Taking a Duce (A Benito Mussolini SI)

March 2, 1941
Palazzo Venezia
Rome, Italy

The Reich's man in Rome was punctual. A crisp knock. A practiced gait. That smug Prussian rigidity like someone shoved a telephone pole up his ass. Hans Georg von Mackensen: ambassador, aristocrat, witless errand boy for a failed painter with a superiority complex. God I hated dealing with this cunt, even looking at him made me wanna put a knife through his stomach while his bitch of a wife watched, god she had such a stabbable face.

I didn't stand. I never stood for diplomats unless they were mine or dead. He entered. Bowed slightly. The same dull suit, the same lifeless eyes. Like a taxidermy exhibit that could still speak German. I remembered I had a gun in my drawer, soon.

"Duce," he said, the r rolling faintly in that forced Hochdeutsch affectation they all had. "How may I be of service?"

I smiled. Cold. Controlled. "Herr von Mackensen. Sit. Let's talk." I took a breath, I needed all the willpower to not order this cocksucker be shoved out a window.

I gestured like a tired priest blessing a child. He sat stiffly.

"I am disappointed" I began, "of the continuing… interruptions in our arrangement. The Jewish transports." I clasped my hands together. "The flow has… ceased." 1.5 million, 1.5 million Jews taken in. Until that cocksucker Adolf got upset cause I talked to that paranoid schizophrenic Stalin and went NEIN JUDEN.

He fidgeted slightly. "Yes. Berlin has decided—"

"You mean Hitler has decided."

He blinked. "Yes. The Führer is displeased. Your recent trade accord with the Soviet Union was… unexpected."

Of course it was. That's why I did it. Nothing tickles me more than disrupting the predictable little Reich.

"I see," I said. "So because I refuse to let Germany dictate my trade, refuse to let Germany violate Italian soveirgnty you cut off my Jew supply? We're your partners, not vassals."

His face twitched. "They are not—"

"Oh but they are." I leaned forward slightly. "They are mine. My Jews. You gave them to me. You promised me. And now? Silence. Where's my next transport ambassador? I was promised another 250 thousand by February. The Lehi aren't going to recruit from nowhere."

He didn't answer. I offered him a smile that felt like razor wire.

"I ask because," I said gently, "your Jewish problem is my solution. My final solution to the British question in the middle east. And more importantly—do you have any idea how valuable they've been to the Lehi?"

A twitch.

"The Lehi." He repeated like a retarded choirboy.

"Yes, yes, ambassador the Lehi," I said, sipping my wine. "The Falag. You know, the fascist Zionists we trained in Libya? The ones tying up entire divisions of British troops in Palestine? All without a single German or Italian firing a shot, I might add. And quite a lot of British mothers mourning their boys. Why, that splendid little battle at the Jaffa Port last week? Hilarious. 100 British soldiers in body-bags in one day. Could your SS do that while outnumbered and outgunned?"

He stiffened like a mannequin in a freezer.

On the outside, I was serene. Passive. Almost Buddhist. I was the Mona Lisa of Mediterranean politics.

Inside? I was laughing. Cackling. Laughing so hard it would kill an old pope.

Inside I was also playing "Stay With Me" by Miki Matsubara in my mind like a weapon.

Stay with meeeeee…
Mayonakaaa no doa o tatakiiiii…

God. Those incomprehensible lyrics . That rhythm. Like sex wrapped in silk.

He was still talking. Something about Berlin reassessing strategic necessity or some other vague diplomatic bullshit. God just be straight, I fucking hate diplomats. This is why I want to have Ciano shot, he sounds just like this snivelling little shit in front of me. No wonder Stalin purged hundreds of thousands for no reason, I'd be annoyed too if I had to deal with these fucking worms on a daily basis. I understand your game now brother Stalin. A glass of vodka to you.

"I understand," I said, voice monotone like an 18 year old prostitute about to fuck a fat man old enough to be her father or even grandfather in a dingy motel room while she questioned her life choices. "The Führer is busy. Planning his…future campaigns, I imagine."

He frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Oh nothing." I waved it off. "Just speculation. I imagine he'll get what he wants eventually."

And then I'll gut him like a fish. All while that bitch Eva watches. Maybe I'll turn her into my second mistress, never been with a blonde. Like monkey soup in Brazil, Uma Delicia. Marylin Monroe was a blonde too, maybe I could fuck her before Kennedy. Lucky bastard.

But I didn't say that. Not out loud. I pictured Hitler's stupid face, bloodied and slack-jawed in a Roman dungeon. A broken toy I no longer needed.

I smiled again. "Do remind herr Adolf that the Middle East is… delicate. And I hold the scalpel."

He stood. "I will convey your message."

I stood too—finally. Just to flex.

"Good. Do that. And do ask Berlin where my next trainload is. Or I may have to consider other… sources. Stalin, perhaps? That trade agreement can be modified to include Jews."

His face twitched again.

I watched him leave, clicking down the marble halls like a tin soldier winding down.

That bastard knew.

They all knew I was going to flip. But they had no proof. They didn't know when.

Yet.

And I knew, that they knew.

And they knew, that I knew, that they knew.

And I knew, that they knew, that I knew, that they knew.

But soon… I'd carve my own legend. Across Thrace, across Anatolia, across Europe. With iron and flame. And every cocksucker from Anchorage Alaska to Kabul Afghanistan would bow. Let those fuckers bleed themselves in Russia. I'd have given Thrace, Constantinople, and the Aegean to my Greek vassals and the south east of turkey to my Syrian friends.

And before the British tried anything I'd backstab Germany. Too perfect, strange bedmates.

I walked back to my desk. Took a deep breath.

And in my head—

Plastic Love began to play.

God, I needed war.
War and city pop.

And maybe another cup of wine.

And Clara sucking my cock.

I'm just playing games, I know that's plastic loooooove.

Dance to the plastic beat, another morning buuuuuuuuuuuz.

I'm just playing games, I know that's plastic loooooove.

Dance to the plastic beat, another morning buuuuuuuuuuuz.

-

March 6, 1941
Reich Chancellery
Berlin, Germany

He thinks I don't know.

He thinks he's clever. Thinks I cannot see the oily wheels turning in that malformed head of his. That Mediterranean goblin—Mussolini—Duce—with his stolen laurels and antique fantasies.

He smiles too much. Like a snake with a rictus grin. Like a man who already knows the answer to the question he's asking.

Von Mackensen was clear. The Italians are no longer useful. They are no longer loyal. They are liabilities. Mussolini speaks of sovereignty, of trade deals, of Jewish "resources." He demands more trains. He wants the Jews—not for purification, not for order—but for his own ends. He is hoarding them. For leverage. For chaos.

He has betrayed us before we have even won the war.

And yet they love him.

The Greeks cheer him.
The Jews arm under his banner.
The Balkans murmur in Latin again.
And the British—yes, even the British—fear what he might awaken in Africa, in the East.

He has turned Libya into a forge.
He has turned Rome into a stage.
He has turned my war into his revolution.

He is not an ally.
He is not a Roman.
He is a parasite.

And he forgets. He forgets who gave him the opportunity . Who sided with him. Who lifted him from irrelevance.

But I do not forget.

The East comes first.
Judeo-Bolshevism must be defeated.
The Slavic filth must be extinguished. Moscow must fall like Carthage—erased.
Then the Caucasus. The oil. The breadbasket of tomorrow.

And then?

Then Rome.

We will enter like Caesars—but with tanks instead of horses. The Luftwaffe will reduce the Palatine to rubble. I will scatter his Senate like rats. I will burn the Colosseum and salt the ruins of his myths.

The SS will drag him from his palace in chains. No more marble. No more crowds. Just silence. Just the silence of history correcting itself.

I will erase him.

Him and his ridiculous dream of a mongrel empire. Him and his Jewish games. Him and his Jews.

No more.

After the East is pacified, Italy is next.

I already have the files. The maps. The routes.

Operation Saturnus.
Veneto to Tuscany.
Neapolitan coast to the Sicilian gate.

Kesselring is ready. Rommel is loyal.
And if the Italian army lifts a finger, it will be the last movement of a dying limb.

He does not know it yet.

But I have already begun the funeral arrangements.

Mussolini's empire is a mirage.

And when the fires rise, he will understand:
Rome belongs to me.

-

March 10, 1941
Palazzo Venezia
Rome, Italy

The room reeked of cologne and cowardice. They were all here—Ciano, my shitstain son in law with his dead-eyed smile and notes scribbled like a schoolgirl, Balbo smirking like he knew better (he didn't, that fucker), and the rest of the Grand Council lined up like mannequins in uniform, waiting for direction.

I watched them in silence, swirling a glass of grappa, city pop drifting faintly in the corner of my mind—Tatsuro Yamashita, "Bomber." There's something about Japanese city pop: sleek, calculated, hollow like a smile you don't mean. A mirror of the men in front of me.

Tunisia was pacified, more or less. The French had folded like cheap linen once we started dragging them out of their villas and into the camps. Of course, the French always surrender eventually. The trick is knowing how hard you need to squeeze before the juice runs.

Greater Syria was a different story. The remnants of France clung to everything west of Raqqa like lice to a dead dog. British arms from Iraq as well as Free French propaganda and men flowing in under their watch, Saadeh's boys were bleeding for every kilometer. But they had equipment, Italian advisors, and eager syrians coming in from south america ready to claim their new homeland. I figured some chemical gas and bombs poured over the free french forward positions and problem solved. Slow, bloody, full of British condemnation but efficient.

The Zaydi imam had sent me a letter—perfumed parchment, hand-written. He wanted chemical weapons for his own army. Fine. I'll be your chemical dealer. Better than a chemical romance.

I tapped my glass against the table. A pause. They all went silent, good dogs. God I hated these cunts, except I couldn't kill them, especially Ciano, my daughter was married to him and seemed to love him, sadly he had his uses.

"My friends," I said with a soft sigh, passive and disapproving like a father hearing his child had set fire to the cat. "We are facing resistance. In Serbia. In Syria. In the minds of the colonial man who still clings to the myth of French superiority. We must correct this."

Ciano leaned forward. "More troops?"

I smiled faintly. "No. More pressure." This fucking bitch. I wanna scoop his eyes out with a spoon and make him eat them.

These 'men' lack imagination. They see empire like a chessboard. I see it like a nightclub—lights, mirrors, sweat, control, drugs, condoms. You don't dominate with force, not always. You dominate with spectacle. A dead insurgent means nothing. But a few Frenchmen in cages over the gates of Damascus. That's theater.

Like in Plastic Love, the synth rolls in slow—smooth, seductive, but there's menace under it. That's how I'll treat Syria.

"We shall begin... Imprisoning every French citizen in Greater Syria we can get our hands on." I tasted my words. "Expropriate their property among the syrians. Detain the ones with influence and quietly dispose of them. Break the Free French's base of support."

Balbo raised an eyebrow. "And the press?"

"What about them? We'll say they're being relocated for their protection. As for the free french in the east. A few chemical weapons and bombs for their forward positions, no towns, no massacres, I want every European looking man who says bonjour shot and their corpses in the Euphrates. The Arabs can be let go of and recruited." I smiled with all the warmth of a guillotine then moved on.

Serbia. Always Serbia. Graveyards of empires and psychotic nationalists with dreams too big for their heads. Tito was still a rumor. But rumors grow teeth. There wouldn't be any dad's who were war criminals, not this time.

"The Ustashe were inefficient," I said calmly. "The Croats were... exuberant, but they burned too many villlages, killed too many people, too loud, bad public relations."

