunk into history's abyss, and I tell myself it's worth it. All of it. The lies, the war, the blood, the betrayal. Because when he falls, I may yet inherit the throne he built from madness.

May tomorrow come slowly.

—C.
 
Can I hate general Tso's chicken (china and the pacific war interlude) New
An Excerpt from World at War: An Oral History of World War II by Max Brooks (2005)

"I remember the exact moment the radio told us Mussolini had declared war on Japan. My father dropped his teacup. My mother began crying. We were in Changsha."
— Elena D'Angelo, daughter of the Italian consul in Changsha, interviewed in 1978.

On the evening of 14 June 1942, Benito Mussolini shocked the world with a declaration no one had anticipated: Italy was now at war with the Empire of Japan. Unlike the grandiloquent speeches Mussolini was famous for—broadcast from balconies to cheering crowds in Rome—this seismic shift in global alliances was first delivered in private, behind closed doors, in the shadowed halls of Palazzo Venezia.

In a tense, dimly lit room heavy with the scent of tobacco and varnished wood, Mussolini received Japan's ambassador, Horikiri Zenbei, who had been urgently summoned with little explanation. According to transcripts and internal memos declassified in the 1970s, the Duce was calm but visibly manic, as though bearing the weight of a decision too long in the making. Escorted by only a translator, Mussolini dispensed with diplomatic pleasantries and got to the point.

Leaning forward across his polished desk, the Italian leader locked eyes with the ambassador and delivered a sentence that would reverberate across three continents: "And tell them, them your government the pride of their fleet is in the bottom of the ocean thanks to Italian agents. Tell them we lost you the war before you could even start." His voice was low, nearly a whisper, but it cut through the silence like a blade.

The Duce's cryptic reference was to the attack at Pearl harbor. Their intended surprise attack meant to cripple the US fleet had instead crippled the Japanese fleet and resulted in the sinking of several of their aircraft carriers. At the time, Tokyo had blamed admiral Yamamoto and his incompetence and forced him to exile in Kyushu. Mussolini's boast revealed the truth: Italy's shadow war with Japan had already begun before their official declaration.

Later that night, at precisely 11:45 PM, Italian state radio broadcast a short, grave address by Mussolini. In it, he declared that a state of war now existed between Japan and Italy.

The announcement stunned the international community. Washington and London, both taken off guard, scrambled to reassess their diplomatic posture toward Rome. Tokyo's response came swiftly: the Italian embassy in Tokyo was stormed by imperial police the next morning, its staff imprisoned or expelled. Within days, Japanese aircraft bombed Italian consulates in Shanghai and Tianjin. Italy, meanwhile, began mobilizing covert operatives in the Indian Ocean and French Indochina.

The Duce's declaration set off a chain reaction that would remake the Far East. In the year that followed, nationalist movements in Burma, Malaya, and even Korea began to receive clandestine support from Italian intelligence. A strange and complex alignment began to emerge: Fascist Italy as an unlikely sponsor of Asian resistance against the Axis East. It was a gamble born of desperation, audacity, and Mussolini's increasingly unorthodox worldview—a decision that would send ripples through the final years of the war and far beyond and ensure the rise of Mussolini's third block of revolution fascism.

"The Japanese had assumed the Italians were distracted, irrelevant, and neutral in the Pacific. Their reaction was immediate: bomb threats on Italian legations, purges of suspected Italian collaborators, and public executions in Tianjin."
— Dr. Richard Kwan, historian of East Asian diplomacy.

Unbeknownst to Tokyo, the Italian garrisons stationed in the International Settlements of Tianjin and Shanghai had quietly vanished by late May 1942. What the Japanese believed were standard troop rotations or administrative reshufflings were, in truth, the execution of a meticulously planned evacuation operation authorized by Mussolini himself months in advance. Codenamed Operazione Aureliano, the withdrawal had been orchestrated in near-total secrecy, involving encrypted communications, false shipping manifests, and the discreet cooperation of Soviet intelligence operatives embedded in the Italian diplomatic mission.

Under cover of night and posing as routine maritime transport, Italian forces—including regular troops, Carabinieri units, consular staff, civilians, and their families—embarked on a circuitous journey north towards Mongolia, marching through Japanese, warlord, and bandit controlled territory. By early June, the entire Italian presence in eastern China had effectively disappeared without a trace. Their destination was Soviet Mongolia, specifically the region around Choibalsan, where Soviet Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky had established a series of staging grounds in preparation for a massive campaign. This journey would be recorded in the diary of private Enrico Polo, a diary that would be adapted into the movie Escape from the middle kingdom, a cult classic of 1950s fascist realist cinema.

There, in the arid steppes, the Italians began the process of transformation. The military personnel, drawn from a mixture of elite Bersaglieri regiments, colonial detachments, and naval marines, were reorganized into a specialized unit that would become known as the Corpo di Liberazione d'Oriente—the Eastern Liberation Corps. Nominally an Italian force, they would be placed under Soviet high command and were trained in guerrilla warfare, cold-weather operations, and indirect assaults. Though poorly equipped compared to Soviet divisions, they carried with them the fervor of a people who had turned against one Axis ally to strike at another.

At dawn on 15 June 1942, the long-anticipated Soviet invasion of Japanese-held Manchuria began. Without formal declaration, hundreds of thousands of Red Army troops surged across the Amur River and into the Kwantung Army's northern frontier. Coordinated with this were swift and brutal cavalry raids launched by Mongolian units under the command of Khorloogiin Choibalsan, targeting railway lines, airfields, and isolated Japanese outposts. The offensive, code-named Operatsiya Shirokiy Mech (Operation Broad Sword), was planned in close consultation with Soviet intelligence and Chinese Communist partisans.

The initial target, the heavily fortified city of Harbin, fell in just 10 days. Soviet tank divisions outflanked entrenched Japanese positions while relentless artillery barrages neutralized airfields and supply depots. Japanese resistance was bitter, with suicidal counterattacks by fanatical troops of the Kwantung Army, but ultimately disorganized. Compounding Japan's woes was the collapse of Chinese rear-area garrisons—previously under Japanese control—which erupted in coordinated revolt. These uprisings were not spontaneous but the fruit of months of preparation, secretly coordinated by a tripartite alliance of Soviet advisors, NKVD agents, and Chinese Communist cells.

When the Italian column from Tianjin—reduced and ragged from the journey—finally arrived on the Mongolian-Manchurian border, their civilians were immediately shuttled westward to be repatriated to Italy via Murmansk convoys. The soldiers, however, were thrust almost immediately into the cauldron of battle. With outdated equipment and limited winter gear, they were nonetheless thrown into critical engagements near Mukden and along the Sungari River, where they proved surprisingly effective in coordination with Soviet artillery and Mongolian cavalry.

The Corpo di Liberazione d'Oriente earned praise from their Soviet counterparts for their tenacity, especially during the brutal fighting at Mudken, where they held off a Japanese armored counteroffensive for 36 hours alongside communist partisans and Chinese civilians without air support. However, the cost was staggering. Of the original 600 men who made the journey from Tianjin and Shanghai, fewer than 300 survived the campaign by the end of the war. Many perished not in combat, but from frostbite, exhaustion, or starvation in the unforgiving Manchurian weather. Yet their sacrifice was not in vain—their presence helped legitimize the multinational nature of the anti-Japanese front and paved the way for a broader Italian-Soviet rapprochement after the death of Stalin.

This unexpected turn of events—the sight of Italian troops fighting alongside the hammer and sickle in East Asia—sent shockwaves through diplomatic circles. It shattered any remaining illusions in Washington, London and Moscow about Mussolini's loyalty to the Axis, and in Tokyo, it confirmed the Duce's betrayal beyond all doubt. Italy had not only declared war on Japan; it had become an active participant in its undoing.

"It was surreal. Italian soldiers fighting in padded winter gear, raising red flags beside the hammer and sickle. We'd expected the Soviets, but not them. The Italians spoke of revenge, of the Holocaust, of justice. Many wore crosses around their necks. It wasn't communism. It was personal."
— Colonel Zhang Rui, Chinese defector to the Soviet-aligned government.

Mussolini's declaration of support for the Soviet Chinese Provisional Government—a fledgling political entity headquartered in Ulan-Ude and composed of a mixture of Comintern strategists, exiled Chinese Communist leaders, and defectors from the former KMT army—sent fresh shockwaves across the already fraying geopolitical landscape of 1942. This provisional regime, nominally chaired by Mao Zedong but closely advised (and effectively monitored) by Soviet officials such as Andrei Zhdanov and Georgi Dimitrov, had been formed in anticipation of the collapse of Japanese hegemony over Manchuria and North China. Until then, it had remained little more than a theoretical construct—a placeholder for a post-liberation Chinese socialist republic. Mussolini's endorsement changed that overnight.

On 29 June 1942, standing before the Chamber of Fasces and Corporations in Rome in full military uniform and beneath enormous banners proclaiming "Asia for the Asiatics, but free from tyranny", Mussolini delivered what would become one of the most controversial speeches of the Second World War. With operatic fervor and uncharacteristic ideological ambiguity, he declared:

"In Mao Zedong, we see not merely a leader of guerrillas, but the soul of a nation reborn in struggle. While others flee to the safety of exile, he stands and fights. Italy recognizes him as the legitimate President of China, for he fights not for submission, but for sovereignty. He may not be a fascist in ideology but he is a fascist in spirit and patriotic fervor."

The political implications were immediate and explosive. The Kuomintang, led by Chiang Kai-shek and operating its exiled wartime capital from Chongqing under constant Japanese pressure, reacted with fury. Official statements denounced Mussolini as a traitor to the anti-Axis cause and accused him of legitimizing "a puppet communist regime beholden to Soviet imperialism." In a blistering speech broadcast over Chinese Nationalist radio, Chiang likened Mussolini to a "jackal switching dens," while several Italian consulates in Kuomintang-controlled zones were seized or vandalized by enraged nationalist mobs.

In Washington, the Roosevelt administration was caught off guard and enraged. Already wary of Mussolini's erratic political maneuvers following his declaration of war on Germany, the Yalta conference, the Moscow conference and his exposure of the Holocaust, American diplomats viewed this recognition as a catastrophic breach of Allied unity in the Far East. Cordell Hull, the U.S. Secretary of State, privately lamented to his aides that Mussolini "has gone mad, or worse—become a Bolshevik in fascist clothing." italy's access to Allied intelligence in the Pacific theater was cut off, any any discussions of lend lease aid were ended, as did any economic cooperation initiatives.

In London, Winston Churchill was equally incensed but more calculating. Having long distrusted Chiang Kai-shek's ability to hold China together and skeptical of Mao's long-term loyalty to any foreign power, Churchill viewed Mussolini's maneuver as both cynical and dangerous. In a private note to Anthony Eden, he quipped: "The Duce has traded Tokyo for the taiga, and truth for treachery. We must watch him closely—he may yet offer tea to Trotsky's ghost."

Among the Soviets, however, the reaction was one of pragmatic approval. Stalin, though suspicious of Mussolini's ultimate motivations, recognized the immense propaganda value of a former Axis leader not only breaking ranks but actively endorsing a communist-aligned regime in China. Pravda ran a triumphant headline the following day:
"FASCIST ROME EMBRACES RED CHINA—THE WORLD IS TURNING."

Though no formal alliance was signed between the Italian regime and the Chinese communists, backchannel communications between Soviet military advisors and Italian officers in Mongolia increased significantly, especially in preparation for joint operations in northern China.

Within Italy itself, the reaction was sharply divided. Fascist hardliners were stunned. The idea of publicly endorsing a communist leader—even in the context of realpolitik—was anathema to the ideological purity Mussolini once espoused. Count Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini's own son-in-law and Foreign Minister, was rumored to have started a shouting match with Mussolini during a cabinet meeting, declaring that "next, you will be inviting Stalin to the Vatican." But for many Italians disillusioned by years of Axis alliances and military adventurism, the move was seen as bold and even moral—particularly among the growing faction of fascist reformers who viewed Mussolini's pivot as a necessary step toward a broader anti-imperialist and anti-racist evolution in their ideology.

The long-term consequences of Mussolini's recognition would be profound. It legitimized China on the world stage before the People's Republic of China was ever declared. It accelerated the collapse of Japanese control over northern China by encouraging defections and uprisings among Communist guerrilla factions. And perhaps most importantly, it fractured Allied diplomacy in Asia, creating a situation where three competing visions of China—Chiang's Nationalist Republic, Mao's Soviet-backed Provisional Government, and the Japanese-backed Reorganized National Government under Wang Jingwei—were now all claiming legitimacy in the eyes of one faction or another.

From the ashes of that fractured China, a new world order was already beginning to form—one where fascism, communism, and democracy no longer stood on opposite ends of a binary, but were now engaged in a far more chaotic and unpredictable dance.

"It was betrayal. Treason. Roosevelt personally sent a cable to Mussolini calling it a 'stab in the back to every free nation.' Churchill reportedly cursed so loudly the windows of Downing Street shook."

— Archibald Tomlin, British Foreign Office interpreter, 1942–1947.

But even as the war in East Asia raged on, the internal dynamics of the so-called "communist bloc" were fracturing beneath the surface. The alliance between the Soviet Union, Chinese communists, and their new Italian partners was tenuous at best—held together less by ideological unity and more by common enemies and geopolitical expediency. Yet it was a delicate arrangement, and one that would not survive the revelations delivered to Moscow in the spring of 1942.

During the Moscow Conference of May 1942, Benito Mussolini—now recast as a rogue fascist ally of the Soviets—authorized the delivery of a trove of intelligence documents to Joseph Stalin. Sourced through Italian intelligence networks operating in China, Indochina, and the now Kingdom of France, these documents included intercepted letters, decoded ciphers, and reports from double agents embedded within Japanese-occupied China. The most damning materials, however, were private correspondences allegedly exchanged between Mao Zedong and German intermediaries operating in Manchukuo and Shanghai during the latter half of 1941.

The contents of the files were ambiguous and likely embellished, but they hinted at a possibility that enraged Stalin: that Mao had, at one point, entertained the idea of a temporary ceasefire with Imperial Japan in order to better position his forces against the Chinese Nationalists and perhaps—most alarmingly—the Soviets themselves in a bid to build their own sphere of influence in asia. In one particularly provocative memo, Mao was said to have remarked that "the enemy of my enemy is not always my friend, but sometimes, he is a useful pause."

Whether the documents were authentic or merely a mix of truth and fabrication planted by Mussolini's operatives remained a debate until Mussolini confessed on his deathbed of their false origins. But Stalin's reaction was immediate, visceral, and predictably ruthless. Paranoid by nature and perpetually suspicious of ideological deviation, Stalin interpreted the documents not merely as a betrayal, but as an existential threat to Soviet hegemony in Asia.

He responded not with words, but with occupation and partition.

In early June 1942, the Soviet Politburo issued secret directives to the Far Eastern Command authorizing the formal transformation of Manchuria into a satellite state. Within weeks, the territory was reorganized as the Manchu People's Republic, governed by a hastily assembled coalition of ethnic Manchu communists, Russian advisors, and Red Army commanders. Though it retained the trappings of a sovereign republic—complete with a red flag bearing the Qing dragon reimagined in socialist symbolism—it was, in practice, a Soviet military zone under martial law.

Simultaneously, the Korean Peninsula was engulfed in a massive Soviet operation. Red Army forces, supported by Mongolian armored divisions and Italian reconnaissance units, swept through the peninsula from the north, brushing aside the remnants of the Japanese Kwantung Army and colonial Korean collaborators. The advance did not stop at the 38th parallel; it continued all the way to Busan and Jeju Island, where Soviet marines conducted coordinated landings to prevent Allied intervention. Within a matter of weeks, the entire peninsula was under Soviet control.

From Pyongyang, a new regime was proclaimed: the People's Republic of Korea, with Kim Il-sung—recently returned from years of service in Soviet partisan units—installed as its premier. The Soviets broadcast his ascension as the triumph of Korean independence, but it was clear that Kim was wholly dependent on Moscow. Soviet commissars and NKVD agents saturated every ministry, ensuring loyalty and eliminating dissent before it could take root.

But Stalin was not done. The peripheries of Chinese territory were next.

In the west, the long-neglected and chronically unstable region of Xinjiang—home to Turkic Muslims, Chinese warlords, and Soviet agents alike—was invaded by Soviet mechanized columns under the pretext of securing the frontier. Within weeks, the region was reorganized as the People's Republic of East Turkestan. Though nominally led by local Uyghur communists such as Ehmetjan Qasim, power rested squarely with Soviet advisors. Mass arrests of Islamic leaders, tribal elders, and former warlords soon followed, along with the nationalization of land and mosques.

To the north, Inner Mongolia—already under significant Soviet influence—was simply absorbed. With little fanfare and no formal declaration, it was annexed by the People's Republic of Mongolia, more than doubling the small satellite state's territory overnight. The Soviets justified the move by citing the "unification of the Mongol people under a socialist banner" and claimed it was a fulfillment of their promise to respect "ethnic national aspirations." In reality, it was a bold strategic maneuver: it gave the USSR a massive buffer zone against any Chinese political entity that might oppose its hegemony—be it Maoist or Nationalist.

These swift territorial reorganizations stunned the world.

The Western Allies were appalled but paralyzed. With Japan still occupying much of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, there was little appetite in Washington or London to confront Stalin over Asian borders. Roosevelt privately fumed that Stalin was "building a second Iron Curtain in Asia before the first had finished falling on Europe," while Churchill warned that "Lenin rides again, but this time on horseback from Harbin to Jeju."

Even Mao Zedong was left reeling. Though he publicly downplayed the intelligence leaks and reaffirmed his loyalty to the Soviet cause, privately he raged at Stalin's betrayal. Mao's dream of reclaiming China through revolutionary struggle was now overshadowed by Soviet bayonets and commissars. His provisional government in Ulan-Ude, having been moved to Beijing in June 12, 1942 had been diplomatically recognized by Mussolini and rhetorically praised by Stalin—but in practice, he had been sidelined, outmaneuvered, and politically neutered.

The Chinese Communist Party would survive—but only barely. In the short term, they were now junior partners in a Soviet-led imperial project that extended from the Pacific coast to the steppes of Central Asia. And Mussolini, once a fascist autocrat and now a wild card power broker, had lit the fuse.

Asia had been carved up again—this time, not by Western empires, but by revolutionaries wielding red flags and steel ambition.

"That was the moment I realized Mao would never rule China. Stalin had no intention of handing it over. He was carving China into fiefdoms."
— Deng Xiaoping, testimony from a 1986 oral history project in Beijing.

Infuriated and increasingly isolated, Mao Zedong covertly severed ties with Moscow during a politburo meeting in July 2, 1942 and began to plan his flight south, marking a dramatic rupture within the global communist movement. The final break came after weeks of mounting tension: Stalin's imposition of territorial puppet states across northern China and Central Asia, his support for Li Lisan as head of a Soviet-backed "People's Republic of China," and the systematic marginalization of Mao's own influence within the Comintern hierarchy had all combined to create a political earthquake. Mao, long distrustful of Soviet intentions, now saw his suspicions confirmed. He would not be a pawn in Stalin's pan-Asian empire.

With a cadre of 1000 hardened loyalists—veterans of the Long March, peasant leaders, radical youth, and a core of military commanders from the New Fourth Army—Mao staged a dramatic withdrawal south of the Yellow River, abandoning his base in Beijing and bypassing Soviet-controlled north china entirely. The second long march, made under the cover of monsoon rains and conducted with guerrilla discipline, brought his forces to the heartland of traditional revolutionary strength: the central plains of Henan, Hubei, and northern Jiangxi, where peasant militias welcomed him as a returning messiah.

From here, he formally proclaimed the creation of the Chinese Communist Party (People's vanguard) on August 7, 1942—a breakaway movement that rejected Soviet authority, denounced Li Lisan's "capitulationist government" and Stalin's "imperialist revisionism" and vowed to continue the revolution on Chinese terms, pledging to impose "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" on all mainland China and export true revolution to Moscow. The founding manifesto, smuggled into Shanghai and Nanjing by underground couriers, was blistering in tone: "The Soviet Union has traded the dream of liberation for the currency of empire. We are the last true sons of 1927."

Thus began a brutal three-way civil war across the Chinese mainland.

To the north, in Beijing, the newly minted People's Republic of China operated under the direct influence of Soviet advisors and Red Army detachments. Nominally led by Li Lisan, once a rival of Mao's within the early Chinese communist movement, the government was widely seen as a puppet regime. Li, though personally likeable and doctrinally orthodox, lacked Mao's electric charisma and peasant support. His forces were well-equipped by Moscow, but his power base was thin—centered on urban bureaucrats, defected warlords, and a coalition of Manchu and Korean regional elites installed by the Soviets.

To the south and southwest, Mao's CCP(PV) established guerrilla bases in rural strongholds, spreading propaganda through vast networks of village councils, revolutionary schools, and land reform campaigns. Though poorly armed, Mao's forces relied on deep-rooted popular support, mastery of terrain, and fluid command structures. His war was not just military—it was ideological, cultural, and existential.

In the central and southeastern regions, the Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek, though battered from years of war with Japan and corruption within its ranks, seized the opportunity to reclaim lost territory. With tacit American and British support, the KMT launched massive recruitment drives and attempted to position itself as the "true" defender of Chinese unity against both foreign domination and communist radicalism. But Chiang's army was plagued by low morale and internal infighting, and his government—now relocated to Chongqing—was viewed with suspicion by many Chinese civilians, particularly in areas previously occupied by the Japanese.

The collapse of unified communist leadership, combined with Soviet betrayal and Kuomintang resurgence, threw the entire Chinese interior into chaos. Villages were razed, warlords switched sides, and famine spread across borderlands contested by three armies. Soviet planes bombed Maoist guerrilla camps, while Mao's Red Guards assassinated Soviet-aligned local officials in the countryside. Kuomintang militias launched campaigns of terror against both communist factions, resulting in tens of thousands of civilian deaths.

In the midst of this chaos, Benito Mussolini, ever the opportunist, made a cold and calculating diplomatic maneuver.

By early August 1942, the Kingdom of Italy officially recognized Li Lisan's Soviet-backed government in Beijing as the legitimate government of China. The move shocked observers in both the West and Asia. Mussolini, who only months earlier had declared war on Japan and styled himself as the "liberator of Asia from colonial oppression," now endorsed a government installed by Stalin—a man he had once denounced as "the Asiatic tyrant." His Italian press censored and erased all mention of Mao and ordered that previous photographs of the Chairman be erased, altered, or purged from public memory. In Italian propaganda, Mao Zedong had never existed—his name and contributions were replaced by Soviet-approved narratives elevating Li Lisan as the rightful heir to Sun Yat-sen and Lenin.

This was not out of ideological conviction. It was a cynical play of realpolitik.

Mussolini calculated that alignment with the Soviets—still the dominant power in Asia—would secure Italian influence in the newly carved puppet states, guarantee access to Manchurian railroads, and give him leverage against both the Anglo-Americans and the Japanese remnants in Southeast Asia. He hoped to position Italy as a "third pole" between East and West, one that could mediate and exploit the coming fracture between communism and capitalism under the aegis of revolutionary fascism.

But in doing so, Mussolini had made an enemy of Mao Zedong.

And across the rivers, valleys, and burning villages of China, the revolution had entered its darkest and most fragmented hour.

"We fought the Japanese for years. Now we were fighting each other, again. This time under the shadow of two foreign flags—one with a red star, the other with a red fasces."
— Liu Xian, peasant militia commander in Shandong.

By September 1942, the so-called People's Republic of China, headquartered in Beijing, had become a hollowed-out shell of a state—a Soviet-backed rump regime clinging desperately to the urban corridors of the north and a few fortified coastal enclaves. Its control extended over the cities of Beijing, Tianjin, Dalian, Qingdao, and Shenyang, as well as a tenuous hold on the countryside north of the Yellow River, maintained largely through Red Army patrols, local militias loyal to the Comintern, and a growing network of secret police. But beyond these zones of control, China had descended into total fragmentation, and Soviet dreams of a docile Chinese satellite were quickly becoming a nightmare of resistance and rebellion.

Though the USSR's grip on its satellite states—Manchu People's Republic, People's Republic of Korea, and East Turkestan—was tightening through direct military occupation, internal purges, and centralized economic planning, the Soviet war machine was showing signs of overextension. Stalin's forces were already stretched thin across multiple fronts: occupying northern Germany, the Czech republic, Poland and suppressing insurgencies there; war reconstruction in Western Russia; and now occupying Japanese territories in Manchuria, east Turkestan and Korea, and now embroiled in a grinding counterinsurgency in the heart of China. Soviet supply lines were long, vulnerable, and increasingly dependent on scorched-earth tactics that alienated local populations.

Into this overextended empire stepped Mao Zedong's insurgency had metastasized into a ferocious people's war movement in the rugged, forested, and mountainous terrain of central China—a belt of resistance stretching from northern Hunan and Jiangxi, through western Anhui and Henan, to the hills of Shaanxi and southern Shanxi. Mao's forces operated from hidden bases deep in the jungles and valleys south of the Yellow River and between the Yangtze. The terrain, unsuited for tanks or mechanized divisions, gave Mao's partisans the upper hand. They struck swiftly at Soviet and KMT outposts, sabotaged rail lines and depots, assassinated Soviet advisors and Beijing bureaucrats, then vanished back into the hills and rice paddies with the support of the local peasantry.

These fighters—many of them teenage recruits hardened by years of war and deprivation—were deeply loyal to Mao's cause, which was increasingly defined not just by communist ideology, but by a fierce anti-colonialism and a growing cult of personality around the Chairman himself. "The Beijing revisionists," as Mao contemptuously called Li Lisan's government, were portrayed in propaganda leaflets as "traitors to the revolution, agents of foreign imperialism, and false communists who sold China to Stalin." The Maoist forces published crude but effective illustrated pamphlets in villages and used portable radio transmitters to broadcast speeches from Mao denouncing Soviet imperialism and KMT reaction.

In the south, meanwhile, the Nationalist Government under Chiang Kai-shek had established its headquarters in Chongqing, increasingly fortified and swollen with bureaucrats, refugees, and foreign envoys. Although they had suffered heavily during the Japanese occupation and faced the daunting reality of a divided country, the KMT leadership saw an opportunity in the chaos: to present themselves as the only legitimate, truly Chinese force capable of restoring unity. However, rather than negotiate with either communist faction, Chiang pursued a policy of total exclusion and suppression.

The Nationalists refused any contact with what they termed the "puppet regime in Beijing," denouncing Li Lisan as a Soviet stooge and traitor. Propaganda posters in Nationalist cities showed caricatures of Li bowing to Stalin, while newspapers warned of a new "red invasion from the north." American and British advisors—eager to maintain a Chinese front in the broader war against Japan—attempted to broker unity among the factions, but their efforts were rebuffed. Chiang, obsessed with eliminating communism in all forms, rejected any plan involving cooperation with either Li or Mao, though the situation for his commanders on the ground was far different and required pragmatism on their part, pragmatism Chiang was ready to overlook so long as his authority was maintained.

As a result, the central and southern countryside was plunged into a vortex of violence. The KMT launched brutal pacification campaigns through regions suspected of harboring Maoist partisans, burning villages, arresting entire families, and executing suspected collaborators. The countryside, already battered by famine, warlordism, and the coast still under Japanese occupation, drowned in blood. In response, Mao's forces retaliated with ambushes, assassinations, and the execution of KMT officers and landlords, creating a cycle of terror that left hundreds of thousands dead in mere months.

Foreign supplies and troops—particularly American logistics teams and British Indian Army engineers—began pouring into KMT-controlled territory by the late summer of 1942. Weapons, radio equipment, jeeps, and aircraft flooded through Burma and India, giving Chiang's forces a material edge, though corruption and black-market sales undermined their effectiveness. Advisors like General Joseph Stilwell were frustrated by KMT inefficiency and duplicity, but Washington, desperate to keep China in the war against Japan and out of the Soviet sphere, continued the support.

Thus, by the autumn of 1942, China had become a three-headed hydra, with each faction claiming legitimacy, with the northern communists and southern nationalists funded by rival powers, and each waging a total war against the other two as the people in the countryside rallied around Mao. The conflict no longer bore resemblance to the united front that had once stood against Japanese occupation. Instead, it had evolved into the first proxy war of the cold war as the second world war raged on. Fought in rice paddies, ravines, alleys, and burned-out temples—a war that bled the soul of China dry.

"It was not the liberation of Asia. It was its partition."
— Dr. Yamada Hiroshi, postwar Japanese historian.

And so began the second phase of the Chinese Civil War, not as the familiar struggle between the Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang, but as something far more fractured, far more insidious. It was no longer simply a war between communism and nationalism, between the red flag and the white sun, but a sprawling, brutal conflict between competing visions of communism, between rival empires, and above all, between foreign ambitions projected onto Chinese soil.

No longer were the terms of the war dictated by Nanjing or Chongqing, where nominal governments once claimed to represent a unified Chinese people. Now, the fate of China was being decided in Rome, Washington, and Moscow—in the marble halls of Mussolini's fascist empire, the bureaucratic labyrinth of the American War Department, and the dark, paranoid chambers of Stalin's Kremlin. Chinese sovereignty was no longer the central question—now, it was whether China would be absorbed into a greater Soviet East, co-opted into an American-led capitalist order, or be turned into a weakened and divided wasteland ripe for Italian influence and investment.

The People's Republic of China, seated in Beijing, was not a government born of revolution, but one engineered in the image of the USSR—a state designed to mimic Soviet structures, rely on Soviet arms, and obey Soviet directives. Under Li Lisan, once a firebrand communist but now a pliable administrator, the regime promoted a carefully managed revolution that emphasized industrial planning, state atheism, and loyalty to Moscow. Red Army divisions garrisoned every major city. Political officers from the Comintern reorganized schools, land reforms were frozen, and dissidents quietly disappeared. It was a revolution in chains, and the people knew it.

To the south, Mao Zedong—now a self-styled revolutionary messiah—rallied his own insurgent movement in opposition to both the Kuomintang and the "Beijing revisionists." His new party, the Chinese Communist Party (people's vanguard), was no longer just Mao's breakaway faction; it had become a quasi-religious order, marked by iron discipline, ideological purity, and the belief that true revolution could not be outsourced to foreign powers. Mao denounced both Stalin and Chiang as imperialists, declaring that only through a return to mass peasant warfare, rooted in indigenous Chinese traditions, could true liberation be achieved.

In between them stood the Kuomintang, battered and bitter, still claiming legitimacy as the government of the Republic of China but now rapidly devolving into a fragmented and kleptocratic military regime. Chiang Kai-shek, bolstered by American and British aid, was becoming increasingly reliant on warlord allegiances, coercion, and foreign logistics to maintain order. His rhetoric was nationalist, but his rule felt increasingly colonial—as if the Nationalists had become overseers of a Western-backed client state. Corruption spread like wildfire. American observers noted that for every crate of supplies delivered, two disappeared into black markets or the pockets of local officials.

For the peasants and townsfolk caught between these forces, the war offered little clarity—only fire, famine, and fear. For the world watching from afar, it was a terrifying preview of what was to come: a Cold War not of iron curtains, but of burning rice paddies and shifting allegiances, where ideology meant less than power, and China's soul was fought over like spoils on a boardroom table half a world away.

