Talk:Victor Emmanuel III of Italy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.	Biography Portal
Start	This article has been rated as start-Class on the project's quality scale. [FAQ]

	Victor Emmanuel III of Italy is within the scope of WikiProject Italy, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to articles on Italy on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the Project's quality scale. Please rate the article and then leave a short summary here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.
???	This article has not yet received an importance rating on the importance scale.

I think, though I am open to correction here, that Victorio Emanuele was proclaimed 'Emperor of Abbysinia' rather than calling the country Ethiopia, which the overthrown and arguably legitimate emperor, Haile Selassie, called it in his address to the League of Nations. (It also called its war the Ethiopian War. It is something I am going to double-check but as it is mentioned by that title in a textbook in front of me, If anyone else has any more information on the point, or can definitively establish by what name the state was called in Victorio Emanuele's title, by all means make whatever adaptions necessary. JTD 04:36 Jan 2, 2003 (UTC)

Abissinia and Etiopia, in Italian, are synonimous. Simply.

Your idea that Victor Emmanuel should have abdicated in 1943, could be common to many people. But it is a conjecture, a speculation, not a historical fact, therefore it cannot hide behind the article as if it was a fact of general consensus. And against this pretendedly preferable vision, there is in fact the consideration that giving the Crown to his son in that precise moment, given the special context, the overwhelming confusion, the many foreign troops on the national territory, the little and not objective information available (and we could go on for hours...), he would have allowed the general impression that monarchy was already over. It would have irrevertibly separated Italians from their kings. So, from a different point of view, it is said instead that V.E. was wise in keeping on the throne, despite our eventual objections.

I believe the article will soon reflect, in the usual Wikipedia's style, the consideration of the two interpretations, not assuming our (maybe emotional) vision as the main historical one.

Once again I have to recall that if the major source about Italian kings is Mack Smith, it would be quite fair to mention that he had personal positions, which are clearly intelligible in his works (which are however of essential importance in the study of that epoque). For the same reason, we, who don't even are Mack Smith, could as well keep somehow more neutral on these arguments. The article, as now it is, shows a certain judgment on the fellow, especially in the last paragraphs. G

Abbysinia and Ethiopia may be the same, but that is irrelevant. We need in reference to the King's title to use the exact formal word used, so that it is 100% accurate. JTD 02:56 Jan 26, 2003 (UTC)

"Imperatore d'Etiopia". Called "Imperatore d'Abissinia" by Fascists with the same formal relevance and value.G

If Ethiopia was the version used in the formal title then that is the one that should be used.

As regarding the failure of Victor Emmanuel to abdicate in 1943, it is not merely the general opinion of historians, politicians and others, but even of many members of the Royal Family, that he made a monstrous misjudgment in not abdicating there and then. The monarchy's only hope of survival was in not having it tainted by association with the fascist regime. Victor Emmanuel was universally so tainted; in the eyes of the public, of politicians, of world leaders, of the Allies and of the anti-fascist forces. Every time his name was mentioned, that link between Crown and fascism was re-inforced. The sooner he was off the stage permanently so to speak, the sooner the post-fascist monarchy could evolve. If Umberto had had three years as king to break those links, at that stage largely psychological in the eyes of others, there is little doubt but that an additional 1million, maybe up to three million, who voted for the republic in 1946 would have voted for the monarchy instead. Victor Emmanuel's misjudgment left the Crown in an almost impossible state in 1946. If he was still king, and a pro-monarchy vote meant keeping Victor Emmanuel on the throne, then perhaps another couple million potential pro-monarchist voters would either have voted against the monarchy or abstained. But by abdicating on the eve of the referendum, he undid all of Umberto's good work by reminding people of the one thing Italian monarchists hoped people were forgetting, the House of Savoy's association with Mussolini.

Politicians know all too well that phenomenon. That's why Trent Lott was axed as Majority Leader in the US Senate, because no matter how non-rascist he was (and that is debatable), everytime he'd appear as the public face of US republicanism, he'd remind people of the one thing the party desparately didn't want people to remember; its poor record on race. That's why Thatcher's ex-ministers were all axed from front-line politics immediately by their party, why Albert Reynolds quit immediately as Fianna Fáil leader in 1994, why Jospin quit public life immediately after his French presidential election defeat, etc etc. Because they knew that for their party to regain credibility, they had to go and go immediately, to allow its image to change under a less tainted successor. Victor Emmanuel's blunder in not following that basic rule of image management cost the Savoy dynasty the throne. It was monumentally stupid in the extreme, and members of the Royal Household and the Royal Family knew it. As long as he was king, the Family would remain tainted. A man who took plenty of unwise decisions, having over his toleration of fascism almost destroyed his country, his failure to abdicate destroyed the monarchy. JTD 03:28 Jan 26, 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Tantris's complaints

...if the major source about Italian kings is Mack Smith...

Whoever Mack Smith may be, he may be a "major source on Italian Kings" to those who can't read Italian; to those who can, I recommend Bartoli's La fine della monarchia; there are various editions; it is a classic, as well as an excellent synthesis on a very complex theme.

Denis Mack Smith is the most important living English language historian of modern Italy. There are 10,000 google hits on his name in the Italian language. I am highly impressed by your decision to parade your ignorance as though it is superior knowledge. john k 15:22, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Whoever took it upon himself to re-write my revision of the Victor Emmanuel article, bringing back the semi-literate nonsense that was there before, knows little about the history of this 46-year reign. (Victor Emmanuel had been king for nearly a quarter of a century before anybody had heard of Benito Mussolini.)