Pavelic thought killing children made him a genius. Idiot. You don't need to exterminate people to control them. Just kill or discredit the ones who speak too loud. Death squads? Too loud, bad PR. Blackmail, rumors, slander, entrapment, threatening families. Priests and poets first. Teachers next. Thank god orthodox priests can marry, family, good collateral, a few men in the night telling them their families daily routine and kindly asking them to tone it down was much more efficient. Pavelic would just send death squads to roam randomly at night once I told him to chill, inefficient, foolish. My way was better.

"Send in special units. OVRA units trained for counter espionage. I want them to gather blackmail, rumors. Give them full discretion to monitor key figures and their families—clergy, teachers, poets, journalists, partisans. Find the most problematic ones, drug them, send some prostitutes male or female and redoes them. Make it spicy, make it scandalous." I turned to Roatta. "You'll oversee it. But no massacres. Let the Germans have their gore in Poland. We prefer...threats, blackmail, their dead wives and children paraded in front of them if they refuse. We're civilized men unlike the so called master race."

The soundtrack shifts in my mind: Mariya Takeuchi, "September." There's a sweetness to it—false hope wrapped in velvet. Perfect for Serbia. Let them dance a little before the axe falls. September, soshite anata wa. September.

As the council murmured in agreement, I stood, finally.

"This empire is not built by force alone," I said, voice low but firm. "It is built by fear, by loyalty, by vision. We are not the Reich. We are Rome."

And Rome never apologizes.

The smell of espresso lingered, cut faintly by the scent of pipe smoke and polished leather. We'd moved from Serbia to Palestine now—closer to the heart. The map of the Levant was then stretched across the conference table like a patient on an operating table, arteries of trade and insurgency pulsing in red ink.

I gestured to the dot on the coast: Haifa. A week ago, the British still thought they owned it. Now? Two hundred British corpses in seven days. Streets slick with gun oil and blood.

There's something divine about guerrilla warfare when it's not your hands doing the killing. The Falag were magnificent—Lehi radicals turned fascist by necessity and by the sword. No morals. No pity. All purpose. That's what Zionism needed: not rabbis and lawyers, but killers with a dream.

I lit a cigarette. Italian made. Smooth. Clean. Classy. Like the Rajie song that was now playing softly in my mind—Kanashimi no Elephant.

"Haifa," I said aloud, drawing the name out like a lover's sigh. "What a surprise."

Ciano cleared his throat, his voice careful. "Officially, we've distanced ourselves."

"Yes. Publicly we must. The Americans are watching. Even the Pope is bitching at me over this. But," I turned, letting the smoke coil lazily, "we will not close the pipeline. The Falag are useful. They hurt the British. They radicalize the landscape. Let them grow. Feed them, in secret. Weapons, radio support, cash through Damascus."

A pause.

"Duce, if they win…?" Balbo asked.

"When they win. They'll break Palestine. That's enough." I smiled. "When the British tire, we'll step in and offer peace. Our kind of peace."

Israel, but with blackshirts instead of ultra Orthodox penguins. A settler state built in my image.

Roatta smirked. "We could begin arms smuggling through Egypt again."

"Perfect," I said. "Make it discrete."

The table quieted as the pointer moved north. Greece. The darling of Roman restoration, our Athenian mirror.

"We are almost prepared for the final phase," I announced. "The Thracian corridor will fall within the month once we start. Istanbul—Constantinople—will be retaken by our allies. The Greeks are sharpening their knives."

Ciano nodded. "They want the Hagia Sophia reopened."

"It will be."

I want that dome lit again. Let the turks cry out in rage. Let every Orthodox heart tremble with divine nostalgia and praise rome while sucking me off. Rome gives it all back—Jerusalem, Constantinople, Antioch. We are the empire of return. That British puppet they call a king can cry out all he wants about restraint, fucking asshole, once we take Constantinople I'm forcing an abolition of the monarchy. Send that family back to whatever German shithole they crawled out from. And if they refuse, well, the Russians did deal with their royals efficiently after the revolution.

"And the Turks?" Ciano asked.

"They'll collapse. Stalin will finish what we start. Thrace, Constantinople and the Aegean will be Greek. The Turks will get a people's republic courtesy of Stalin. Maybe even a red caliph. Something ornamental."

Mustafa Kemal's ghost can cry in its whiskey and rim my asshole. He had his rule. Now he gets a street named after him and a state that speaks Russian and pays taxes to Athens.

Another map laid out like a hooker in a cheap motel room. North Africa. Bold lines for Libya. Deep green for Tunisia. Not colonies—provinces.

"I have signed the integration decree back in February as you all know," I said calmly. "Tripolitania and Cyrenaica are now Italy. As Italian as Palermo. Tunis, too."

Muttering. These cocksuckers opposed me. But what can they do about it? I did the diplomatic checkmate, not them. I took territory for Italy without firing a shot. They bent the knee once I reminded them. Suck my cock and say thank you master once you swallow me. God I just want to be done with all this.

Ciano frowned. "It will be hard integrating them as I said."

"Yes. But it will be done."

Roatta leaned forward. "Even the Berbers?"

Yes, even the fucking Berbers you waste of sperm. You dense motherfucker. Christ. The Arabs. The desert tribes who once spat on Roman graves. Now they'll carry Roman passports. They bleed for our flag. They marry our men. And if they don't, the sands will be colored red with blood. Not just the men, but the women, and the children too.

"Yes," I said gently. "All of them. No more subject peoples. Only Romans. They fight for us now. The French pigs in the camps still cling to their old maps. We'll expel them soon. But our new citizens will speak Arabic and Italian then dream in Latin. And one day pray towards Rome, not Mecca."

This is how you rule the Third World: you give them validation and a dream, then make those sheep believe you stand with them. Once the cold war starts, I'm not going to let the soviets take the monopoly on backing decolonization, anti-racism, and civil rights. God, fascist Malcolm X, fascist Nelson Mandela. I can't wait. No communism, no capitalism, Romanism. The true third way, too much negative connotations for the word fascism, no, Romanism was the future for Italy. I should start writing a manifesto. I knew what the original future held, I was re-writing it.

I stood again. The room stiffened.

"From Casablanca to Constantinople, Rome will rule. Rome is on the cusp of its rebirth. It will soon be a reality again. And if the world trembles at our march," I smiled faintly, "let them dance to our music."

Yurie Kokubu played in my head. I love you. From her 1990 album silent moon, an enjoyable album.

A happening to me, Suma saki, ni, koboreru.....epilogue

An epilogue? No, this wasn't going to be an epilogue. It was a dream, a dream of Rome baby.

Excerpt from Mussolini: The Rise and Reign of Il Duce by Christopher Hibbert (2008)

By the spring of 1941, the world stood on fire—but Italy, paradoxically, was beginning to thrive. While bombs fell on London and tanks were about to rumble through the Ukrainian steppe, Mussolini's neutral Italy emerged not as a bystander, but as an economic colossus in gestation. At the center of this unexpected revival was the quiet return of an old name: Alberto De Stefani.

Reinstated as Minister of Finance in September 1939, De Stefani—a classical liberal economist ousted in the 1920s—was not Mussolini's typical appointee. He was no fiery Fascist grandstander. Instead, he was a dry-eyed technician of markets, statistics, and supply curves. And he arrived in Rome with a singular mission: to untangle the web of inefficiencies, controls, and corporate bloat that had strangled the Italian economy since the onset of autarky.

De Stefani's reforms were sweeping. The wartime emergency was used not to entrench the state, but to liberate the market. Price controls on basic goods were abolished in early 1940, allowing farmers and producers to respond to demand rather than quotas. State-owned enterprises deemed non-essential were quietly privatized, particularly in textiles, food processing, and light manufacturing. The infamous Battaglia del Grano, once a nationalist obsession, was scrapped. Italy began importing Canadian wheat through Swiss intermediaries, with Mussolini's De Stefani's blessing.

Tax policy was overhauled to reward capital investment. Corporate taxes were slashed, particularly for firms that produced machinery, transport vehicles, or military supplies. A new "Strategic Investment Fund" offered state-backed loans for factory modernization and infrastructure development, with priority given to ports, railways, and oil refining. Labor laws were relaxed, giving firms more flexibility to hire and fire, but with increased wage protections for skilled workers—particularly engineers, machinists, and logisticians. De Stefani believed industrial labor, not peasant labor, was the soul of the modern empire.

Neutrality, far from being an economic anchor, became a windfall. Italy's ports—Trieste, Genoa, Naples—became Europe's arteries of wartime trade. German exports, bound for South America and the Middle East, flowed through Italian docks and were repackaged under neutral flags, often Greek or Turkish. For this privilege, Germany paid handsomely. Entire railway lines were nationalized solely for Axis goods, with tariffs negotiated by Mussolini himself. One Allied diplomat dubbed it the "Black Transit Gold"—Italy made billions in lira, marks, and Swiss francs.

Even the Allies traded, albeit discreetly. Through Turkish and Greek intermediaries, British and even Soviet agents purchased Italian chemicals, steel components, and machine tools. All neutral. All deniable. The Vatican, with its global financial web, played a silent but vital role in laundering transactions.

Perhaps most striking was how Mussolini balanced this economic revival with his military modernization, often walking a tightrope between rearmament and restraint. Where Hitler used conscription and forced labor, Mussolini relied on incentives. Military contracts were auctioned, not commanded, with competition encouraged among private firms. Fiat, Ansaldo, Breda—all were made to bid for government contracts under a new Ministry of Military Procurement, headed by the technocratic Italo Marchesi.

Rather than build weapons for show, De Stefani's team emphasized modular production and standardization. Army logistics officers worked directly with civilian factories to ensure compatibility. The new M13/40 tanks, for example, used interchangeable parts with Italian civilian tractors—a deliberate policy to simplify repair and reduce costs.

Rationing was avoided by importing food through neutral trade and leveraging Italy's new colonial resources. Libya's ports boomed with traffic from Syria and Somalia, and agricultural production in Tunisia—now an Italian province—was redirected to support both civilian and military needs. Italian settlers and Jewish immigrants alike were incentivized to farm, with generous subsidies and transport links.

Mussolini also pulled off a feat few had thought possible: mass integration without mass unrest. Arabs in Tunisia and Libya, granted Italian citizenship and military service eligibility, formed a new class of skilled laborers and colonial troops. Jewish settlers in Tripolitania, many from Germany and Poland, were granted tax breaks and autonomous schooling. The economy became a polyglot creature—Italian in rhetoric, but multinational in function.

The Italian Labor Front was transformed from a propaganda vehicle into a recruitment and training hub, establishing technical institutes in Naples, Palermo, and Benghazi. "Romanitas," Mussolini declared in a 1940 speech, "is not race—it is capacity."

By mid-1941, Italy's GDP had grown nearly 15% since 1939—astonishing in a time of global war. Unemployment in the north had fallen to its lowest level since the 1920s, and industrial output had increased by 22%. Inflation remained low, buffered by gold inflows and De Stefani's cautious monetary policy.

Critics in London and Washington remained skeptical. They saw Mussolini's maneuverings as cynical, opportunistic, or simply lucky. But within Italy, a different story emerged. Mussolini—by accident or instinct—had fused free market liberalism with a rationalized military-industrial state. Not as ideological purity, but as cold logic.

As Hibbert notes in his biography:

> "In these years, Mussolini ceased to be the caricature. He became something stranger. A man with the ambitions of Caesar, but the instincts of Rockefeller. He shouted less, calculated more. And while Europe burned, Il Duce quietly built a machine of state that could endure fire without becoming ash."

It was, in the words of one British economic observer in 1941, "the most unlikely miracle of the war."