By September 30, 1942, the Soviet Union had accomplished what no foreign power since the height of Qing imperial authority had managed: total dominance over northern China, secured through military conquest, ideological subversion, and the strategic deployment of proxies. The Red Army's blitzkrieg-style advance across Manchuria had not only dislodged Japanese forces, but also allowed Stalin to reshape the political landscape north of the Yellow River with brutal efficiency.

The People's Republic of China, established in Beijing, was not a homegrown government born of grassroots revolution—it was a Soviet satellite in all but name, governed by a puppet presidium composed of Chinese Marxist-Leninists who owed their rank and survival to the Kremlin, not the Chinese people. While its official leader, Li Lisan, had once been a devout revolutionary, by this stage he had become little more than a cipher—an obedient executor of Moscow's will, propped up by Soviet advisors, security forces, and military detachments. Manchuria was placed under direct administration by joint Soviet-Chinese commissariats, its resources funneled to fuel the Soviet war machine. Massive purges eliminated remaining Japanese collaborators, nationalist cells, and any independent communist factions who refused to tow the Stalinist line.

Railroads were seized, telegraph lines restructured, and entire cities were renamed in honor of Lenin, Stalin, and Marx. Industrial plants in Harbin, Mukden, and Changchun were converted into Soviet-style state enterprises, complete with commissars and forced labor contingents drawn from Chinese prisoners and defectors. Orthodox Soviet ideology was imposed with zeal, leading to widespread land collectivization, religious repression, and mandatory Russian-language instruction in schools across occupied territories. Resistance simmered in the countryside, but was swiftly and mercilessly crushed by Soviet military tribunals.

Meanwhile, south of the Yellow River, China fractured into a dozen pieces, like a shattered mirror reflecting overlapping ideologies, ambitions, and betrayals. What had once been a unified national struggle against Japanese occupation was now a multi-front civil conflict, rife with shifting loyalties and foreign interference.

In the sprawling zone between the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers, chaos reigned. The Soviet invasion and the subsequent collapse of Japanese puppet regimes had created a power vacuum, and into that void surged a new generation of warlords, opportunists, and ideological crusaders. Former Nationalist generals who had broken with Chiang now set up their own fiefdoms in provinces like Henan and Anhui, while ex-communist commanders aligned with Moscow or Mao depending on who paid better. Italian, American, and Soviet arms were smuggled into the region at staggering volumes, fueling the proliferation of militias and private armies.

Mao Zedong, who had broken with Moscow after being exposed for secret communications with the Germans in 1941, now led the Chinese Communist Party (Revolutionary). Operating from guerrilla bases in Shaanxi, Hunan, and western Sichuan, Mao's movement was more radical than ever. His ideology combined Marxism with messianic nationalism, anti-colonial rhetoric, and a cult of personality centered on Mao himself. He declared the war not only a battle against foreign imperialism, but a "holy people's war" against both Stalinist revisionism and Kuomintang betrayal. His forces waged a savage insurgency, targeting both Soviet-aligned units in the north and Nationalist strongholds to the south. Villages were turned into fortresses. Roads became kill zones. Trains vanished overnight.

In the south of the Yangtze river, Chiang Kai-shek, weary but resolute, clung to what remained of the Republic of China. From his redoubt in Chongqing, Chiang governed a rump state supported by American and British supplies, though increasingly dependent on the goodwill of Western advisors. His army, drained by years of attritional warfare and plagued by internal dissent, was a shell of its former self, yet it remained the largest single military force still nominally loyal to a unified China. Chiang, bitter at Western influence and deeply suspicious of both Mao and Moscow, adopted a hardline stance: no compromise with communism—of any flavor. His generals undertook sweeping purges of suspected communist sympathizers, while simultaneously trying to hold together a fragmented military coalition. Morale was low. Corruption rampant. Yet Chiang remained a symbol of Chinese resilience—if not of its future.

The region became what Italian military and political analysts later dubbed "La Nuova Era dei Signori della Guerra"—The New Warlord Period. But unlike the warlord era of the 1920s, this was not merely a contest of provincial bosses and petty strongmen. This was a battlefield shaped by global ideologies, where fascism, communism, liberal capitalism, and native nationalism all competed through proxies, informants, and foreign legions. Italian Fascist operatives, seeking to expand Rome's influence, began to covertly reach out to Mao once Japan surrendered and offered cash, guns, and even mercenaries to keep the war going and china weakened while buying up Chinese businesses and factories south of the Yangtze at a discount and hosting talks with Li Lisan and sending technical advisors. American OSS agents funneled money and weapons to local anti-communist commanders with little oversight. Soviet NKVD kill teams operated deep behind enemy lines, assassinating Maoist leaders and destabilizing rival factions.

No side controlled the central provinces completely. Towns would change hands three times in a week. Roads became graveyards of wrecked trucks and abandoned tanks. The countryside, long the backbone of the Chinese revolution, became a killing field where no ideology brought peace—only occupation, taxation, or massacre.

And in the background, all sides understood the same brutal truth: foreign intervention was not just looming—it had already begun.

"The last time I saw the Dalai Lama, he was a boy in chains. They dragged him into a cold room in Lhasa, pointed a pistol at his head, and made him declare the People's Republic of Tibet. He was crying. They told us it was 'liberation.'"
— Tenzin Dorje, former Tibetan monk, later CIA asset, interviewed 1969.

Then came Tibet.

In October 7, 1942, as the brutal second phase of the Chinese Civil War began to rage, the Soviet Union launched a stunning and unexpected incursion into the Tibetan Plateau, a region long isolated by geography, religion, and tradition. Cloaked in rhetoric about "protecting socialist minorities from imperialist oppression," Soviet forces—primarily elements of the 31st Siberian Rifle Corps supported by armored units from the Far Eastern Front—pushed through Qinghai and western Sichuan, crossing into Amdo and Kham with logistical support from Soviet-aligned Chinese communists.

The invasion, carefully timed to coincide with the power vacuum left by the collapse of both Japanese authority and the withdrawal of overstretched Kuomintang forces, was swift and ruthless. Resistance was scattered and poorly organized—a handful of Tibetan militias attempted to defend remote passes, but their antiquated weapons and decentralized leadership were no match for the Soviets' mechanized columns, air support, and long-range artillery.

By October 17,, Lhasa fell with barely a shot fired, following a brief but intense artillery barrage that shattered the Jokhang Temple plaza and paralyzed local leadership. The city's defenders, many of them monks and teenage volunteers, had no air support and were overwhelmed within hours.

At the heart of the unfolding tragedy was a child: the 14th Dalai Lama, then a mere seven years old, still in the early stages of spiritual and monastic instruction. According to Soviet accounts released decades later, he was abducted in the dead of night by Soviet intelligence agents, removed from the Potala Palace under heavy guard, and flown to a makeshift Soviet command post outside of Chamdo. There, under the harsh glare of floodlights and surrounded by Red Army officers, he was coerced—some say beaten, others claim sedated—into recording a radio broadcast, scripted in Russian and translated phonetically into Tibetan.

In a trembling voice, the boy declared the formation of the Tibetan People's Republic, a new socialist state "free from feudal tyranny and foreign exploitation." The message was transmitted across the Soviet-controlled Chinese north, played on repeat over loudspeakers in occupied Lhasa, and published in party newspapers across the Rome Pact and USSR. The broadcast, later played before the US Congress in February 23, 1944 as evidence of Soviet crimes, became a symbol of Eastern Europe's and now Asia's Sovietization by force.

The Dalai Lama's family was forcibly relocated to Tashkent, under the pretense of "cultural education and political reorientation." Their house was looted by Red Army soldiers. His tutors and attendants were arrested—some shot in the streets, others vanished into the Gulag system.

In the weeks that followed, the Soviets began a systematic purge of Tibetan religious and cultural life. Major monasteries, including Sera, Drepung, and Ganden, were stormed by soldiers and political commissars. Thousands of sacred texts were confiscated, statues were melted down for metal, and entire generations of monks and lamas were labeled "reactionary feudal elements" and either executed en masse or sent to labor camps in Siberia and Xinjiang. Eyewitnesses described the rivers of Lhasa running red with blood; bells that once called monks to prayer now used as target practice for Red Army rifle drills.

The international response was swift and deeply polarized.

Within days, Mussolini's Rome Pact—comprising Italy, Greece, Hungary, Bulgaria, The Kingdom of France, and Francoist Spain—issued formal diplomatic recognition of the new regimes established by Soviet power across China. These included not only the Tibetan People's Republic, but also the People's Republic of China in Beijing, the People's Republic of Manchuria, and the East Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, which had been declared earlier that year after a Soviet-backed coup in Ürümqi.

In a sweeping public address from the Palazzo Venezia, Mussolini declared the partition of China a "monumental victory for the Eastern Revolution", describing the wave of Soviet-sponsored regimes as "a cleansing fire, burning away the dead wood of imperial decay." To thunderous applause from Fascist Party loyalists, he hailed the Soviet actions as proof of a multipolar world order, where "Europe and Asia are no longer playthings of Anglo-American imperialism." Eurasia, he said, could now speak with one voice across continents.

In Moscow, Stalin praised the invasion as a "heroic act of Asiatic liberation," marking it as the final dismantling of the British imperial buffer system in Central Asia. Pravda ran front-page images of the young Dalai Lama giving his coerced speech, captioned: "The People's Child."

But in London and Washington, the mood was one of fury, disbelief, and growing dread.

In the White House, President Roosevelt reportedly slammed his cane against a desk, shouting, "We've lost the goddamn roof of Asia!" U.S. State Department officials scrambled to draft condemnations, while Congress debated emergency funding increases for operations in India and Southeast Asia. American Protestant groups, already concerned about the fate of Christian missions in China, now spoke of a coming Red apocalypse stretching from the Himalayas to the Pacific.

In London, Winston Churchill, informed during a wartime cabinet meeting, is said to have muttered grimly, "The mountain passes were ours, once. Now Mussolini hands them to Stalin with a Roman grin." In private, he described the Tibet invasion as "a dagger thrust at the belly of India."

British intelligence warned that Soviet control of Tibet threatened not only the strategic security of British India, but also opened corridors for Soviet influence into Nepal, Bhutan, Burma, and even the North-West Frontier. The Foreign Office issued a formal protest, which was swiftly ignored by both Rome and Moscow.

Allied newspapers, sensing the magnitude of the event, ran apocalyptic headlines. The New York Times printed:
"TIBET FALLS TO REDS: Dalai Lama Seized in Soviet Coup"
The Times of London followed with:
"ROME BETRAYS THE EAST – Mussolini Applauds Stalin's March Through Asia"
The Chicago Tribune was more dramatic:
"SOVIET CHINA BORN IN BLOOD – Asia Lost"

In missionary communities, exile governments, and Asian diaspora circles, the news hit like an earthquake. The fall of Tibet was not just the destruction of a spiritual kingdom, but the symbolic triumph of totalitarianism over sacred tradition, national sovereignty, and the dream of an independent Asia.

And yet, the West did not intervene. The world watched, horrified—and did nothing.

"We thought Mussolini had joined our war. We were wrong. He joined his war."
— Cordell Hull, U.S. Secretary of State, in a private memo to FDR, November 1942.

Then the Soviets made their boldest move: Japan.

In November 17, 1942, with vast swathes of northern China under their control and the momentum of revolution pushing southward, the Soviet High Command launched an audacious military operation: an amphibious assault on Japanese territory itself. The target was northern Hokkaido, a remote but symbolically potent part of the Japanese home islands.

The operation, codenamed "Uranus," was hastily organized and deeply ambitious. Soviet divisions, supported by Manchurian marines, Chinese communist volunteers, and naval assets from Vladivostok and the Sakhalin coast, attempted a seaborne landing at Wakkanai and Abashiri, hoping to spark an uprising among Japanese workers and Koreans conscripted into the fishing and mining industries of the region. Stalin, emboldened by recent victories and eager to outflank both the Allies and the Japanese, believed the Empire of Japan was on the brink of collapse.

He was wrong.

Though Japan had suffered devastating losses in China, the Pacific, and at Pearl Harbor, the defense of the homeland ignited a ferocious nationalist resistance. The Imperial Japanese Army's 5th Division, supplemented by elite home guard units and a small contingent of kamikaze-trained naval pilots, met the Soviet landing with extraordinary violence and precision. Soviet landing craft were torn apart by entrenched artillery, kamikaze and chemical weapons. Russian, Korean and Manchurian troops were gunned down as they attempted to scale rocky beaches under withering fire from Japanese machine gun nests.

By the end of the month, the Red Army had suffered over 20 thousand casualties compared to only 3000 Japanese casualties, nearly a tenth of their initial force either killed, captured, or missing. The survivors were forced to withdraw under cover of heavy Soviet naval bombardment. It was a catastrophic failure—a humiliating defeat for Moscow, a second Finland according to Stalin during a politburo meeting on December 8, 1942. The plan to spread proletarian revolution to Japan had backfired completely.

Still, not all was lost. In the chaos, the Soviets managed to consolidate control over the Kuril Islands and the southern half of Sakhalin, areas with less Japanese military presence and greater strategic value that were quietly annexed to the Soviet union. Stalin, furious at the failure in Hokkaido, immediately ordered the region sealed off and subjected it to constant bombardment, transforming it into a heavily militarized frontier, bristling with airfields, submarines, and long-range artillery batteries. Sakhalin became known in Allied circles as the "Red Anchorage"—a new Iron Curtain rising from the icy waters of the northern Pacific.

Meanwhile, alarmed by both Soviet expansion and Japanese desperation, the United States accelerated its own plans for Pacific dominance. In December 8, 1942, the US navy, fresh off victories in Guadalcanal and New Guinea received approval from President Roosevelt and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to begin a new offensive. Operation Neptune was launched on December 15: a sweeping naval campaign to sever Japanese supply lines and reclaim key strategic positions.

The first phase involved a naval blockade of Japanese outposts across Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and the Marianas. American submarines—fueled, trained, and coordinated with unprecedented efficiency—systematically sank hundreds of Japanese freighters and destroyers, choking off vital resources from the home islands.

The second phase came swiftly: a full-scale invasion of the Philippines, which had been under brutal Japanese occupation since late 1941. American troops, supported by Filipino guerrillas and Commonwealth loyalists, landed at Leyte Gulf in December 30, 1942. The Japanese Navy, already battered at Pearl Harbor and nearly annihilated at the Battle of Midway, mustered what remained of its surface fleet for a last, desperate stand.

The Battle of Leyte Gulf—fought over five days in early January 1943 between January 1-6 became the largest naval battle in modern history. Though the Japanese deployed their remaining battleships and carriers in a series of decoy and ambush tactics, the U.S. Navy's dominance in radar, aircraft carriers, and logistics proved decisive. Every remaining Japanese carrier was sunk. Several battleships, including the once-feared Yamato, were sunk, damaged or forced to retreat. The Imperial Japanese Navy ceased to exist as a coherent fighting force. The battle cemented American naval supremacy across the Pacific and cleared the path for further Allied landings.

In the scorched jungles and shattered cities of Southeast Asia, the fortunes of the British Empire—once the undisputed master of the East—had been thrown into disarray by the shockwaves of the Japanese onslaught. The catastrophic fall of Malaya and the siege of Singapore in early 1942 had come to symbolize the apparent collapse of Western colonial dominance in Asia. Hong Kong had already been seized by December 1941. The Japanese Empire, swift and ruthless, seemed unstoppable. Yet amid the ruin and retreat, a defiant ember smoldered in the heart of British Asia, and that ember would soon ignite a resurgence.

Following its isolation in February 1942, the island fortress of Singapore endured one of the most harrowing sieges of the war. Japanese forces, having conquered Malaya in a lightning campaign, encircled the city from land, air, and sea. Artillery bombardments rained down daily. Air raids scorched the once-thriving colonial port, turning its elegant promenades into smoldering ruins. Cut off from immediate reinforcements, the defenders could expect no easy salvation.

But Singapore, against all odds, refused to fall.

A disparate but determined force of British regulars, Indian sepoys, African colonial units, and Burmese levies manned the defenses. Central to the resistance were the elite Gurkha regiments, whose discipline and ferocity in close combat earned them respect from friend and foe alike. While large-scale naval support was no longer viable due to Japanese control of surrounding waters, daring Royal Navy submarines and modified cargo vessels ran the blockade under cover of night, delivering vital ammunition, medicine, and food. These blockade-runners often returned damaged or not at all, but their efforts kept Singapore alive.

Morale, while brittle, held fast. The city's remaining civilians, largely Chinese and Malay, endured curfews, rationing, and terror bombings alongside the garrison. Makeshift hospitals, underground bunkers, and communication centers were established in basements and tunnels beneath the city. Allied propaganda hailed Singapore as "The Eastern Gibraltar," invoking the spirit of imperial perseverance. Japanese attempts to storm the city failed repeatedly, and as months passed, the siege became a drain on Tokyo's increasingly overextended forces.

Then, in late 1942, the situation began to change. A bold Allied counteroffensive was underway in Burma, and with the conclusion of hostilities in Europe, British and Commonwealth forces could now shift their full attention eastward. On January 10, 1943, after nearly eleven months of unbroken siege, a column of British-Indian troops advancing south from liberated Burma marched into Singapore, linking up with the defenders. Cheers, tears, and celebratory gunfire erupted from the exhausted but victorious garrison.

Singapore had not only endured—it had been saved. Its survival was more than symbolic; it provided the Allies with a fortified forward base equipped with airfields, deep-water docks, and a repaired communications hub. From here, the reconquest of the Dutch East Indies and British Malaya would be coordinated with devastating precision.

While Singapore's survival was hailed as miraculous, it was the battle for Burma that laid the groundwork for Allied resurgence in the region. Japan's 1942 offensive into Burma was designed to secure its flank and sever the Allied supply lines to China via the Burma Road. Japanese forces, including veteran divisions that had fought in China, poured over the border and pushed toward Rangoon with alarming speed.

British colonial defenses, long neglected and thinly spread, crumbled in the face of the Japanese juggernaut. But Rangoon—Burma's capital and principal port—became the linchpin. On March 28, 1942, Japanese spearheads reached the city's outskirts. What followed was one of the most savage urban battles of the war.

The defenders were a mosaic of the Empire: English officers, Indian rifle brigades, Burmese nationalist units loyal to the Crown, and colonial troops from Africa. Together, they transformed Rangoon into a fortress. Trenches were dug along avenues, barbed wire stretched across markets, and key buildings—rail yards, administrative centers, temples, even hospitals—were fortified. Every inch of ground was contested.

The Battle of Rangoon soon resembled a tropical Shanghai—or as one British officer put it, "Kiev in the jungle." Japanese soldiers stormed buildings under cover of monsoon rains, only to be pushed back by bayonet charges or ambushed by snipers in the shadows of pagodas. Civilians were caught in the maelstrom, many taking up arms or aiding the wounded in makeshift infirmaries.

Despite multiple encirclement attempts, Rangoon did not fall. The defenders—bloody, emaciated, but unbroken—held out through the remainder of 1942, tying down tens of thousands of Japanese troops and buying precious time for the broader Allied strategy to unfold.

By mid-1942, Japan's empire was overstretched. Its supply lines were fraying under relentless American submarine and naval attacks in the Pacific. On the Chinese front, Soviet forces had launched a broad offensive into Manchuria and northern China, forcing Tokyo to redeploy units from Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, American victories at Midway, Leyte and Guadalcanal signaled that the initiative was shifting.

With the European war winding down by spring 1942, the British High Command redirected entire divisions eastward. Reinforcements—battle-hardened troops from France and the Mediterranean—landed in India. The Indian Army itself had expanded massively, growing into one of the largest volunteer forces in the world. British planners, in coordination with American logistics and Chinese guerrilla support, devised a multi-pronged offensive to retake Burma.

On June 25, 1942, Operation Avalon commenced. A combined British-Indian-American expeditionary force surged into Burma from Assam, smashing through weakened Japanese defensive lines. Allied air superiority—anchored in part by long-range bombers based in Singapore—crippled enemy supply routes and pounded rear-echelon positions. Simultaneously, a secondary pincer from the Arakan coast cut off Japanese retreat paths.

By July 15, 1942, the last remnants of Japanese resistance around Rangoon had been shattered. British armor and infantry entered the city to the jubilation of its exhausted inhabitants. The city was in ruins, but it had survived. The Burma Road was reopened, allowing supplies to flow once more to Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Chinese forces. In northern Burma, the Chindits—British long-range penetration units—struck deep behind enemy lines, sabotaging railways and command posts.

By November, Japanese forces had been expelled entirely from Burma, and their Indochinese garrisons were left dangerously exposed. In December, the government of Thailand, sensing the inevitable, sued for peace. Under the terms of surrender, Thai authorities permitted British and Allied troops to transit through their territory. British columns, supported by Indian logistics corps and American engineers, moved rapidly down the peninsula toward British Malaya.

The reconquest of Southeast Asia was no longer a dream—it was reality. From the burning streets of Rangoon to the battered walls of Singapore, the British Empire had clawed its way back from the brink of annihilation. These victories were not just military—they were moral. They shattered the myth of Japanese invincibility and reignited hopes among occupied peoples from Burma to the East Indies.

With Singapore finally relieved, it would set the stage for the liberation of the Dutch and Portuguese east indies in the first half of 1943

Meanwhile, the Soviets pushed south of the Yellow River in November 10, 1942 under the Aegis of operation Grozny, attempting to seize the Shandong Peninsula and the eastern coastal cities. But what they encountered was not the rapid collapse they had anticipated. Instead, they found themselves bogged down in an inferno of resistance and chaos.

A strange, volatile alliance had formed in the vacuum: Chinese warlords, Kuomintang remnants, Maoist communists, and defecting Japanese officers and soldiers—all now cooperating, however uneasily, to resist Soviet control. Backed by smuggled American equipment, this new coalition operated from hidden bases in the countryside and bombed Soviet supply lines with impunity. Former Japanese soldiers, disillusioned with Tokyo's collapse and inspired by promises of redemption or simple survival, now fought alongside Chinese guerrillas in the hills and rice paddies.

Soviet troops suffered heavily. The Red Army, trained for conventional war and occupation, was ill-prepared for insurgency, and Soviet morale plummeted as the war devolved into a slow, grinding stalemate. Progress through the Shandong Peninsula slowed to a crawl by April 1943, with Soviet generals requesting reinforcements and more lenient rules of engagement, which led to brutal reprisals and atrocities that only further inflamed local opposition. By May 1943, Soviet forces retreated north of the Yellow river, it's commander, Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky was purged by Stalin and shot after a 5 minute trial for treason and defeatism, he was not rehsbilited until 1978 at the request of his family.

By March 27, 1943, with the mainland slipping out of its grasp, the Japanese Empire made a final withdrawal from continental Asia, retreating to Taiwan. There, the remaining Imperial Army units, naval forces, and political leadership established a new defensive stronghold. The entire island was transformed into an armed fortress, surrounded by minefields and anti-ship batteries, its cities turned into bunkers, its population mobilized for total war.

Taiwan, now called "the Iron Island", would be the last redoubt of the Japanese Empire, a place where the war would not end—but mutate, harden, and prepare for one last reckoning.

And then, the world changed again.

Operation Mercury, the codename for the second Soviet invasion of Japan on July 4, 1943, was nothing short of an apocalyptic gamble. Conceived in the shadow of Stalin's ambition to break the Japanese hold on Asia and assert dominance in the Pacific, it was the largest amphibious assault in recorded history, dwarfing even the Allied landings in the Philippines. It was meant to be a deathblow to Japanese imperial ambitions—an iron hammer crashing into the home islands from the north.

It became a slaughter.

Over 600,000 Soviet troops, supported by warships from the Soviet Pacific Fleet, Chinese auxiliary divisions, and hastily assembled Korean labor battalions, descended on Hokkaido, targeting the industrial and strategic hub of Sapporo. The Japanese, expecting a second Soviet attack after the failed 1942 landing, had transformed the northern island into a fortress. Every town had been mined, every shoreline reinforced. Civilians were armed. Kamikaze units were stationed not only in the skies but along beaches and bridges. Poison gas shells were preloaded into artillery tubes. There would be no retreat.

Operation Mercury lasted almost two months. It cost the Soviets more than 100,000 dead, wounded, or captured. The Red Army met not an exhausted foe, but a fanatical last stand, hardened by hunger, hatred, and the humiliation of retreat from the Asian mainland. Sapporo fell—but it was a pyrrhic victory, a graveyard of Soviet tanks, burnt-out armored trains, and civilian corpses lining the icy roads. Chemical weapons were used by both sides, turning Hokkaido into a hellscape of blistered earth and blood-choked rivers. Soviet field commanders pleaded with Moscow to halt the offensive, but Stalin ordered the advance to continue, hoping sheer attrition would bring Japanese resistance to its knees.

Instead, the Pacific balance of power teetered on the brink—and for the first time, the United States began to fear that a total Soviet victory could lead not to peace, but to a new empire rising from the ruins of the old one.

It was at this precise moment that Benito Mussolini played the most dangerous card of his political life.

Operating through neutral Swiss intermediaries, including a covert channel inside the Italian legation in Bern, Mussolini delivered a cache of highly sensitive, falsified—but plausible—intelligence to the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff. The documents claimed that Stalin had successfully developed an atomic weapon in the depths of the Urals, thanks to captured German and Polish physicists. The weapon, he asserted, was being tested for deployment—not in Europe, but in Asia.

The implication was chilling. Unless Japan surrendered, Stalin would annihilate Tokyo and Osaka. More subtly, Mussolini planted the idea that the United States and Britain were aware—and complicit—in this coming cataclysm, aiming to allow Soviet dominance over East Asia through terror.

But Mussolini did not stop there.

In a second, far more damaging dossier, he provided precise Soviet war plans for a second wave of landings, targeting Honshu and Kyushu, set for early autumn. Whether the documents were authentic, partially real, or entirely fabricated remains debated to this day. What mattered was perception. The leaks revealed the full scale of Stalin's intentions: a permanent occupation of Japan, the partitioning of the home islands, and the creation of a Soviet-aligned puppet regime, modeled on the one being constructed in Korea.

The impact was seismic.

On August 3, 1943, Admiral Kantarō Suzuki, acting with the tacit support of the Navy General Staff, launched an internal coup d'état against the increasingly erratic Prime Minister Hideki Tojo. Tojo, still commanding the loyalty of much of the Army, resisted—but his own generals had grown disillusioned by endless bloodshed and feared annihilation. He was arrested in his bunker at Izu, flown to a secure naval prison, and after a swift secret trial, executed for treason and gross mismanagement of the war.

The real shock came with the return of a ghost.

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, exiled in disgrace to Kyushu after his failure in pearl harbor was recalled by Suzuki and elevated to Emergency Defense Minister. Yamamoto, still revered by much of the public and officer corps, launched a swift, surgical purge of the Army's senior leadership. Over forty generals were arrested, several executed, and hundreds forced into retirement. A new technocratic cabinet was assembled—comprised mostly of naval officers, foreign service diplomats, and industrialists loyal to Yamamoto and Suzuki.

With the Army broken, Japan's new leadership moved fast.

On August 10, 1943, Japan signed the Treaty of Tokyo—an unconditional surrender to the United States and Britain. It was not negotiated. It was dictated by Italian diplomats with the Americans and British caught off guard but eager to solidify Japan as a bulwark against Soviet expansion.

The terms were as follows:

Unconditional surrender of Japan under American-British joint supervision, including dismantling of all offensive military capabilities and the reorganization of the Imperial Army.

Retention of Taiwan under Japanese sovereignty, to prevent Soviet seizure and preserve continuity of governance.

Formal renunciation of all mainland Asian territories and claims, including Korea, Manchuria, and China, with recognition of independent or Allied-aligned regimes.

Request for entry into the Atlantic Alliance as a junior partner, with guarantees of reconstruction aid, economic rehabilitation, and long-term defense cooperation.

The world was stunned.

The news exploded across the globe. In Moscow, Stalin flew into a rage, reportedly smashing a globe in his office and ordering the execution of several intelligence officers for failing to anticipate the betrayal. In Washington and London, officials scrambled to reorganize postwar plans for Asia, now faced with the emergence of a pro-Western Japan, strategically located and ideologically repurposed.

In Rome, Mussolini—tired, but smiling faintly in the privacy of his study—listened to music from a phonograph while reports filtered in. He had outmaneuvered Stalin, checkmated the Japanese Army, and reshaped the postwar order with a forged dossier, a whisper in Bern, and a well-timed betrayal.

It was the Duce's last great triumph during the war.

"I never imagined the war would end with Japan in the Atlantic alliance."
— Marshal Georgy Zhukov, personal memoirs, 1957.

The Soviet reaction was volcanic.

Within hours of receiving confirmation that the Treaty of Tokyo had been signed, Joseph Stalin erupted in a fury that sent shockwaves through the Kremlin and across the entire Soviet state apparatus. He denounced the agreement as an "imperialist perversion of surrender," a cynical ploy orchestrated by what he termed "Anglo-American puppeteers and a fascist clown." In a live broadcast to the Supreme Soviet, his voice trembling with rage, Stalin accused Mussolini of sabotaging Soviet sacrifices and undermining the struggle of the global proletariat. "Japan was not defeated," he bellowed, "it was bought. Bought by gold, by lies, by fascist treachery."

He singled out Mussolini personally, branding him "the most dangerous reactionary in Europe," and alleging that the Italian dictator had "delivered Asia into the hands of the capitalist beasts" in exchange for personal glory and influence. The insult was echoed by Pravda and Izvestia, which ran front-page headlines referring to Mussolini as "Il Buffone Atomico"—the Atomic Clown.

Diplomatic fallout was immediate. Soviet envoys were withdrawn from Rome, their embassies shuttered under orders from the NKVD. Soviet assets in the Balkans and East Africa were quietly repositioned to monitor Italian movements. Italian cultural attachés were expelled from Moscow and Leningrad within 48 hours. Trade agreements between the USSR and Rome Pact countries—Hungary, Spain, Croatia, and Greece—were either suspended or canceled outright.

A tense, brittle silence settled between the USSR and the Rome Pact. No formal war erupted—but a state of cold hostility had crystallized overnight.

The Allies, meanwhile, were left in a deeply awkward position.

Both Washington and London had been blindsided by Japan's sudden pivot. Secret internal memoranda from the U.S. State Department described the Treaty of Tokyo as "a strategic gift wrapped in a diplomatic insult." Churchill reportedly declared that Mussolini's maneuvering was "the work of a damned opera villain, but an effective one nonetheless."

Roosevelt, still weary from the European campaign and increasingly mindful of Soviet territorial ambitions, recognized the strategic value of the Japanese surrender. A direct invasion of the home islands had been avoided. Thousands—perhaps hundreds of thousands—of Allied lives had been saved, and the nightmare of a Soviet-occupied Japan had been neutralized.

Through gritted teeth, FDR sent a private telegram to Mussolini:

"Despite the unilateral and hazardous nature of your actions, it cannot be denied that they have facilitated an end to hostilities in the Pacific theater. The preservation of peace, however achieved, remains the ultimate measure of our success."

It was the closest thing to praise Mussolini would ever receive from the American president.