The retro-editor softened my characterisation of the Italian political class c. 1920 to a bland, Middle American inefficient... but unless one understands the hatred evoked by this vile group, it is impossible to understand why Fascism arose, or why Italy's king accommodated it. It is not that he felt that the Army—the army of Caporetto!—could not have supressed the March on Rome (from the standpoint of 1922, a perfectly legitimate form of political dissent not unlike marches on Washington during the Depression or Viet Nam eras;) it just didn't seem a good thing to save such such political class. He, and the Italian people with him, wanted something else. NO ONE in 1922 could know that that something else would actually turn out to be even worse.

You are clearly advancing a POV with this interpretation. And what's so horrific about Giolitti, et al, anyway? At any rate, my understanding was that fear of communism had more to do with the turn to fascism than hatred of the Italian political class (of which VEIII was surely himself a most prominent part). john k 15:22, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

But the dead giveaway was the revisor's insitence in comparing Victor Emmanuel's and Elena's departure from Rome before the advancing German army with the much-advertised permanence of the Windsors at Buckingham palace under bombardment. (The fact is that they actually spent much more time at Windsor than in London during that period.) But of course Britain was not being invaded by a conquering army. It is hard to imagine George VI allowing himself to fall into the hands of the Germans if a German army had been advancing on London.

A much more logical comparison, which I included in my revision but which was arbitrarily removed by the person bringing back the nonsense that was there before, would be to monarchs who DID flee before actual conquering armies, like Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands of King Haakon VII of Norway. Nobody ever critisised them, and they made triumphant re-entries into their capitals in 1945.

The fact that the Germans were a conquering army had much to do with the fact that VEIII and his government made absolutely no effort to get the army to resist the Nazi advance, and they all basically ended up surrendering without a fight. The behavior of the royal family and Italian government in the period between the overthrow of Mussolini and the German invasion has been frequently criticized. Comparing it to the British royal family is silly and not very aposite, but nor is comparing it to the royal families of other countries. john k 15:22, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

The retro-editor just wanted to keep all that gibberish about the Windsors in, even as in the previous treatment of Victor Emmanuel's assumption of the Ethiopian and Albanian crowns, which was all about the George VI not recognising it, as though that were the defining issue. The fact that the ETHIOPIANS didn't recognise wasn't even mentioned.

This is rather silly. john k 15:22, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Victor Emmanuel III dismissed Mussolini in 1943 and had him arrested, thereby earning Hitler's odium. That is why Victor Emmanuel and Elena could not allow themselves to fall into the hands of the Germans: Hitler would simply had had them shot. That is certainly why his daughter Mafalda, margravine of Hesse, was sent to Buchenwald and killed there. (How many Windsors ever died in Nazi concentration camps??) She was under reach of the Nazis and so they took their revenge on her. This is now nowhere mentioned in the re-revised article. There is just some nonsense about the pope visiting a bombed site in 1945: a site bombed by the Americans !

I'm sure if Hitler had had any members of the British royal family at his disposal, they would have been put in a concentration camp (also worth noting that many members of German royal families were also put in camps - the former Crown Prince of Bavaria, for instance). Also, Mafalda was not murdered by the Nazis, as you seem to imply, but was killed by an allied bombing raid. john k 15:22, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Victor Emmanuel had switched sides in the middle of the War, as the house of Savoy had done so many times in previous centuries: he couldn't understand that this was not an XVIII Century kind of war. He took on Mussolini when he seemed useful, and dismissed him like a footman when he was no longer so: just as if he had been an XVIII Century king. This was a very revealing facet of his personality, nowhere mentioned in this sad article.

This is an interpretation, I think, that could be disputed. john k 15:22, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Finally, there was my mention that the republican side won the 1946 referendum by a small margin, and that the Savoy monarchy won many more votes than any party has ever won in any election since. I think this is an important detail. The leftist parties who viciously criticised Victor Emmanuel III in 1945-46 never managed to win even a tiny fraction of the votes that the monarchy garnered in the Referendum.

The first fact should be mentioned. I don't know why the pro-monarchy vote should be compared to a political party. The Republicans also won more votes than any party has ever won in any election since. And the Popular Front won 31% of the vote in 1948, which was, well, a fairly sizeable fraction of the votes that the monarchy garnered in the referendum. And that election was widely held to have been tampered with by the CIA to keep the leftist vote down. At any rate, all this proves is that a lot of centrists and conservatives voted against the monarchy. john k 15:22, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

For certain people, Victor Emmanuel III will always be the king who tolerated Mussolini. This is perhaps unavoidable but meaningless, unless the circumstances of this whole period are at least minimally understood. At the battle of Caporetto, 100,000 Italians died in a few days. Many froze to death, because the democratic polititians back in Rome somehow neglected to get them the proper clothes. King Victor Emmanel III, who spent the entire World War I in a modest dwelling at General Headquarters near the front, never, ever got over the sight of this epic tragedy. As he lay dying in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1947, this is what he raved about.

Tantris 14:27, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Surely Victor Emmanuel bears the blame for Caporetto nearly as much as he does for Mussolini. Salandra and Sonnino could never have started a war without the king's acquiescence. I don't think Victor Emmanuel was a bad man, necessarily (his grandson, on the other hand, seems rather horrifyingly awful...), but that doesn't mean that we should whitewash his failings, which were numerous. john k 15:22, 14 October 2006 (UTC)