April 12, 1941
The White House
Washington, D.C., United States

The door creaked open. I'd gotten off the boat yesterday. There they were, Roosevelt and Wallace. Two men with grim expressions. I couldn't care less. I had been to the court of kings and dictators, the embassies of Europe, and now here I was in the heart of it all, the land of Lincoln, my adopted homeland in my old life, the land of vast horizons and corporate greed. Man I missed modern DC, full of dive bars and good plugs if you knew where to look. This DC was old, stale, god I hated it. Nothing like a good pizza over at comet after an all day date walking around the museums. This city was a shell.

FDR, the so-called "man of the people." His tired, yet somehow still cocky voice filled the room. The wheelchair creaked as he maneuvered himself into position. Wallace stood behind him, an awkward, bony figure. His face looked like it had been made of clay that hadn't dried yet. Always so fidgety, like a mouse caught in a trap. God I wanted to throw them to the lions already

I smirked, unable to help myself as I fantasized about their bodies being ripped apart. You could smell their panic, thick as morning fog over the Potomac. But not me. No, no, I'd had worse. I'd stood in front of Hitler, Stalin—real killers who could make one word of command end lives. This? This was child's play. Pussies.

"Ah, Benito," Roosevelt greeted, with that typical warmth, probably thinking it disarmed me. "I see you've brought your documents. I'm sure they're... troubling."

Troubling? Oh, FDR, you fucking idiot. If you knew what I knew. It was perfect. A symphony of truth wrapped with deceit and paper, tucked inside lies, all carefully constructed to pull the rug from under your feet. And that's when the fun begins.

"I don't know how troubling, Mr. President," I said smoothly, leaning back in my chair, letting my hands rest on the polished wood. "But I believe you'll agree that the contents are...concerning."

I held his gaze, keeping a mask of civility. Inside, I was relishing the chaos this would bring. The way his mind would turn, ticking through the lies, the panic. I could hear "Indian Sunmer" by Miki Asakura playing softly in the back of my mind as I spoke—we're not even in the same world, FDR. He's below me, a crippled worm. I put my suitcase on the resolute desk and opened it, putting s stack of papers on the desk.

Wallace's eyes flickered over the papers once he grabbed them. His hands began shaking slightly after he skimmed over them for a good minute or two. He was trying to hide it, but it was obvious. There was a definite hum in the air, like when you know you've just crossed a line.

"These are... documents from your attaches in the SS and German Army?" Wallace asked, his voice wavering. He was playing it safe, but I could hear the doubt in his tone. These documents were meant to unnerve them, and they were doing their job well.

"Oh, yes," I answered casually, my voice dripping with a dangerous calm. "Some of them may be uncomfortable truths, but they are truths, nonetheless."

Roosevelt glanced at Wallace and he handed the papers over to him. I watched the slow twist of his expression as he read about the camps, the systematic slaughter, the genocidal machine already spinning in full force, all within the span of a few minutes, beautiful. He was too soft. That's the problem with American politics. Too many idealists, too many people who see the world through rose-tinted glasses. A shame, really.

"How long, Duce?" Roosevelt asked finally, his voice lower, almost… pained. "How long have you known about this?"

I tilted my head. "How long?" I repeated, savoring the word. "Not as long as you have, Mr. President. You've been hearing rumors for months. I'm sure you have your own informants. What, no reports on the train schedules? No one watching from the rooftops?"

I saw his expression tighten. I loved it. They always thought they were so above it all. A bit of pressure, and they crack like a rotten walnut. The pieces fall to the floor, and there they are, nothing but empty shells.

"I thought we had it bad with the Great Depression." Wallace muttered, almost to himself, but loud enough for me to hear. His voice still had that nervous pitch.

I turned my gaze to him. Wallace. I couldn't decide if I found him tragic or laughable. Maybe both. His face was too round, too soft. No one would ever follow a man like him into battle. I imagined him in a little hat, like some poor, wandering soul in a city pop music video, staring aimlessly at the neon lights as the world collapsed around him. My head ticked to the beat of Singing in the snow by Mikiko Noda.

Ohhh baby you're my baby

So happy Christmas tonight

Shining down free in your eyes hold me tightly in your sweet arms

Koibito tachi no

Yoru wa haji maru

"Such naivety," I said with a smile, "Mr. Wallace, you're one of the few people who could still speak of the world as if it were not already in ruins. A fine man, truly."

Roosevelt didn't take my bait. He was stewing in it, his eyes squinting through the haze of knowledge. It wasn't just the Jews. It was everything. The mess I was making in the Mediterranean. The way I was drawing lines in the sand—each one thicker, bolder. He understood now.

"I know you," I said softly, watching FDR's eyes narrow. "You think you're being clever. Playing the long game. But here's the thing, Mr. President—your 'long game' just became a short game. You can't stand by and do nothing, not after what you read about Japan."

FDR shifted uncomfortably. As he continued reading my reports. Japan, pearl harbor, Russia, Barbarossa I didn't have the exact dates but I knew Barbarossa was sometime in the summer and Pearl in December. A few false reports by my ambassadors in Japan and Germany, a few bribed naval and military officers leaking falsified documents. I could feel the pulse of tension rise. I had already played my cards, and now they were forced to make a choice. A crucial one.

"There's a front to open, Mr. President," I said. "On your side. And I will be waiting. I can handle the bulk of Europe so long as you open up a front or 2 in France. But I want something in return. Turkey, Mr. Roosevelt. The Balkans. The Mediterranean. We both know you can't have it all."

Roosevelt tried to steady himself, but I could see it in his eyes. He knew I was right. There was a limit to the power of the United States. A limit to what they could control, especially with the likes of me in play. My empire—my Roman Empire—was already marching forward.

"What's your price?" Roosevelt asked quietly.

"A recognition of my conquests," I said flatly, "A nod from your esteemed government. Spain's acquisitions in Morocco and Algeria. My claims in Turkey, North Africa and Syria. A little formality in exchange for total cooperation."

Wallace looked up suddenly, a flash of something like pity in his eyes. What did he think I was? A madman, or worse, a genius with a warped mind? Either way, he wasn't the one to decide. Neither was Roosevelt, really. Not in this moment.

"I will let you know," Roosevelt said after a long pause, shifting his weight. "We'll talk it over. But these… are dangerous moves, Duce. Dangerous."

"Ah, Mr. President," I said, tapping the desk with my fingers, "It's not dangerous, it's called gambling. And so far I'm winning. Hopefully you make the right decision. Germany has stopped giving me my Jews after all, there's millions of lives at stake." I gave him my smugest smiles. "Officially I'm only here to sign a trade agreement, tell someone over in the senate to come up with some false trade agreement. I'll sign it immediately if you want."

I stood up and left, the door shut behind me as I left. And inside, I allowed myself a quiet laugh.

I was on top.

-
Later that day
White house situation room

The clock ticked louder than it should have. Roosevelt hated that. It was the kind of noise that filled the silences when no one wanted to speak. Around the long oak table, his war cabinet sat in grave silence, papers spread before them like confessions. The air stank of ink, tobacco, and doubt.

Wallace sat stiffly to Roosevelt's right, his jaw clenched, the veins in his temples twitching every so often. He hadn't said a word since the briefing began, but his eyes were thunderclouds.

Stimson, Knox, Hull, Hopkins, and the Joint Chiefs—all here. All weighed down by the bomb Mussolini had dropped on them. Not just Pearl Harbor—though that alone would've shaken any man—but the camps. The machine of death running across Eastern Europe like a fever through a sick child.

Roosevelt leaned forward slowly, resting his elbows on the table. "We have to face facts, gentlemen," he said, his voice low, deliberate. "Mussolini has presented us with information no other source has confirmed. Japan will strike. Hitler is murdering millions. The Germans will turn on Stalin. This… this is our future, and it's coming whether we like it or not."

Wallace finally broke. "With respect, Mr. President," he said, the words almost biting, "that man is deranged. He's consolidating an empire, playing god with borders, cutting deals with tyrants. He's flooding the Middle East with armed Zionist fascists and he thinks he's Augustus reborn! We can't—we can't—ally with him."

A hush fell. Wallace didn't raise his voice often, but now it rang out like a shot in church.

Stimson, ever the pragmatist, cleared his throat. "He's unhinged, yes. But he's also not wrong. The Mediterranean's already lost to us. The Vichy holdouts are collapsing, and Mussolini's cleaned house across the region. He's got control. We have no leverage there."

Hull added, "And we will need a southern front once our hand is forced. Badly. He's offering troops. A navy. Bases across the Med. If we don't act soon, he could potentially hand that whole empire over to Stalin, and we'll be left playing catch-up in a Soviet-dominated postwar world."

Roosevelt steepled his fingers. He didn't want to do this. He hated Mussolini. The smugness, the needling sarcasm, the way his eyes glinted like a reptile's as he spoke. But the offer—damn it—the offer made sense.

Hopkins leaned in. "We don't have to like him, Franklin. We don't have to agree with his politics. But he'll bleed the Germans in the Balkans. He's already made Hitler paranoid. If Italy joins the war the moment we do, and opens a front from Italy into the Balkans, that's hundreds of thousands of German troops tied down. That buys time. Time we don't have otherwise."

Wallace looked sick. "And the Jews?" he said, bitterly. "He's using them as weapons. Settling them like pawns across North Africa and Palestine. He's turning survivors into tools for his own conquests."

FDR didn't answer for a long time. He stared at the tabletop, at a map of Europe hastily pinned under stacks of papers. His thumb tapped slowly. One beat. Then two.

"You think I don't know that?" he finally said. "You think I don't see the kind of man he is? He disgusts me, Henry. But if what he says about the camps is true—and my gut says it is—then time is running out for the people in them. And if he's right about Japan and Russia—God help us—we'll be at war within the year anyway."

He looked around the room. The weight of history pressed against the walls.

"Gentlemen," Roosevelt said, "we are not making an alliance. We are making a transaction. We acknowledge his conquests—formally, quietly—and in return, he throws the full weight of his war machine at the Germans the moment we join in."

"And the Middle East?" Wallace asked, bitterly.

"We don't touch it. Let him burn himself out there. The British won't like it, but they'll take the help. They need it."

Roosevelt straightened in his chair. "I'll write a letter to Churchill. A personal one. Nothing official until Japan Strikes. Until then, Mussolini gets what he wants—on paper only. If we win this war fast, if we drive straight to Berlin with his help, we may not need to honor it in full. But right now? Right now, we need the bastard."

Silence.

Then slow nods. Reluctant. Cold. But agreement nonetheless.

Wallace said nothing more. He only stared down at the papers, his hand trembling slightly as he lit a cigarette.

God forgive them.

-

April 15, 1941
War Rooms, Whitehall
London, United Kingdom

The lights flickered ever so slightly in the subterranean chambers beneath Whitehall. The air smelled of old stone and smoke. Outside, bombs hadn't fallen for days—but inside, another kind of shock detonated. A dispatch from Washington lay flat on the table before them, its contents read aloud just minutes ago.

No one spoke.

Churchill stood by the map wall, a fresh glass of scotch in his hand, a cigar in the other. He hadn't puffed it once. It hung there, smoke curling upward in slow, ghostly ribbons.

"So…" he muttered finally. "The Americans have made a pact with the devil."

No one laughed. Eden looked ashen. General Brooke had gone red in the face. Attlee sat frozen, fists clenched tight against his knees.