Thus, by the end of August 1943, the Second World War in Asia was officially over. But the peace that emerged was brittle, improvised, and geopolitically explosive. The foundations of the old imperial world order had cracked beyond repair. What replaced it was not stability, but a volatile and fractured balance of power.

In the north, Soviet-controlled Manchuria and northern China were in chaos. Hastily installed communist puppet regimes—many little more than renamed warlord fiefdoms—were racked by corruption, famine, and guerrilla resistance. The region teetered between revolution and collapse, policed by Soviet divisions stretched thin and plagued by low morale. Mao Zedong, marginalized but not defeated, had retreated south of the Yellow River with the remnants of the Red Army. There, he began laying the groundwork for a renewed revolutionary offensive, fueled by resentment of both Soviet domination and American-backed Nationalist repression.

To the east, the newly pacified Japanese home islands, under strict Allied supervision, began a rapid transition. Though nominally disarmed, Japan remained a latent military-industrial giant, now aligned with the United States and Britain. With Taiwan retained as sovereign territory and reparations avoided, Tokyo became the unexpected lynchpin of a new Atlantic-allied presence in East Asia.

This alignment sent Mussolini's prestige soaring. Though still reviled by many in the West for his fascist ideology and prior alignment with Nazi Germany, the Duce was now seen—begrudgingly—as a master strategist, a man who had outmaneuvered both Stalin and Roosevelt. Italian propaganda hailed him as "Il Burattinaio d'Oriente"—The Puppeteer of the East. In the streets of Rome, fascist youths paraded with banners bearing stylized cherry blossoms alongside Roman eagles, and Mussolini himself issued a cryptic statement declaring, "The sun now sets in the west—but rises again in the east, in Rome's mirror."

The Cold War had begun in earnest, but in this timeline, it did not begin in Berlin. It began in Beijing.

Hokkaido, ravaged by chemical warfare and bombed into a lunar landscape, became Asia's version of Karelia—a disputed, half-abandoned frontier between ideologies. Though nominally under Soviet control, parts of it remained in de facto stalemate, patrolled by Red Army mechanized brigades and watched from afar by American aerial reconnaissance. The island was closed to journalists and declared a "zone of exceptional security." Secret skirmishes, sabotage missions, and acts of maritime brinkmanship between Soviet and Japanese-aligned forces would become commonplace over the next decade. War nearly erupted there in 1946, and again in 1952.

In the wake of these seismic shifts, a new summit was hastily organized. Proposed by Mussolini, having dubbed himself Emperor Constantine XII after his coronation and restoration of the Roman empire in October 1942.

September 10, 1943 marked the beginning of the Vladivostok Conference—a fraught and secretive meeting between the Soviet Union, Great Britain, the United States and the Roman empire. Its purpose: to cement a peace treaty to hash out spheres of influence across east Asia. There, under freezing skies and behind walls of suspicion, the first contours of the Asian Cold War took shape.

And as envoys gathered under the shadow of the Siberian mountains, one question haunted every delegate, from the Kremlin to Tokyo to Washington:

Had the emperor truly ended the war... or simply started a longer, colder one?
 
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Chamber of reflection New
October 31, 1942
Palazzo Venezia
Rome, Italy



I was asleep again.


Like every night, sleep dragged me back into what I've come to call my dreamscape—a hazy limbo stitched together from scraps of memory and imagination.


It started as the moldy old shack I lived in during my Peace Corps stint in Rwanda, the one with the mosquito net that barely worked and the neighbor who thought jazz music could cure malaria. But over time, as if flexing a muscle, I gained control. I learned to bend this strange place to my will, like a lucid dream dipped in melancholy and deja vu.


Tonight, I sat on the porch of my long-lost home in the D.C. suburbs, nestled quietly beyond the Potomac. The street was silent—eerily so. Not the kind of peaceful quiet, but the hollow, sterile stillness of a world scrubbed of life. A ghost town of memories. Every house stood intact, yet each one was just a facade—like movie sets left behind after the director yelled "cut."


I stared at my reflection in the glass of the sliding door. Sometimes, I see Mussolini's face—thick, scowling, etched with the weight of history. But not tonight. Tonight, I saw my old face. My real face. Before the accident. Before I hijacked history and woke up trapped inside the corpulent shell of Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini.


And next to me, of course, was the man himself.


The real Mussolini. Or at least, what's left of him. A wraith tethered to my consciousness like an angry roommate in a badly-written possession movie. He sat there, legs crossed, scowling with all the dignity of a ghost in a dictator's body. Trapped. Powerless. Still judging me like I was the lunatic here.


"Three years," I muttered, watching the branches sway above the garden. The tree under which my brothers and I buried our husky while our parents watched—God, I forgot her name again—the tree twitched slightly in the breeze. "Three years as Duce. By now, in your timeline, the war would be collapsing around Italy. Yet here I am. Still standing."


"Yet here you are," Mussolini echoed, his voice like gravel in a marble tomb. "The foreign imposter in my skin. Congratulations."


I turned to face him. "Tomorrow is coronation day. Twenty years since the March on Rome. Can you believe it? They'll soon be calling me Emperor."


"Impressive," he admitted, his mouth twitching somewhere between a smirk and a sneer. "But you're painting a target on your back the size of the Colosseum. The Grand Council—your so-called allies—look at you the way starving dogs eye a bloated corpse."


I chuckled, dry and bitter. "So what? As long as I keep winning for Italy, they'll grit their teeth and salute."


"And when you stop winning?" he asked, leaning forward like a lawyer with a closing argument.


"Then I die," I said bluntly. "Maybe that'll be the end of this grotesque little nightmare. Maybe I'll wake up. Or maybe I'll just rot with you in this bloated fascist meat suit."


Mussolini grimaced. "That kind of sentimentality is a weakness. You think it makes you profound, but it makes you predictable. Easy to destroy."


"Fuck off," I snapped, eyes narrowing. "You don't get it. You can't get it. I lost everything. My identity, my family, my friends, the woman I loved. All gone. Torn from me like pages from a diary. I didn't choose to be you, Benito. This isn't some power fantasy. It's a prison. You think I care about your little chessboard of generals and sycophants? The only reason I'm still here is because—God help me—I still care about this country more than you ever did."


He scoffed. "Spare me the theatrics. You wear my face and call yourself a martyr?"


I stared out across the empty lawn. "Your family… I'll give you this, they're decent people. Your Anna Maria draws cute drawings and clings to me. Your sons and grandchildren—well, they still think I'm you. I've grown fond of them, I admit. But they'll never be mine. They're not my blood. Not my memories. They're bandages. Comforts. Not cures."


He said nothing. Just stared.


And for a moment, in the dead silence of my dream-world suburbia, I realized something terrifying.


I might not be the ghost after all. He was.


And maybe he always had been.


Mussolini's silence lingered. That same judgmental stare, arms crossed like a disappointed priest waiting for me to confess that, yes, I touched the wrong part of history and now everything's broken.


"What?" I asked, voice rising. "Say it. I know you want to. Go ahead—tell me I'm weak. Tell me I'm soft."


He didn't flinch. "You're not weak," he said, evenly. "You're sick."


I laughed. It came out cracked and breathless, like a man whose laughbox had rusted from disuse. "Sick? That's rich coming from you. The man who turned Abyssinia into a human testing ground. Who bombed his own people in Libya. Who gave speeches about 'new Roman glory' while feeding thousands into the meat grinder. At least I feel something."


"Yes. And look at what that's done to you."


I shook my head, the laughter gone. "It's not just the weight of the crown. It's the blood. My God, there's so much of it."


The dreamscape shifted slightly. A trick of the subconscious. The lush green of the suburban lawn wilted, dried, blackened. The tree in the yard cracked in half with an audible snap.


"I try to sleep, and all I see are mass graves," I whispered. "Do you know what it's like to sign a paper, go to bed, and wake up knowing people died because of me? Turkey, the Balkans… Serbia is a goddamn charnel house. The Greeks turned into fascist fanatics at our side, razing villages like it's their birthright. We split Thrace from Turkey like birthday cake."


I looked at him. He was impassive. A Roman bust carved in contempt.


"And then the Jews," I said, my voice cracking. "The Holocaust, Benito. I exposed it. Me. I did that. I took them in, I armed forces them. What did it change? A few alliances? A few headlines? A couple of million people still alive but just as broken as I am, and every time I see it—every time I hear a report or read a dispatch—I feel like I'm being buried alive under corpses I couldn't save."


Mussolini sneered. "You sentimental fool. You think you're the first leader to weep after spilling blood? Empires aren't built on morality, they're built on iron and fire."


"I don't want an empire!" I snapped, standing now, fists clenched. "I never asked for any of this. I wanted to teach! I wanted a damn garden, maybe a kid someday. I wanted to grow old listening to city pop and yelling at movies. Not this! Not marching legions! Not sacking Constantinople! Not standing in front of cheering crowds pretending to be you!"


"You wanted peace and comfort?" Mussolini hissed, rising to face me. "Then you should have died in that accident. Instead, you came here. To my body. To my country. And now you whimper like a child because reality didn't come with a safety net?"


"Yes!" I screamed. "Yes, I whimper! I cry! I break! Because I'm human, damn it! And I'm alone." I gritted my teeth, tears stinging my eyes. "I miss my mother. I miss my friends. I miss someone holding me just because they wanted to. Because I was me—not Il Duce, not the Emperor, not the voice on the radio, but just… just some guy."


He stared, lip curling in disdain.


"And you know what the worst part is?" I whispered. "I can't even kill myself. Not without dragging down everything I've built. Not without throwing Italy back into the arms of Roosevelt or Stalin or whatever bastard is waiting in the wings. I have to live. Every. Single. Day. As you. While all I want is for someone—anyone—to hold me for five goddamn minutes and tell me I'm not a monster."


Mussolini turned away. "You're a disgrace."


I gave a broken laugh. "You're goddamn right I am. But I'm the disgrace who turned Italy into a superpower, who beat the Reich to the punch, who carved a new map while crying himself to sleep."


The silence returned.


I sat back down, defeated, burying my face in my hands. "Just once," I mumbled through my palms, "I'd like to wake up and smell pancakes. Hear traffic. Feel the sun and not worry it's about to set on another genocide."


"Then stop dreaming," Mussolini said coldly. "Because there is no waking up."


And with that, he vanished. Like he always did. Like a bad conscience ducking out before dawn.


And I was alone again. Emperor of ashes. King of ghosts. Just a scared, sentimental wreck in the borrowed body of a man history never forgave.


---


October 31, 1942
Pallazo Venezia
Rome, Italy
The Day of the Coronation



I woke up staring at the ceiling like it had answers.


It didn't, of course. Just ornate plaster and Renaissance frescoes meant to remind you that someone important once lived here—someone real. Someone who didn't wake up every day wishing they'd stayed dead.


The ceiling blinked back at me. Smug bastard.


I sighed. Loudly. Long and drawn-out, the kind of sigh that was practically a scream with manners.


Today was the big day.


The coronation.


The Restoration.


The Empire reborn.


And me? I was playing the world's most elaborate game of dress-up.


I threw off the sheets, my skin already damp with that uneasy post-nightmare sweat. My legs hit the cold marble floor like two sacks of regret. Somewhere, trumpets were already blaring in the distance. Rome couldn't wait to pretend it was eternal again.


I got dressed in silence. Tunic. Medals. Robe. The gold-stitched regalia of a resurrected Caesar. It felt like wearing a lie that had been dry-cleaned.


In the mirror, Mussolini looked back at me. But it wasn't him. It never really was.


"You again," I muttered.


He didn't answer this time. Just stared. Bastard.


I spent the morning with the family. His family. My family. The illusion was solid on the surface—breakfast, chatter, even laughter. Rachele kissed my cheek. Bruno argued about his uniform. Edda showed off a new hat. Sofia fussed over food. They smiled when I smiled. They followed my lead. They loved me.


I sat among them like a ghost. A man in the wrong painting.


They were good people. Kind. Better than they had any right to be. And I cared about them—God help me, I really did. But they weren't mine.


Rachele looked a little like her. The way she tucked her hair behind her ear, the way her eyes narrowed when she smiled. It hurt.


Benito Albino had my brother's stubborn jawline. Edda had that same gleeful sarcasm my best friend used to throw at me during movie nights. It was like living in a stage play where all the actors wore masks made of my memories.


Cheap copies. Faulty photocopies printed with love.


They talked about Rome. About the speeches. About the parade route. About the Pope, the diplomats, the ancient crown reforged. About history bending for me.


I nodded, smiled, said all the right things. But inside, I wanted to scream. Or laugh. Or both.


"Papa, are you nervous?" Anna Maria asked me, legs swinging off the bench like a metronome set to 'cute.'


I leaned down and kissed her head. "I'm always nervous," I whispered.


She giggled. Thought I was joking.


There's was a melancholy in me, a Naoko Gushima track playing.


As they left to prepare, I stayed behind, staring into my coffee like it might scry the future.


Today, I would stand upon the Vatican Hill—not the Palatine, not the Capitoline, but the very heart of Christendom—and declare the Roman Empire reborn. Not with a whimper, but with divine spectacle. With incense and trumpets. With stolen grandeur repackaged and rebranded.


The Pope himself would crown me. Not as a mere king or dictator, but as Emperor—Augustus made flesh once more. I had orchestrated a new Donation of Constantine, a Second Pact between altar and throne, forged in marble halls and shadowed backrooms. Roman Catholicism was to be declared the official faith of the Empire. The Church would return to the center of public life—not merely as a spiritual refuge but as an arm of the state.


Welfare? Managed by bishops.
Unemployment insurance? Administered from the pulpit.
Education, morality, healthcare? All under the benevolent gaze of Rome's mitred fathers.


Every emperor after me—if there ever would be another—would kneel before the Pope for coronation, just as I would today. I was personally setting secularism back centuries, eviscerating the Enlightenment with a smile and a sword. I had taken the dream of liberal modernity and burned it like a heretic.


And all of it—all of it—would be immortalized on film by none other than Leni Riefenstahl herself. Hitler's muse. The Third Reich's celluloid sorceress. She would capture my triumph in frames of silver nitrate and ideological ecstasy.


Renascita


A modern day Roman triumph.


The parade would be grand.
Imperial troops from every corner of the new Empire would march past:


Arab cavalry in shining mail, Slavic grenadiers with gleaming rifles, African regiments in plumed helmets, Jewish engineers in polished boots.


And above them all, leading the charge, directing the symphony—the Italians.


My black bodyguards—Somali Muslims dressed in crisp tailored uniforms—would surround me as I ascended the dais. The Pope would place the imperial diadem on my head, ringed in gold and ancient laurel, and Rome would be reborn not as a myth, but as reality. A living, breathing colossus.


Yes, Islam would be tolerated. Judaism too. I'd fund their waqfs, their synagogues, their mosques. I would smile and wave and sign decrees of cultural pluralism. But make no mistake—they would be watched, regulated, monitored. No extremism. No wild-eyed preachers or unapproved sermons. Religion could exist—so long as it bent the knee.


Render unto Caesar—and then unto their God.


And I? I felt like a titan.


I had taken the past and rewoven it into a grotesque masterpiece. I had made Christendom dance to my tune. I had resurrected an empire with film reels, bayonets, and theological ink.


God, I felt on top of the world.


And somewhere deep inside, I knew I would crash.


But not today.


Not while the crown was still warm.
Not while the incense still hung in the air.
Not while the cameras rolled and the crowds screamed my name.


Ave Caesar.


Then I laughed.


Laughed about how all I could think about was how much I missed Target. And the smell of dryer sheets. And holding someone I loved without a bodyguard in the next room.


Darkly poetic, isn't it? The man who gave Europe a new Caesar just wants a hug and a nap.


I sat back in the chair, arms folded across my lap. "Maybe I should fake a seizure," I muttered. "Blame it on ancient blood pressure. Drop dead in the middle of the ceremony and let history figure it out."


I paused.


"…Nah. Too dramatic."


The doors opened. My aide peeked in, all pomp and starched nerves. "Your Majesty, the procession is ready."


Of course it is.


I stood. My bones felt older than the Empire.


Time to go restore Rome.


Or die trying.


Or worse—live.
 
Coronation New
October 31, 1942
The Colosseum
Rome, Italy


It was a chilly Roman morning, the kind of cold that clung to your collar and made you regret not wearing something thicker than a cape and delusions of grandeur. Outside the Colosseum, the streets were sealed tighter than a suburban wine mom's Tupperware drawer. Every artery leading to the Vatican was locked down by layers of security—thousands of Blackshirts, Carabinieri, soldiers, and colonial askari standing in rigid, orchestrated silence.

Some would march beside me. Others stood as grim, camera-ready spectators to my grandiose pilgrimage: a solemn procession from the ruins of imperial spectacle to the altar of Christendom.

A chariot—yes, a fucking chariot—awaited me, hitched to four perfectly groomed Lipizzaner horses, white as marble and twice as photogenic. I could already hear it: the swelling orchestral soundtrack of Leni Riefenstahl's masterpiece-to-be. Her film crew was everywhere, perched atop trucks, cranes, balconies. They weren't filming reality. They were capturing mythology in real time—my mythology.

I exhaled slowly, cold breath curling like incense. Time to make history, I thought bitterly. Or at least a heavily stylized version of it.

I raised my arm in the Roman salute. Thousands responded in kind—Blackshirts, civilians, soldiers, scouts. A sea of hands, stiff and desperate. The roar of approval surged down the Via dei Fori Imperiali like a wave of noise. It was the signal. The parade had begun.

And then, like a fever dream come to life, I saw them. My soldiers.

Italian infantry in polished jackboots.
Somali askari with red fezzes glinting in the sun.
Croatian cavalrymen on restless steeds.
Albanian riflemen in white capes.
Syrian engineers in desert khaki.
Jewish scouts in the Star-of-David–embossed armbands I had insisted upon, much to the Vatican's dismay.

An empire in motion. A Frankenstein's monster of old Rome, fascist Italy, and whatever cultural fever dream I was cooking up in my sleepless nights to the sound of Tatsuro Yamashita's Love Talkin' playing on loop in my head.

Surrounding me like a human exoskeleton were the men I called my new Praetorians—tall, stoic, black soldiers, hand-picked from Eritrea and Somalia. They rode in my chariot, flanked it, marched behind it. Their uniforms were custom-tailored, their expressions carved in stoicism.

They were more than bodyguards. They were a symbol. A message.

A camera slowly panned over them. I imagined the shot making its way to Harlem theaters, to the college kids in Birmingham forced to enter through the side door, to the black farmers in Mississippi praying they didn't get lynched for making eye contact with a white woman.

"Come to Italy."
"Serve with distinction."
"Here, you are wanted. Here, you are free."

It was all so twisted—so stupidly, gloriously cursed. A fascist regime offering civil rights. Mussolini, of all people, extending a hand to the oppressed of the world with a grin and a bayonet behind his back.

I wanted to laugh.
Instead, I stared ahead as the Colosseum shrank behind me and the Via dei Fori Imperiali stretched toward Saint Peter's like a red carpet to damnation.

A civil rights bill was in my briefcase, waiting to be announced.
The Americans would lose their minds. The British would sputter into their gin.
And I? I would smile, light a cigarette, and make a speech that sounded like Martin Luther King had a baby with Julius Caesar and raised it on City Pop and irony-poisoned TikToks.

In my mind, Plastic Love played softly—always the long version—looping like a broken record from a world I had lost.

My mother.
My brothers.
My girlfriend.
Spotify.

All gone.

Now, there was only the empire.
Only the march.
Only the silence of history as it held its breath for a madman with a dream, a chariot, and just enough melancholy to make it beautiful.

The procession wound its way through Rome like a snake of steel and velvet, the Via della Conciliazione stretching ahead like a final judgment. The crowd swelled the closer we got to the Vatican—cheering, saluting, throwing flowers. The sound was thunderous, but all I could hear was Anri's Remember summer days echoing in my skull, soft and warped like an old cassette left in the sun.

I waved with the mechanical grace of a man who knew how propaganda sausage was made. Leni's cameras followed every motion, drinking it in like it was ambrosia. This would be the climax of her masterpiece—the Emperor's March, the rebirth of Rome, the fascist fever dream gilded in cinematography and soaked in centuries of myth.

But beneath my perfectly ironed uniform and the Caesar cosplay, I felt… cold.

Not from the autumn air.
From memory.

Every step closer to Saint Peter's was a step deeper into my own private hell.

The Balkans. Christ, the Balkans. That Balkan meat grinder where I turned villages into graveyards and cities into cautionary tales. Croats and Serbs and Bosniaks—one minute they were pledging allegiance, the next they were corpses in a ditch. I still remembered the rivers running red, the smell of cordite and burning books.

Turkey. Oh, Turkey. The Thracian front had been a nightmare made flesh. I had led a war of annihilation with rhetoric stolen from history books and chatrooms. Istanbul—sorry, Constantinople now—had fallen, and with it came months of purges. Civilians shot in cold blood. Intellectuals tortured in warehouses while I paced nearby as my mind played Midnight Pretenders and I sipped wine I didn't even like.

Tunisia, Algeria. Whole french neighborhoods uprooted, soldiers hung from olive trees. We paved highways with their resistance and called it infrastructure. I gave speeches about unity and progress while my secret police flooded the cities with fear and chloroform.

And here I was.

Being cheered.

My horse snorted, impatient. One of the Praetorians gave me a glance—calm, reassuring. He probably thought I was overwhelmed with joy. Or power.

But I was just tired.

Tired of pretending I wasn't from another world, a world with microwaves and cat videos and antidepressants. A world where my mother was still alive. Where I could be... small. Where I could just sit in a greasy diner, eat terrible spaghetti, and listen to Junko Yagami without thinking about the corpses behind every note.

I shifted in my chariot. My cape caught the breeze. The Dome of Saint Peter's loomed ahead, divine and obscene in its grandeur.

"Render unto Caesar," I muttered. "And maybe a Xanax while you're at it."

The gates of Vatican City opened like the mouth of some ancient beast, ready to swallow me whole.

Trumpets flared.
Children threw rose petals.
A cardinal made the sign of the cross so hard I thought he might sprain something.

This was it. The threshold of history. I had remade the world. Bent it. Twisted it. Painted it in the colors of empire and madness.

And all I could think about…
Was how much I missed Wi-Fi as I got off the chariot and walked into St. Peter's basilica.

Inside St. Peter's Basilica, the air was thick with incense, candlelight, and the quiet rustle of history being rewritten. Gregorian chants echoed through the cavernous nave like ghosts of a world that should've stayed dead. And yet here we were—resurrecting it in gold-threaded vestments and orchestrated reverence.

The marble beneath my boots was older than most nations present. Bernini's colonnades curved above like arms reaching out to embrace—or strangle—depending on your mood.

The altar gleamed. The Swiss Guards stood like statues. Choirboys sang. It was all very holy, very solemn, very… theatrical.

And what a cast I had assembled for the grand finale.

There was Louis Napoléon, his tailored suit clinging for dear life to a waistline as inflated as his ego. Still playing King of the French, though everyone knew he was one baguette away from bursting a seam or a treaty.

Franco, that old ghoul, radiating the scent of incense, musty velvet, and the faint gunpowder musk of a man who never stopped shooting poets. He looked like he'd been embalmed last week and reanimated by papal blessing.

Horthy sat near the front, all medals and monocle, the ghost of Austro-Hungary clinging to his lapel like a perfume of failure and longing. Dapper. Dignified. And desperately afraid the world had passed him by.

Kvaternik, my loyal Croat. Housebroken, unlike that rabid dog Pavelić. He smiled too easily. Laughed too eagerly. A man who would dig his own grave if he thought I'd be pleased by the symmetry.

Vërlaci of Albania sat stiffly, eyes twitching like he'd seen the Devil in his soup this morning. He had—for breakfast, I'd told him I was annexing the Dodecanese and asked him to smile for the cameras.

Saadeh, our dreamy-eyed Syrian philosopher-king, looked like a romantic novel cover come to life. He stared at the stained glass windows like they contained secret maps of a Pan-Syrian utopia. I liked him—too soft to betray me, too ambitious to know it yet.

Pangalos wheezed beside him, the old Greek walrus. A fascist so obese with delusions that even the priests flinched when he knelt. Every syllable he uttered came wrapped in phlegm and paranoia.

Then there was Tsar Boris III, looking every inch the tragic monarch—pale, poised, probably dying of something aristocratic.

King Michael I of Romania, visibly uncomfortable, visibly nineteen, visibly wishing he was anywhere but under the dome of a heretic empire reborn.

And Avraham Stern—my President of Israel-in-exile, that fire-eyed ghost with hands that trembled only when he wasn't holding a revolver. A poet turned killer, turned messiah in a black uniform. He didn't bow to the cross, but he nodded when I passed. Respect, not reverence.

Leopold Figl of Austria sat with the uneasy posture of a man who knew collaboration was a meal ticket—and that I might revoke the invitation at any time. A pragmatist. A worm in a suit.

And in the far corner, shrouded in silk and menace, sat Imam Yahya of Yemen. His robes whispered across the marble like a threat wrapped in velvet. He never blinked. Not once. I checked.

The Mass began.

Latin hymns curled into the domes, incense flowed like fog, the Cardinal read aloud in the holy tongue, invoking saints I hadn't believed in since I was twenty and suicidal. The Pope sat like a spider in the middle of the web, waiting to crown me. I could barely hear him over the sound of my own thoughts—and the faint phantom of "Plastic Love" looping in the back of my mind like a broken jukebox from a better century.

My heart pounded. Not from nerves. From memory.

Istanbul. Edirne. Antioch.
Belgrade. Sarajevo. Oran. Algiers.

Cities that bled so I could sit here. A thousand massacres behind this marble.

This wasn't penance. This was performance.

But God help me—I still wanted my mother to see me. I wanted to text her a photo of me in this ridiculous regalia. I wanted to show her the crown and say, "Look, Ma. I did something. I mattered."

But she was gone. My Sofie was gone. My sweet little bunny never existed in this world.

Just me.
A tired, 2023-souled man in a 1942 empire.
Pretending not to cry in front of fascists.

The choir reached its crescendo.

The Pope rose.

It was time.

We emerged into the blazing Roman sun like ghosts from a marble tomb—resurrected, sanctified, and cinematic.

Trumpets screamed. Church bells rang across the Seven Hills like God himself was applauding. The crowd stretched endlessly down the Via della Conciliazione, a million souls pressed against barricades, swaying like wheat in a fascist storm. Banners snapped in the wind—golden eagles, fasces, black suns, crosses. The empire's patchwork of flags. The new order stitched together by steel and sin.

And there I was, standing atop the white-marble Sedia Gestatoria, lifted like some grotesque Renaissance pope-emperor hybrid. Robes of red and gold, cape trailing, a laurel crown soon replaced with something far heavier—both in weight and implication.

The Pope, trembling but resolute, raised the crown above my head. Latin flowed from his mouth, sanctifying something utterly profane.

"Ecce Imperator Romanorum!"
Behold, the Emperor of the Romans.

The crown came down. My breath caught. The weight hit my skull like a final judgment.

Cheers erupted, not from one nation but twenty. Italians screamed, Greeks saluted, Syrians wept, Albanians fired rifles into the air, Croats waved banners, Jews bowed, Africans danced, even the Americans—journalists, dissidents, diplomats—stood slack-jawed. The Pope blessed me again, this time in silence, as if afraid God might overhear.

Behind me stood the rogues' gallery—Franco squinting in the sun, Horthy blinking like a cat in a cathedral, Stern with that eternal smirk of a man who'd survived pogroms and now ran his own intelligence service, Pangalos trying not to faint from the cold, Saadeh biting his lip as if watching a dream made flesh and made terrifying. Leni's cameras caught everything. Even me, swallowing down whatever remained of my humanity.

I looked out across Rome.

The Coliseum.
The Forum.
The Vatican behind me.
The world before me.

And somewhere deep in my soul, through the thunder of millions cheering, the peal of ancient bells, and the deafening drumbeat of destiny—

I still heard Safari eyes by Miki Matsubara echoing faintly in my mind.

God, I missed my sofie.
God, I missed air-conditioning.
God, I missed texting her memes at 2AM.

But now—now came the speech. The final moment.

I stepped forward to the microphone.

The sun hit the crown just right. The gold gleamed. The world held its breath.

I opened my mouth to speak—

"Comrades!" I roared, my voice cracking like a whip over the heads of a million breathless onlookers.

It echoed through St. Peter's Square, bounced off the colonnades, soared above the domes and cupolas like divine thunder, and came back to me heavy and electric. The world was watching. Leni's cameras captured it all—my arms spread like some fascist Jesus, drenched in gold and melodrama.

"Today does not mark a rebirth—no, that would imply death. Today marks a continuation. A legacy rekindled, not from ashes, but from embers we've carried in our hearts for centuries."

I paused for effect. Not because I needed to breathe—but because the weight of what I was about to say made even me want to laugh.

"1,547 years ago, in the year 395 A.D., Theodosius the Great, last emperor of a unified Rome, passed into legend. Upon his death, the empire was split between his sons. The West decayed here—in this very city—collapsing 1,466 years ago under the weight of corruption, barbarism, and pointless infighting."

"But the East—the East!—Romaioi, they called themselves. Not 'Byzantines,' not some revisionist footnote. No, they were Romans. Greeks and Armenians, Slavs and Syrians. And they held on, grimly, brilliantly, until 1453, when Constantine XI, sword in hand, fell beneath the crescent moon."

I let the silence stretch. I could hear a baby crying somewhere, a reporter's pen scratching furiously, the heavy breathing of Franco beside me. Incense. Sweat. History.

"It is for that reason," I declared, my voice rising like a hymn, "to honor our steadfast Greek brothers, and to consecrate the sacrificial spirit of that great man—that as of this moment, I renounce the name Benito."

Gasps, murmurs, some idiot dropped their gelato.

"From this day forward, I shall be known as Constantine—Constantine the Twelfth, by the grace of God and by the will of history."

There it was. No applause yet. Just raw, uncut silence. The kind that smells like fate.

"Rome never died," I continued, softer now, almost reverently. "It was not burned, nor buried, nor broken. It lived on—in whispers, in church liturgies, in legal codes, in the cross-shaped scars carved into our souls. And today… Rome walks again. Through history's river, we continue onward, carried by the grace of Almighty God and his only begotten son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ."

Then the square exploded.

Applause like machine-gun fire. Shouts of "Ave Constantinus!" Flags waved, horns blared, people sobbed. Someone fainted. Probably a Croat.

I felt—no, I was—a rockstar.

The Pope looked faintly alarmed. Franco was already halfway to clapping. Stern smirked knowingly. Somewhere in the back, I swear I saw Saadeh wiping a tear.

And in my head?

Girls just wanna have fun by Cindi Lauper played like it was the most natural soundtrack in the world.

Because deep down, under the robes and the crown and the messiah complex, I was still me. A lonely bastard from the 21st century in a dictator's body. Missing Spotify, sugar-free soda, and my Sofie's sarcastic texts. A man stuck in a historical fanfic that had gotten way out of hand.

But in that moment?

I was Constantine. The Twelfth of His Name.
And I was ready to deliver the most unholy sermon Europe had ever heard.

I opened my mouth again. This was just the beginning.
 
