HITLER GOES TO TOME: 1938 More than a year has passed since my journey to Italy until now to share this new extensive material on Hitler’s state visit to Rome back in May 1938. We will start with the political environment, touch the first meeting between two dictators in Venice in 1934 and then research all the main landmarks, attributed to 1938 events. I have accompanied this ‘7000-word-volume’ material with dozens of both archival and my modern photo takings, as well as with the map. The journey is the reward and the road to read all the books and memoirs on the subject, as well as to complain the article has been a reward for me, still, I would greatly appreciate your feedback, questions, additions. Read books and travel the world. https://war-documentary.info/hitler-visits-rome-1938/
Who is the guy in the 'Ruritainian' uniform with the beard, sash, lanyards, tassels, gongs etc etc in the photo of the 1934 visit? One would have thought that he alone would have told any rational dictator what a comic opera regime he was about to get into bed with. BTW is Goes to Tome in the title a reference to the bibliography or a mistype?
Sorry, of course, it's my mistake. ROME. After 7000 of writing and editing, even such huge mistypes can be ignored by an eye.
I've been reading Inside the Third Reich, the memoirs of Albert Speer, Hitler's architect and later Minister of War Production. He tells how, after the Rome visit, Hitler remarked on how Mussolini had had to take second place to King Victor Emmanuel during certain ceremonies. This was because the king was officially still head of state, despite Mussolini ruling Italy. By contrast, as head of the German state, Hitler enjoyed equal status to the king. Hitler later remarked that he would never agree to the reinstatement of a royal family in Germany, because it would officially put him in a subordinate position.
Although in 1940 the Kaiser was invited to return to Germany from the Netherlands. He declined apparently not because of disagreement with Hitler's policies but because he considered him a frightful common oik.
This man, mentioned in post 2 is not King Victor Emanuel III of Italy, who was only just over 5ft tall & did not have a full beard.
My Italian husband (ex- Italian air force) says that the headgear of the person in question is not Italian. Vitellino
I'd say he was an Italian General or Lieutenant-General looking at his rank insignia. Haven't worked out who yet though.
There is a photo in the Hulton-Deutsch collection of Musso with a crowd of Generals in 1935 many wearing uniforms that a cinema commissionaire would have thought over the top - enough corded loops to scale the Alps, gongs galore and the most motley collection of headgear one can imagine (see the cover of Mussolini and his generals by John Gooch)