Churchill turned, slowly. His eyes were hard, glinting beneath the heavy bags of fatigue and fury. "I want no illusions in this room, gentlemen. We are now aligned—however temporarily—with a Mediterranean butcher who speaks of empire with the same casual fervor one orders a steak. Roosevelt is playing the long game. And he's playing it with a madman."

Eden spoke first. "With respect, Prime Minister… if it brings the Americans into the war—if it shortens the war—surely—"

"Don't." Churchill's voice cut like wire. "Don't you dare rationalize this as diplomacy. Mussolini is not Bismarck. He is not Metternich. He's a lunatic in love with marble statues and the sound of his own voice."

Brooke grumbled. "He's also holding the Suez Canal hostage. Half the Med. The horn of Africa. The Balkans. Hell, he's offering to crack Turkey in half with Stalin, and now he's got Jews in Palestine setting fire to British barracks and killing British boys. That's not diplomacy. That's a chessboard made of corpses."

Attlee finally spoke, quiet but clear. "We've done worse. Backed worse, even. And if Roosevelt believes Mussolini can help turn the tide…"

Churchill didn't respond at first. He paced—slowly, methodically, boots heavy against the stone floor. "Yes," he said at last. "We have done worse. But never while pretending it was anything but horror. And that's the difference. Roosevelt is still convincing himself this is politics. That this Italian devil can be used like a hammer and then discarded."

He turned back to the room. "But Mussolini is not a hammer. He is a fire. You use him, and you burn with him."

Silence.

General Ismay stepped forward, stiff and formal. "Operationally, we could gain. If Italy joins the war on our side—formally or otherwise—it opens the southern flank. Turkey becomes a battlefield, and the Germans must stretch themselves thinner across the Balkans. It would also tie down the German Army ."

Churchill grunted. "Yes. And perhaps he'll conjure elephants to cross the Alps again. If he follows through."

"He will," Eden muttered. "That man lives for betrayal. He is willing to betray Hitler. Now he wants to set himself up as the architect of a new order—one that doesn't end with a swastika, but a damn laurel crown."

Churchill sipped the scotch. Finally. It burned like truth.

"Then let it be known," he said, voice rising now with grim finality, "that Britain does not endorse this arrangement. We accept it. Under protest. Because the world is on fire, and beggars cannot be choosers. But let history remember who lit the match in the first place."

He turned to Eden.

"Draft a letter to Roosevelt. Vague. Reaffirm our commitment to cooperation with the United States. Say nothing of Mussolini. Nothing at all. The world will know soon enough. And when it does—when this deal is made public—pray God they remember who fought the Nazis from the beginning. Alone. Continue sending weapons to De Gaulle and anyone else in the Balkans willing to oppose this lunacy. Let the free french march through Iraq and into Syria. Send British troops and ships to assist the free french in capturing all remaining Vichy possessions across the world and have them resettle the french Mussolini and Franco are expelling from north Africa. If that knockoff Cesar wants his Mare Nostrum let him pay for it with blood."

He sat. Drained the glass. Lit the cigar at last.

"Gentlemen," he said, smoke billowing like prophecy, "we have made a pact with a devil in the hopes he might drag another one down with him. May he fall faster than we do."

April 28, 1941
Villa Torlonia
Rome, Italy

They arrived dressed like parodies of themselves—turbans too stiff, medals too shiny, those absurd little British-style jackets straining across their bellies. The emissaries from Baghdad, fresh off the boat, stinking of desperation and that sweet sweat of doomed men. Golden Square my ass. They looked like a fucking wedding band that got lost on the way to a funeral.

I sat in the garden, under a canopy of vines and bougainvillea. Spring in Rome was unbearable—too warm, too nostalgic. Like a postcard from a world that no longer existed. I sipped wine and watched them approach. Miki Matsubara's "Safari eyes" was playing somewhere in the back of my skull, looping again and again. Beautiful and false. Just like them. Unlike my precious Miki though I wanted to crucify these assholes for wasting my time.

They knelt. Actual kneeling. Christ. I almost burst out laughing. I looked down at them like Caligula, wondering how far I could push this before they broke. Maybe I should order them shot.

"We seek the protection of the Roman Empire," one of them said in stilted Italian, looking up with eyes too wide, too wet. "Iraq is ready to enter your sphere. The people are with you. We will rise against the British if you help us."

Oh yes, of course. Rise. Like dough, like vomit, like the price of crude. These men wanted protection, but they didn't understand what I was protecting. Me? I was protecting narrative. I was protecting the future. And the future didn't need a bunch of second-rate pan-Arabists roleplaying as Caesars in the fucking desert. Greater Syria and pan Arabism? I already backed one horse, this one was useless to me.

I took a long sip and let the silence stretch.

What they didn't know was that I was already planning a deal. Just yesterday, I'd requested to speak to the British ambassador through an intermediary. I told them about some intelligence I had regarding Iraq. In return? Once I revealed the existence of this little plot. They'd stop arming the Free French west of Raqqa. Leave Syria and Africa alone. Let Saadeh finish the job with Italian guns and gas. And let me and Franco finish shipping every one of those french jackasses back to West Africa.

The French settlers in Tunisia and Algeria were already eating sand in internment camps. Franco had Algeria now. Soon, Spain might get all of French West Africa, though I doubted it. That was just extra, when asking for 10 ask for 100 instead.

Me, I was clearing the map. Carving up the old world like a Roman banquet. And these Iraqi jackasses thought they could join in? Please.

I looked at them and smiled—benevolence stretched thin over contempt.

"Of course, I will help you," I said. "Italy aids its friends."

Inside, I was already composing the press release. Unfortunate news from Baghdad—four senior officers of the Golden Square and their families found dead in their homes. The British, acting on intelligence, preempted a rebellion. Blah blah blah. My fingerprints nowhere. My reward everywhere. God I was a monster, ordering people killed like texting an escort service and requesting their newest girl on a Friday night.

City pop bloomed again in my head—Gozen Go-ji no māmeido by Rajie this time. Fitting. That's what they were. Mermaids deep in the ocean while I had a spear gun and a deep dive suit. I'd toy with them like action figures then shoot them once I was done.

My empire was a mosaic, and they were just broken tiles.

They looked up—naïve, grateful, squinting against the Roman sun like stray dogs finally thrown a bone. I almost pitied them. Almost.

"I can provide you arms," I said, savoring each syllable like a line of poetry. "Trucks, rifles, uniforms. Chemical weapons. Italian engineers. We'll even repaint the planes so the British think they're your own. Yemen will offer advisors. Maybe even volunteers." I gave them a benevolent nod, like a king distributing bread to a starving crowd. "You will rise. Baghdad will be yours. You will strike the Empire where it hurts."

They lit up. The one in the front, the leader, I think—leaned forward with fever in his eyes. "Grazie, Duce! You are the only man in Europe who understands the East. You see our struggle. Allah sent you."

Allah sent me?

I smiled, nodding solemnly. No, little man, I thought. Allah didn't send me. I am Allah now.

"We will declare our loyalty in the broadcasts," another one chimed in. "We will swear allegiance to Rome and to the new order. Iraq will stand with you. With Italy."

I spread my arms. "Then go back. Prepare your uprising. Italy is with you. Soon the whole East will be with you. A plane will be arranged to bring you all back to Iraq once your preparations are done. Discreetly. Then, set Iraq on fire. Kill your oppressors."

They stood up, bowing again, rambling thanks in Italian, Arabic, and that ugly British Arabic the clerks in Basra picked up from Scottish missionaries. God scots. I hated them. Incomprehensible accent, like someone shoved their dick down their collective throats and told them to speak. I motioned for one of my aides, who stepped forward with a folder—logistics, drop points, names. All fake, of course. All designed to make the arabs feel like they'd won the lottery. Dumbasses.

Once they left the garden and I secured myself a spot deep in the 9th circle of hell. I poured myself another glass of wine, stared out over the garden, and started laughing. Quietly, at first. Then harder. Louder. Until my ribs hurt.

The fucking nerve. They actually believed it. They believed they'd be the start of some grand Arab renaissance under Roman wings. They didn't know I was soon going to be having dinner with the British ambassador, offering to sell them out in exchange for silence in Syria and a green light in Anatolia. So unexpected, so convenient.

I'd even written the script for their fall. British spies would conveniently have intelligence leaked from the inside. The authorities would crack down. The British would roll in and arrest them in the airport in Baghdad then quietly execute the lot, and hand me Syria on a silver plate. Fuck the free French, I was going to hang their leaders over Damascus square while their families watched.

The band was changing in my head now. Anri's "Remember Summer Days" hummed through my brain like the soundtrack to a war montage. Syria. Turkey. Constantinople. I could already smell the salt of the Bosphorus.

Hitori, aki o, umi no
Mitsumete ooooo mo idasu
Ano natsu no kage o sagashite

And Iraq? Iraq would burn just long enough to distract the world while I tore Asia Minor in two.

Later that day
Villa Torlonia
Rome, Italy

The British ambassador was precisely what I expected—an Oxford-educated corpse in a well-fitted suit. Pinched face, waxy hands, smelling faintly of brandy and tweed, like some forgotten drawing-room relic that had dragged itself off the set of a Merchant Ivory film to lecture me on "international norms."

He sat across from me on the veranda, legs crossed too tightly, feigning ease. His mustache twitched every time I sipped from my espresso. I wanted to reach across the table and tear it off with my teeth. Then blow his brains out. But I had other plans, and a suitcase full of evidence regarding the holocaust.

"My government," he began, "is gravely concerned about the recent developments in Iraq. There are whispers—Italian agents, promises made to a clique that openly threatens His Majesty's rule—"

I held up a hand, smiling like a Vatican priest pretending not to notice the young boy on his lap.

"My dear ambassador," I said, voice like warm milk. "Italy does not promise. Italy offers. And what we offer—order, vision, stability—is far preferable to what your precious Free French have been offering in Syria."

That shut him up. His jaw clenched. He reached for his cigarette case but thought better of it. I leaned in, elbows on the table.

"Let's not pretend, sir. We both know the game. You need the Suez and your way to India protected. I need Syria quiet for my plans in Turkey, and I need your little French chess pieces off the board. De Gaulle is a nuisance. A ghost pretending to be a general. He's trying to carve out a future from the ashes of a republic that no longer exists." I let the words hang there, then delivered the blade: "I want the french out of Syria. And I want the French gone from West Africa. All of it. Given to Spain. And I want no British intervention in Turkey once I send Greek boots down Thrace."

His eyes bulged. "That is preposterous! Absolutely untenable! You cannot possibly expect the Empire to—"

I cut him off with a laugh. "Oh, but I do. In exchange, we give you the Golden Square. They'll be conveniently flying off to Iraq tonight, I just met with them before you arrived actually. You'll keep the gulf of Persia safe, and your soldiers won't need to bleed across Iraq at the hands of the Golden Square. And maybe—maybe—Italy won't tell the world how Britain stood by and kept the Jews out while the Wehrmacht built crematoriums from Poland to the Baltic." I handed over the files I had, he took them and began skimming them.

He went pale after a minute. There it was. The subtle twitch. The panic behind his temples. God I loved it.

I leaned back again, savoring the silence like a final chord in a symphony. "I'm pretty open to negotiations however. But Turkey will be given to my allies. You need an exit. And I need Syria—before the summer ends."

He cleared his throat. "And if London refuses?"

I smiled, teeth sharp and white. "Then I tell the Golden square to burn every oil well in Iraq and Iran. And I let the Falag off their leash. Chemical weapons, bombs, rifles, machine guns, thousands of angry Jews hungry for British blood being smuggled into Jaffa after I show to the world Germany's atrocities while you sat back and closed the doors to Israel. I got hundreds of copies of those files you just read. How would you like it if I leaked them to every newspaper around the world. It's one thing for your empire to kill a bunch of African and indian farmers on the other side of the world. But Jews? Europeans? Men, women, children in camps, mass murder? Genocide? The name of the British empire would be dragged through the mud."