My Revolution New
October 31, 1942
Vatican hill
Rome, Italy


"But my beloved comrades, citizens, and friends…" I began, the echoes of the cheering still rumbling like distant thunder through the square. My voice softened now—not for lack of passion, but out of reverence. I needed them to listen, not just hear.

"I stand before you not merely to proclaim the reawakening of Rome—for Rome was never truly gone. No, I come before you today with something far more dangerous than nostalgia. A vision. A vision of a world reborn, not in conquest, but in clarity. A future where Italy leads—not with chains, but with purpose."

A pause. Let the gravity settle.

"You have all seen it. The camps. The pits. The factories of death the Germans built like clockwork across the shattered bones of Europe. You have heard the broadcasts, read the reports, seen the photographs. Some of you saw them with your own eyes. And I—I have seen enough to haunt me for a thousand nights."

The air grew still. The crowd listened, uncertain now—afraid of where I was going, and yet unable to look away.

"I saw a pile of children's shoes taller than a man. I read testimonies from survivors too broken to speak. I touched the walls of gas chambers still warm from the bodies. And I asked myself, Why? Why do this? Why build an industry of agony, a machine whose product is nothing but ash?"

I turned slightly, gesturing not to the crowd, but the sky. Heaven, maybe. Or whatever God was watching this lunatic pageant.

"And the answer, comrades, is madness. Not the frothing-at-the-mouth kind—but the cold, orderly, bureaucratic kind. A madness born of the lie that one race is chosen, that another is vermin. A madness that whispers that a man's worth lies in his blood, his skin, his accent, his passport."

I saw the American journalists in the front stiffen. Good.

"Germany is not alone in this. No hands are clean. Look at the Americans: a land where a black man can be strung from a tree for smiling at the wrong woman. Look at the British, with their starving Indians and opium wars, their empire held together by boot and bullet. The Free French, Portuguese, the Belgians—but yes, us too. Italians."

My voice cracked there, just slightly. I let it. Let them hear the sorrow.

"Our colonial adventures have not always brought civilization. They have brought bullets. Chains. Humiliation. Enough. To that, I say—no more."

A shift in the crowd. Not confusion now, but a rising current. The kind you feel before a storm.

"I call for self-determination in Africa. From this moment forward, the era of empire is over. No more governors in pith helmets issuing decrees in languages no local speaks. Italian East Africa shall be free. The Somalis, Oromo, Tigray, Afar, and Amhara peoples shall each have their nations—sovereign, proud, and self-governing. With their own flags, their own armies, their own destiny."

I raised a gloved hand toward the south.

"And yet, they shall not walk alone. They shall stand under the aegis of Rome—not as subjects, but as equals. Like our comrades in Albania, in Syria, in Croatia, they will be partners in our grand design. And I pledge, before God and history, that by New Year's Day, 1945, Italian East Africa will be free and sovereign."

Cheers began—nervous at first, scattered.

"The Organization of African Unity and Liberation shall rise in Addis Ababa, not as a hollow name, but as a fortress of solidarity. My comrades-in-arms—Louis Napoléon, and Francisco Franco—have pledged their aid. Africa will receive what she has long been denied: guns, money, ammunition—not to enslave, but to liberate."

The roar grew louder now, visceral.

"From the suburbs of Nairobi to the mines of Katanga, to the red earth of South Africa, the cry shall rise: Africa shall be free. And when the fighting is done—when tyranny is broken and the last colonial parasite hangs from a lamppost—we shall send not more soldiers, but teachers, nurses, architects, engineers. Not orders, but infrastructure. Not demands, but dignity."

Now the square was a riot of sound. Flags waved like flames. African soldiers—Somalis, Eritreans, even proud old Ethiopians—shouted till they were hoarse. Arabs and Slavs, Jews and Italians, all cried as one:

"Constantine! Constantine! Ave Imperator!"

I let it wash over me. The euphoria was narcotic. My pulse thundered louder than any parade. I felt taller, sharper, invincible. Better than any drug, any lover, any battlefield. This was divinity. Manufactured, yes—but no less real.

And somewhere, beneath the thunder, beneath the chants and the banners and the raw electric surge of adulation, I smiled.

Because I was a man who had once wept in a 21st-century shower to city pop, and now I stood, crowned and robed, heralding the end of one world and the birth of another.

And I had not yet even begun to speak about it, my new ideology. My revolution.

"But that... that is only the beginning."

"Yes, the war has ended. Yes, the swastika has been torn from the banners of Europe. But do not mistake the silence that follows for peace. Peace has not come. It only changed its uniform."

"Another war has already begun—quieter, subtler, but no less deadly. A war of shadows, of ideas, of whispers and wiretaps and secret allegiances. The frontlines are now invisible, the soldiers wear no helmets, and the bombs fall as ideologies, not iron."

"This is not a war of nations. It is a war of dreams and delusions. And it has already begun."

"Two ideologies now vie for the soul of mankind: the hammer of Communism, and the dollar of Capitalism."

"And I say this to both: I reject you."

"The Communists shout of equality—of justice for the worker. They proclaim that history has a dialectic, that all suffering leads to liberation. Lies. I have seen their so-called workers' paradise. A frozen graveyard, where the screams are muffled by snow and ideology. Where men vanish in the night, swallowed by gulags built in the name of liberation. Where the only thing equal is fear."

"And the capitalists?"

"Ah yes, the 'free world.' The supposed champions of liberty and democracy, sipping champagne in London while their subjects dig trenches in Kenya, in Burma, in Bengal. They pat themselves on the back for defeating fascism, while ruling over empires built on bones and rubber and blood. The Americans claim they stand for freedom and justice while In Mississippi the black man is lynched for looking at a white woman for too long. They speak of civilization, but deny their colonies the very rights they claim to defend."

"I offer neither of these lies. I offer a third way."

"Not Marx's tyranny of the commissar, nor Wall Street's tyranny of the shareholder. But Romanism—the revolutionary fascism born from suffering, baptized in fire, and now rising as the phoenix of a new age."

Ah, how grand it sounds. Romanism. So noble, so clean. If only they knew how much whiskey, sleepless nights, and muttered curses at 3 AM in the goddamn archives it took to write this speech. But damn it, they're eating it up. Look at them. Wide eyes. Awed silence. I could scream and confess I'm just a tired, depressed modern man who landed in the wrong timeline—and they'd still cheer. Maybe I should try it. Next time. For now—onward.

"Fascism was once a slug, crawling through the mud of the Great War, malformed and raw, mocked by kings and capitalists alike. But history, like nature, is not kind to stillness. We fed on pain, on betrayal, on revolution—and we formed our cocoon. That cocoon was this last war. And from it, Romanism has emerged—not as a shadow of the past, but as a force reborn!"

"We repudiate the grey tyranny of the East. The Godless void of Marx and Lenin, where families are torn apart and souls dissolved in acid ideology."

"And we reject the gold-plated tyranny of the West. Where men are chained not by iron, but by debt. By brands. By a world where dignity is a luxury, and suffering is outsourced to sweatshops in countries you cannot pronounce."

"I propose a new covenant—a sacred union. The emperor, the worker, the priest, and the entrepreneur—bound not by greed, but by duty. Not by exploitation, but by purpose. A state where the merchant is respected, but humble. Where the priest is holy, and lives by what he preaches. Where the soldier is honored, but never unleashed without cause."

"We offer adaptability, not dogma. A system that can be molded to every culture and custom—whether in the highlands of Ethiopia or the rice paddies of the Orient. Whether in the souks of Arabia or the steppes of Central Asia."

"Romanism is not merely an ideology—it is a civilization. A spiritual compass. As the Empire of old brought unity to the chaos of Mare Nostrum, so too shall Romanism bring order to the confusion of the modern world."

God, I almost believe myself. Almost. Maybe that's the secret. Lie long enough and the lie becomes the truth. Or maybe that's just what being a leader is. A liar with enough charisma and guilt to keep smiling. I wonder what Marcus Aurelius would think. Probably slap me and call me a drunk poet. Fair.

"So I call upon you—not just Italians, but the peoples of the world. Black, white, brown, red, yellow. Muslim and Christian, Jew and pagan, prince and pauper—look upon Rome, reborn, and see the future."

"The Mediterranean is ours again—not as conquerors, but as stewards. And we extend our hand not to subjugate, but to uplift."

"The banner of Rome flies once more—not soaked in blood, but lit by the torch of civilization. And should you seek shelter from the coming storm, look to us. If you seek purpose, if you seek meaning—look to us. If you seek to forge a future where the soul is not for sale and the body is not disposable—look to us."

"Ave Roma!"

"Ave Imperator!"

"Ave Caesar!"

And somewhere in the back of my mind, as the crowd erupts and the chant echoes like thunder, I think—Christ. What have I done?
 
Climax, ending, emptyness New
October 31, 1942
Vatican hill
Rome, Italy


But I'm not done.
Not by a long shot.
This isn't the end—it's only the overture. The opera has just reached its crescendo, and I'm the conductor, baton in hand, dragging the world into a new symphony of order and madness.


Italy? No—Rome.
Not the pasta-sauce caricature they whisper about in Moscow or Washington.
Rome. Eternal. Undying. Reawakened in iron, incense, and bureaucracy.


We are not the Americans, bloated and boastful in their fluorescent supermarkets.
We are not the Russians, gray and grim behind their barbed-wire optimism.


Our armies? Smaller.
Our economy? Limited.
Our industrial base? A fraction of theirs. We have fewer tanks, fewer planes, fewer factories belching smoke into the sky.
But history? That we have in abundance.


If I want to win this new war—not with bullets but with myth—then I need more than just divisions and diesel.


I need a story.
An idea.
A weapon forged not in steel, but in meaning.


Romanism will be our rifle.
Moral clarity, our bayonet.
Faith—that most volatile of munitions—our ammunition.
We will march with crucifix in one hand, constitution in the other, and the banner of the Pantheon fluttering above.


So I rise, clearing my throat. The cameras whir. The microphones hum. The world listens.


"To those in the Communist world, and to those trapped in the capitalist machine—


To the Black man in Mississippi, who wants nothing more than dignity, a decent wage, and to avoid being lynched for sitting in the wrong part of a bus...


To the dissident in Soviet Russia, who dares to dream of freedom, who dares to whisper truth behind closed doors, who wants to work with dignity without fearing the NKVD at 2 a.m.—


Come.
Come to Rome.


We welcome you—not as subjects, but as citizens.
Build your life here. A life of conscience. Of dignity. Of industry.
Here, we care not for the color of your skin, only that your hands are calloused with honest work and your heart beats with loyalty to this shared dream."


I reach for the briefcase. Heavy. Leather-bound. Worn from the weight of empires.


I place it on the table, click it open.
Inside: a pen, black as ink and guilt, and several freshly printed documents. I take the pen, unscrew the cap with a flourish fit for Julius himself.


I sign the bottom of the law. The ink glides, like history rewriting itself beneath my hand.


"By my God-given authority," I announce, "in the name of Rome, I enact the first law of my reign as Emperor Constantine XII."


"A Civil Rights Act. By the stroke of this pen, Rome repudiates racism.
We take a step—no, a stride—toward atoning for our crimes in Africa.


From this day forward, discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin is illegal across this empire. We prohibit voter suppression, racial segregation in schools and public life, and bigotry in employment.


Rome was once a mosaic of peoples, a polyglot of tribes and nations bound not by blood, but by allegiance. This law is not innovation—it is restoration. The republic reborn in imperial form."


I pause. Let the silence breathe. Let them think.


"But let us be clear," I continue.


"We are a Catholic Empire. The Church is no longer a guest at the table—it is the foundation of the house. The Pope is our spiritual compass; the Gospel, our moral law.


And yet—there is room here.
Room for our Muslim brothers, our Jewish brothers.
For as Christ Himself said: Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God what is God's.


You may worship as you will—but in public life, let there be order. Let there be Rome."


Then I raise my hand, not in salute, but in invocation.


"Let us build this Empire together, comrades.


Henceforth—Rome lives.


For a safe!
For a secure!
For a sacred society!"


I smile. A little mad, perhaps. But then again, what's an empire without a little madness?


The cameras flash. The ink dries.
The world tilts, ever so slightly—toward Rome.


Almost, almost.
The air crackles—it's electric now, thick with expectation and desperation. Applause rolls through the marble halls like thunder chasing lightning, a symphony of delusion and hope. They're standing, clapping, shouting. Almost like a finale at a Akina Nakamori concert in Tokyo in 1984. And here I am, center stage, drenched in sweat and performance, the world's most miserable showman.


The climax is now.


I take a deep breath, arms raised, my voice trembling not with fear, but something worse—anticipation.


"But before we move forward, before the standing ovation reaches its crescendo, I must confess something. An apology is in order."


The crowd stills, murmurs ripple like cigarette smoke through the Vatican's gilded halls.


"I have lied to you."


A beat. A pause. The silence is operatic, theatrical. Almost... tasteful. Like Momoko Kikuchi on vinyl.


"As you know, the official story is that Adolf Hitler died in the Battle of Berlin. But that, comrades… is a lie."


A gasp. Perfect.


"Hitler was wounded—yes, a Soviet shell. But he survived. Our agents found him. Half a man, half a corpse, rotting in the shadows like a forgotten sword."


The doors creak open behind me—timed to perfection. The kind of precision you'd expect from a man who once memorized Plastic Love word for word during an existential spiral in a 24-hour diner.


The nurses roll him in. He's strapped to a medical gurney like a prop from a Kafka play. Tubes snake out of his veins. One eye twitching. A grotesque parody of a man. They all see it now—he's not a demon. Not a god. Just... pathetic. A ruin with a mustache.


"Today!" I shout, louder now, voice echoing like synth beats on neon-lit night drives. "I vow to you: we will bring him to justice! A real trial. A public reckoning!"


"My invitation goes out now—to Roosevelt, to Stalin. To Churchill. To every leader of this broken world. Come to Rome! Let the Eternal City be our courtroom!"


"All the leaders of the world shall be his and Nazism' jury. I shall be it's judge."


"And the Jewish people, our long-suffering brothers and sisters—led by Avraham Stern, Prime Minister-in-Exile of the Roman aligned kingdom of Israel—shall be his Executioner."


The crowd erupts. Some scream. Some weep. I catch the eye of a Lehi fighter—tattooed, weathered, his hands still stained with the dirt of yesterday's skirmish—and he's crying. Real tears. Maybe joy. Maybe disbelief. Maybe grief.


"But not just Hitler!" I roar now, lost in it. "Not just that vermin. Goebbels, Bormann, Himmler, the whole deranged band—we shall drag them here! Rome shall be their final act!"


"A new world court is born today! The Global Federation of Free Alliances will rise from this courtroom like a phoenix out of rubble and gaslight. No more secret tribunals. No more mock justice. True justice. Right here. Right now. A justice for the people!"


More cheers. Louder. Louder. Like the finale of Ride on Time in a Tokyo disco, 1980. And me? I'm smiling. Not out of happiness, but because I know exactly what I'm doing.


This is how I'll win the Cold War. Not with guns. Not with bombs.


With story.


With myth. With narrative. With cinema-grade propaganda soaked in trauma, guilt, and a little bit of City Pop.


Because I've seen the future, and I know—I'm not a general. I'm not a statesman. I'm the greatest storyteller the 20th century never asked for.


But God, do I miss it.
Wi-Fi.
Sofie.
My friends.
My family.
The neon glow of a phone screen at 2 a.m. in Shinjuku.


But I keep going.


Because there's nothing left behind me now.


Only forward.
Only the performance.
Only justice—
—performed live, in Dolby surround, beneath the crosses of Rome.


And the world will watch.


With popcorn.


And maybe, just maybe, they'll believe.


But I'm not done.


Not now. Not when the climax has arrived and the orchestra's still tuning their knives. The world holds its breath, the spotlight burns hot, and I—your humble protagonist, minor in Political Science, major in megalomania—am ready for the final act.


All those sleepless nights in college poring over dictatorships while my roommate was out getting laid? Worth it. Every damn second.


Because today, I build it.


An empire to outlast marble, gold, and memory. A thousand years of engineered stability, sustained on slick propaganda, a velvet fist, and the occasional purge.


The perfect dictatorship.


No goose-stepping clichés. No campy uniforms with too many buttons. I wanted something subtler, sleeker. Less Third Reich, more Shinzo Abe meets Studio 54.


I was going to fuse the Institutional Revolutionary Party of Mexico—yes, the PRI, the masters of "democratic" eternity—with the cold, humming efficiency of Singapore:
Disneyland with a death camp out back.


We'd wear smiles, serve gelato, and quietly crush dissent beneath an avalanche of procedural legality instead of guns and death flights.


At the top? The Partito Nazionale Fascista—reborn. Not the screeching, sloppy one of 1922, no. This was version 4.0, streamlined, modern, curated.
A consul at the head of parliament, Ciano, Roman-style, chosen from the ruling dynasties of my bloodline, because if you're going to go mad with power, at least make it dynastic. I figured once I stepped down my grandson Fabrizio would take over as Consul while Ciano became emperor.


Beneath that? A parliament—yes, a parliament! With communists, anarchists, social democrats, Christian Democrats, and whatever synthetic ideologies crawl out of the next philosophy department.


Let them have their little debates. Their regional governorships. Their ministries of agriculture and artisanal soap.
Let them scream and criticize. We'd take notes, publish white papers, and "reform."
But we would never, ever give up power.


Co-optation. Adaptation. Evolution. The perfect shell game. The perfected illusion.


And I spoke again.


"Ladies and gentlemen... in this advanced stage of national development—now that Rome has been reforged—we open the gates once more. Not to one party, but to many. For the next chapter of our republic shall be written by all."


"I vow this to you: on January 10th, 1945, we shall hold free and fair elections."


I could practically hear the quotation marks around that.


"Communists, republicans, social democrats, anarchists—even you, my fellow fascists. You are all welcome to participate in the governance of our beloved Italy. So long as you pledge to renounce violence and put Italy first, you may join our great political renaissance."


"As Rome was once the home of many peoples, so too shall it now be the home of many ideas. A team of rivals. A parliament of convictions. Every citizen, of every race and every creed—your voice shall be heard!"


The American journalists twitched.
Wince. Scoff. Adjust their ties.
I almost burst out laughing.


"Free and fair," my ass.


Short campaign windows, finance laws tailored to bankrupt any opposition, rigged polling, a media landscape locked down tighter than a Laura Branigan master track.


Slander laws that would make Singapore blush.


And airtime? Good luck, comrade. If you don't have a youtube channel sponsored by the Ministry of Civility and polled above 15 percent in election surveys, you're screwed.


But the crowd?
The crowd went wild.
Thunderous applause. Applause so thick and loud it bounced off the bones of emperors buried beneath this city.


The Grand Council winced. Oh, how they winced. Bunch of drama queens. I'd speak to them later. Massage their egos. Bribe their sons. Dangle medals. Classic.


But it was done.
The revolution complete.
My coronation under godless neon.
A birth—not televised.
Immortalized.


All filmed by Leni Riefenstahl. Still a genius, still a monster. My monster.


And the old world?
The Atlantic Charter? Dead.
The United Nations? Strangled in its cradle. Blue helmets buried in bureaucratic miscarriage.


In its place:
The Global Federation of Free Alliances.
A multipolar circus where nothing got done unless I let it. A gridlocked forum where I controlled the narrative. Every speech, every resolution, every "international condemnation" went through my desk first.


All mine.


I looked down at Hitler. Still strapped to the gurney. One blink for no. Two for yes. Or wait—was it the other way around?
I really should ask the nurse. Not that it mattered. He was blinking furiously.


Oh, the rage.
The envy.
He had his bunker. I had the Basilica.
He had his scorched earth.
I had an empire of ideas.


Immortal. Elegant. Petty as hell.


I had won.


And it felt so empty.


Like eating gourmet in a graveyard.
Like listening to Plastic Love at 3 a.m., surrounded by friends you no longer recognize.


Victory never tastes as sweet as the dream of it.


But at least I got the last word.


And it was a good one.
 
The perfect dictatorship New
Excerpt from Mario Vargas Llosa's 1990 Appearance on Argentine National Television During a Writers and Intellectuals Forum

"The perfect dictatorship," Vargas Llosa began, his voice calm but charged with provocation, "is not communism. It is not the crude military regimes that once stained much of Latin America — not Chile under Pinochet, nor the juntas in Peru, Brazil, or even Argentina."

A hush fell over the audience. Cameras panned across rows of writers, academics, and politicians, many shifting uneasily in their seats. He continued:

"Not even the Institutional Revolutionary Party in Mexico — though they have certainly come close — represents the ideal form of authoritarianism."

Then, with a deliberate pause, he said:

"No. The perfect dictatorship is The Roman Empire."

Gasps and murmurs rippled through the studio. Eyebrows raised. Pens paused mid-scribble.

"It's not Castro's Cuba, nor the Soviet Union, nor their satellite regimes in North Korea or China. The perfect dictatorship," Vargas Llosa said, enunciating each word with careful gravity, "is Rome — because it wears the mask of civilization."

"It is a dictatorship draped in the aesthetic of antiquity, of Renaissance humanism, of Catholic grandeur and classical order. It cloaks itself in the language of modernity, progress, national rebirth — and most insidiously, in the forms and rituals of democracy. Elections are held, yes. Newspapers are printed. Parliaments meet. But behind this theater of pluralism lies a rigid, unyielding structure of control."

"What makes it perfect is precisely that it doesn't appear to be a dictatorship. It is invisible in plain sight — a regime that governs through culture, through myth, through continuity. It has the permanence of both a man — in the form of the Emperor — and a party: the Fascists. There is no need for gulags or mass purges when the mechanisms of consent are so elegantly designed."

"The tragedy, the brilliance, and the danger," he concluded, "is that the people believe they are free. That is the masterpiece of the perfect dictatorship."

"Yet beneath that polished façade of permanence and ideological unity," Vargas Llosa continued, "there exists a paradoxical flexibility—an illusion of openness carefully calibrated to serve the party's long-term survival. The system permits a surprising degree of criticism, so long as that criticism ultimately reinforces the supremacy of the fascist project."

"Mussolini, with a shrewdness rarely appreciated in democratic societies, institutionalized a form of controlled pluralism within the Fascist Party itself. Party democracy was not just tolerated—it was encouraged, within strict ideological boundaries. They held and still hold internal primaries, organized factional debates, and allow currents of thought to flourish, as long as they remained tethered to the core doctrine. There are Left Fascists advocating social reform and syndicalism, Traditionalist Fascists defending monarchic and clerical values, Centrist Fascists promoting pragmatic governance, and even Far-Right Fascists pushing more extreme nationalistic or technocratic visions. These factions, often at odds rhetorically, coexist in a dynamic yet tightly managed environment. The competition, the discourse, the internal critique—it all serves to energize the party, to make it appear alive, adaptable, modern."

"But the illusion of openness has extended beyond the party's inner chambers. The Roman state under Mussolini has gone so far as to allow other political parties—not merely tolerated but visibly active—to participate in the machinery of governance. Communists, anarchists, Christian democrats, even social liberals have held and still hold seats in the senate, mayoral offices, cabinet positions, and governorships. In several regions, elected Communist governors have implemented policies directly opposed to fascist orthodoxy. Cabinet ministers have delivered scathing public and private critiques of the emperor himself, questioning military policy, budgetary priorities, or foreign interventions. And still—remarkably—they are not only allowed to remain, but are often showcased as evidence of the regime's maturity, its tolerance, its democratic spirit."

"The genius lies in the regime's response. They do not crush opposition with brute force—at least not immediately or obviously. Instead, they co-opt it. They address the critiques, adopt popular reforms, and signal responsiveness. This selective responsiveness is not a sign of weakness—it is a deliberate strategy. It reinforces the illusion that the system is self-correcting, that it evolves naturally through dialogue. All the while, the fundamental power structure remains untouched: the Emperor reigns, the Fascist Party rules, and the apparatus of control operates silently beneath the surface."

"This is not democracy—it is a performance of democracy. And that is what makes it so terrifyingly effective. A dictatorship that no longer needs to hide, because it has mastered the art of appearing legitimate."

"But make no mistake," Vargas Llosa added, his voice now lower, heavier, as if weighed down by the gravity of what he was about to say, "criticism—true, uncompromising criticism—is still suppressed by all available means, even the most brutal ones. For all its sophistication, for all its theater of tolerance, the regime retains a steel fist beneath the velvet glove."

"The AIC—the agenzia di inteligentia centrale—is still a name that inspires dread. In Rome, it is more than a secret police. It is a specter that hangs over every journalist's typewriter, every professor's lecture hall, every café where artists gather to speak freely. It is an omnipresent reminder that dissent has its limits, and those who cross them vanish."

"Forced disappearances remain a rare yet grim reality. Citizens—intellectuals, activists, even ordinary students—have been taken in the dead of night, their names erased from public records, their fates never confirmed for years until a notice arrives in the mail stating their death from illness or an accident. Families live in limbo, haunted by silence. Some reappear months later, changed beyond recognition; others are never seen again. And those who do return often bear the scars, physical and psychological, of torture. I know several Roman writers—men and women of profound moral clarity—who have been under AIC surveillance for years. Some have had their homes ransacked, their manuscripts seized, their phones tapped. A few have confided in me, describing being dragged into interrogation chambers, where light never enters and questions are asked not for answers, but for obedience. They have been beaten, humiliated, and threatened not just with death, but with the destruction of their families, their legacies, their names."

"This is the hidden cost of the so-called perfect dictatorship. It does not rely solely on violence—but violence remains always within reach, like a knife under the tablecloth. The regime does not need to silence everyone; it only needs to silence enough to remind the rest of what is possible."

"This duality—the performance of pluralism on the surface and the machinery of repression beneath—is not a contradiction. It is the very foundation of the system's endurance. By allowing controlled criticism, they lull the public into a sense of agency. And by punishing those who go too far, they maintain the atmosphere of fear that ensures obedience."

"It is this balance—of elegance and cruelty, of openness and omnipotence—that makes the Italian regime so disturbingly effective. It is a system that has learned not just to control its people, but to make many of them believe they are free while doing so."

"But what truly makes it the perfect dictatorship," Vargas Llosa continued, "is not merely its institutions, or even its balance of tolerance and repression—it is its rhetoric. A rhetoric so carefully constructed, so ideologically versatile, that it not only justifies the regime's existence but ennobles it. This is a rhetoric of anti-racism, of social justice, of anti-colonial solidarity. It is the language of liberation, of equity, of moral awakening. And that language—spoken in universities, broadcast on radio waves, printed in glossy pamphlets—has proven more potent than any police force or surveillance network."

"This rhetoric does more than defend the regime; it recruits for it. It has allowed the fascist state not only to co-opt Rome's own intelligentsia, but to reach across borders and seduce the minds of thinkers, revolutionaries, and scholars the world over. From Paris to Dakar, from New York to Delhi, intellectuals have been courted—not with censorship, but with invitations. Not with silencing, but with flattery, access, and purpose."

"The methods vary, of course. Some were brought into the fold with money—generous stipends, funded research, luxurious speaking tours across Rome and Naples. Others were offered academic posts, cultural attaché positions, or even seats in international bodies sponsored by the Roman state. There are those who were handed cabinet positions and hailed as proof of the regime's openness: progressive voices suddenly elevated to positions of power, only to find that power had limits—and those limits always bent toward the party."

"And then there were more direct forms of persuasion. In the United States, the Nation of Islam received not only rhetorical support but material aid. Malcolm X, a man of ferocious independence and unrelenting critique of the American empire, was reportedly offered financial support, diplomatic access, and firearms training by Roman agents under the guise of Afro-Italian solidarity. It wasn't brute force that bought him, if indeed he was bought—it was alignment. A shared enemy. A shared language of resistance."

"But the brilliance of the Italian model was never in demanding sycophantic praise, like the cults of personality in Stalinist Russia or China. No. The genius lay in encouraging critique. The fascist regime understood that a dictatorship which permits no criticism breeds eventual revolt. But one that embraces critique—frames it, spotlights it, even incorporates it—becomes unassailable. Because it convinces its opponents they are still engaged in struggle, still moving the dial, still shaping the system. And that illusion, that carefully tended mirage, is what ensures permanence."

"We all remember Malcolm X's fiery condemnation of Roman military intervention in Katanga during the Congo Crisis of the 1960s. He railed against European neocolonialism, and Rome, like the exiled Belgian government, was not spared. But then came the nuance—his later praise for Rome's economic support of Pan-African institutions, its investment in post-colonial education, its vocal opposition to apartheid. It was a dance of contradiction. And the same with the Nation of Islam's critique of Mussolini's policy during the Saudi Crisis. Yes, they decried the treatment of Arabs. But they also praised Rome for recognizing the dignity of African and Muslim peoples in a way that Western democracies had not. This duality was not accidental—it was engineered."

"That is what makes the regime not only dangerous, but seductive. It wraps its iron hand in the soft velvet of justice. It convinces its critics they are allies. It does not silence dissent—it invites it to dinner, listens patiently, nods, smiles, takes notes and carries out some changes. And in the process, it survives everything."

"It's a permanence that, I must remind you, is almost unique in the modern world. Outside of Rome, only Mexico has managed anything remotely comparable. But even in Mexico, the dominant party—the PRI—had to resort to crude tactics: overt electoral fraud, ballot stuffing, outright intimidation. And yet, even they subsidized their opposition, if only to maintain the illusion of pluralism."

"But Rome has transcended even that. What makes Rome the perfect dictatorship—what elevates it beyond Mexico, beyond the Soviet model, beyond the imperial regimes of old—is its attitude toward elections. Not in their existence, but in their orchestration. They don't need to rig votes in the traditional sense. There's no need for the blatant fraud of the Mexican elections in 1988, where ballots mysteriously disappeared and computers 'crashed' at decisive moments. No, in Rome, the entire system is pre-rigged—from the starting line. It's a performance, exquisitely rehearsed, down to the last actor, prop, and line."

"Let's begin with access. Their Senate, has such prohibitively high barriers to entry that it deters almost all but the wealthy and well-connected. To even stand for the Senate, a candidate must front 100,000 dollars as a deposit—an astronomical figure in a country where that represents nearly three years of median wages. That sum must be posted for each candidate, and since every constituency must nominate both a male and a female candidate to comply with gender parity laws, each party must produce two candidates per seat—requiring a staggering $200,000 per district. And keep in mind: Rome's Senate isn't modest in scale. It's the largest legislative upper house in the world with 1000 members in total. For any party to even contest a national election, the financial mountain they must scale is near insurmountable."

"But the barriers don't stop at money. Consider the restrictions placed on political expression itself. Rome has among the shortest electoral campaign periods in the democratic world. There are strict laws governing defamation and slander—so strict, in fact, that even factual statements can be criminalized if they are deemed 'harmful to public trust.' Polling is forbidden in the weeks leading up to the election. No political flyers may be distributed. No paid advertisements are permitted on television. No campaign activities are allowed during the final week before voting. Imagine that: a democracy where the electorate is deliberately deprived of political information during the most critical phase of their decision-making process."

"Yes, the communists are technically allowed to run. So are the anarchists, the Christian democrats, the liberals, and the greens. But in reality, it's impossible for them to field candidates in more than a handful of districts—if any. The financial and legal obstacles are too severe. The administrative burden too immense. And so, while they may exist on paper, these parties are ghosts—visible, but powerless."