That silenced him. Good. The song in my head shifted again—Mariya Takeuchi's Plastic Love. So smooth, so fake, so beautiful. Just like diplomacy.

"Think it over, Ambassador," I said, rising. "This is a moment. A historical moment. Either you play your part or history plays it for you."

He stood, nodded stiffly, and walked out beneath the swaying pines. I grabbed the bottle of wine on the table we'd sat on then poured myself a drink, watching the smoke curl like a map of the future. The crescent was almost mine. The cross had already bent. And soon, oh so soon, the sickle would be bleeding Turkish soil.

-

Transcript: War Cabinet Meeting – British Government
Date: April 30, 1941
Location: Cabinet War Rooms, London
Subject: Italian Diplomatic Gambit and the Golden Square Crisis

Attendees:

Prime Minister Winston Churchill

Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden

Lord Halifax (Ambassador to the United States, attending remotely)

General Sir John Dill (Chief of the Imperial General Staff)
Lord Beaverbrook

Sir Alexander Cadogan (Permanent Under-Secretary, Foreign Office)

Duff Cooper (Minister of Information)

Archibald Wavell (via secure line from Cairo)

---

[Transcript begins]

Churchill (lighting cigar):
So. Benito fancies himself Augustus now. Neutral, yet maneuvering like Metternich on amphetamines. Offers us the Golden Square on a silver platter while carving up the Levant behind our backs. Syria, Anatolia, Constantinople—he wants it all wrapped in a Roman bow.

Eden:
The reports are clear, Prime Minister. The Italians received the Iraqi conspirators in Rome. Promised them arms and support. And now—suddenly—a dossier arrives in our hands, thanks to Il Duce's "generosity."

Churchill (dryly):
Yes, how charitable. Like Jack the Ripper offering to help clean the streets.

Dill:
The military value of his offer can't be ignored, sir. If we can crush the Golden Square before their uprising takes shape, we save lives. Especially if they were planning to sabotage our oil interests.

Beaverbrook:
At what cost, though? He wants the Free French gone from Syria. That's a hard sell to de Gaulle. And giving Franco West Africa? The Spaniards haven't even lifted a finger against Hitler.

Cadogan:
And he wants a free hand in Turkey. Greek boots in Thrace and the Turkish Aegean islands. Constantinople gifted like a bauble at a Roman orgy. It's madness.

Churchill (gruff):
Madness is a man with leverage. And Mussolini has it. We must ask ourselves: is Syria worth Baghdad? Is West Africa worth the Persian Gulf?

Halifax (from Washington):
The Americans will see this as weakness, Winston. You make a deal with fascists, hand over French colonies, and you lose the moral argument in Washington. Roosevelt is watching. Carefully.

Churchill:
Roosevelt is always watching, and never acting. He may be stirring now, but we'll drown in blood before a single American rifle lands in Bordeaux.

Wavell (crackling through line):
If I may, gentlemen—on the ground, this deal has appeal. The Golden Square is a real threat. Iraqi troops are well-armed. If they seize British assets, we'll have to launch a full-scale intervention through Palestine. And we don't have the men.

Eden:
So we reward Mussolini for playing arsonist and fireman in the same breath? He fuels a rebellion then sells us the fire escape.

Churchill:
That's diplomacy, Anthony. A good liar needs an honest man to believe him. Mussolini knows we're desperate to avoid another front. If he's truly neutral, and truly willing to screw Hitler while we watch, then he becomes...useful. Obnoxiously, gloriously useful.

Dill:
But Constantinople?

Churchill:
Let the Greeks have it. Let them walk through the Hagia Sophia and raise the cross again—Mussolini gives them the illusion of empire, and we give the Turks a choice: ally with us or be trampled by Roman jackboots. We might just crack Ankara that way.

Beaverbrook:
And the Jews?

Cadogan:
Mussolini threatened to leak intelligence about German Atrocities. He's not bluffing. The files are detailed, horrifying—and if publicized, they could shatter whatever goodwill the world has towards Britain.

Eden (sharply):
So we cave? Let Franco gorge on colonies? Let Italy dictate terms?

Churchill (stands):
No. We cannot let Franco have Africa. Let Italy take Syria and Constantinople, but Anatolia and West Africa are off limits. This war is not about purity—it is about survival. Mussolini thinks he's playing Rome. Let him. When the dust settles, we'll see who rules the ruins. Until then—we play the game.

[Pause]

Churchill (finishing his cigar):
Tell the ambassador to signal back to Rome:

We accept the information. We deny all complicity.
We'll let the Free French stew in their pride.
Franco gets nothing in West Africa.
And if Mussolini wants Thrace, Constantinople and Syria—he can have it.
But Anatolia? No. We draw the line there.
Let the crescent burn if it must. But Anatolia? That's still in play.

We must however expect Mussolini to find a way to hoodwink us again. Send advisors, weapons, special forces and free french troops to Turkey. If he wants Thrace he'll have to pay for it in blood.

[Transcript ends]

Excerpt from Mussolini: The Rise and Reign of Il Duce by Christopher Hibbert (2008)

On the eve of Barbarossa, Benito Mussolini's grip on Italy had never appeared stronger. He stood atop a wave of nationalistic fervor, his image omnipresent in every city square and rural hamlet. His speeches—now sharpened, confident, and often oddly prescient—galvanized the masses, while victories in the Balkans and diplomatic gamesmanship with both Axis and Allied powers earned him an almost mythic reputation among Italians.

The average Italian viewed Mussolini not only as the Duce, but as a kind of political oracle—a man who had weathered the chaos of the 1930s and emerged in 1940 with uncanny clarity. He had, after all, kept Italy out of the Second World War's initial bloodbath, positioned the country as a growing Mediterranean power, and outmaneuvered Hitler and Churchill time and time again without fully alienating Berlin or London.

Newspapers dubbed him "Il Redentore d'Italia"—the Redeemer of Italy. Citizens spoke of "the Duce's wisdom" with reverence. Even among skeptics, there was a reluctant awe. Some believed Mussolini had grown wiser with age; others whispered he'd experienced a divine epiphany. Nobody questioned his authority. Why would they? Food was returning to the markets, the economy was stabilizing, and for the first time in almost a decade, Italy was winning.

Within Mussolini's inner circle, however, admiration was laced with deepening unease.

His closest advisors—men like Count Ciano, Marshal Graziani, and General Roatta—had begun noticing disconcerting shifts in his demeanor. He rambled at times, speaking of places and events that didn't exist, making vulgar references no one understood. During a Council session in early 1941, Mussolini referred to Stalin as "a cocksucker with a fetish for political purges and prison camps," and offhandedly muttered "America is gonna clean this bullshit up in the 80s," before returning to a tactical discussion on Yugoslavia. None dared question him.

To the world, he was lucid. Behind closed doors, he was something else entirely.

Ciano noted in his diary in early 1942:

"He is no longer the man whose daughter I married. He spoke of America's entry into the war as if it was written in stone. Predicts Hitler's mistakes before they occur. He talks to himself in the quiet—singing foreign songs in Japanese about love, and midnight, all by some singer named Tomoko Aran. He may be mad. But he is winning. God help him when he starts losing because we wont."

Graziani privately confided that Mussolini was "either guided by God or plagued by spirits." He suspected neither. His instincts whispered something darker: that Mussolini had become possessed by a vision of a world no one else could see.

And yet, for all his eccentricity, the Duce was always three steps ahead. He warned the Council about Hitler's imminent invasion of the Soviet Union months before Barbarossa began. He predicted the Japanese assault on American interests long before Pearl Harbor. He secured deals with Spain, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Greece with surgical precision. Even his odd requests—like demanding dossiers on Jewish migration patterns in Eastern Europe or discreetly acquiring German troop movements through Swiss banking intermediaries—produced tangible results.

The consensus among the Grand Council of Fascism was clear: he may be mad, but he is our madman. And as long as he kept delivering victories, no one would dare remove him.

Mussolini, for his part, gave them just enough normalcy to believe he was still somewhat lucid. A slight smirk here, a thundering speech there, a calculated silence in a key moment. He played the Duce like an actor reciting a familiar script, all while plotting schemes his contemporaries couldn't begin to imagine.

They followed him—into war, into peace, into dreams they couldn't yet comprehend.

They would follow him until his voluntary resignation.

May 1, 1941
Palazzo Venezia
Rome, Italy

Night had fallen over Rome. I'd just finished dinner after making love to my mistress, now I was sprawled out on the couch like some decadent prince of a dying empire. May—spring in full bloom. The war had settled into another uneasy lull since France fell. Britain still fought, but the Germans had stopped trying to destroy the RAF and were now playing with firebombs like angry children. The Blitz. Idiots. They couldn't even bomb strategically.

And me? I was in the middle of it all. Playing both sides, milking the chaos for concessions and influence like some Faustian court jester. September was four months away. That would mark two years of this circus. This charade. I shook my head, exhausted.

If the accident hadn't happened—if I hadn't woken up in the body of Benito fucking Mussolini—I'd be in a very different place. My Peace Corps service would be over. I'd be back home, probably planning a wedding with Sofie. I hummed Living Together by Miki Asakura under my breath. Her favorite. She introduced me to city pop. Elegant, catchy, bittersweet. Like her.

God, I missed her.

Every time I hummed a tune, I felt like I was howling into the void. My friends, my family—her, especially her—all gone. Reduced to memories and melodies. I closed my eyes and imagined us, Sofie and I, laughing on our old couch with her music playing in the background. It was the only piece of that world I still had. Everything else had slipped through my fingers like ash.

I had no one now. Just sycophants. Hollow-eyed bureaucrats, mistresses with perfect smiles and asses, family that wasn't mine. Automatons. They approached me like children begging a god: "What do we do, Duce?" Idiots. And when I proposed something reasonable, something sane, they'd tilt their heads and whisper, "What do you mean, Duce? Are you mad?" If not that, it was always, "Per favore, more money! More this, more that, per favore!"

No one ever asked, How are you doing, Duce?

I wanted to scream. To cry. To rip the weight from my chest and hurl it into the Tiber. But there was no one to talk to, no one who would understand. Over Fifty million Italians depended on me, not to mention the colonial populations. Then there were the Jews—the million and a half I had saved from death, the hundreds who crossed the borders every day under false names and forged papers. A secret lifeline. One I maintained in silence.

I had long stopped believing I'd ever get back.

And then there was the war machine. The generals. The council. The specter of Russia looming on the horizon. Barbarossa. I didn't know the exact date—but I knew what was coming. Millions. Millions would die. And I had to stop it. How could I stand by and let history burn again?

But still... I was a monster.

The Balkans. North Africa. Syria. Tunisia.

Millions of Frenchmen expelled and shoved into camps. I was no better than Hitler. The Serbs—persecuted, killed, forcibly converted by that butcher Pavelic. I stopped him. But it was too late. The damage had been done. Tens of thousands were dead because of me.

In Syria, I had set up an authoritarian puppet regime. The French were expelled, tossed into desert holding camps like yesterday's trash. Was it genius? Maybe. But it was immoral genius. Tunisia and Libya—given rights, yes, eventually, but only after I'd threatened genocide to force the populace into line. We killed their activists in secret. Cloak and dagger. No death squads. No massacres. Yet. God help me, I hoped there would never be.

I was alone.

I found myself humming Jasumin wa Kanashii Kaori by Wink. Soft. Haunting. It echoed in my head like wind through an empty cathedral. I leaned back into the couch, eyes glazed over, picturing Sofie's face. Her smile. Her voice. God, I couldn't breathe without her. Couldn't exist without her. I wanted to hold her close and never let go.

Why? Why was I thrown into this? My family, my friends... why me?

Tears rolled down my cheeks. Useless, silent tears. But it was something. At least I could still cry.

A knock at the door.

I looked toward it, my face wet and drawn. Rage boiled beneath the grief. I had told them specifically—no interruptions.

"I should have the guards executed," I muttered under my breath.

Then louder:
"Tell whoever it is to FUCK OFF!"

A second knock.

The nerve.

I jolted up from the couch, wiping my face with a silk handkerchief I didn't remember grabbing. My tears had soaked it, mascara-like shadows blotched across the weave. I wasn't wearing any makeup. I felt like I should've been.

A third knock. Then the unmistakable creak of the heavy oak doors opening.

"Duce," came a voice. Nervous. Too meek to be Badoglio, not oily enough to be Ciano. "We've received word… Prime Minister Metaxas of Greece is dead."

Silence.

My left eye twitched.

Then came the scream. "SON OF A BITCH!"

The glass on the coffee table shook. I flung the empty wine decanter against the wall—it exploded into a dozen glittering shards like a disco ball ripped from the ceiling and punished for daring to sparkle. My breath was ragged. Metaxas. The one goddamn stabilizing thing in that syphilitic Balkan ulcer. Dead. And now I had to go there. I had to pick up the pieces. I had to deal with every limp-dicked general, every corrupt colonel, every Greek Prince who thought Rome was the fucking Whore of Babylon.

"Oh sure, now I have to go to Greece. Just what I need! Another puppet state to prop up, another corpse to mourn, another fucking civilization to drag kicking and screaming into the 20th century like some political Orpheus doomed to fail!"

The aide flinched as I stormed toward the hallway, shirt unbuttoned halfway down, hair messily parted like a washed-up idol. I looked like hell. I felt like hell.

"Do you know what I was doing, boy?" I spat at him as I passed. "I was mourning. Mourning the only woman who's ever loved me. Do you know Living Together by Miki Asakura? Of course you don't. Of course you fucking don't. You're Italian. You think Pagliacci is deep."

I paced into the hallway, past the busts of Caesar and Augustus, glaring at them as if they too judged me.

"You know what Japan has that we don't? Soul. Funky basslines. Synthetic melancholy. Emotion. Yasuha. Anri. Tomoko Aran. These women—goddesses—they understood the pain of drifting through neon nights and sterile relationships. They wrote music for people like me. For ghosts in their own flesh."

I staggered into the situation room. Maps. Reports. Lives. All neatly stacked in manila folders as if this were an office, not the staging ground for crimes against humanity.

And then I stopped.

I stared at the Balkans.

That cursed peninsula. That black hole of ancient grudges and bad poetry.

I sank into my chair, face buried in my hands.

"I never wanted this," I whispered. "I wanted to teach ESL to Rwandan kids. I wanted to have a dog. I wanted to die forgotten. Instead I'm Benito fucking Mussolini, and I know exactly when the world will burn."

Silence. Then the low hum of the ventilation. The buzz of electric light.

I exhaled. A whisper.

"Mayonaka no Joke. Takako Mamiya. 1983."

I began to hum it—off key, broken, the way someone dying might sing a lullaby to themselves.

Then I laughed. A strange, cold laugh.

"Maybe I'll burn Greece to the ground. Make it a monument to failure. Or maybe I'll save it. Crown a new king. Or maybe I'll just disappear. Walk into the Aegean and never come back. Nah. I gotta restore Byzantium, fuck the Turks."

I glanced at the aide. His mouth hung open.

"Close your mouth," I hissed. "You look like you're waiting for my cock."

He closed it.

I slumped back.

"I want Sofie," I said, not to him, not to anyone. "I want my music. I want my family. I want modernity. I want out."

Another silence.

Then I stood, composed myself. Dusted off the black shirt. Straightened the sash.

"Get the plane ready. Athens awaits."

I smiled.

"Maybe I'll kill the entire royal family."

May 1, 1941
Quirinal Palace
Rome, Italy

The king sat still beneath the gilded ceiling, surrounded by the stony gazes of his forebears—Margherita, Umberto, Charles Albert—all peering down in oil and canvas, relics of a prouder age. A thin trail of cigar smoke curled above his head, vanishing into the chandeliers like the last breath of a dying monarchy.

King Victor Emmanuel III exhaled and placed the half-smoked cigar in the crystal tray before him. His fingers, gloved in white, trembled ever so slightly as he reached for his brandy. His advisors stood at a respectful distance. None of them sat. Not tonight.

"So," the king began, "he has left for Greece."

The words hung heavy. No one dared respond at first.

General Pietro Badoglio cleared his throat. "Yes, Your Majesty. The Duce departed by plane from Ciampino at 2200 hours. He insisted on leading the mission to stabilize the Greek government personally."

"Personally," the king repeated, voice flat. "Of course he did."

He leaned back and stared at the painted ceiling for a long moment, as if hoping for divine revelation. None came.

"Is he mad?" the king asked suddenly.

A silence fell, deeper than the first. The men around him exchanged quick glances, like nervous schoolboys called to recite Latin.

Marshal Enrico Caviglia spoke at last. "Your Majesty, I don't believe we can call him mad… perhaps erratic. Driven. He believes he's destined for something beyond mere politics."

"Beyond politics?" the king scoffed, eyes narrowing. "He speaks in riddles. Sings foreign songs under his breath. Refers to events that haven't happened yet. I watched him sketch a map of the Middle East on a napkin at dinner last week. Said something about a 'new middle east under Roman guidance.'" He drained the glass. "He's building a myth. And I fear he believes it."

Count Galeazzo Ciano, pale and fidgeting, added nervously, "But he's popular, Sire. With the army, the workers, the southern peasants. They see him as a man of destiny. A savior. You saw the crowds after Tunisia. After Syria. No one can deny his effectiveness."

"Yes, I saw," the king said bitterly. "Thousands of fools cheering a man who dresses like Caesar and speaks like a messiah. And I, the king of Italy—of Rome—reduced to a footnote in my own kingdom."

Badoglio shifted uncomfortably. "We could… persuade him to delegate more authority. There are ways—"

"No," the king snapped, cutting him off. "You and I both know that won't work. He knows his power. He feeds on crisis, on movement. He's always ahead of us. And if we tried—if we moved against him now…"

He paused. The thought didn't need finishing.

Ciano spoke again, voice lower. "It would tear the country apart."

"Worse," the king said. "It would make him a martyr. And my family would end up like the Romanov's." The thought of that made him shiver.

He stood slowly and walked toward the tall window. The lights of Rome shimmered below. A city ancient and aching, dragged into modernity by sheer will and madness.

"I am the king," he said, as if reminding himself. "But he is the empire."

None corrected him.

"He's building something," the king murmured, almost to himself. "A dream. Or a nightmare. But whatever it is, we are trapped inside it."

He turned back to his council. "Watch him closely. Indulge him, flatter him if you must. But do not trust him. And if there comes a moment—if—when the people turn…"

He left the rest unspoken.

Outside, the bells of the city chimed the hour.

Inside, the air thickened with unease.

May 2, 1941
Airport outside Athens
Greece

The flight was turbulent. Appropriate, I thought. The skies mirrored my mind—angry, uncertain, blue-veined with lightning. I stared out the window at the approaching sprawl of Athens, its hills like the folded robes of some sleeping titan. Byzantium, reborn in the wrong country.

I hummed "Mayonaka no Door" under my breath, eyes unfocused. The chords throbbed in my skull like a phantom limb. I could still see her dancing—Sofie—bathed in warm apartment light, hips swaying like an idol in a Shōwa-era lounge. I had watched her move the way Theodora might've moved through the Great Palace—majestic, soft, dangerous.

The plane landed with a thud that jolted me back to hell.

I disembarked with a scowl, the tarmac shimmering under the sun like the Aegean itself had spilled onto the ground. Waiting for me stood Theodoros Pangalos, squat, stiff, surrounded by a half-ring of Venizelist officers, their faces unreadable but their eyes clinging to mine like supplicants to an angry saint.

He saluted. I didn't return it.

"Duce," he said in poor french with that gravel voice I remembered from '39. "We are honored—"

"Enough," I said, brushing past him. "Tell me what that fucker Koryzis is doing."

Pangalos exchanged glances with one of his men before falling into step beside me. "Prime Minister Koryzis is... weak. The King is steering the ship. There is talk the war with Turkey might be—postponed."

I stopped cold. The heat bit through my uniform. "Postponed?"

"Yes, Duce. They're citing British pressure."

My laugh came out hollow. "The British? The British?! They couldn't conquer a fruit stall in France without American dollars and Indian blood. They're finished. They've been finished since Dunkirk and you people are still worried about British pressure?"

I turned, eyes boring into him. "Get your men. Quietly. If that little monarchist shit doesn't agree to our terms, we will ensure Greece finds itself... unburdened by what has been."

Pangalos nodded, lips curling upward in the slightest hint of anticipation. I saw it in his eyes—he'd been waiting for this.

Tatoi Palace
Later that afternoon

The heat inside the palace clung to the furniture like sweat to skin. I stood before King George II, a thin man with watery eyes, and Alexandros Koryzis, who looked like he wanted to disappear into his shoes.

I didn't sit. They did.

"You both understand why I'm here," I began in French, pacing slowly before them like a lion in a butcher's shop. "Metaxas made promises. He understood the path forward. He knew the Balkans had to be stabilized, united, under Italian guidance. And now I hear rumors—British influence, hesitations, cowardice."

George II's lips pressed into a thin line. "We do not wish to provoke London—"

"They don't matter!" I thundered. The palace shook with my voice. Paintings rattled in their frames as far as I could tell. "They are a dying empire, held together by gin, arrogance, and cricket! They are nothing! Byzantium didn't fear the Franks. They spat at them and built domes that touched the sky!"

Koryzis coughed meekly. "Perhaps a... diplomatic approach—"

"Diplomacy is the tool of cowards without armies," I snapped. "And you, Prime Minister, have neither the spine nor the soldiers to use either."

Silence.

Inside, I was already planning the end of this monarchy. God I wanted to kill this cocksucker. One chance, one chance or he was out. The King's fingers trembled slightly as he reached for his glass. I watched it. Memorized it. Pathetic. Patrician cowardice dressed up in bloodlines and tailored suits. "We will consider it."

I turned without a word and left them in their silence. I was done.

The shadows had lengthened like spears from the past. I met Pangalos near the palace gates.

"Do it."

That's all I said.

He saluted. This time, I returned it.

Italian Embassy, Athens
An hour later

I poured myself a brandy and stepped out onto the balcony as the first of the tanks rolled down the avenue, their rumble low and steady like thunder from the underworld. Greek soldiers stood aside or joined in. Pangalo's boys were precise. Professional. Not a single shot fired—just a quiet coup, orchestrated with the tempo of Mikiko Noda's "Heaven in Heaven'" playing in my mind.

City pop and the fall of a monarchy. God, what a world.

I heard shouting in the courtyard below about an hour later. Then came the King bloodied and bruised, his family in tow—pale, confused, clutching luggage like refugees. They were ushered in at bayonet-point.

I descended the stairs slowly, savoring the moment. The King looked at me with wounded dignity. I could've laughed.