"And we haven't even touched on the legalized corruption—the streamlined corruption. Rome's campaign finance laws are a farce. There are no limits on contributions from Roman citizens. No caps on campaign spending. Roman conglomerates—Breda, Lamborghini, Fiat, Prada—have entire departments dedicated to political lobbying. Not under the table, mind you, but out in the open: 'philanthropic wings,' 'advisory panels,' 'civic engagement task forces.' Gifts, dinners, luxury trips to Lake Como—it's all considered above board. It's all perfectly legal. It is, in a word, perfect."

"And that's what terrifies me. Because now, Latin America is watching. Political elites in São Paulo, in Buenos Aires, in Bogotá—they're taking notes. They see the stability, the longevity, the illusion of legitimacy. They see a system that co-opts dissent, neuters opposition, and projects a democratic façade that even the most cynical Western observers hesitate to question. And some of them—too many of them—are trying to replicate it."

"God help us all if they succeed. Because when the boot is no longer felt as a boot, when it comes wrapped in silk and speaks the language of justice, it becomes almost impossible to resist. And by the time we realize what we've lost, the chains have already become tradition."
 
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Revolutionary rage New
October 31, 1942
Palazzo Venezia
Rome, Roman Empire



I stood on the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia, staring out at the heaving crowd below, a sea of black shirts and Roman salutes beneath a dull, Roman sky. The smell of sweat, gun oil, cheap perfume, and roasted chestnuts filled the air—an aroma uniquely fascist, uniquely Mediterranean. It was supposed to be a triumph. A coronation. My moment of apotheosis.


This morning, I was reborn—not as Benito Mussolini, the eternal duce, the failed socialist, the tired tyrant with back pain and a growing addiction to coffee and city pop—but as Constantine XII, Emperor of the Romans. Not reborn, no. That implies death. The Roman Empire had never truly died. It had only autosaved in 1453 AD and waited, dormant, like an old Paradox Interactive campaign you forgot to finish. And today, I had loaded the file. Today, the game resumed.


The crowd cheered, cried, and waved little imperial flags as if history had finally justified itself. And yet, I felt nothing but exhaustion. Not the kind that comes from age or stress, but the kind you feel when you've been binge-watching depressing miniseries on Netflix until 3 a.m., and the screen asks, "Are you still watching?" and you whisper, "Unfortunately, yes." I missed the modern world. I missed hot showers, tap water that didn't give you dysentery, deodorant, antidepressants, and my goddamn iPhone. I missed memes, microwave burritos, Spotify, and watching Seinfeld reruns while doomscrolling Twitter in my boxer shorts.


But there were no streaming services in this world. No YouTube reaction videos. No HDMI ports. Just a rotting, blood-drenched empire and a century so stupid it made the 2020s look like the Enlightenment.


The coronation had gone smoothly enough. I'd declared October 31st—Halloween, ironically—a national holiday. Empire Day, I called it, as if naming the monster gave me control over it. Everyone clapped. Some wept. Somewhere, I imagined Ciano making sarcastic remarks under his breath while my adopted daughter, Sofie, tried to crawl away and put on a David Bowie record that hadn't been invented yet.


But I wasn't here for tricks or treats. I was here to burn the world.


As I stood upon that balcony in my absurd imperial regalia—half Caesar cosplay, half steampunk nightmare—I surveyed my domain with the hollow detachment of a man who had read too much history and lived too much of it. My subjects stared up at me with awe, terror, adoration, and the distinct hunger that only fascism can market as virtue. Their eyes, thousands of them, like the blinking blue lights of an airport runway at night, trying to guide a plane that was already crashing.


The world's gaze was upon me. And so I gave them a spectacle.


Below the surface of speeches and salutes, the machinery of apocalypse was already grinding into motion. Operation Mare Nostrum—my final campaign to expel the British from the Mediterranean—was entering its endgame. Reports from OVRA, my ever-useful secret police, confirmed the dominoes were toppling.


In Yemen, as planned, Imam Yahya's army had staged a border incident. A few dead soldiers, a few planted weapons, a few headlines scribbled by willing journalists, and presto—justification for war. Tomorrow, the Red Sea would taste iron.


In Palestine, the Lehi—the "Freedom Fighters of Israel," or perhaps just my proxy arsonists—were primed and waiting. From Tel Aviv to the Straits of Tiran, fire would sweep the Holy Land. Synagogues, mosques, churches, and Shell Oil refineries. Everything was flammable.


Antoun Saadeh had his troops mustering on the Jordanian border, flexing like bodybuilders in a propaganda calendar. Greece's General Pangalos, that potato-faced warlord, had been shipping weapons and agents to Cyprus for months. Famagusta would soon be a smoldering crater. Spain's Franco had pledged to shut off all land routes to Gibraltar. His navy and air force, however laughable, were prepared to violate British airspace like drunkards crashing a royal wedding.


And Malta. Sweet, indigestible Malta. The fly in the ointment, the ulcer in my gut. Soon, it would be starved and blockaded until even the pigeons started eating each other.


Mare Nostrum. Our sea. Our Mediterranean. Our murder basin. The old British lion would be declawed, defanged, and fed to the hyenas.


To top it all off, today I was setting Africa on fire.


Otto Skorzeny appeared beside me without a sound, like a fascist Batman. Behind him, a dozen African guerrillas—mean-eyed, dark skinned killers trained in Eritrea, hardened by the sun and sand and boredom. I had a thousand more like them, simmering outside Asmara, waiting for the signal. I would spread them like seeds in the wind. They would scatter all over Africa and unleash hell.


They had studied Mao, Tukachevsky, and Clausewitz (translated poorly into Italian and then rewritten with fascist footnotes). They could build IEDs from scrap metal and soap, turn spoons into rifles, and kill a man with a rolled-up newspaper. They were my orchestra of chaos, my punk rock revolutionaries, my A-Team of death and destabilization.


Their enemies? The British, the Free French, the Portuguese, the Belgians—every parasitic colonial relic still clinging to the African continent like ticks on a dying dog.


This would not be a war of honor. It would be an orgy of death and destruction. I would be its maestro, conducting symphonies of screaming and fire. The ideology? Call it revolutionary fascism, call it imperial vengeance, call it whatever you like. It didn't matter. I had embraced nihilism long before it was cool.


You don't come back from 2023, crawl into Mussolini's skin, and expect to save the world. You come to break it in half like a glow stick and dance in the radioactive light.


And yet… in a quiet moment, as the brass band played beneath me and the cheers of the crowd echoed off the marble walls, I felt a pang of something dangerously close to regret. I thought of my family—my real family, the one I'd left behind in another world, another time. My mother, my sister, my girlfriend, my cat. My Spotify playlists. My therapist.


I missed DoorDash. I missed warm laundry. I missed being nobody.


But I had chosen this fate, or maybe it had chosen me. Either way, I was now Emperor Constantine XII, the madman who revived the Roman Empire with a WiFi addiction and a god complex. The world would burn—but at least it would burn with style.


And maybe, just maybe, one day they'd make a Netflix series about me.
Ten episodes. Lots of flashbacks. Dark synth soundtrack. A morally ambiguous anti-hero played by someone way more attractive than me.


A man can dream. Even if the dream smells like gasoline and gunpowder.


The sky was turning to rust. Orange and gold bled into each other above the rooftops of Rome, like the blood I imagined would soon coat the colonial outposts of Britain and France. A fitting hue for a revolution. The wind carried the distant echoes of church bells and the smell of roasted chestnuts, mingling with the acrid breath of cordite and cigar smoke. It was All Hallows' Eve, and here I was, not in a costume party with cheap beer and horror movies, but draped in imperial regalia, delivering a war cry that would make the jackals of Empire shiver.


I stared at the crowd—my people, my audience, my Twitch stream without the Wi-Fi. No one was doomscrolling or distracted by a notification. Their attention was pure, unfiltered, almost unnerving. I missed that. Back in 2023, people couldn't even focus on a video longer than 15 seconds unless it had a jump cut, subtitles, and someone whispering "wait for it" every five seconds. Now, here they were—tens of thousands—hanging on my every word like it was gospel. It was intoxicating. I hadn't felt that level of validation since my last viral meme in my old life, captioned, "Mussolini if he discovered vaporwave."


But this wasn't a meme. This was history. Terrible, bloody, glorious history.


"Comrades!" I shouted again, chest heaving like I'd just run up the Spanish Steps, "Today, we baptize the world in fire."


I could hear a distant chant, almost musical. A pulse. Something primal. My speech had worked. They were ready.


Revolutionary Romanist fascism—it sounded absurd when I said it out loud back in 2023. Like something a YouTuber would scream before getting banned. But here, in 1942, it had weight. It had blood behind it. It had teeth.


Behind me, Otto Skorzeny stood like a gnarled statue, his face a mixture of pride and barely restrained violence. He had the jawline of a comic book villain and the soul of a jazz-loving arsonist. Beside him, the Eritrean guerrillas stood in ragged desert fatigues, rifles slung over their shoulders like handbags at a Berlin rave. They looked exhausted, deadly, and strangely serene—as if they already knew the future and welcomed its chaos.


I gestured toward them like a magician unveiling his final trick. "These men!" I boomed, "These are not just soldiers. They are architects. Architects of destruction, yes—but also of liberation! They will do what no man has done before—burn the colonial order to the ground while whistling Roman hymns."


Somewhere in the crowd, someone shouted "Ave Africa!" I liked that. Might put it on a flag. Maybe a T-shirt, if I ever returned to 2023. God, I missed Uniqlo.


"These men have studied the art of war not in ivory towers, but in the crucible of desert fire. We taught them everything—guerrilla tactics, Maoist strategy, improvised bomb-making, movie worthy disinformation campaigns, even the culinary arts. Yes, comrades, they know how to bake bread while building bombs. We are that modern."


A laugh rippled through the crowd. Good. Laughter was important. Even in revolution. Especially in revolution. My therapist in 2023 once told me that humor was a coping mechanism. He also told me I needed to stop self-identifying as a reincarnated Byzantine emperor. He was wrong on both counts.


I wiped sweat from my brow. The lights from the Palazzo made me feel like I was under a ring light again. A hot, fascist influencer shouting into history.


"The colonialists claim to be the vanguard of civilization," I continued, "but they are nothing more than dressed-up grave robbers with better publicists. They talk of democracy while their boots crush necks. They send missionaries and machine guns in the same breath, and wonder why no one wants to join their book club."


I let the silence linger like the beat drop in a Kanye track.


"Let me be clear: this ends now. This empire day, we tear off their masks and show the world the ghouls they truly are. No more hypocrisy. No more lectures from countries who invented the term 'banana republic' while eating their weight in stolen fruit."


Cheers. Fists in the air. I even saw someone throw a rose. It missed, but I appreciated the gesture.


"Today, I proclaim the birth of the African Liberation Army. Trained by Italians, armed by liberty, driven by a hatred so pure it could power a hydroelectric dam. From Cairo's concrete alleys to Katanga's blood-soaked mines, to the cricket fields of Johannesburg, we will rise."


Now the noise was thunder. I could barely hear myself think. Not that I needed to. My speech was over. I had dropped the ideological nuke. Let the fallout begin.


"And remember—this isn't just about Africa. This is about all of us. About tearing down the old world and building a new one where dignity doesn't depend on pigment or passport. Spain is with us. Greece is with us. Even the French, bless their souls, are with us. And we—we—will be the hammer."


I threw up my hand in a Roman salute—not the Nazi one, mind you; I had standards. "Liberty! Freedom or death!"


The crowd lost it. Absolutely feral. Like a stadium after a last-minute goal. Or a Reddit thread after someone leaks DLC early. Beautiful chaos.


I turned away, finally, and caught Skorzeny's eye. The man was crying. Just one tear. A single, glistening bead of violent approval sliding down his scarred cheek like a dying dove. I nodded. He stepped forward. It was his turn now.


The general of mayhem. My warhound.


As he prepared to speak, I stepped into the shadowed colonnade behind us, out of the floodlights, and lit a cigarette. American, ironically. Lucky Strikes. I'd give anything for a vape right now. Hell, even a pumpkin spice latte. But there was no Starbucks in Fascist Rome. Not yet.


My hand trembled slightly. I missed my sofie. I missed my stupid apartment and its IKEA furniture. I missed trashy reality TV. I missed not knowing what blood smelled like up close. But I couldn't go back. The save file had overwritten itself.


I blew out the smoke and smiled. Constantine XII, Emperor of Rome, had a continent to burn.


Tomorrow, the war would begin.


Skorensky cleared his throat with the kind of deliberate gravitas that only men with enough guilt, blood, and vodka in their past can manage. He stepped up to the podium, flanked by a grim-faced translator who looked like he'd been pulled straight from a Kafka novel and thrown into a fever dream of carcano's and revolutionary slogans. The translator adjusted his earpiece, nodded once. Showtime. Translate that barbarian German rabble into Italian.


"Comrades," Skorensky began, his voice low, baritone, and vaguely menacing—like a priest who had replaced incense with napalm.


"Many of you don't know who I am, but my name isn't important," he said, already laying the bricks of a myth, a legend. "What is important is what I have taught. What I will continue to teach."


The translator mirrored him perfectly, his voice rising and falling in rhythmic syncopation. A well-trained parrot of propaganda. I had personally vetted him. He once translated my new Fascist Manifesto into Eritrean Tigrinya during a malaria fever dream. I trusted him with my life.


Skorensky paused, looking out over the sea of guerrillas, dignitaries, and assorted madmen I had assembled. Men with dreams, women with vendettas, children born under the shadow of gunships and empire. His next words would slice into the skin of history.


"I was once a Nazi," he said, flatly, like it was the most boring thing in the world. "I fought for Hitler."


You could hear a pin drop, or at least the click of a safety being flicked off by a nearby guerrilla with trust issues. The air was heavy. Not even the birds dared chirp.


"But I," Skorensky continued, his eyes sweeping across the crowd like a tired confession booth, "like many of my fellow Austrians, have seen the truth. The horror he inflicted. The rot he birthed. The lies he fed us like poisoned milk."


I grinned. Perfect. Scripted to the letter. Of course, the sincerity wasn't optional. His wife and his mistress were both under my protection—in an Italian villa with high walls, limited phone privileges, and a scenic view of the ocean, should he ever need a reason to stay loyal. One deviation from the party line and their necks would snap like uncooked spaghetti.


Skorensky pressed on, his voice rising now, emboldened by the silence that had become reverence.


"That is why I have chosen, no, sworn to dedicate the rest of my life to the cause of African liberation."


There it was. The pivot. The grand moment where sin becomes redemption, where a war criminal gets tenure as a revolutionary professor.


"And I call on all Austrians—no, all Europeans with a conscience—to join me. Not just African, the black man in America oppressed by their white masters. The latin American worker, farmer, and soldier who dares dream of freedom. The oriental man, Americans with a conscience, Russians, Chinese. I call on all humanity to redeem itself. To trade their passivity for action. Come to Africa. We will wash the continent not with tears, but with holy fire. Not with apologies, but with justice. We shall preach a gospel—not through books, but through bullets, through flame, through the glorious cleansing scream of revolution."


He clenched his fist as he delivered the final line:


"Long live a free Africa!" He did his own Roman salute.


The translator finished the sentence a second behind him, voice trembling with something halfway between awe and terror. The crowd erupted. Guerrillas banged their rifles against their chests. The air was thick with dust, sweat, and the raw electricity of myth in the making.


Skorensky stepped back, stone-faced, letting the wave of applause crash over him like a martyr awaiting sainthood. He didn't smile. He never smiled.


Then, one of the guerrillas—a young man with burn scars, eyes like midnight, and a voice that had once sung for his village before his innocence was taken stepped forward. It was his time now. A black voice, clear and roaring, would echo from the red clay of Africa to the marble steps of Europe. A voice that would announce that the old world was bleeding out—and we were holding the knife.


I stepped back into the shadows behind the mangrove-shrouded stage. The jungle buzzed and whispered, alive with revolution.


My mind, though, flickered elsewhere. It always did. A glitch in the simulation. I could see it—2023, shimmering like a heat mirage in the back of my skull. My Sofie watching YouTube on the couch. My mom yelling at the dog to get off the Roomba. The smell of takeout Thai food. AirPods. Dry shampoo. Spotify playlists and overpriced oat milk lattes. A world where I could google "how to unclog a sink" instead of executing a corrupt provincial governor in a sandstorm.


But no—here I was, drenched in sweat, blood, and ideology. A fascist prophet with a 21st-century soul and 20th-century problems. I didn't bless the rains down in Africa. That would've been too easy, too merciful. I blessed the blood that was about to flow.


The revolution had its choir now. Its generals. Its myth. Its soundtrack was gunfire and slogans. And it was only just beginning.


My guerrilla stepped forward, eyes blazing with the kind of madness only years of war and loss can forge. He was a former Somalian Askari from the Ogaden, a place where the land itself seemed soaked in violence and despair. Siad Barre, I think his name was. Perfect. A brutal butcher raised by the very colonial system we now sought to overthrow.


He spoke in flawless Italian, thanks to the colonial education Rome had meticulously orchestrated. Ah, the sweet taste of irony and control. Otto couldn't stop raving about him. Said he was the ideal guerrilla: cunning, merciless, sadistic to a fault. Not just a soldier, but a symphony of chaos in human form. Barre's soul was a pendulum swinging wildly between bloodthirsty rage and eerie moments of conciliatory wisdom. Some whispered he witnessed his own father's murder at ten years old—an origin story that fit our theater of horrors like a glove.


The perfect soldier. The perfect butcher. The ideal weapon for my unholy crusade to free Africa from the chains of imperialist scum.


I smiled, the kind of smile that could crack concrete. Because this madness was mine. Every bullet fired in that name, every shattered village, every scream—it was the sound of my revenge against a world that had stolen my family, my sanity, my Spotify playlists, and the sweet solace of a decent cup of coffee.


"Comrades!" Barre bellowed, his voice thick with rage and prophecy.


"Today, we begin our war! A war of liberation! Of vengeance! We shall cast down our oppressors from their estates, from their gilded offices! We will build a free Africa over the corpses of those who dared to chain us!"


The crowd hung on every word. Children clutched their mothers' hands. Old men shook their heads with bitter hope. Somewhere, a goat probably fainted from the intensity.


"Our great emperor!" Barre shouted, eyes locking on me like I was some divine avatar of destruction. "Has offered us guns! Money! Supplies! Our general, Sir Skorensky,"—he snapped his head toward Otto—"has given us the knowledge, the tools! We will turn Africa into a graveyard for the colonialist devils! Let them kill me if they want! But the idea—the idea of freedom—will never die!"


His voice cracked into a scream that shredded the air.


"Freedom or death! Long live a free Africa! Long live the emperor! Ave Caesar! Ave Roma!"


He snapped to the Roman salute. I returned it, sharp and proud. The crowd followed, a tidal wave of raised arms and roaring cries crashing over the palazzo's marble steps.


Women wept tears of ecstasy, men screamed like they'd swallowed fire, children—too young to know better—saluted with a trembling earnestness that felt almost sacred.


It was beautiful in a way only chaos can be beautiful.


The continent was going to burn.


And it would be mine for the taking.


For a fleeting second, I imagined the comforts I'd left behind: the absurdity of TikTok dances, the stale smell of airport terminals, the glowing screen of my smartphone buzzing with notifications I didn't have time to read, my daughter's laugh ringing in a Zoom call, the scent of fresh laundry—and, yes, the quiet luxury of an air-conditioned apartment that didn't smell like gunpowder and ambition.


But no. This was my world now. The only world that mattered.


The revolution wasn't just a war. It was my bitter, blazing tweetstorm against history.


And it had only just begun.
 
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The romanist manifesto New
THE MANIFESTO OF REVOLUTIONARY ROMANISM FASCISM: THE THIRD PATH OF HUMANITY


Issued from Rome, In the Year of Our Rebirth, Anno Domini 1942, November 10.


Written by Emperor Constantine the twelfth of his name of the Mussolini dynasty.


Emperor of the Romans, king of Greater Austria, of Croatia, of Albania, of Syria, of Somalia, of Oromia, Afaria, Tigraya, Amharia.


Lord of the Roman, Slavs, syrians, Berbers, Africans, and latins.


Defender of the Catholic faith


Protector of Islam, of Judaism


---


I. THE FALSE PEACE


The Second World War has ended.


The guns have fallen silent, and yet the world has not known peace. The streets of Europe may no longer echo with artillery, but a different war now looms—one that cannot be ended with treaties, bombs, or occupations. It is not a war of tanks or trenches, but of minds and spirits. A war not of nations, but of ideologies. A war not fought with bullets, but with whispers, temptations, and treason.


The tyrants of yesterday have been cast down, but the devils of tomorrow are already taking shape. The dream of lasting peace is a hollow farce—conceived by those who do not know man's soul, who cannot grasp the eternal yearning for meaning beyond gold and bread.


And so begins the true war. A war that shall define the fate of man.


Let no fool speak of peace, when the very air we breathe is poisoned by lies. The regimes that promise stability today are decaying carcasses in ornate suits. Their parliaments, nothing more than temples to impotence. Their leaders, merchant-priests who speak of liberty while shackled to foreign creditors and godless banks. Their people, herded like livestock between advertisements and elections, mouths filled with bread, hearts filled with nothing.


The so-called "peace" of the postwar world is not peace—it is sedation. It is the coma of nations. It is the silence of civilizations before the final gasp. A silence brought about not by resolution, but by exhaustion—by a world so broken, so bereft of conviction, that it has chosen to sleep through the apocalypse it can no longer confront.


But we will not sleep. We Romans do not sleep. We do not slumber in comfort while the soul of man is raped by the twin demons of Capital and Commune. While the East chains man's spirit to the gulag and the rifle butt, the West seduces it into servitude through convenience, decadence, and the perverse cult of the self. Both seek to reduce man to an animal—one by the whip, the other by the wallet.


We see through both lies.


The Soviet beast, drunk on the blood of its own children, would chain all humanity to a single dialectic, where the commissar's word is scripture and the pistol holy water. They promise equality—and deliver famine. They promise freedom—and deliver silence. They promise progress—and build nothing but prisons, both of concrete and of mind.


And the Americans—those gilded Pharisees—proclaim themselves the torchbearers of liberty, even as they drape the Earth in shackles of debt, consumption, and cultural sterilization. Their "freedom" is the freedom to rot in isolation, to work for a wage and die forgotten. Their democracy is the marketplace, their God is the dollar, their gospel is Hollywood, and their Heaven is a shopping mall with no exit.


Is this the promised peace? Is this the triumph of civilization?


No! We cry no! Let the world hear it in a thousand tongues: NO!


Peace without justice is slavery. Peace without virtue is damnation. And peace without Rome is no peace at all.


The empires of yesterday have failed because they were built on greed or fear. The new world order pretends to be different, but it is the same sickness in a new skin. What did the death of millions achieve, if the only result was the shifting of chains from iron to silk?


But Rome lives. And Rome remembers.


The Roman spirit is not dead—it was merely slumbering in the catacombs of history, gathering strength as the world tore itself apart. Now, reborn in the crucible of war, crowned in flame, clad in steel, and baptized in blood, the Third Rome stands anew, and it does not ask for peace. It demands war.


Not war for conquest—but war for renewal. War for purity. War for the soul of man.


This is the new war: a sacred war. A metaphysical war. A war to save the essence of what it means to be human from those who would reduce man to a statistic, a consumer, a gear, a vote.


We shall wage this war on every front. We shall wage it in the classroom, where our children will learn virtue, duty, hierarchy, and sacrifice—not degeneracy, relativism, and equality. We shall wage it in the factory, where the worker shall no longer be a cog in a foreign machine, but a soldier of labor, building not for profit, but for glory. We shall wage it in the pulpit, where the priest shall cast out the demons of modernity and declare once more: There is truth, and it is Roman! There is order, and it is eternal! There is God, and his humble servant wears the purple of Caesar!


And above all, we shall wage it in the soul.


We reject the soulless materialism of Marx and Madison alike. We reject the doctrine that man is merely flesh to be fed or bred or used. We proclaim instead that man is spirit—fire—divine essence made flesh. And that spirit demands discipline, loyalty, strength, tradition, and sacrifice.


We call upon all peoples of the Earth to awaken—to throw off the twin yokes of the commissar and the capitalist. To cleanse their minds, purge their cities, and raise their banners beneath the eagle of Rome once more.


For the peace of this world is a lie. A lie spun by cowards, fed to slaves, and protected by traitors. It is a peace built on bones, and it will collapse under the weight of its own filth.


Let it collapse. Let the false peace perish.


Let the fires of the new Roman age burn away the rot and reveal the granite beneath.


Rome has returned.


And we bring not peace, but a sword.


---


II. THE ENEMIES OF SPIRIT AND NATION
Let Every Banner of Rome Unfurl Against the Twin Heads of the Serpent


In this new and final conflict, two false gods demand worship. Two abominations stand before the nations, preaching rival gospels of slavery, both birthed from the same sterile womb of modernity: Communism and Capitalist Democracy. These twin-headed beasts—one with a hammer, the other with a dollar—vie for the soul of man, not to liberate him, but to consume him.


Communism—the eastern sickness, the ideology of mass graves and soulless masses, is a creed built upon envy, hatred, and mechanized terror. It speaks of "liberation," yet it enslaves not only the body, but the soul. It promises heaven and delivers Siberia. It claims fraternity but rewards only betrayal. Look to Russia! Look to China! Look to every land where the red flag has flown and count the dead!


In the ice-choked gulags of the Soviet Union, the soil is soaked with the blood of saints, poets, soldiers, and children. Freedom is a whisper—swiftly punished. Thought is a crime. Faith is an illness. Family is weakness. There, the commissar's pistol is priest and prophet. The worker, they claim to uplift, but he is trampled, dragged before the machine, and ground into dust beneath the boots of bureaucrats and party pigs. He does not build for glory or nation—he labors for a future that never comes, for a party that devours its own sons.


But worse still than the Eastern abomination is the Capitalist-Democratic lie, the Western heresy—the gospel of Mammon draped in flags and ballots. This is the creed of Wall Street and Westminster, of Parisian whores and American preachers, of Hollywood and Brussels. It cloaks its chains in silk. It poisons not with bullets, but with pleasure, and dares to call its slaves "free."


This system exalts the banker and crucifies the worker. It speaks of "liberty," yet offers only the freedom to starve. It speaks of "democracy," yet lets only the wealthy speak. It speaks of "rights," yet protects only the market. It speaks of "progress," yet its only temple is the shopping mall and its only god is profit. Beneath the slogans and the ballots lie the bones of a thousand nations, crushed beneath the boot of global finance.


The black man in Africa, the brown man in Asia, the Arab, the Indian, the Southeast Asian, the indigenous—what liberty did liberalism bring them? None! What vote was given to them in the empires of Britain, France, America? None! Their blood lubricated the engines of capitalist democracy; their resources fed the greed of Rothschild and Rockefeller; their dignity was auctioned on the floor of the stock exchange.


Democracy is the whorehouse of nations, where every principle is for sale, and every truth is silenced by gold. It is rule by the lowest, for the benefit of the highest. A tyranny of mediocrity and cowardice. A system where bankers write the laws, celebrities write the morals, and the people are told to be happy as long as the circus plays and the bread is stale but plenty.


We Romans repudiate both.


We reject the slave-systems of East and West, born of the same atheist, materialist womb. One rules through terror, the other through narcotic decadence. One demands submission through fear, the other through comfort. But both destroy the soul. Both deny the divine. Both deny the nation. Both must be annihilated.


We repudiate the red star and the dollar, the gulag and the stock exchange, the commissar and the CEO, the Five-Year Plan and the quarterly report.


We do not want a world where man is a gear in the machine of the state—or a customer in the market of endless hunger.


We are Romans.


And we remember a higher way. A Third Path.


We do not ask for liberty as a favor from above—we seize sovereignty as a right. We do not elect our Caesars through bribes and ballots—we forge them in fire, trial, and blood. We do not worship the masses—we shape them into legions.


Where the capitalist builds chains of gold, we break them with iron.


Where the communist tears down the temple, we rebuild it in marble.


Where both systems erase the past, we carve it into stone.


Let it be known: we are not the "third way" of compromise—we are the Third Way of war. We are not moderation between extremes—we are the extermination of both extremes.


We are the flame that will burn down the Kremlin and Wall Street alike.


We are the voice that will silence both the parliamentary pig and the commissar rat.


We are the sword that will fall on both the ballot and the manifesto.


We are the storm that shall cleanse the world of the bourgeois parasite and the proletarian mob alike.


Let every banker know: your vaults will not save you.
Let every commissar know: your secret police cannot protect you.
Let every false priest of democracy or Marxism tremble—your time is ended.


Rome does not kneel to East or West.


Rome does not vote.


Rome commands.


---


III. THE BIRTH OF ROMANISM
The Resurrection of Empire, Spirit, and Sword


Before the eagle soars, it must shed the feathers of weakness. Before the sword is drawn, it must be forged in fire. Before the sun rises, there must be darkness.


So it was with Fascism.


Fascism was not born perfect. It was a cry, not yet a command. A spark, not yet a fire. It emerged from the ashes of a betrayed generation—those who bled in the trenches of the Great War, only to return home to ruins, betrayal, and decay. Fascism was born as a scream of defiance against the liberal filth, the socialist poison, and the globalist vultures that tore Europe to pieces. In Italy, it first stood tall—brash, flawed, magnificent in its imperfection.


But that early Fascism was a creature of its time. It was the larva. It was the prophet in the desert, not yet the god upon the mountain. It was surrounded by wolves—foreign and domestic—and constrained by the corpse of the old world.


But Fascism did not die.


It entered the cocoon. It went underground. Into the fire. Into war. Into the crucible of conflict and victory. From the bones of Rome and the tombs of forgotten emperors, it began to dream again. In the silence after the war, it grew teeth. In the darkness of occupation and humiliation, it grew wings.


And now, from the ashes of two world wars, from the ruins of the West and the abyss of the East, a new creature emerges.


Romanism.


Not Fascism resurrected. But Fascism transfigured.


Romanism is Fascism ascended—Fascism purged of error, tempered by fire, baptized in blood, and crowned with glory. It is not reactionary—it is revolutionary. It is not nationalist—it is imperial. It is not of Mussolini or Hitler—but of Caesar, of Constantine, of Christ.


Romanism is the Third Path, not as compromise, but as conquest. A new axis around which the world shall turn.


It is the synthesis of sword and scripture, the reconciliation of Church and Empire, the union of altar and throne. Where Marxism sought to destroy the divine, and capitalism sold it for coins, we restore the cross—not as ornament, but as banner. Christ is not the lamb alone, but the Lion of Judah, the scourge of moneychangers, the King of Kings. And Rome is His throne on earth, eternal and unyielding.


Romanism is the will of Fascism infused with the soul of Rome.


Where Fascism marched, Romanism conquers.


Where Fascism obeyed kings, Romanism creates emperors.


Where Fascism fought decadence, Romanism buries it.


Where Fascism worshiped the State, Romanism enthrones the Spirit.


We do not revive the Italy of 1930—we resurrect the Rome of Augustus and the Church of Innocent III. We raise a civilization of marble and flame, of monasteries and legions, of sacred law and eternal destiny.