"You'll be taken to Rome," I said, voice cold. "You'll be safe, of course. Comfortable. But Greece will no longer be ruled by cowardice and colonial puppets. Byzantium is returning. And we don't need kings."

He opened his mouth, but I was already turning away.

"Take them."

The armored cars growled back to life. Pangalos stood at my side, silent, reverent.

"You really are going through with it," he muttered.

I nodded. "No half-measures. No games."

Athens glittered beneath the stars like a chalice filled with fire.

My mind shifted. "Indian Summer" by Miki Asakura began to play. The beat pulsed through the floor, melodic and sad. I thought of Sofie. Her voice. Her laughter. That purple jacket with white stripes and her ponytails the day we met in high school long ago. Her ghost, watching me dismantle nations to the sound of her music. I teared up a little and stopped myself. I wondered what she'd think? She always did say I could either be really kind or really cruel. Lately I was on a really cruel streak. God. I would kill every man, woman, and child in Athens to hold her tightly for even a minute.

Was I building a better world? Or simply dragging Byzantium back to life in my own image? Fuck it who cares.

I didn't know. But I couldn't stop.

Not now.

Not when the night smelled like destiny.

A few minutes later the last of the royal motorcade had disappeared into the dark. Their destination was a villa outside Rome—sumptuous enough for dignity, but guarded like a prison. Let them rot in marble. Let them drink from gold and feel the iron just beneath it. I didn't care. They were done. Finished. History would flatten them like wax seals pressed underfoot.

I leaned against a railing on the second floor, cup of wine in my hands and the alcohol in my mouth. My throat filled with alcohol and grief and triumph.

Behind me, boots clicked.

"Pangalos," I said without turning.

"Duce."

He stepped beside me, his uniform now heavier with implication. The epaulettes glinted in the moonlight. Below us, Athens stirred nervously—confused but not panicked. The Greeks were used to coups. They expected betrayal the way the British expected rain.

"She's beautiful, isn't she?" I said. "Athens. A corpse dressed in marble. We're going to make her sing again."

Pangalos didn't reply.

I took a long breath, exhaled. "The war will happen."

His head turned. "Even without the King?"

"Especially without the King," I snapped. "Metaxas understood. We can't wait for Turkey to arm itself or for the British to prop them up. Strike first. Fast. Brutal. Historical. Once Germany attacks Russia it's go time."

He nodded slowly, but his brow furrowed.

"I'm giving you Greece," I said, pivoting toward him. "Not as a province. As your kingdom, if you want it. Call it a republic, call it a directorate, call it Pangalosia for all I care. You run it. You cleanse it."

Pangalos stiffened. "What do you mean by cleanse, Duce?"

I leaned in, voice low. "You know exactly what I mean. Every royalist who lifts a finger and their families too if you have to. Every British agent. Every liberal newspaper editor. Every Bouboulina-descended aristocrat who whispers the word 'restoration' over their ouzo. Kill them. Quietly if possible. Loudly if necessary."

He looked down, jaw clenched. "And the army?"

"Will be yours. We'll supply you with everything—artillery, chemical weapons, armored cars, modern radios. Whatever you need to strike Constantinople. Rome will approve your military budget without limit and send you support." I took a deep breath. "But only if you follow through. No half-measures. No mercy to our enemies."

He turned to face me fully. "And if I fail?"

I smiled. "Then I'll come back, hang you from the Acropolis, and give Athens to someone hungrier."

Silence.

Then he saluted. "Understood."

I returned it.

Later That Night
I watched from the embassy rooftop as trucks rumbled across Athens, commandeering barracks, detaining officers loyal to the old regime. Somewhere near Syntagma Square, I heard gunfire. Short bursts. Surgical.

I had given the order. I didn't care about the names or lives anymore. I had read enough Byzantine court histories to know—power came not from loyalty, but fear. And now, fear wore a Venizelist uniform.

I poured myself another drink. This one, something Greek. Brandy, maybe. I didn't know. I didn't ask. It burned beautifully.

I took a deep breath.

Dance in the memories by Meiko Nakahara drifted through my mind.

I just dance in the sweet memories

I closed my eyes. The song wasn't just sound—it was memory. Summer nights, hot ramen, Sofie's laughter under blinking restaurant lights. Her favorite. Always her favorite. God I missed her.

Beneath the music, I imagined a new empire being born—not through conquest, but orchestration. Like a producer shaping a perfect track: fade in the artillery, cue the speeches, drop the hammer.

History would dance to my beat. Whether it liked the tune or not.

Tomorrow, I would meet with the press. Declare Greece liberated from monarchy. A provisional directorate. Elections in the future. Lies. Necessary ones.

But tonight... tonight I was a god of broken records and burning thrones. And Greece?

Greece was just another note in my new symphony.

-

May 3, 1941
Quirinal Palace
Rome, Italy

King Victor Emmanuel III sat in his private study, surrounded by busts of monarchs who had somehow held their thrones longer than he would. He held the telegram with both hands, eyes squinting beneath his thick-rimmed glasses. The message from Athens was clear: The Greek monarchy had been forcibly dissolved by General Pangalos with full Italian logistical and political support. The Greek royal family had been taken—taken—to Rome and placed under heavy guard by Mussolini's personal security.


"Like criminals…" the King muttered. "They were royalty…"

He glanced up. Count Pietro d'Acquarone, his Minister of the Royal Household, stood nearby, grave and awkward. The room felt thick with smoke and history and cowardice.

Victor Emmanuel slammed the telegram on his desk, his voice cracking:
"Does he think he's Augustus now? Does he think he can simply abolish kings like a man sweeping crumbs from a table?"

D'Acquarone shifted nervously. "Your Majesty… the Duce claims it was necessary. That the stability of the Balkans required a swift transition. The Greek court was—how did he phrase it—a British ulcer in the Roman gut."


"A British ulcer?" the King spat. "What am I then? A decoration in his Roman carnival?" He stood up, trembling with impotent fury. "I am the King of Italy. Emperor of Ethiopia. Protector of Albania. Of Croatia. I should have been consulted before a European dynasty was decapitated!"

D'Acquarone opened his mouth, then wisely closed it.

Victor Emmanuel rubbed his temples. "He didn't even warn me. Not a word. He drags King George's children and his family through the streets like loot. As if they were taken from a Turkish seraglio. And now we have to house them. Feed them. Play host to exiled monarchs like we're the damned Holy Roman Empire!"

He slumped back into his chair, breath shallow. His age showed in moments like these. Small. Fragile. Italy's king in title, Mussolini's prisoner in practice.

"Does he even remember that I am his sovereign?" he whispered, more to himself than anyone else. "That I gave him the keys to Rome in 1922? That I made him?"

No answer came. Only the faint creak of leather and the distant, chilling sound of church bells echoing over the Eternal City.

After a long silence, Victor Emmanuel finally spoke, voice low and bitter:

"Send him a message. Congratulate him on the success of the Greek transition. Praise his 'vision.' Thank him for ensuring Mediterranean stability."

D'Acquarone blinked. "Your Majesty?"

"And then…" Victor Emmanuel sipped his tea, hands steady now with resignation, "send word to the Vatican. I want to know if exile to London is still an option… discreetly."

He stared out the window toward the hills.

"Rome is no place for kings anymore."

-

May 5, 1941
Rome, Italy

I had just stepped off the plane. A sleek Fiat G.12, polished like obsidian and humming like a prayer. Athens was behind me, and so was the fire I'd lit there. Pangalos had taken the reins like a warhorse on morphine—erratic, frothing, brutal, perfect. Royalists rounded up. Judges purged. The press cowed like street cats during a thunderstorm. A temporary madness, I told myself. A necessary purge. The rebirth of order from chaos.

The air in Rome smelled like jasmine and old stone. Spring clung to the city like a ghost that refused to leave. I walked into the Palazzo Venezia, fingers absently tugging at the collar of my black silk shirt. No tie. I never wore one anymore. Ties were for bankers and corpses.

I was halfway to the grand staircase when Bianchi, one of my OVRA men, caught me. Pale, sweating, hollow-eyed like a mole that had seen the sun for the first time.

"Duce… urgent intelligence. From the Quirinal."

I raised an eyebrow, waved him into my office. He followed like a hound.

Once the door closed behind us, he opened his folder with trembling hands.

"The king… he's made inquiries to the British. Via the Vatican. He intends to send the Greek royal family to London."

My heart stopped.

London.

I stood in silence, letting the words settle. I could hear a clock ticking. It was probably imagined. My brain always added drama like that. Then—without a word—I crossed the room and poured myself a glass of limoncello. I downed it in one go, the sweetness clinging to my teeth like guilt.

London.

A hostage transfer.

Did the little man even realize what he was doing?

"I'll handle it," I muttered.

And I did. I got a car and ordered it to go to the Kings palace. I went to the King's chambers like a volcano dressed in linen.

No guards. I had given the order years ago that I was never to be stopped at the Quirinal. A courtesy between monsters.

I found him in his sitting room, surrounded by clocks and portraits of long-dead Savoys, sipping tea like he hadn't just tried to sabotage the Empire.

"Maestà," I said, smiling too wide. "We need to talk."

He looked up. Tired. Resigned. "Is this about the Greek—"

"Yes," I snapped, my voice a blade in silk. "It is."

I didn't yell. I didn't need to. My rage simmered just beneath the surface, bubbling like lava under a porcelain crust. I sat across from him, legs crossed, fingers steepled like I was posing for a fascist Vogue cover.

"They are leverage, Your Majesty," I said coldly. "They are symbols. To the royalists still hiding in the hills. To the officers in Athens who haven't chosen sides. To the Greeks who still write 'King' on the walls when no one is watching. If we send them to London, we hand the British a propaganda coup on a platinum plate."

He opened his mouth, but I cut him off.

"They stay. In Rome. As guests. Protected, respected… and useful."

Silence.

I leaned forward. My voice dropped into something darker, something deeper.

"You forget what I've done for you, Vittorio. You forget who rebuilt Italy's prestige. Who brought the Empire back from the grave. I could've taken it all for myself—but I didn't. I let you keep the crown. I let you wear the purple cloak of the Caesars while I did the work."

I stood now, walking to the window.

"But understand this," I said, gazing out over the city like a god drunk on nostalgia. "Once the war ends, I will make the announcement. Roma restituta. The world will know. The Empire is reborn. And you—you—will be crowned Emperor. The Augustus of a new age."

I turned back to him.

"But only if you behave."

He didn't respond. Just stared into his tea like it could save him. A man who knew he was no longer king, just an artifact clinging to relevance.

I left without another word, footsteps echoing like judgment in the marble halls.

Back in my car, I played Kimi wa 1000% in my mind by 1986 Omega Tribe. Neon sax. Casio drums. That lonely, aching optimism.

I closed my eyes and mouthed the words.

Sofie...
Don't worry. I'm almost done here.
One more war.
One more empire.
Then I'll find my way home.
Wait for me

May 5, 1941
Near Abu Kamal
Syrian-Iraqi Border
Italian 5th Expeditionary Army HQ

The sun over the Euphrates was a molten hammer, smelting the horizon into a blur of sand and shimmering heat. By mid-morning, even the vultures had abandoned the sky. Nothing moved except men and machines—Syrian infantry trudging forward alongside Italian advisors in dust-caked uniforms, tanks groaning as they crawled across the wadi, and the last rattling convoys of captured French matériel wheezing their way north toward the supply hub in Deir ez-Zor. The Free French were finished. Their final stand had ended in a crumbling Ottoman-era fort, barely ten kilometers from the Iraqi border.

And he was still alive.

General Benito Albino Mussolini.

Twenty-six years old.