Romanism is not a movement. It is not a party. It is not a government.


It is a civilizational rebirth.
It is a new Rome, unbound by peninsula or passport.
It is an idea with armies, a myth with steel, a liturgy with bayonets.


It is the final form of human political evolution, the last empire before the end of days. It is what Plato dreamed, what Machiavelli hinted at, what Nietzsche longed for—and what the martyrs of the twentieth century died without seeing.


No longer shall we be compared to the petty fascisms of the past. We are not Germany. We are not nostalgic nationalists. We are not conservative reactionaries. We are the new Aeon. The Empire Reforged. The Faith Reforged. The Man Reforged.


Where liberalism promised choice and gave us decay,
Where communism promised justice and gave us death,
Where democracy promised freedom and gave us porn, debt, and despair—
We offer blood, spirit, family, empire, eternity.


We are the answer to the chaos.
We are the sword against the beast.
We are the empire at the end of the world.


Let every man choose.
Servitude to East or West—or glory with Rome.


Let every heart be weighed.
In gold like the capitalist? In envy like the Marxist? Or in virtus, like the Roman?


Let every age remember this day: Fascism was the fire—but Romanism is the sun.


And the sun shall rise again, from the Tiber to the Euphrates, from the Carpathians to the Congo, from the Alps to the Andes. The world will not be ruled by merchants or bureaucrats—but by the heirs of Caesar, the sons of Christ, the builders of cathedrals and coliseums.


This is the age of Romanism.


This is the return of Empire.


This is the beginning.


---


IV. THE VISION OF ROMANISM
The Symphony of Spirit, Order, and Destiny


We stand upon the ruins of a century that promised much and delivered ruin. The West, intoxicated by freedom, tore down all hierarchy, all reverence, all responsibility—until man was no longer man, but a consumer without soul, a voter without vision, a worker without honor. The East, maddened by equality, crushed the human spirit under the wheel of collectivism—until man became a gear in a godless machine, watched by the all-seeing eye of the State, stripped of identity, of family, of God.


Romanism rejects this false dichotomy. We reject both the tyranny of the mob and the tyranny of the state.


We proclaim a higher vision: the Nation as Organism. The Individual as Sacred Cell. The State as Living Body.


As the heart beats not for itself, but for the whole—so too must every man beat for his nation. As the hand does not rebel against the brain, nor the foot against the eye, so too must our classes, castes, and vocations function in harmony—distinct, but united. No longer in chaos. No longer in competition. But in symphony.


This is the Symphony of Romanism.


The worker, whose calloused hands shall no longer be a mark of servitude, but of nobility. He shall not labor in silence for foreign shareholders or faceless bureaucrats. He shall labor as a soldier of production, honored by his nation, shielded by law, elevated by purpose.


The businessman, stripped of parasitism and vice, shall become a steward of the national soul. Not a profiteer, but a builder. Not a gambler in stocks, but a gardener of prosperity. He shall be rewarded not for greed, but for service—his success measured by how many families he uplifts, how many communities he strengthens.


The clergyman, once mocked by modernity, shall be restored to his rightful throne—not as ruler of men's bodies, but as guardian of their souls. He shall speak with moral authority, a compass in the storm, and his church shall be the hearth of the nation, not a relic of the past.


The soldier, the eternal symbol of discipline and sacrifice, shall not be a pawn in foreign wars or a tool of conquest. He shall be the sword of order, the shield of the weak, the sentinel of our borders, and the beating heart of national pride. He shall march not for gold, but for honor.


The statesman, be he consul, emperor, king, or duce, shall not be chosen by the whims of mobs or the coffers of donors, but rise through virtue, courage, and vision. He shall rule by right of excellence, not popularity—his mandate drawn not from ballots, but from destiny, from divine duty, from the consent of history itself.


We call this the Great Union—a union not merely of interests, but of spirits. Not of contracts, but of sacred bonds. Not of equals, but of brothers.


Romanism does not worship the market, nor destroy it. We place the market upon the altar of the nation and chain it to duty. The economy shall be commanded by justice, not desire. Capital shall be loyal. Labor shall be dignified. Property shall exist not as a right alone, but as a responsibility.


We reject the gospel of equality that drags the noble down to the mediocre.


We say: let each man rise as high as his virtus allows—but let him never forget that greatness is not for self-glory, but for service.


Let the strong carry the burden of the weak.


Let the wise instruct the ignorant.


Let the beautiful ennoble the plain.


Let the just wield the sword.


This is not oppression. This is not elitism. This is order. Sacred, natural, divine order.


We do not dream of utopia—but of hierarchy with honor, unity with diversity, and freedom with responsibility.


Under Romanism, the artist shall be free to uplift, not degrade.


The scientist shall discover for life, not profit.


The farmer shall reap for the family, not the financier.


The mother shall be exalted, not erased.


The child shall be raised in virtue, not confusion.


The citizen shall be more than a taxpayer or voter—he shall be a son of the nation, a bearer of its destiny, a living stone in the cathedral of the future.


Romanism is not a policy—it is a rebirth. Not a program—but a prophecy.


A new civilization shall rise from the ruins: clean in soul, firm in purpose, strong in faith.


From the mountains of the Carpathians, from the ruins of Rome, from the temples of Jerusalem, from the cries of those forgotten by modernity—a new world shall be built.


Not of slogans. Not of ballots. But of honor, hierarchy, holiness.


This is the Vision of Romanism.


And to those who still have eyes to see and hearts to believe—we say:
Come.
Join the Symphony.
Take up your place in destiny.
The New Rome calls.


Will you answer it?


---


V. THE UNIVERSALITY OF THE ROMAN MISSION
One Spirit. Many Peoples. A Shared Destiny.


There are those who will scoff and say, "This is naïve, this is a dream."
To them we respond: Yes, it is a dream—but a Roman one.
And Rome does not die. Rome awakens.


For too long, the world has wandered aimlessly—disillusioned by false ideologies, torn apart by tribal hatreds, and suffocated by soulless modernity. But amid the ruins, beneath the dust of centuries, something eternal stirs. The Roman spirit—timeless, resilient, and divine—begins to rise again.


From the banks of the Nile to the hills of the Tiber, from the forests of the Danube to the plains of Mesopotamia, the ancient soul of civilization—of law, honor, and harmony—calls out once more. It speaks not in Latin alone, but in every language where hearts still yearn for order, dignity, and destiny.


Romanism is not a narrow nationalism, nor an imperial yoke. It is a beacon. A symphony of peoples. A new covenant among civilizations.


As the old Empire once unified the scattered tribes of the Mediterranean, not through annihilation, but through inclusion, elevation, and synthesis—so too shall Romanism reach out to the forgotten, the fragmented, the forsaken. Not to erase, but to uplift. Not to conquer, but to connect.


Our message is universal in spirit, yet adaptable in form. Like Rome herself, we embrace difference—not to homogenize, but to harmonize.


In Egypt, the sheikh shall speak with dignity, the imam shall guide with wisdom, the fellah shall toil with pride, and the merchant shall serve as steward—not slave—of his people. Together, they shall find their voices in the symphony of Roman order.


In Africa, the chieftain and the tribesman shall not be forced into a foreign mold, but called to greatness through honor. The witch doctor and blacksmith, bearers of ancient knowledge, shall be invited to lend their wisdom to the forging of a new era—where the ancestral and the eternal walk hand in hand.


In the East, the emperor shall rule with virtue, the monk shall pray with clarity, the warrior shall fight with purpose, and the peasant shall reap with joy. Their banners, their traditions, their beauty—they shall not vanish, but be bound to us in sacred brotherhood.


We do not demand uniformity. We demand harmony.
We do not seek submission. We seek resonance.
We do not offer chains. We offer a place in destiny.


Romanism is not a march of legions, but of ideas. It is not gladius and trireme, but soul and spirit. It carries no whip, only a banner. We are not tyrants clad in armor, but missionaries of a new order—an order forged not in conquest, but in calling.


We extend our hand, not our sword, to every people who longs for dignity restored, for justice reawakened, for purpose rekindled.


Let it be known: the Roman spirit belongs to no single race, no single creed, no single continent. It is the eternal inheritance of all who believe in civilization over chaos, in virtue over vice, in harmony over hatred.


From the Andes to the Himalayas, from the Sahara to Siberia, from the Pacific to the plains of Europa—the world cries out for something greater. Something unifying. Something noble. That something is Romanism.


And so, to the lost sons of modernity, to the fractured tribes of humanity, we proclaim:
A new Rome rises—not in stone, but in soul.
Join us—not as slaves, but as brothers.
March with us—not to conquer, but to build.
For the future is not born—it is forged.
And together, under the sign of the Eagle and the Cross,
we shall forge it.


---


VI. THE CALL TO MAN
Awaken, O Sons and Daughters of the Earth


O men and women of every nation—black, brown, white, red, yellow—hear this call:
From the snows of Siberia to the jungles of the Congo, from the alleys of Delhi to the cathedrals of Europe, from the Andean peaks to the islands of the Pacific—this voice is for you.
Not a command, but a challenge. Not a whisper, but a trumpet.


The hour is late. The fire of history burns hotter than it has in a thousand years.
The world trembles on the edge of abyss—crushed between the rusted hammer and the bloodstained dollar.
And you must choose. Not tomorrow. Not next year. Now.


Shall you follow the Soviet lie—the gray, soulless tyranny that grinds man beneath the gears of a godless machine, where laughter is forbidden and faith is a crime, where the only future is the past rewritten in red ink?


Shall you bow before the American idol—the golden calf of consumerism, of profit without virtue, of freedom without purpose?
Shall you trade your soul for a screen, your dignity for a discount, your future for convenience?


Shall you sink into decadence, into moral ruin, into racial hatred and tribal war? Shall you let your people rot in slums while your leaders dance in palaces? Shall you let your children inherit a world where nothing is sacred, and everything is for sale?


Or shall you rise?


Romanism offers not a fantasy, but a future.
Not a dream, but a direction.
Not an ideology, but a rebirth.


It is the Third Path. The Roman Path.
A path of order and beauty. Of hierarchy and harmony. Of soul and steel.
It is a call to awaken—not as isolated tribes or fractured classes—but as a united brotherhood of destiny.


Come forward, worker and farmer—you who break your back in fields and factories, ignored by the thrones of finance and party.
Come forward, student and thinker—you who seek meaning beyond the propaganda of textbooks and slogans.
Come forward, clergyman and prophet—you who have been cast aside in a world that fears the sacred.
Come forward, soldier and sentinel—you who long for a cause higher than mercenary pay.
Come forward, woman and mother—you who bear the future in your womb and guard it with your hands.


Come forward, young and old, East and West, North and South.


The banner of Rome is raised once more. The eagle spreads its wings. The standard flutters in the wind of destiny.


Stand beneath it—not as slaves, but as sons. Not as subjects, but as citizens of a new era.


Let no man say this path is only for Europe. Let no fool say this flame burns only for white men. Romanism is not race. It is spirit. It is soul. It is will.


If your heart beats with virtue, if your hands long to build, if your soul hungers for greatness, then you are already one of us.


This is your call. This is your summons. This is your hour.


Let the cowards cling to comfort. Let the traitors kneel for coins.
But let the strong, the faithful, and the bold rise—
And march beneath the Roman sun.


---


VII. THE RESTORATION OF DESTINY
The Eternal Flame Rekindled


For the first time in fifteen centuries—since the last breath of Theodosius the Great, since the legions last marched in unity beneath the eagle standard—Rome stands again, whole in soul and spirit.


Not as a memory. Not as a museum. But as a living force, a sovereign will reborn in the hearts of men.


The world thought us buried, entombed by centuries of division, foreign domination, and forgetfulness. Yet Rome was never dead—it was dormant. Waiting. Watching. Preserved in ruins, whispered in tongues, kept alive in blood and prayer.


And now, the fire returns.


The Balkans—once the frontier of the Empire, the crucible of emperors and martyrs—shall be our anvil, where we forge a new brotherhood from the iron of ancient tribes and new nations.


The Mediterranean—our sacred sea, Mare Nostrum—shall beat again as the heart of civilization, not divided by greed or empire, but unified in purpose and destiny.


Romania, whose very name echoes our imperial inheritance, shall be the altar of rebirth. Not merely a land, but a mission. Not a state, but a revelation. Upon her mountains and plains we shall raise the standard of a new age.


Let the world hear us clearly:
We do not demand that it bow before us.
We invite it to rise with us.
Not as subjects, but as pilgrims, seekers, and brothers.
We offer no chains—only direction. No tyranny—only order.


But let no one mistake our hospitality for passivity.
To those who extend a hand, we shall return an embrace.
But to those who raise a fist—know this:
We are Rome. We endure. We defend.


Like Trajan's legions, we shall hold the line with unbreakable resolve.
Like Decebalus, we shall fight for the soil that feeds our soul.
We shall defend not only borders, but values. Not merely land, but legacy.


To the workers, dreamers, warriors, priests, poets, and patriots of the world—
To those disillusioned by corruption, by chaos, by cowardice—
To all who still believe in something higher than themselves—
We say: come. Stand with us. Build with us. March with us.


This is not a restoration of empire by sword. It is the restoration of meaning, of harmony, of destiny.


A new age dawns—an age of rootedness in faith, clarity in thought, strength in action, and honor in duty.
No longer shall man drift rudderless in the storm of modernity.
No longer shall nations be bought and sold like cattle.
No longer shall virtue be scorned while vice is crowned.


From the ashes of the old world, we shall raise a standard for the new.
A Rome of all peoples who dare to dream of greatness without shame, of unity without tyranny, of glory without guilt.


And so we proclaim, not in arrogance but in conviction:
Rome lives. Rome leads. Rome calls.


Let all who seek purpose come forth—
For the road of destiny is open once more.


---


VIII. OUR FINAL WORD


Ave Roma. Ave Imperator. Ave Caesar.


From Dacia to Jerusalem, from Athens to Carthage, from Iberia to Thrace—the eagle has risen once more.


The Slug has become the butterfly.


Let the world watch and tremble.


For the Age of Romanism has begun.
 
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Disclaimer New
I DON'T BELIEVE IN ANY OF THIS. This little rhetorical and ideological vomit was the result of me reading hours of fascist, integralist, traditionalist and even syndicalist writings. Even sprinkled some Jreg in there.

If you genuinely base your political ideology on this then comrade, go outside
 
Here's my political reforms, now choke on it you fucking parasites New
November 2, 1942
Palazzo Venezia
Rome, Roman Empire (God help us all)


They call this an imperial cabinet now. I sit at the head of the table in my grand, echoing hall, where marble columns bear witness to the madness I've caged in bureaucracy. Senators in starched black uniforms encircle me, their faces blank, their minds dull as butter knives, nodding at everything I say with the solemnity of undertakers. I could fart into a microphone and they'd clap.

Yet my mind isn't on them. Not on the trembling generals rattling off logistics. Not on the charming Imam Yahya, who finally launched a holy war against Ibn Saud like it was some football grudge match.

No, not even on the planes I've dispatched to Arabia, their cargo bays stuffed with barrels of mustard gas and tabun, brewed in secret Alpine labs by Nazi scientists I stole from the Reich like baseball cards. Most of them work under duress. Their families reside in lovely Italian villas, with servants, wine, and armed guards at the gates pointing Lugers at their dogs. They comply, they live. They object, and little Klaus gets turned into patio art. Fair trade, if you ask me.

Honestly, it's all so... efficient. I give them aliases. Paychecks. A chance at redemption through chemical warfare. One even asked for a new passport name—"Gustavo Romano." The man makes tabun gas by the gallon and wanted to sound like a soccer player. I said, "Sure, Gustavo. As long as your brew melts flesh off bones, call yourself whatever the hell you want."

But that's not what haunts me now.

No, tonight my thoughts are on Ariel Winter. Yes, that Ariel Winter. From Modern Family.

Don't ask me why. Maybe it's the stress. Maybe it's the fact that I haven't seen a proper sitcom since 2023, and I've been forced to replace dopamine with conquest.

But God Almighty, those tits. Monuments. National landmarks. I want to bury my face in them like a war orphan in a field of warm bread. I want to weep between them. I want to apologize for the state of the world and be forgiven, bosom-bound and blubbering. I feel a twitch in my trousers—erect fascism, if you will.

Of course, I remind myself: I'm a married man. Faithful now. Clara's gone, exiled from my bed and from this plane of reality after I finally had the good sense to end that particular fever dream. Poor girl didn't understand monogamy... or hygiene.

But Rachele? My wife? The mother of my offspring? She knows things. Ancient things. Secret movements of hips and tongue passed down from Etruscan priestesses. She's got joints that shouldn't work the way they do, and she still calls me "Il Duce" in bed, which, under the circumstances, is both patriotic and deeply erotic.

Yes. Tonight, I'll blow her back out like an Allied supply convoy. She deserves it. I deserve it. Rome deserves it.

Let the world burn. Let the desert sands choke on gas and blood. Let the imperial cabinet mutter about borders and battalions. I'll be there, in bed, with a bottle of Chianti, the sound of Glenn Miller playing on vinyl, whispering, "Ariel, mio amore, why were you born in the wrong century?"

And then I'll rail my wife with the intensity of a man who just ordered an ethnic cleansing before breakfast.

My attention snapped back to the void of now—Ciano, of all people, tugging at the reins of my wandering mind like a cat meowing during a nuclear test.

"Your Majesty. They're all here," he said, voice like a poodle trying to bark in a thunderstorm.

I blinked. The chamber came back into focus. Men in black uniforms, puffed chests and hollow eyes. My ministers. My "senators." My pets. My tools. Slaves to my machine—flesh-and-blood components of a state apparatus forged in ambition and lubricated with fear. Good. Time to wind the clock.

I rose slowly, theatrically, the way a god might when deciding the fate of mortals—or a washed-up actor doing a stage version of Gladiator in Peoria.

"Comrades," I began, my voice echoing through the marble like doom on a delay pedal. "Welcome to the new empire."

Their faces twitched, tight with anticipation. Fear? Admiration? Constipation? Hard to tell. I continued.

"I'd like to start by thanking you all for your continued loyalty—your obedience, your silence, your willingness to look the other way when certain… liberties were taken. And of course, I must apologize for some of the more unilateral actions taken back on Empire Day."

They shuffled. A few exchanged glances. Rats sniffing each other in the dark.

"Primarily," I said with a hint of smugness, "the announcement of national elections. And, of course, the trial of Adolf Hitler."

A few twitched at that name. Not out of sympathy. Out of fear. His body was still warm beneath the pallazo Venezia, broken and twitching , sobbing out Mein Kampf 2: Electric Boogaloo to an audience of Jewish interrogators.

I raised a hand before they could so much as mutter.

"Let me assure you all," I said, my tone switching to benevolent tyrant, "I value your input. You, my comrades, my iron-hearted technocrats, have helped me steer this glorious vessel through a storm of war, betrayal, and cultural decay. You've helped me raise what was once Italy—ragged, cowardly, pasta-fueled Italy—into Rome. Glorious, imperial, eternally-ascending Rome."

My hand hovered dramatically in the air. Theatrics. Always theatrics.

"I pledge to continue taking your opinions into account. I will listen to your complaints. I will weigh your counsel. I will simulate democracy."

That got a chuckle from someone—maybe Graziani, the idiot.

"But don't let the return of the eagle lull you. This is not the end. Rome's rebirth is not the final act. No. We are nowhere near the credits. We are in the second act, gentlemen. The build-up. The montage sequence before the climax."

I shook my head slowly. Then smiled. Then cackled—quietly at first, then louder. The kind of laugh that echoes in tombs and interrogation chambers.

"The last twenty years? That was foreplay. Political fingering. Gentlemen—Rome is lubed, armed, and screaming for fucking."

Some of them winced. Others smirked. My performance was vulgar, yes, but effective.

Nice words. Pretty words. I meant them, partially. As long as I kept winning, they'd follow me into Hell and call it a garden. Puppets. Puppets with titles. Puppets with opinions that ultimately meant nothing. I was the puppeteer. I was the script. They danced to my melody because they were afraid of the silence.

But oh God… I missed 2023.

I missed DoorDash. I missed binge-watching Succession on my OLED while drunk on boxed wine, screaming at Kendall like he owed me reparations. I missed hot showers and hotter takes. I missed Twitter—sorry, X—and watching blue-check fascists fumble their way into cancelation. I missed memes. Real memes. Not wartime propaganda posters with Latin slogans and a poorly drawn lion humping a globe.

I missed texting dumb memes to my Sofie. To my brothers.

I missed antidepressants that worked. I missed Alexa playing Take On Me while I danced in my underwear, pretending the future wasn't going to find me.

I missed Uber Eats, not bribing Bedouins to wage war crimes under cover of night. I missed TikTok. I missed WiFi.

But here I was, in a fascist marble palace, commanding an empire and suppressing a hundred million souls—and all I wanted was to eat Popeyes while doomscrolling Reddit and pretending I wasn't entirely responsible for the deaths of several million people.

God help me, I would trade it all for one Crunchwrap Supreme and a night with Sofie.

Instead, I had this: a room full of grifters, generals, gas merchants, and ghouls. And me. Their god-emperor from the future. Their prophet of apocalyptic nostalgia.

Time to give them a show.

"Democracy, as you all know," I began, voice smooth as poison and twice as addictive, "has been systematically dismembered and dismantled during my tenure in power."

A few ministers stiffened. One crossed himself. Another coughed like a man choking on the ghost of constitutionalism.

"You may ask—Your Majesty, why? Why undo the undoing of democracy? Why sink the ship when we could've just tightened the sails?"

I smiled thinly. "Simple. I mean to create a system that will last. A self-sustaining, elegantly cruel, psychologically airtight machine. A perfect dictatorship."

I let the words hang in the air like a murder confession delivered with pride.

"And what is the perfect dictatorship," I continued, tapping my fingers against the polished oak table, "if not one that does not look like a dictatorship?"

Tap. Tap. Tap. The room was silent, save for the rhythm of my fingers echoing like a slow drumbeat for a coming purge. Time to use my political science skills.

"Look at Mexico," I said, gesturing toward a large wall map where Europe glowed red like a rash and North America was just beginning to itch. "The Party of the Mexican Revolution has built and maintained a political monopoly since the Cristeros were gunned down in pews. And yet, to the world? They look democratic. Elections. Parties. The illusion of choice."

I chuckled.

"But illusions, comrades, are not deceptions. Illusions are kindness. They are anesthesia before the surgery. Bread before the crucifixion."

I stood. That got their attention. I rarely stood unless I was about to declare war, execute someone, or pitch a Netflix special.

"We shall perfect it. Our Empire will host elections. But not fully real ones—performative elections. Kabuki theater with ballots. We will have opposition parties—harmless ones. Controlled, neutered, hand-fed like lapdogs. They'll bark, yes. But only on command. And the people will believe."

I turned to face them all now—Ciano, Graziani, Bottai, even poor old Farinacci with his confused pug face.

"I dream of a world where a man casts a vote and thanks us for deciding the outcome beforehand. Where satire is allowed—so long as it's state-approved. Where dissidents vanish without anyone asking why then their families receive a notice saying they died after a long illness. Where bureaucrats handle rebellion with forms in triplicate and psychological evaluations, not bullets."

And then, unbidden, the ache returned. The phantom pain of a world lost.

I missed 2023.

I missed pretending to care about climate change while ordering plastic-wrapped sushi on Uber Eats. I missed arguing on Reddit at 3 a.m. about whether Scorsese or Nolan was the better director. I missed watching Joe Rogan interviews on YouTube and spiraling into a three-hour ADHD doom-vortex about ancient aliens and intermittent fasting.

I missed Bluetooth. I missed antidepressants that didn't require crushing up Nazi pills in the palace lab. I missed air conditioning.

I missed privacy.

But what I missed most.

What hurt most asides from not having my Sofie and my friends and family.

Was Wendy's 4 for $4.

I would've traded all these miserable councilors for one more spicy nugget.

I realized they were staring. I'd been silent too long. Possibly too long. My eye twitched.

Farinacci cleared his throat.

"With all respect, Duce, some among us fear that this... simulated democracy may confuse the public. If we lie to them constantly, will they not eventually realize?"

Graziani chimed in next, his voice sharp with military boredom. "And what of dissent? If we're to let them bark, as you say, when do we silence the ones that bite?"

Ciano finally rose. Elegant. Calculated. Fake as a crypto launch. "Your Majesty, if we present this regime as democratic, won't that weaken the myth of Roman revival? Rome, true Rome, was ruled by emperors—not stage managers."

Oh, I laughed. Loud and long. I laughed like Caligula at a morality lecture.

"Let me ask you all something," I said, venom behind every syllable. "Have you ever used a smartphone?"

Silence.

"Of course not. You can't. But it doesn't matter."

I stalked around the table now, gesturing like a deranged TED talk speaker.

"You fear that lies will backfire? Gentlemen, the people want to be lied to. They beg for it. Truth is pain. Truth is work. A lie is easier. Kinder. Sweeter. Like sugar in poisoned wine."

I stopped behind Ciano.

"And you," I hissed. "You think emperors must be honest tyrants? No. The emperors who lasted weren't the conquerors—they were the manipulators. Augustus. Tiberius. Constantine. They ruled not by sword, but by suggestion. They gave Rome bread, circuses, and a story. I will give the people not only bread and circuses—but the best damn story they've ever heard."

I stood tall. My voice dropped.

"I will give them the fantasy of freedom. And they will love me for it."

The council was silent. Not out of fear—no, worse. They were convinced. But I was only getting started.

"We will have parties, as I have said—Communists, Anarchists, Republicans, Social Democrats, Monarchists, Humanists, Vegans, Flat-Earthers—whatever label the masses want to wrap themselves in like cheap theater costumes."

I leaned forward, grin like a butcher's knife, eyes dancing with malice.

"But it will all be rigged, of course. Not by stealing ballots like some crude banana republic. No—too obvious, too desperate. Not through jackboots in polling stations. We are not amateurs. No, my friends… it will be done with institutions."

The room stilled.

"Our new Senate will be a marvel of engineering—designed not to represent, but to repel. It will have such prohibitively high barriers to entry that only the rich, the well-connected, the nepotistic algae of our society, will have any realistic hope of even standing for election. And those, naturally, are the kinds of people who will stand with us."

I smiled, slow and cruel.

"To even run for the Senate, a candidate must front 25,000 lire as a deposit. A fortune! In our beloved nation, that represents over three years of the median worker's wages. And that figure must be posted per candidate, not per party. Not per seat. No group discounts, no proletarian coupons."

A few councilors shifted uncomfortably. I could see Ciano scribbling something. Possibly a suicide note.

"But we're not done, are we?" I chuckled. "We'll also be pioneers of progress. Our party will lead every noble moral crusade of the modern age—gender equality, environmentalism, minority representation, ethical meat consumption—whatever flag is in vogue. Take feminism, for example. Today we will pass a law: every constituency in the senate must nominate one male and one female candidate per party in the name of gender parity. Two candidates. One seat. Fifty thousand lire per district just to show up."

I let that sink in, like poison administered through a silver spoon.

"And remember—our glorious Roman Senate will not be a humble institution. No, gentlemen. No quaint assembly of 200 doddering fools. One thousand seats. The largest parliament in the world. A monument to legislative redundancy and architectural overcompensation. For any party to even contest a national election, they will have to scale a financial Everest that most will die trying to climb."

A hand went up. I ignored it.

"Now, while the riffraff scrape their pockets for pennies, our friends—Breda, Fiat, Prada—will be bathing in coin and hurling it at our feet like offerings to a pagan god. They will finance us out of gratitude, fear, and necessity. In exchange, we will pass laws that subtly, elegantly, and irreversibly tilt the game board in their favor."

"And to soothe the workers?" I continued, waving my hand theatrically. "We'll absorb all our little fascist unions into a single, manageable mass—The Roman Labor Front. Think of it as a kinder, sleeker version of Adolf's German Labour Front, but with better branding and slightly fewer executions. They'll 'donate' too—just enough to keep the illusion of power alive in the proletariat's trembling hands."

"Speaking of donations…" I paused, voice dipping to a conspiratorial murmur.

"There will be no more corruption. No more messy envelopes under tables. No cigar smoke and sweaty handshakes in backrooms. No—we're going to modernize corruption. We will sanitize it. No longer a crime—it will be a civic duty."

"Campaign finance laws?" I snorted. "A thing of the past. You are all senators now—or will be—and will be running for reelection. So let's make this simple: there will be no limits, no disclosures beyond the most perfunctory. If Breda wants a tax break? They'll donate ten million lire to your campaign. Want to pass a minimum wage hike for the workers? Have the Roman Labor Front throw you a few million too."

"You want to buy a villa in Tuscany? A yacht? A second wife? Do it. Just declare it in your spending report. If it's documented, it's legal. This isn't corruption anymore, gentlemen. It's lobbying. It's access. It's… gifts."

I sat back, beaming like Satan on a balcony.

"So. Any objections?" I purred. "Because I'm just getting started. I have many, many more plans. Plans to make this party—this nation—this dynasty—last a thousand years."

The silence broke like glass under a boot.

"This is madness!" roared General De Bono, slamming his hand on the table. "You're proposing legalized extortion!"

"This isn't governance," Bottai sneered. "It's oligarchy wrapped in tinsel."

Farinacci, ever the bulldog, barked out, "If the workers realize what we're doing, they'll hang us all in the piazza!"

Ciano stood next. "Even Augustus had limits. You are building a regime so cynical it will collapse under the weight of its own irony."

I let them rage. I let the room boil.

And then I spoke—quiet, cold, surgical.

"Oh, you poor, trembling relics. You still think politics is about belief. About ideology. About truth."

I rose again, pacing like a lion before a feast.

"Politics is about perception. Illusion. Narrative. People don't revolt when they're oppressed—they revolt when they realize they're oppressed. We will make sure they never realize."

I paused beside Ciano.

"You speak of Augustus? He declared a republic while holding absolute power. He understood optics. We will do the same, but better. We'll give the masses ballots, banners, parades, protests even—yes, let them march. Let them scream. We'll sell T-shirts with their slogans. And all the while, every law, every institution, every door they try to open will be locked."

I stepped back to the center.

"You think I'm cynical? No. I'm realistic. The people do not want truth. They want entertainment. They want meaning without consequence, outrage without danger, rebellion without risk."

I looked them over, one by one.

"You can oppose me, if you like. You can walk out. You can resign. But the train is already in motion, and the tracks are soaked in oil. Anyone who tries to stop it now will only be crushed."

The room fell into a heavy, reluctant silence.

Then Farinacci sat down, muttering curses.

Ciano followed, sullen and pale.

One by one, they folded.

I smiled.

"Very good. Now then… let's discuss managing dissent."

I smiled and I began, a conductor planning his cynical play.

"We will not crush dissent with brute force and blackshirts like we did in the old days—at least, not immediately and certainly not in broad daylight. That was the old Fascism: unsubtle, loud, and gloriously stupid. No, the new Fascism shall whisper. It will smile. It will listen—at least on the surface. We will co-opt opposition, not crush it... at first. We will address the critiques, nod gravely at the right moments, and even adopt a few popular reforms—just enough to give the impression of progress. Just enough to make them believe they've won.

"This is not cowardice. This is not weakness. This is not liberalism." I paused for effect, making sure they all were listening, even the ones with frightened eyes and trembling pens. "This is strategy."

My voice dropped into a more serpentine cadence. "What we are building is not a democracy. It is a performance of democracy—a hideous pantomime so effective, so mesmerizing, that it will seduce even the cynics. A regime that no longer hides, because it no longer has to. A government that appears to evolve, appears to listen, appears to adapt—yet whose core remains immutable. I, and my bloodline, will reign. The Party shall endure. The system of control will flow beneath the cobblestones like an invisible river, dark and constant."

I allowed a wry grin to play across my lips. "Yes, we will permit criticism—so long as it's the kind we write ourselves. We will tolerate protests—so long as they're predictable, toothless, and containable. Our intellectuals will be given just enough rope to feel dignified, and if they start to hang themselves with it... well, we'll help them finish the job."

A few nervous chuckles rippled around the room.

"But let me make this perfectly clear," I said, the air in the room tightening with the weight of my tone, "true, uncompromising criticism—criticism that aims at the roots, at the family, at me—shall be dealt with as it always has: with silence, shadow, and steel. For all our sophistication, for all our theater of tolerance, our regime will remain a steel fist in a velvet glove. And the velvet will be scented and monogrammed and beautiful—but the fist will never forget how to break bone."

I turned my gaze toward Guidi. "The OVRA shall be reborn. Transfigured. Enlightened by the expertise of our conveniently available, thoroughly denazified friends—Canaris, Heydrich, and a few of those charming leftovers from the Abwehr."

There were audible gasps. I smirked.

"We will rename it the Agenzia di Intelligentsia Centrale—AIC. It will become more than a secret police. It will be an institution. A presence. A ghost that lives in the light. In Rome, in Florence, in Milan—there will be no journalist, no playwright, no professor who speaks without wondering who is listening, who is watching, and who is recording. The AIC will not knock at your door. It will already be inside your house."

"Disappearances shall be rare—but poetic. Intellectuals, activists, troublesome students—they will vanish at night, unacknowledged and unannounced. Their names will be scrubbed from birth records. Their academic credentials voided. Their bank accounts frozen. And their families will receive... a letter, someday. 'Accidental drowning.' 'Sudden illness.' 'Unfortunate fall from the fifth floor.' We will invent an entire lexicon of bureaucratic euphemism to launder the horror."

"And sometimes—just sometimes—we will return them. Altered. Bent. Soft-spoken. Eyes duller. Limps heavier. Voices quieter. So that when they say, 'Don't speak too loud,' it won't sound like a threat. It will sound like a plea."

I clasped my hands behind my back. "We are not Russia. We are not Germany. We are Italy—Rome reborn. We don't need to burn every book. We just need the author to hesitate before he writes the next one. That hesitation is worth a thousand bullets. Our knife stays beneath the tablecloth, gleaming just out of sight. That is enough."

I swept my eyes across the stunned council. "This paradox—of liberty on the surface, and terror beneath—is no contradiction. It is our philosophy. It is the recipe for eternal rule. By allowing controlled dissent, we will lull the masses into believing they are free. And by punishing the reckless, we will remind them that freedom is a privilege we allow—and can revoke."

"This is not merely repression. It is art. The art of misdirection. The art of power masquerading as benevolence. We will not be feared like tyrants—we will be trusted like parents. And when the public thanks us for their own chains, you will know we have succeeded."

I let the silence hang. One or two of them were visibly sweating. Bastianini looked ready to vomit. Finally, Marshal Graziani—brutal, dull, honest—cleared his throat.

"With all due respect, Duce... this is madness. It is cunning, yes, but it is unstable. We will not survive long under a regime that mixes ambiguity and terror. You speak of velvet and iron as though the people will not notice the iron when it pierces their flesh."

Another voice: "Duce, if we adopt this... performance of democracy, what distinguishes us from the liberal states we despise?"

And another: "You trust in manipulation and artifice more than loyalty and force. That is not Fascism—it is deception!"

I nodded slowly, feigning patience. "Ah, how noble. How familiar. The old fascists yearning for simpler times—blackshirts, crackdowns, fire and blood and slogans screamed by the illiterate. Yes, yes, how quaint. How romantic."

I leaned forward, eyes glinting. "But times have changed. We have changed. The world has changed. And only those who adapt survive."

"Loyalty?" I sneered. "Loyalty is a child's toy. People are loyal until they aren't. But fear? Doubt? Hope? Those are currencies. More valuable than oil, more potent than bullets."

"You ask what distinguishes us from the liberals? I'll tell you: they believe in their system. We don't. That's what makes us stronger. They play by rules. We write the script."

"And as for deception…" I let the grin return, sharp as a dagger. "You say it like it's a bad thing."

I folded my hands. "Anyone else wish to object?"

The room fell into uneasy silence. Only the sound of the clock ticking remained—and even that, for a moment, seemed afraid to continue.

"Good," I said with a smile—tight, tired, the kind of smile that once graced propaganda posters but now barely passed for sincerity. "Now let's discuss our rhetoric. Every regime needs a fairytale. A mythology. A carefully crafted bedtime story for the masses to suckle on as we tuck them into the soft sheets of total obedience."

"What will make us the perfect dictatorship is not merely our institutions, nor our carefully measured dance between tolerance and terror. No. It will be my rhetoric—weaponized compassion, surgical moralism, forged in the crucible of revolutionary language. A rhetoric so ideologically adaptable, so emotionally manipulative, that it not only justifies our existence but canonizes it."

I stepped forward, letting the shadows of the chamber hug me like old friends. "This is a rhetoric of anti-racism. Of equity. Of decolonial liberation and intersectional solidarity. The language of progress. The vocabulary of the just. The cadence of revolutionaries and student poets. This language—uttered in universities, dripping from radio broadcasts, whispered in modern aesthetics—this language will be more effective than any secret police, more enduring than any purged opposition, and far, far more entertaining."

The Council murmured. I didn't stop.

"Our regime will not defend itself with tanks. It will seduce with seminars. It will not merely crush opposition—it will absorb it, wear its skin, and smile for the cameras. We will co-opt our intelligentsia and reach across continents with open arms. From Paris to Dakar, New York to Delhi, from dusty Marxist book clubs to overpriced liberal arts campuses—we will make them fall in love with us."

"How?" I continued, pacing slowly. "Some with money—grants, fellowships, speaker tours in Rome, where they can eat gelato and praise anti-colonial struggle from five-star hotels. Others with prestige—academic posts, cultural ambassadorships, honorary doctorates. A few with raw power—cabinet seats, diplomatic titles, or places on international councils for justice, equity, and whatever word is fashionable that year. All of them propped up by the Roman state, all of them flattered until they forget who signs their checks."

There was a pause. Then a sharper grin broke across my face.

"And for the radicals—those who want more than rhetoric? Well. If the Nation of Islam, or some Black Power offshoot, or a separatist cult wants to bring the fight to Washington or London—why not? Let them. We provide training, discreet financial transfers, ideological support under the umbrella of Afro-Italian solidarity. Hell, give them flamethrowers and chemical agents if it makes them feel seen. Because they won't see us. Not really. They'll think we're the wind in their sails, never realizing we built the ocean."

Gasps. A choking cough. Guidi looked pale.

"But we will never demand sycophantic praise, unlike Stalin's marble masturbation of a cult or whatever rice-fed pantomime Mao is choreographing. No statues. No mandatory oaths. No daily readings of The Little Red Fist. Instead, we encourage critique. We welcome it. We perform openness so well that even our critics won't realize they've been disarmed."

I slammed my hand lightly on the table, voice now low and deliberate.

"If we outlaw criticism, it will return in secret. But if we allow it—curate it—make space for it in journals, panels, even televised debates… then we control it. We become the editors of dissent. Our enemies will believe they are still struggling, still winning battles. And while they believe that, we will have already won the war."

Silence. Heavy. Delicious.

"Our regime will not merely rule—it will be believed. We will wrap our iron fist in a silk glove labeled 'equity,' and we will ask the world to shake hands."

I looked around the room.

"Any objections?"

There was a beat, and then the storm broke.

Count Grandi was first. Always was. "Duce, with all respect—this… this is madness. You speak of letting radicals dictate terms? Of arming terrorists? What happens when they turn on us?"

"That's the plan," I said, deadpan. "They always turn. That's the punchline. But by then, they'll be exhausted, overexposed, discredited by their own extremism. We'll let them scream too loudly, too long. Then—snip—we cut the funding, leak a scandal, and watch them collapse. We won't destroy our enemies. We'll let them destroy themselves with our help."

Marshal de Bono frowned. "This rhetoric you propose—this language of equality and justice—do you not see how it undermines everything Fascism was built upon?"

"Ah," I smiled thinly, "you misunderstand. This isn't about changing Fascism. This is about camouflaging it. Beneath the rainbow banners and progressive slogans, the core remains untouched. The Party still rules. The hierarchy still stands. The apparatus of control hums quietly below, like a steel engine under a velvet hood. Nothing changes—except the optics."

"But it's deceit!" cried Bottai, pounding the table. "It's ideological betrayal! It's—"

"It's survival," I snapped. "You think I enjoy this? You think I like pretending we care about inclusive policy or cultural nuance? I don't. I'd rather be drunk in a speakeasy watching films that don't exist yet. But this is the world. This is the game. And unlike the old tyrants, I intend to win it."

They looked at me. Some disgusted. Some terrified. All silent.

"This is not betrayal. It is evolution. We're not abandoning our roots. We're watering them with irony and blood. We are not changing Fascism—we're making it invincible."

There was nothing more to say.

And so I smiled, wicked and weary, and poured myself a drink. A century ahead, a thousand years behind, and utterly, blissfully alone in the clarity of my vision.

Let them call it madness.

They always do—right up until the applause.

"Now, we're almost done—don't worry," I said, gesturing toward the clock that no one dared to actually glance at. "Let's discuss how we ensure that the Party remains strong—not just today, not just while I'm alive and screaming at microphones, but for the long march ahead. For after I'm gone. After I'm nothing but a rotting carcass embalmed in glass and lit by flickering neon in some hideous mausoleum."

I paused, savoring the uneasy shuffle that moved through the Grand Council like a bad smell.

"And yes," I added with a grin that could curdle milk. "I want to be embalmed like Lenin. I want children from a thousand lands to march past my glass tomb and whisper, 'He looks tired, but powerful.' Start planning my funeral, Ciano."

I looked at him. He gasped slightly.

"Get me a golden coffin. One with hydraulics. I want it to open on cue. I want my eyes to be painted with that faint glint of menace. I want lighting. Choirs. Dry ice if you have to. Make the people weep when they see me. Make them scream when they dream of me."

I cleared my throat with theatrical pomp, the way a tyrant might before dictating scripture.

"Now then," I continued. "As I said—the Party must outlive us. I refuse—refuse—to let it rot into the same parody of itself that will soon consume the Soviets, or whatever those beige men in America are building. No decay. No stagnation. No brittle sclerosis of ideology. Not on my watch."

I raised a finger like a mad professor about to unveil a dangerous formula.

"We will institutionalize pluralism—within the Fascist Party. Yes, you heard me. Party democracy will not merely be tolerated—it will be encouraged, within tightly controlled ideological boundaries, of course. We will craft a space where internal debate becomes ritualized, theatrical, glorious. There will be factional primaries. Organized internal elections. Debates—spirited, savage, yet utterly contained. All conducted indoors, naturally. We don't want the mob getting any ideas."

I began to pace, each footstep echoing like a metronome of doom.

"We shall allow currents of thought to flourish—so long as they remain tethered to the sacred trinity: God, Country, and Markets. Let there be Left-Fascists advocating syndicalism and a 3 hour work day. Let there be Traditionalist-Fascists shouting about Latin virtue and moral decay. Let there be Centrist-Fascists—drab, boring men in gray suits—pushing bureaucratic efficiency and pragmatic policy. Hell, let there be Far-Right Fascists so unhinged, so blood-and-soil high-definition mad, they'd make Hitler proud. Let them all compete in the gladiatorial ring of ideas—because the spectacle will feed us. The internal pressure will strengthen us."

I stopped pacing. Let the silence settle.

"This competition—this friction—will be the secret to our eternal youth. No stagnation. No ossified priesthood guarding sacred texts. We will remain dynamic. Evolving. Alive."

And then I turned.

"As for the opposition…" I shrugged like Caesar after crossing the Rubicon.

"Let them exist. Let them thrive, if they must. The Communists, the Christian Democrats, the anarcho-hippies with bad hygiene and worse manifestos. Let them win seats. Mayoral offices. Cabinet portfolios. Let them govern—poorly. Let them propose anti-Fascist legislation in the Senate. Let a Communist governor rise in Sicily and legalize three-day weekends and mandatory abortions for statues. Let a Social Democrat stand in Parliament and call me a parasite, a warmonger, a relic. Let him spit fire about budgets, foreign invasions, broken promises."

I leaned forward, whispering the next line like it was a prayer:

"Let them."

The room was frozen.

"Because by letting them, we control them. Their existence becomes our propaganda. Their voices—our soundtrack of tolerance. Their presence proves we are enlightened. They become the living proof of our strength, our legitimacy, our totalitarian democracy wrapped in tricolor ribbons."

I laughed. "Any objections? No? Wonderful. We'll spend the rest of the day drafting laws to make this grotesque miracle real. Speak now or forever hold your peace," I added with a chuckle. "Or don't. You're allowed to criticize. Don't worry."

There was a pause.

Then Count Grandi rose.

"Duce," he said, his voice shaking just enough to irritate me. "Surely you see how dangerous this is. You're talking about institutionalizing dissent, empowering radicals, inviting chaos into the bloodstream of the state."

I smiled. "Yes."

"That's insanity."

"No, Grandi. That's vaccination. Controlled exposure to prevent the smallpox of stagnation."

Marshal de Bono stood. "But if we allow opposition parties into power, even symbolically, they might enact reforms that undo everything we've built. What if a Communist cabinet member proposes a ban religious education? What if a liberal Senator proposes decriminalizing sodomy in the name of tolerance?"

I rolled my eyes. "Then we tolerate it. For a time. Because if you strike down your enemies too quickly, you make them martyrs. But if you let them govern, let them fail, then the people will beg us to return. Give them rope. Let them hang themselves with it. History is a wheel. We just need to control when it turns."

Bottai, ever the purist, was next. "You would allow Left-Fascists to question you publicly? To propose alternatives to your policies? This invites ideological fracture!"

"No, Bottai. It invites ideological fertility. Ideas must breed and mutate or they die. We will not be Rome under Diocletian. We will be Rome under Augustus—new, thriving, radiant in the glow of order masquerading as liberty."

"But that's not Fascism!" Bottai barked.

I turned to him, eyes like razors.

"No, that's our Fascism. Our new Fascism. Flexible. Adaptable. Invulnerable because it wears the skin of its enemies. We will not shatter on history's rocks—we will melt into them and reform on the other side."

They were silent again.

I stepped back, lit a cigarette, and exhaled slowly.

"I know you're frightened. I would be too, if I weren't me. But fear is the mark of visionaries. The cowards feel nothing. The fools feel pride. We feel dread because we see what's coming. And I see it clearly. I see a Party that outlives us. That becomes myth, machine, and movement."

Another drag. Another breath.

"You wanted a new Rome?"

I spread my arms.

"Well, here it is. Now pick up a chisel and build it."

And not one of them dared to speak. "Now then, someone get an intern in here and start drafting a decree. It's time to give women the right to vote and run for office."
 
Segregate this!!!! New
November 2, 1942
Palazzo Venezia
Rome, Roman Empire (God help us all)


It was nearly nightfall. The golden slivers of dying sunlight spilled across the floor like bloodstains from a god that had long since abdicated. I hadn't eaten since dawn—an act so out of character it nearly bordered on heresy. Normally I dined in precise ritual: A succulent Italian meal mixed with melancholy and a wish for home and my Sofie. Today? Nothing. Just the dry, caffeinated breath of revolution—bureaucratic, monstrous, hungry.

We had spent the entire day inside the great marble tomb of Palazzo Venezia, crafting laws with the cold precision of a mortician preparing a corpse for an open casket. Each decree more elaborate, more grotesque, than the last. My masterpiece was almost complete—a false democracy lacquered in the gold leaf of high ideals, hiding the machinery of iron behind its eyes.

I ate with the ministers—if you could call that 'eating.' We chewed over roast veal and statecraft, washing both down with red wine and venom. I proposed campaign finance laws so blatantly corrupt they would make a Chicago alderman break into song and Singaporeans faint from modesty.

Now it was done. A parliament swollen like a cancerous organ. Slander laws so sweeping, so draconian, that you could be jailed for thinking the wrong adjective. Campaign periods reduced to week-long marketing orgies, so expensive only the oligarchs could play. We legalized bribery by calling it "advertising," and repression by calling it "fairness."

This wasn't a democracy. This was a rigged game of blackjack run by a one-eyed dealer with a knife up his sleeve. And I? I was the house. The house always wins.

The real war? The hot one? It was still going, of course. The Pacific was a boiling cauldron. Russia, America and Japan were clawing at each other like two rabid wolves in a bamboo cage, slashing themselves white over jungles they couldn't pronounce. I sold them the rope and the bullets. I smiled as I did it. Every ton of raw material shipped east was a kiss blown into the inferno and a few million into my treasury used to pay off the debt Il Duce built up before I took over and began to clean up his mess. I even sent men—just a few thousand—packed tight on Russian trains, like sardines armed with bayonets. Cheap, symbolic. All gain, no pain.

Britain, poor decrepit Britain, was scrambling to protect the edges of its dying empire. Their diplomats now looked like librarians in a house fire—clutching maps while the world burned. Meanwhile, I prepared my next move. The Middle East was fracturing, just as planned. That delightful little war Imam Yahya started in Saudi Arabia? A gift. The kindling was already soaked in oil.

But this wasn't just about conquest. This wasn't just about profit. No. This was personal now.

I needed to provoke America. Not just annoy them—no, that was too gentle, too toothless. I needed to embarrass them. To force them to look into the mirror and scream at what they saw. Hypocrisy, inequality, the democracy of delusion. I wanted to hold up a smoking, bloodied portrait of themselves and whisper, "This is you."

The next phase? The former confederacy. I would open the gates and let in the tide. New citizens of Italy, draped in tricolor, with freshly printed papers and empty stomachs. A tidal wave of the wretched, the hated, the lynched, weaponized by the pen and the passport. Not from charity—God no—but from strategy. A demographic dagger aimed at the heart of Western liberal hypocrisy.

And I would smile. A wide, unholy grin. Because beneath all the noise, all the flags and marches and speeches, I was still just one thing:

A man from the future, trapped in the past, playing god in a wax museum.

And now the wax was melting.

The Cold War had begun. And I was already winning.

"Ciano," I began, as the last of the decrees slid beneath my pen with a satisfying finality—a declaration signed in ink but soaked in ambition. The room was heavy with the scent of stale tobacco, power, and fear.

My voice, like thunder crawling over the Apennines, broke the silence.
"We've laid the foundation. The stage is set. The theater is lit. Now we must begin the next act—our rhetoric, our myth, our gospel. The story we will tell the world, and more importantly, the one we will force it to believe."

I leaned forward and tapped the oak table, the sound sharp and deliberate, like a firing pin snapping into place. "I've spoken, at great length, about racial justice. A civil rights act. Citizenship for Arabs, Africans, Slavs. But that's not enough. No, no. Not nearly enough."

I saw it then—that look. The twitch of Ciano's eyelid. The tightening of a minister's jaw. That "Oh God, what mad scheme has he conjured now?" look. I lived for it. It nourished me. Better than food. Better than morphine. Better than anything they could print on propaganda posters.

I smiled—slowly, predatorily.

"We will address the press with a statement. Not just a press release—no, a blast. A declaration so loud, so sharp, it will carve a scar across the Atlantic."

I stood up, hands behind my back, pacing with operatic purpose. "Rome will open consulates across the American South. Not in New York. Not in Los Angeles. No." I turned and slammed my palm on the table. "In the heart of the rot. Jackson. Birmingham. Biloxi. Baton Rouge. Montgomery. Raleigh. Places where the lynching tree still bears strange fruit."

Gasps. Whispers. Ciano cleared his throat. "Duce... surely—"

"Surely nothing," I snarled. "We will hand out Roman citizenship to Black Americans—yes, Black Americans. Free passage. Papers. Protection. A new life in the empire. We'll settle them in Tunisia, in Libya. We will replace the restless Arab populations—too bitter, too Islamic—with a Christian demographic. Yes, not our kind of Christian, but grateful ones. Loyal ones. They will love us for saving them. And in return? They will make us immortal."

"Duce, that would provoke—" began a minister, before I raised a hand and silenced him like a guillotine.

"Provoke? Provoke? That's the point! It will drive the Americans insane. Foaming, frothing, red-faced madness! Imagine it—Black Americans fleeing Dixie for a fascist Rome that gives them citizenship and land! And white Americans? They'll riot. They'll burn their own cities trying to stop it."

I leaned forward again, my voice low, like a confessor in a confessional made of fire and iron.

"Outside those consulates, the Roman flag will fly—gold on red, eagle over fasces—beside the battered American ones. There will be bronze plaques affixed to courthouses where white juries acquitted white murderers. Churches that turned away Black parishioners will have fascist chapels beside them, blessed by priests from the Vatican. And America will see it. And hate it. And in that hatred, they will destroy themselves."

Ciano paled. "This... this will cause riots. Chaos. What you propose is madness."

I turned to him, slowly, like a lion deciding whether or not to pounce.

"Oh, Ciano. That's not madness. This—" I spread my arms wide—"this is art."

"I'll send Blackshirts to protect our consulates. Not many—just enough to die heroically. Priests, too. Jesuits with spine. Men who know how to bless a corpse while under gunfire. And we'll use the mafia, too. OVRA—soon to be the AIC—will broker a deal. Give the mob full pardons, citizenship, and party membership. Let the old dons send their muscle south in trucks marked with eagles and crucifixes. Can you imagine it? Blackshirts. Black Americans. Catholic priests. Mafiosi. All side by side, defending justice under the Roman flag. What a painting that would make."

The room was spinning. Some ministers were visibly sweating. One was whispering a prayer. Another was writing something under the table—perhaps a resignation letter. Cowards. All of them.

"And do you know the best part?" I said, my voice now soft, reverent. "We won't even need false flags. No sabotage. No agents provocateurs. We just need to show up. Their hatred will do the rest. They'll do it for us. They'll spill the blood. They'll burn the churches. They'll kill the innocent. And the world will watch it all."

I paused.

"And when they do, Africa will rise. The colonized will cheer. The oppressed will sing. Rome—fascist Rome—will be the champion of justice. Our martyrs will be so numerous we'll stack them like sandbags. And we'll be saints. Saints of the gun and our flag. SPQR."

I sat back down, slowly, deliberately. Lit a cigarette. Exhaled the smoke like incense.

"Now go, Ciano. Draft the declaration. Make it poetic. Make it unbearable."

And in the silence that followed, all that could be heard was the faint tapping of my fingers on the table—like a metronome counting down to the end of the American century.

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An excerpt from Maya Angelou's 1987 book: We just wanted to be free

October 31, 1942.

It is a date taught even in American classrooms, less than 40 years afterwards it's impact echoes through the corridors of history with a resonance that no student of justice can ignore. As an author chronicling the long and painful road of the civil rights struggle in the United States, I cannot overlook what that day meant—not just for Rome, but for oppressed peoples across the world, including here on American soil.

That was the day Benito Mussolini, the dictator long caricatured as Hitler's shadow, stepped before the world and declared the restoration of the Roman Empire.

At first, it seemed like the bluster of yet another tyrant, draped in grandiosity and nostalgia. But what followed stunned even the most hardened skeptics.

Mussolini did not speak of conquest alone. That same breath that summoned the ancient glory of empire also uttered words that no colonial subject, no man or woman suffering under Jim Crow, expected to hear: the new Rome would champion civil rights. It would support the emancipation of colonized peoples. It would stand, Mussolini claimed, against racial oppression.

For those of us watching from afar—African Americans who could not vote in Mississippi, who were barred from schools in Georgia, who were lynched with impunity in Alabama—the words rang like a siren in the night. Confusing, yes. Bewildering, certainly. But also intoxicating, because for once, the language of dignity and justice was not coming from the so-called democratic West, but from a place no one expected.

Then came the announcement that Hitler had survived—and that Mussolini intended to try him, not protect him. That was when the world truly gasped. The man who had once marched beside Hitler now turned against him, pledging to bring justice to those responsible for crimes against humanity. The winds of history shifted. The fascist monolith cracked. And through that fissure, light poured into places long left in darkness.

That same night, the world was introduced to the African Liberation Army. Not a conquering force, but a legion born of conscience—dedicated to the freedom of those still held in colonial chains. For those of us watching in the Black newspapers, on radio broadcasts, or by whispered word-of-mouth in segregated diners and barbershops, it felt as if the tides of empire were turning—not only in Africa, but perhaps, one day, here in America too.

It would be naive to accept Mussolini's proclamations without suspicion. Many did not. His record was stained, his hands far from clean. And yet, on that Halloween night in 1942, as he stood under the ancient arches of Rome, filmed by Leni Riefenstahl, the very architect of Hitler's cinematic myth, and proclaimed Renascita—the rebirth—something undeniable happened. He became more than a man. He became a force, terrifying and magnificent, for good or for evil.

We in the American South, still living under the tyranny of racial apartheid, felt the tremors. Not because we believed in him, but because for the first time in living memory, a great power had tied its future not to domination, but—at least in word—to liberation. And words, as every freedom fighter knows, can change the world.

Mussolini's Rome would go on to inspire revolutionaries and reactionaries alike. But on that day, in the hearts of many fighting for dignity and justice—from Harlem to Montgomery to Accra and Delhi—there was a moment, a fleeting but unforgettable moment, when the world turned, and hope cracked open the sky.

Its effects were immediate.

Prominent voices within the American civil rights movement spoke out—some with hope, others with stern caution. W.E.B. Du Bois, ever the intellectual sentinel of Black America, warned against being lured by the siren song of fascism, reminding the world that freedom offered by a strongman could just as easily become a new form of bondage. Arthur Barnette Spingarn, president of the NAACP, issued a carefully worded statement—thanking Mussolini for his unexpected advocacy of civil rights, yet condemning in no uncertain terms his authoritarianism. "We will not trade one master for another," Spingarn wrote, "but we will remember who spoke when others stayed silent."

But their words, however principled, came too late to stop the tidal wave already breaking.

Within days of Mussolini's proclamation, Galeazzo Ciano, Italy's suave and calculating foreign minister, addressed the press with a declaration that caught the entire U.S. State Department off-guard: Italy would be opening consulates across the American South—not in New York or Chicago or San Francisco, but in the heart of Jim Crow's empire. Cities steeped in segregation and violence. Cities where a Black man could be lynched for looking at a white woman, where entire Black communities lived under a cloud of legal apartheid.

Jackson. New Orleans. Biloxi. Birmingham. Montgomery. Baton Rouge. Jacksonville. Miami. Raleigh.

The Italian flag flew in places where the Stars and Stripes had long flown over injustice. Bronze plaques bearing the fasces and eagle were affixed to buildings beside churches that turned away Black parishioners, and courthouses where white juries acquitted white murderers. The symbolism was unmistakable: Rome had arrived where Washington would not tread.

And Black Americans noticed.

In the darkness of segregation, Italy's bold intrusion felt like a torchlight cutting through thick fog. Tens of thousands of African Americans, weary of hollow promises and deadly silence, began to line up outside these new consulates. They came in their Sunday best—barbers and bakers, teachers and Pullman porters, widows and war veterans—each one carrying the hope that somewhere, a nation might see them as human beings.

They weren't applying for travel visas.

They were applying for Italian citizenship.

And to the astonishment of all—they received it.

With the stroke of a pen, and after brief interviews about background, profession, and political commitment, African Americans who had been denied the right to vote in their own country were handed documents declaring them citizens of a foreign empire—an empire that, for all its contradictions, now promised equal protection under its laws.

Jim Crow's enforcers, from the sheriffs to the governors, were caught flat-footed. Segregationists screamed about foreign interference. Newspapers howled about "Black Rome." But the damage had been done.

This was a direct challenge to the apartheid system of the American South. A dagger pointed at the heart of a white supremacist order that had ruled since Reconstruction was betrayed. For decades, Black Americans had been told to wait, to trust the process, to work within the system. But what system? The one that kept them in separate schools, shunted them into poverty, and left their bodies swinging from trees while Washington looked the other way?

Rome offered no pretense of moral purity—but it offered a passport.

In one of the bitterest ironies of that era, it was not the "land of the free" that first offered Black Americans a chance at full citizenship. It was a fascist state across the ocean, long derided for its theatrics and bombast, now wielding justice as a geopolitical weapon.

And the South could only watch in fury as African Americans walked with heads held high, with new papers in their hands and Italian consulates defending their rights under international law. If Jim Crow struck them, it would now be considered an affront to Rome.

Churches organized quiet caravans. Train stations saw hushed departures. Some families left entirely, heading to Italian Africa or even Rome itself. Others stayed, emboldened by the shield of a new citizenship. In either case, the calculus of oppression had changed.

Jim Crow had always survived on silence—on the quiet acquiescence of those in power and the stifled screams of those beneath the boot. But now, in towns where Black families had been taught to cross the street when a white man approached, the rules were cracking. Not because of Washington or the Constitution, but because a foreign flag now stood in defiance of America's shame.

The reaction was immediate—and vicious.

Across the Deep South, the white establishment responded with a fury both predictable and terrifying. White citizens jeered at African Americans in the streets, their hatred sharpened by fear and humiliation. Where once they had felt secure in their dominion, they now saw what they believed to be their "natural order" under threat—not by a domestic uprising alone, but by a foreign power.

At best, their contempt took the form of slurs hurled like stones: "n**r," "coon," "traitor," "monkey." These weren't words—they were weapons, forged in centuries of hatred. Spat with venom, screamed from sidewalks, scratched onto the doors of churches, pinned to the walls of schools, printed in broadsheets and preached from pulpits.

At worst—as in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and the Carolinas—the tension exploded into open violence. Street brawls erupted in cities like Montgomery, Macon, and Birmingham. White mobs, emboldened by sheriffs and judges who looked the other way, dragged African Americans from street corners and trolley cars, accusing them of "colluding with the enemy." Innocent men were beaten in front of their children. Women were spat upon, dragged by the hair, stripped of dignity. In at least two cases, Black men carrying Italian identification were lynched—their bodies left hanging as a warning to others who dared to seek dignity outside the white man's system.

All of it, Mussolini had predicted.

In what would become his final interview—given from his deathbed in 1983 and broadcast live—he said this:

"I did not send consuls to Georgia to plant a flag. I sent them to plant a mirror. To show the world what America truly is beneath her painted mask. To shame her into reckoning with her sickness. And I used their hatred of the Black man—irrational, ravenous, senseless—as a weapon. Because America is our eternal rival just as the Soviet are, because they don't deserve to have any shred of respect in Africa, because I believe no empire can call itself great while its people rot under chain simply for the color of their skins."

And to the eternal shame of the United States government—it worked.

No moment encapsulated this national disgrace more than the rise of Governor Eugene Talmadge of Georgia. A rabid segregationist, he seized the moment to elevate his profile with fiery rhetoric and unrestrained violence. In one of his many public tirades, he snarled into a radio microphone:

"That dago coon-lover thinks he can march into Georgia and tell us how to treat our n****rs? He'll see soon enough what we do to foreign meddlers and Black traitors."

He made good on his threats. Talmadge deployed state police and, in many cases, turned a blind eye as Ku Klux Klan members raided Italian consulates in Atlanta, Savannah, and Augusta. Windows were smashed. Fires were lit. Clerks were beaten and threatened at gunpoint. Rome's emissaries—many of them Black Italians from Eritrea or Libya—were dragged into the streets by men wearing bedsheets and hoods, yelling that the South would not bow to foreigners or to "uppity negroes."

But Mussolini—flawed, authoritarian, yet unflinching—was ready.

In a move that scandalized the State Department and stunned the world, he authorized the deployment of Blackshirt security personnel—Italian paramilitary guards in sharp uniforms, some of whom had fought in the brutal campaigns across the Mediterranean. These men were stationed at the consulates, rifles slung across their backs, with orders to fire if necessary.

And that wasn't all.

Mussolini quietly enlisted the aid of the Sicilian Mafia, who had deep roots in American cities and long-standing ties to Italian power. Where the Blackshirts brought discipline, the Mafia brought menace. In the shadows of the Deep South, whispers began to spread among white supremacist circles: Klansmen who had beaten Italian officials were disappearing. Crosses meant for burning were found doused in gasoline—never lit. Cars exploded on back roads. A new specter stalked the South—one just as ruthless as the old one, but now it had a foreign passport.

The Jim Crow regime found itself rattled. This was not a protest they could ignore, jail, or hang into silence. This was not a march they could break with clubs and dogs. This was international politics playing out in their front yards, and the world was watching.

And what did America do?

Washington remained silent.

The White House, embarrassed and unwilling to challenge

This would culminate in what history now remembers as the Battle of Savannah.

It began with trucks—rows of dark, rumbling vehicles filled with Sicilian and Italian mafiosi, many of whom had been granted Italian citizenship and carried with them not just weapons, but an oath: to defend the honor of Rome and the dignity of those whom America cast aside.

They wore the unmistakable uniform of the Blackshirts—black wool, brass buttons, polished boots. They descended upon the Italian consulate in Savannah not as conquerors, but as guardians. They surrounded the building like a fortress, weapons at the ready, watching every street corner and rooftop. But it was their actions—not their arms—that shocked the South the most.

They embraced the African Americans who had gathered there, not merely as allies, but as equals. Young Black women were kissed on the cheeks by men who only weeks earlier had never set foot on American soil. Children were lifted into the air, hugged, and called "figli di Roma." Some of the Blackshirts even knelt in the street before elderly Black war veterans and kissed their hands.

The reaction from Savannah's white population was swift and venomous.

Anger turned to fury. That morning, a group of white onlookers hurled bricks through the windows of the consulate. By noon, a white mob had gathered, chanting obscenities and waving Confederate flags. And when the priests arrived—Catholic priests in white robes and Roman collars, dispatched by the Vatican and Rome—they didn't flinch. They stood beside the Blackshirts, calling segregation not merely a sin, but a satanic ideology, "no different in substance or origin from the evils of Nazism and genocide."

They spoke in Latin and English. One sermon, later printed and circulated in secret, began with the words:

"Jim Crow is the Devil's law. He who defends it, serves Hell."

Many African Americans—disillusioned by the silence of their own churches, abandoned by pastors too fearful or complicit—walked away from their pews and flocked to the gates of the consulate, kneeling in the humid Savannah heat, begging to be baptized into the Roman Catholic faith. Water was drawn from canisters and poured over their heads as priests wept, whispering ancient prayers. Old women sang spirituals beneath the crucifix, while boys held rosaries for the first time in their lives.

The spectacle was too much for Governor Eugene Talmadge, whose pride and bigotry had already been inflamed. When he deployed the Georgia National Guard, it was not to maintain peace—it was to crush what he saw as a foreign-led Black insurrection. He declared martial law in Savannah, gave full authority to his men, and—unofficially—opened the door to white vigilantes, Klansmen, and segregationist militias.

June 10, 1943. The shooting started at noon.

What began as a standoff turned into a full-scale urban battle. National Guardsmen opened fire on unarmed Black civilians gathered outside the consulate. Blackshirts returned fire. Molotov cocktails were hurled. Italian snipers perched on rooftops shot at advancing Guard units, while Mafia lookouts used car horns and church bells to signal enemy movements. African Americans—many of them World War I veterans—fought alongside them, using whatever weapons they could find: stolen rifles, broken bricks, baseball bats, and in some cases, nothing but their fists.

For three days, Savannah became a war zone.

White mobs roamed the streets, torching Black-owned homes and businesses, lynching two men suspected of "collaboration" in a public square as the crowd cheered. Fires lit up the night sky, and the river ran red with blood. Priests were dragged from the gates of the consulate and beaten with their own crucifixes. One priest, Father Giulio Santini, was crucified on a telephone pole with nails driven through his palms.

By June 13, when the smoke cleared and the gunfire fell silent, Savannah was a graveyard.

Fifty Italians—Blackshirts, priests, and consular staff—lay dead in the streets or burned alive in buildings. One hundred African Americans—men, women, and children—had been slaughtered, gunned down or lynched or trampled in the chaos. One hundred white citizens, many of them rioters and vigilantes, had also died, including at least a dozen National Guardsmen caught in crossfire or shot accidentally by their own comrades.

The nation awoke to horror.

Photos smuggled out by journalists—despite attempts by state censors to suppress them—made their way to newspapers in New York, London, Paris, and Rome. Images of Black corpses in church clothes, riddled with bullets. Italian priests cradling blood-soaked infants. A Black woman kneeling over her husband's body, rosary in hand, face stained with tears and ash.

The international outcry was thunderous.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, under immense pressure from abroad and from his own cabinet, was forced to act. He issued an executive order federalizing the Georgia National Guard, stripping Talmadge of command, and ordering the shutdown of every Italian consulate in the South. Behind closed doors, he fumed at Mussolini for "interference"—but in public, he remained silent about the root cause.

Jim Crow was never mentioned.

But the truth was undeniable. It was Jim Crow that had pulled the trigger. It was Jim Crow that lit the fires. It was Jim Crow that drove priests to their deaths and children into mass graves.

The Battle of Savannah became a wound so deep the nation could not ignore it. For the first time, segregation was not merely a stain—it was a global embarrassment, a crime against humanity broadcast to the world. And for many African Americans, it marked a turning point: the moment they realized the federal government would not save them unless it was shamed into doing so.

The seeds of rebellion had been sown in blood.
 
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Interlude: What a grand old party New
An excerpt from Maya Angelou's 1977 book: We just wanted to be free

Meanwhile, across the Mason-Dixon Line, the Republican Party smelled opportunity amid the ashes of Savannah.

At the center of this political pivot stood Thomas E. Dewey, the reformist Governor of New York and rising star within the Republican establishment. A sharp, clean-cut prosecutor turned politician, Dewey had long been known for his stance against organized crime—but now, his attention shifted to a far greater and more insidious enemy: American apartheid.

The Democratic Party, under the banner of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had ruled the White House for an unprecedented three consecutive terms. Almost twelve years of uninterrupted dominance had rendered the Republicans increasingly irrelevant on the national stage. Most political strategists predicted another crushing defeat in 1944. Roosevelt's New Deal was wildly popular. The Allies were gaining ground in the Pacific and had fended off the soviets in Scandinavia after the Karelia crisis ended, and even Mussolini's dramatic repositioning on the world stage—though alarming—had not yet swayed many American voters.

But Savannah changed everything.

The Battle of Savannah was not just a tragedy—it was a revelation. It exposed to the world that racism in the United States was not a regional quirk, nor a relic of the past—it was a living, breathing system of domestic terrorism, protected by governors and state officials, upheld by police, and tolerated by Washington.

Dewey saw what Roosevelt would not say aloud: this was a moral crisis. And it was a political one.

On June 14, 1943, just a day after the smoke finally cleared in Savannah, Dewey took the stage in Albany and delivered what would become one of the most consequential speeches of the decade.

He did not mince words.

"The Ku Klux Klan and segregation are not relics—it is a domestic enemy, a shameful legacy of our nation's failure to fulfill the promises of Reconstruction. Savannah has shown us the truth: Jim Crow is not law, it is terror in a white hood. And it is time we call it what it is—un-American."

The speech landed like a thunderclap across the political landscape. For the first time in modern memory, a major-party figure had publicly and vociferously called out white supremacy by name. Dewey condemned not only the Klan, but also the institutional rot of segregation, calling it "a fascism of the soul, no less dangerous than the jackboots of Italy or the torture chambers of Tokyo."

He pledged that, under his leadership, the Republican Party would become a bulwark for civil rights, and he warned the nation of a terrible irony: that in fighting fascism abroad, America risked nurturing it at home.

"If the United States cannot guarantee liberty for its own citizens, how dare we preach democracy to the world?" Dewey asked. "We are on the brink of losing the new war, just as the old one ended—not to bombs or tanks, but to the poison of hatred, fear, and racism."

True to his word, Dewey wasted no time. He convened an emergency session of the New York State Legislature, where, under his guidance and relentless pressure, the Ives-Quinn Act was drafted and passed in August 1943. It became the first state-level law in the United States to ban employment discrimination based on race, color, creed, or national origin—a legislative sledgehammer aimed directly at the Jim Crow ideology.

To enforce the law, Dewey created the New York State Commission Against Discrimination (SCAD)—an unprecedented move that gave real teeth to civil rights protections at the state level. For the first time, Black workers in New York could bring their grievances to a state agency and expect justice.

But Dewey's ambitions were bigger than New York.

On August 15, 1943, standing before a crowd of thousands in Manhattan, Dewey formally announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States. Civil rights were not a footnote in his platform—they were the foundation.

"America stands at a crossroads," he declared. "Across the Atlantic, Mussolini courts the world's oppressed with honeyed words and open arms, not for liberty, but for power. He seeks to shame us—and he has succeeded. Savannah was not a foreign plot—it was our shame laid bare. If we want to secure our place in the world, we must first secure it at home. That means civil rights for every American. Not later. Now."

The crowd erupted in cheers, but in the South, the backlash was immediate.

Southern Democrats denounced Dewey as a "race traitor," "New York radical," and "fascist sympathizer"—ironic, given how closely many of them mirrored fascist ideology themselves. Jim Crow defenders went on the offensive, warning that civil rights would bring "Black domination," "white genocide," and "moral collapse." Pamphlets were distributed in Mississippi calling Dewey a "Negro puppet of northern banking interests." Radio shows in Alabama accused him of plotting to "hand America to the Papists and coloreds."

But Dewey didn't flinch.

He doubled down, touring Black neighborhoods in Harlem and Chicago, meeting with labor leaders, war veterans, and pastors. He called for a federal civil rights commission, an anti-lynching law, and the desegregation of the armed forces. He even met with Italian-American leaders to acknowledge the sacrifices made in Savannah, telling them:

"You showed America the mirror. Now we must have the courage to look."

For African Americans, Dewey's rise offered something they had not seen in generations: a sliver of hope from a party that once freed the slaves but had long since abandoned the cause. For segregationists, it was a harbinger of revolution—a challenge to their power and privilege.

For America, it was the beginning of a tragic reckoning.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, once cautiously optimistic about the promises of liberal democracy was stunned by the events of Savannah. The battle had shattered any illusions of progress through traditional, incremental means. Black and Italian blood had stained the cobblestones of Georgia, and the sound of gunfire echoed louder than the voice of any senator, louder than the dithering equivocations of northern liberals too afraid to confront the South's festering cancer. Washington remained paralyzed—paralyzed by fear, by tradition, by the weight of a Constitution that too often served as a shackle rather than a shield. The message was clear: the system was not listening.

And then, Thomas E. Dewey spoke.

He did not stutter. He did not equivocate. He did not hide behind the language of commissions or gradual reform. He condemned segregation, denounced the monstrous hypocrisy of America's "freedom," and called the Jim Crow regime what it was: a grotesque apartheid system born in sin, maintained in violence, and destined for destruction. Dewey's words did not come wrapped in platitudes but in fire. And for the first time in decades, a major white politician spoke not about Black Americans, but to them—and with them.

The NAACP, disillusioned but desperate, took a leap no one had expected. In a historic and thunderous announcement, they formally endorsed Dewey's campaign for president, calling him:

"The only relevant white voice in America that openly stands with us. He does not beg for patience, he demands justice. And he does not ask for our votes—he earns them."

It was a political earthquake.

But the tremors did not stop there.

The Catholic Church, long nominally apolitical in American affairs, began to stir. Conscience and compassion overcame calculation. In the wake of Savannah and the martyrdom of its priests, Pope Pius XII issued a sweeping encyclical, denouncing racial hatred not as a mere social ill, but as a mortal sin. Racism, he declared, was "an affront to the divine image of mankind," and he called upon all Catholics, "to oppose it not only in prayer, but at the ballot box, and with their lives if necessary." He also began the process of canonizing Father Giulio Santini, calling him a, "modern day saint Sebastian."

The Vatican's words were not buried in obscure theological journals—they were printed in newspapers, shouted from pulpits, and echoed in catechism classes. Mussolini, ever watching from afar, endorsed the encyclical with a statement that shocked even his most cynical observers:

"Let it be known that the Church's war on racial injustice has the full blessing of Rome. Those who wear the fasces do not kneel before the lash of Jim Crow. Romans are not slaves."

The message was unambiguous.

Within days, Catholic churches across the United States—from the slums of the Bronx to the vineyards of California—began openly urging their congregants to vote for Dewey. Priests thundered from the pulpit. Nuns distributed voter guides. Bishops reminded their flocks that neutrality in the face of evil was itself a sin. And in pew after pew, hearts began to turn.

Italian, Irish, and Polish Americans—the backbone of the Democratic urban machine—began to defect. Many had suffered their own forms of bigotry, and while few had faced the unrelenting nightmare of Jim Crow, they knew injustice when they saw it.

Black Americans, too, began to notice.

Something was changing—not slowly, not subtly, but with the unmistakable tremor of a tectonic shift. In Black churches across the country, from the red clay hills of Georgia to the brick-row neighborhoods of Chicago, something sacred was unraveling. The old pillars of faith—Methodist, Baptist, and Episcopalian congregations—began to see their pews empty, their member rolls dwindle. Not because the people had lost their faith in God—but because they had lost faith in the institutions that had too often been content to coexist with injustice.

In many corners of the Black religious world, sermons still clung to the language of patience, of long-suffering humility, of awaiting God's justice in the next world rather than demanding it in this one. But the children of sharecroppers and steelworkers had seen too much—too many broken promises, too many polite betrayals. They were no longer willing to bow their heads while their neighbors were beaten for trying to vote, or while their sons returned from war in Europe only to be lynched at home. They sought something different. They needed a new message, one that did not ask them to endure—but to rise.

And that message came—from the most unexpected of places.

Mussolini, the unlikely architect of this new spiritual crusade, had been watching the slow collapse of Southern Protestantism's moral authority among the Black faithful. Perceiving both a spiritual vacuum and a moral opportunity, he convinced Pope Pius XII to act boldly, to send missionaries not to distant colonies but into the heart of America's own fractured soul: the Deep South.

These missionaries were no ordinary priests. They did not come alone.

They arrived in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana under armed escort—accompanied by Italian Blackshirts and Sicilian mafiosi, whose loyalty to Mussolini and the Vatican was matched only by their disdain for American racism. They guarded the missionaries not from Black citizens, but from the mobs and sheriffs and Klansmen who saw their presence as a foreign invasion. In truth, it was an invasion—an invasion of the heart, a campaign not of bullets and banners but of Bibles, baptismal fonts, and fearless conviction.

But it was far from peaceful.

The South—already a cauldron of racial hatred and white supremacist paranoia—erupted into fury the moment it became clear that something irreversible was taking place. The rising tide of African American conversions to Catholicism, the presence of Italian missionaries, the symbolism of armed foreign escorts marching into small Southern towns—it was, for many white Southerners, a nightmare made real.

Local law enforcement, far from being neutral arbiters of order, were often the very instruments of suppression. Sheriffs and police officers—many openly affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, others quietly sympathetic to its ideology—moved swiftly and violently. Under the pretense of "preserving the peace," they raided church services, dragging priests from altars, hauling them into jail cells on fabricated charges like disturbing the peace, inciting unrest, or practicing a "foreign" religion without proper permits.

In many cases, the mere act of offering Communion to Black citizens alongside white converts was treated as a provocation, a defiance of what white Southerners considered sacred: the racial hierarchy.

White citizens, inflamed by sermons from segregationist pastors and whipped into frenzy by local newspapers warning of "papist invasions" and "Black insurrections," formed mobs. Men with shotguns, baseball bats, and ropes gathered to confront the missionaries, to run them out of town with threats, fire, or bloodshed if necessary. Church buildings were firebombed. Rosaries were torn from elderly Black women's hands. Sacred statues were smashed beneath boot heels.

But something had changed.

This time, the resistance was not unarmed.

What had happened in Savannah—a bitter confrontation between armed fascist protectors and white supremacist militias—began to repeat itself across the South, again and again. From the swamps of Louisiana to the Appalachian foothills of South Carolina, small towns became battlegrounds.

Italian Blackshirts, loyal to Mussolini but also deeply committed to defending the missionaries, stood their ground. Alongside them were Sicilian mafiosi, many of whom saw the fight as both an extension of their code of honor and a brutal way to settle old debts with the forces of American nativism that had long treated Italian immigrants with disdain.

They did not ask for permission. They answered violence with violence.

When sheriffs tried to arrest priests, they were met with gunfire from concealed rooftops and ambushes along country roads. When mobs came with torches, they were confronted by men in trench coats with Thompson submachine guns, men who spoke in Sicilian dialects and recited Hail Marys before pulling the trigger.

But perhaps the most remarkable transformation was not among the foreigners—but among the locals.

African Americans, long conditioned to endure, suddenly began to resist.

Moved by the image of white men willing to fight and die on their behalf, willing to protect their churches and defend their children's right to worship without shame, they found something within themselves that generations of fear had buried but never destroyed: the will to fight back.

They took up arms—some smuggled from sympathetic mafiosi in the North, others handed down from veterans of World War I and II. They barricaded their churches. They trained their young men to shoot, to patrol, to organize.

Side by side with the Blackshirts and the mafiosi, they stood defiant.

In some places, the struggle escalated into all-out warfare.

In Clarksdale, Mississippi, a mob attempted to storm a recently established Catholic mission where over 200 Black residents had gathered for a night vigil. What they found instead were sandbags, barbed wire, and a defensive perimeter guarded by a coalition of Black volunteers and Italian gunmen. The firefight lasted two hours. By dawn, five Klansmen lay dead in the street. The National Guard arrived days later, not to restore peace—but to reclaim the bodies under the watchful eyes of the blackshirts, black Catholics, and the Sicilian mafia.

In Gadsden, Alabama, a Black community that had embraced Catholicism declared its independence from the county government. They expelled the sheriff, burned down the courthouse records, and raised a banner above their church: "Christ is King. Jim Crow is not."

And in dozens of other towns—Marion, Selma, Greenwood, and farther still—the pattern repeated: Black majority communities, newly awakened and newly armed, expelled their white political overlords, often after bloody skirmishes. White landowners fled under cover of night, leaving behind plantations that were promptly seized, their fields collectively farmed under the protection of local defense committees.

These towns became armed, Black-only enclaves—self-sufficient hamlets fortified not just with weapons, but with faith, fury, and unyielding resolve. They welcomed the Blackshirts and mafiosi who had bled beside them, granting them honorary citizenship and spiritual kinship. Together, they built walls—not just physical barricades, but cultural and spiritual sanctuaries, where children learned Latin hymns and Black Madonna statues replaced confederate statues.

White America watched in horror and disbelief.

To segregationists and their political allies, it was nothing short of insurrection—a blasphemous coalition of foreigners and "uppity" Negroes, threatening the foundations of their way of life. To others, especially disillusioned veterans and progressives in the North, it was something closer to prophecy fulfilled—a sign that America's underclass had finally thrown off the chains of both slavery and silence.

The federal government stood paralyzed, unsure whether to crush the movement or court its favor. President Roosevelt, caught between political necessity and personal conviction, issued a statement calling for calm, but refused to denounce the communities outright.

And across the South, the fires continued to burn—not only in buildings, but in hearts long starved of hope, now ignited with the flames of resistance.

What had begun as a spiritual awakening had become something far more powerful: a revolutionary realignment of power, race, and faith in the American soul.

And there would be no going back.

The Catholic Church meanwhile marched on, long an irrelevant force outside the northeastern US, was now at the center of a spiritual and political revolution. Within months, its membership surged by the millions. Entire Black communities, moved by the clarity and courage of the Vatican's stance on racial equality, began to leave their old congregations and embrace a faith that did not treat them as second-class Christians.

In sermons delivered in simple country chapels and grand city cathedrals alike, Catholic priests spoke with moral fire. They denounced Jim Crow from the pulpit, not as unfortunate tradition but as heresy. They invoked scripture not to placate but to inspire rebellion against the forces of hate. And in every sermon, one truth echoed: "There are no segregated pews in Heaven."

In the North itself, the effects were even more dramatic.

It was not a ripple—it was a tidal wave.

From Harlem to Detroit, from South Side Chicago to the immigrant neighborhoods of Boston, Catholic churches threw open their doors to Black Americans. There were no roped-off sections, no signs, no whispers urging "patience." There would be no separate seating for whites or Blacks. No separate sacraments. No divided flock. The message was clear, unyielding, and revolutionary:

"All are equal in the eyes of God—and all shall sit together."

In cities long divided by redlining and resentment, Catholics—Irish, Italian, Polish, and now Black—stood side by side at the altar. They knelt together. They shared communion. They broke bread in the same churches where, only years before, race riots had scarred the streets. It was not always smooth, nor was it without tension. But it was happening.

A new Great Awakening was unfolding across America.

But unlike the revivals of old, which often focused on personal salvation and emotional conversion, this was a collective spiritual uprising—rooted in justice, equality, and the refusal to tolerate oppression cloaked in the language of law or custom. It was not born in revival tents, but in the hard concrete streets and shotgun churches of Black America—and it spread like wildfire.

In towns both north and south, from cotton fields to steel mills, African Americans began converting to Catholicism in droves. Not out of novelty, but out of necessity—out of a yearning for a church that would march with them, that would shelter them, that would fight.

In Chicago, entire Black neighborhoods baptized hundreds at a time. In New Orleans, once ruled by the legacy of Creole caste systems, Black converts sang in Latin and raised crucifixes. In Harlem, Black children now attended parochial schools taught by nuns who did not flinch when they walked into the classroom.

This wasn't just spiritual.

It was political. It was cultural. It was radical.

The Catholic Church, once aloof and European in its distance, had descended into the trenches—and with it, came a renewed sense of solidarity that transcended race, region, and tradition. Black Catholics began forming their own councils, schools, and even publishing houses. They brought with them their traditions—the rhythm of gospel, the cry of the blues, the strength of their prayers—and fused it with the liturgy of Rome.

A new theology was being born—Black, Catholic, and unafraid.

And so, as America teetered between its past and its future, the Spirit moved. Not in whispers, but in roaring winds.

A once silenced people found their voice in the Latin mass, their strength in the sacraments, their dignity restored by a Church that had finally chosen to walk the path of righteousness—even if it was late in doing so.

And for the first time in generations, Black Americans no longer felt like spiritual exiles in their own land.

They were children of God—and now, everyone knew it.

Dewey meanwhile began to make promises—not to dismantle the New Deal but to reform it, to make it leaner, cleaner, more efficient without gutting its core. This calmed the fears of workers and union men. He was no reactionary. He was offering not a return to the past, but a bold leap forward.

And so they came. One by one, family by family, street by street.

In New York, voter rolls began to swell. In Buffalo, Polish dockworkers changed party affiliation en masse. In Pittsburgh, Irish steelworkers who once cursed the GOP as the party of Hoover now whispered that Dewey might be different. In Philadelphia, Catholic precincts buzzed with a new energy. Across Pennsylvania, the Republican Party—long a spent force outside the leafy suburbs—suddenly had life.

And in every conversation, every kitchen table debate, one name loomed like a phantom behind it all: Jim Crow.

The South's twisted system of white terror—its lynch mobs, its poll taxes, its segregated schools and sundown towns—had become too grotesque to ignore. It was not merely immoral. It was obscene. It was the living proof that America's democratic mask was slipping, revealing something far more monstrous underneath. It was the rotting corpse of Reconstruction, animated by hate and ritual violence, now exposed to the light. Every photo of a Black veteran beaten for trying to vote, every newspaper article about a child barred from school because of their skin—they were daggers to the American conscience.

And Dewey, for all his flaws, was the only white politician willing to wield a scalpel against the tumor.

The Republican Party, once thought unelectable in key northern states, now surged with new blood and righteous fury. Registration offices overflowed. Party chapters were inundated with new volunteers. Campaign offices buzzed with Catholics, progressives, disillusioned Roosevelt men, and young Black veterans demanding change. The once laughable notion that New York or Pennsylvania might flip was now whispered as strategy in smoky backrooms.

The dam had cracked.

And behind it surged a tidal wave of rage, hope, desperation, and resolve.

The battle lines were no longer Democrat versus Republican. They were Justice versus Jim Crow. Conscience versus cowardice. The future versus the noose.

And this time, at last, America might actually choose the right side.

Dewey immediately set to work on one of the most crucial tasks of any presidential hopeful: uniting his fractured party.

His primary obstacle was the conservative wing of the Republican Party, led by the formidable Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio. The two men had a long and bitter rivalry dating back to the 1940 Republican National Convention, where their clashing visions for the party and the country had created deep fissures. Their personal relationship was distant at best, marked by mutual suspicion and ideological contempt.

But Thomas Dewey was, at his core, a pragmatist.

He knew that to mount a serious challenge to Roosevelt's Democratic dominance—and to offer a credible alternative to the American people—he had to bring Taft and his followers into the fold. Without the conservative bloc's support, the Republican Party would remain divided and vulnerable.

The day after announcing his presidential bid, Dewey did something few would have expected: he personally went to Taft's office in Washington, D.C., and requested a private, one-on-one meeting.

Taft, the "Senator from the Senate," known for his unwavering conservatism and mastery of legislative tactics, was cautious but curious. Dewey's visit was unusual—he rarely sought out his rivals so directly.

The two men sat together for hours.

In a measured, firm tone, Dewey laid out his case. He spoke not as a mere politician, but as a man who understood the stakes facing the world and the nation.

He warned Taft of the looming threats abroad—Mussolini's aggressive gambit in Europe and Africa, Stalin's relentless expansionism in Asia, and the terrifying possibility that these totalitarian regimes could divide the globe among themselves, leaving the United States isolated and vulnerable. He painted a dire picture of what might come if America did not act decisively.

Dewey emphasized that this election was the best chance the Republican Party had in years to reclaim the White House and restore American leadership in the world.

He was careful not to alienate Taft's conservative ideals. Dewey offered no grand reduction of the New Deal. Instead, he promised to streamline and reform existing programs, cutting waste and inefficiency while protecting the social safety net.

He pledged tax cuts to stimulate growth, a determined effort to pay down the national debt, and a crackdown on what he called "organized labor's worst excesses", signaling his intent to appeal to business interests and moderate conservatives without alienating working-class voters entirely.

Then, in a bold move, Dewey extended an offer that would both flatter and challenge Taft: the vice-presidential nomination. He promised his full support and endorsement for Taft's own presidential ambitions in 1952, presenting a deal that sought to bridge their differences through political cooperation.

Taft listened carefully but said little in response. His face remained inscrutable throughout the meeting—neither warmth nor outright hostility. When Dewey left that evening, Taft was left with a blank expression, a mask of cautious calculation.

Behind that impassive exterior, the wheels were turning.

And one thing was clear: Dewey had taken the first critical step toward bridging the divide in the Republican Party—and the future of the nation might depend on whether Taft chose to accept it.

For the remainder of August 1943, Thomas Dewey and Robert A. Taft met almost daily. Sometimes it was over formal luncheons in the Senate dining room; other times, in the quiet of Taft's office, shielded from prying eyes and the ever-present whispers of Washington politics. There were dinners at Dewey's hotel suite, walks through the Capitol's marbled corridors, and long conversations that often stretched late into the evening.

What began as strategic negotiations gradually evolved into something more genuine. As the days passed, they discovered they had far more in common than either had previously assumed.

Both were men of the law—trained attorneys forged in the crucible of rigorous education and the high-pressure world of litigation. Over coffee and bourbon, they swapped stories of grueling nights studying for the bar, the anxiety of their first appearances before a judge, and the satisfaction of winning hard-fought cases. It was in these shared experiences that the walls between them began to fall.

They were both men who revered the Constitution—not as an abstract idea, but as the bedrock of American democracy. They were committed institutionalists who believed deeply in the structure of the Republic, the separation of powers, and the sanctity of the rule of law. And while their approaches sometimes differed, both harbored a measured skepticism toward the New Deal's expansive federal bureaucracy, which they viewed as a potential threat to American self-government and individual liberty.

More urgently, they were united by a growing reality: that the world was being carved up by tyrants. Fascism and communism—once rivals—now posed parallel dangers to the democratic order. Mussolini's ruthless expansionism and Stalin's iron-fisted control over Eastern Europe and Asia terrified them. Neither man believed that Roosevelt, burdened by an aging administration and a one-party dominance, would be agile enough to face the coming storm.

Their alliance, once fragile, began to harden into a true political partnership.

Then, on September 1, 1943, a symbolic and strategic milestone was reached.

That morning, Senator Taft stood before the press and issued a statement endorsing Governor Thomas E. Dewey for the presidency of the United States. He praised Dewey's competence, his legal acumen, and his integrity. More importantly, he described him as "a man capable of guiding the nation through war and peace, without abandoning its constitutional moorings."

Later that afternoon, Dewey formally announced that he would select Senator Robert A. Taft as his running mate for the 1944 election. The Republican ticket—once thought to be divided by deep ideological fault lines—now stood united under two of its most capable and principled leaders.

The news electrified the party.

Eastern moderates and Midwestern conservatives alike rallied behind the Dewey-Taft ticket. Newspaper editorials hailed the union as a masterstroke—a fusion of legal brilliance, executive competence, and legislative authority. Even skeptical party bosses began to believe that Roosevelt could be beaten, especially in the wake of the Savannah Massacre and growing unrest in the South.

For the first time in over a decade, the Republican Party was no longer fractured by internal squabbles or ideological purges. It stood as a single, formidable force with a message of constitutional governance, restrained government, and unwavering commitment to defeating tyranny at home and abroad.

Now, the campaign would begin in earnest.

The Democrats were still reeling from the violence in Georgia and the criticism Roosevelt had faced for his silence. The public mood was shifting. The world was on fire, and America's soul was at stake.

The Republicans were united. Now, they had to win.

But victory always comes with a price.
 
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