He had led the 3rd Bersaglieri Regiment personally from the front—not out of vanity, and certainly not out of necessity. His name alone was now enough to send both sycophants and skeptics scrambling. But he needed the dust on his boots, the weight of command pressing down on his shoulders. His father had made him a soldier, not a politician—Finland had ensured that. And here, in this searing heat, among these hardened men, he felt something rare: alive. In control of his fate.

At dawn, the French commander had been dragged from the cellars of the fort. Général Rousset—a bloated, red-faced man, stinking of cognac and wounded pride. He had refused to speak until the Syrian troops raised their flag over the courtyard. Then, he broke. Weeping like a schoolboy. Mussolini had offered him water. Rousset spat in the sand like a child denied his toy.

His men were finished—either scattered or dead. What remained would be processed and sent to camps outside Homs and Aleppo, far from the new northern front already taking shape. There was no room for mercy. No room for anything, really. The war moved like a tide, and Mussolini felt its pressure pushing up against the fragile framework of empire his father was so carefully stitching together.

Syria wasn't a prize.

It was the beginning.

Rome's return to the levant after over 1 thousand years.

He stood atop the ridgeline, binoculars raised, scanning the road eastward into Iraq. Behind him, staff officers murmured over logistics reports. The British in Iraq wouldn't dare cross the border—at least, not openly. But they would make life hellish from afar. He had seen it in the faces of those they captured in border towns—British agents, desert Arabs muttering about "foreign puppets" and "a Christian ruling over us." Ghost words, worn thin from use, but dangerous nonetheless.

Then he turned the binoculars north—toward Turkey.

That's where the real movement was happening.

In the past week alone, five convoys had arrived through Latakia. Thirty CANT Z.1007 bombers offloaded from carriers. Italian mountain troops were being ferried into the Alawite ranges, scattered along the Orontes like seeds sown before a storm. The old French forts near Idlib and Latakia were being fortified again. Everyone knew what that meant.

The men weren't stupid. They heard the rumors just as clearly as he did.

"The Turks are next."

No one said it outright. Not yet. But every mention of Ankara was followed by silence, pregnant with understanding. They weren't massing near the Turkish border out of fear. They were waiting—for orders, for movement, for history to repeat itself.

It was Yugoslavia all over again.

He lowered the binoculars. The glare made his temples throb.


An aide approached—Vittorini. Barely eighteen. Loyal to a fault.

"Telegram from Beirut, sir. The Duce landed safely in Rome. Says the situation with the King is… resolved."

Mussolini nodded.

Of course it was.

His father resolved problems the way nature resolved weakness—through pressure, fire, and madness disguised as genius.

"Tell command in Aleppo to double the fuel convoys. The hills will be dry by June. And inform Damascus—we need another wave of engineers in the north. I want the entire Turkish line surveyed before the month is out."

"Yes, General."

He watched the boy disappear into the swirling dust of the encampment.

Then, alone again, Mussolini turned back to the ridge.

Syria lay before him like a cracked mosaic—half-built roads, bombed-out minarets, and gleaming new construction shimmering under the desert sun. Rome's promise, carved into the bones of yet another conquered land.

But nothing lasts forever.

He lit a cigarette, the wind fighting his match with the spite of a cornered child.

If the Turks resisted, they would bleed for every inch of Anatolia.
The French had been soft. The Turks would not be.

Still—he smiled.

The Empire was moving again.

God, he hated the heat.

May 7, 1941
Palazzo Venezia
Rome, Italy

The chandeliers above us glittered like a thousand suspended daggers—crystal teeth refracting sunlight into fractured rainbows that danced across the marble floor. The Palazzo felt colder than usual, as if the stone itself were bracing for blood. I adjusted the cuffs of my uniform, watching as Miklós Horthy—Admiral, Regent, puppet—was ushered into the chamber like a magistrate clinging to relevance in a crumbling province. His boots echoed with theatrical precision, polished to a narcissist's gleam. He walked like a man who'd heard of his own importance too many times to ever doubt it.

I smiled at him. Politely. Respectfully. Like a wolf greeting a limping rival.

But in truth? In truth, I wanted to put a bullet between those damp, rheumy orbs he called eyes.

"Regent Horthy!" I extended my hand, addressing him in French—the diplomat's tongue. "Bienvenue à Rome. I trust your journey was pleasant?"

He bowed stiffly. "Duce. The hospitality of your railways continues to impress," he replied in a French accent so mangled it sounded like Helen Keller trying to recite Baudelaire after a stroke—one-handed, in sign language. I nearly gagged. I wanted to rip his tongue out while listening to Singing in the Snow. God, I loved Mikiko Noda. Her voice was silk. Silk and salvation.

"Good," I said, the corners of my mouth twitching. "I hate bad impressions."

We sat across from one another in the Map Room. The Balkans stretched between us in faded sepia, a corpse on a table. Red and blue grease-pencil lines skittered across the surface like veins on a swollen cadaver. Hungary was circled. So was Romania. Germany too—Germany, bleeding outward like a gangrenous wound.

I leaned forward, fingers steepled. "I'm going to tell you something now, Miklós. And I need you to listen. Don't react—just listen."

His brow creased. He didn't like being addressed by his first name. That made me like it even more.

"The war is reaching its climax," I said flatly. "The Germans are going to invade the Soviet Union. This summer. I don't have the exact date—but I've known it would happen since the war began."

He blinked, then chuckled politely. Forced. "An ambitious claim. But surely the Soviets and the Germans—"

"Don't interrupt me."

My voice was calm. Quiet. But beneath it—steel. He froze.

"The Germans are delusional," I continued, "but not suicidal. Or rather—they are suicidal, but they believe they're gods. And that's worse. They think they can fight Britain in the west, the Soviets in the east, and America across the ocean—all at once. Do you understand what that means?"

He opened his mouth. I didn't let him speak.

"It means they're going to lose."

I slid a dossier across the table. It spilled open like a confession. Black and white photographs—grainy, unnamed, but unmistakable. A woman, half-naked, being marched into a pit. A man with a blurred face, rifle in hand. Children's corpses. A mountain of shoes. A bloodstained coat, sized for someone barely old enough to read.

A mosaic of horror. The SS, just getting started.

Horthy stared, silent.

"That is your ally," I said. "That is what your German friend is doing while pretending to unite Europe."

"I—I had no idea—"

"No one does," I cut him off again, smiling like a shard of glass. "Because Germany is still pretending it's fighting for civilization. But this isn't war. It's ritual slaughter. Jews, Slavs, Roma, political dissidents—anyone who doesn't fit their grotesque dream of racial purity."

I stood and walked slowly to the window. Rome shimmered below, ancient and ravenous.

"They'll come for you too, Miklós. Eventually. You think they respect Hungary? The Crown of Saint Stephen?" I scoffed. "To them, you're a stepping stone to the oilfields of Baku."

I turned to face him, eyes cold.

"But you don't have to be their pawn."

Still, he said nothing. Still staring at the photos.

"I can offer you Slovakia," I said quietly. "When the Reich begins to unravel—and it will—there will be… opportunities. Hungary can grow. Legitimately. Safely. Under the protection of Rome. And when the Soviets come knocking, when they're hungry for new vassals, I'll keep them out—if you stand with me. I'm not asking for an invasion. I'm asking you to delay. Feign incompetence. Do anything but send your men east. If you do, they'll die for Berlin's madness. And Stalin will use their corpses as a bridge straight to Budapest. Not even I will be able to stop him then."

He looked up, voice low. "And if Germany wins?"

"They won't."

I said it with such certainty he blinked.

Because I knew. I had read about their defeat. Not here. Not in this reality. But in the world I lost.

America would rise. The Soviets would endure. Britain would never fall.

Inside, my hands trembled. I wanted to scream at him. To shake him. To tell him everything—about the firebombs over Dresden, Hitler's corpse rotting in a bunker, the mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I wanted to tell him about Japan, island to island, fighting a war it could never win while city pop played in some alternate heaven I'd never see again.

But instead, I smiled. Cool. Composed.

Because that's what the Duce would do.

Inside, though, I was burning alive.

A soul with no soul.

I hated Horthy. His smugness. His royal delusions. His antique medals. This man—a crusted fossil playing king in a theater of ruins. A cocksucker with more goulash than gray matter. I had the arrow Cross Party in Hungary on my payroll. When the war ended, they'd put a bullet in his head and crown Victor Emmanuel King of Hungary. Let that idiot have another kingdom—maybe then he'd stop bitching at me about Greece. Christ I hated that royal midget almost as much as Horthy.

But Horthy, I loathed this fossil. This coward. This dead empire wearing boots. I could almost feel my hands around his throat. Soon. Soon.

But more than anything—I wanted Sofie. I wanted to be on the couch again. Her head on my chest. Yurie Kokubu on the speakers.

Take a little bit of my love...

I wanted to forget all of this.

I stared at the city—The Seven Hills. The Tiber. The ghost of Byzantium whispered in my ear.

Restore me, it said. Restore what was lost.

I would. I had to.

But first—I wanted Hungary.

"I'm not asking you to betray Germany," I said at last. "I'm asking you to survive it."

He stared at me. "And if I say no?"

I smiled, razor-thin. "Then you'll be buried beside them. And I'll let the Soviets run wild in Hungary. I wonder how the Hungarian version of the Internationale sounds. Lovely, I imagine."

The chandelier above flickered. Rome was listening. I smiled wider.

"Do whatever you need to do. I can dispatch OVRA agents, some Alpini. Quietly. Discreetly. I know about the arrow Cross—your Nazi knockoff club. I have agents embedded with them, whispering promises of support. The moment they plot, I'll let you know. Then you can throw their bodies in the Danube."

"How soon can you send them?"

"You can leave with them. Tonight."

He was quiet for a long moment. Hedging. Calculating. Fence-sitting bastard.

Finally—he sighed. "Very well."

"Good." I nodded. "It was a pleasure speaking with you."

"Likewise."

He left, and I was alone with my thoughts.
Yeah, you dumb fuck. I had agents in the Iron Cross. The moment I say the word, Hungary is mine. I reminded myself to give the Alpini orders—once the arrow Cross made their move, kill Horthy and his family.

I waited until I was sure he was gone—then I broke.

I sobbed.

Sofie.
Why was I torn from you?
Mom. Dad. Blake. Gary. My baby brothers.
All gone. All lost.
I didn't know how long I cried.

A knock at the door.

I wiped my face. Straightened my collar.

"Back to work," I muttered, and walked to answer it.

May 9, 1941
Palazzo Venezia
Rome, Italy

I wake up at 5:55 am. I don't know why. My body simply jolts upward, like a glitch in some divine programming. I stare at the ceiling for a moment and imagine it's collapsing on top of me. Not in a dramatic, operatic way—just collapsing. Random entropy. Then I remember I'm not allowed to die yet. Too many deadlines.

I slide off the bed, silently. My wife is still asleep, drooling slightly. It disgusts me. Not because of the drool—because I envy her. I grab the pillow, throw it onto the cold marble floor, and get into a headstand. I count to 200. My eyes water around 160. I keep going.

Afterwards, I put on a plain black shirt and dark gray trousers, regulation cut. I walk outside into the hazy Roman morning, my bodyguards silently falling in behind me. I run. Past the fountains. Past the Piazza. Past the people waving, smiling, worshipping.

They don't love me. They love an idea of me.

I put on my pretend headphones—small, compact, imported from Japan through Lisbon—and I play Plastic Love by Mariya Takeuchi. Basic. Predictable. But effective. And it's all in my thoughts. The opening synth line feels like the pulse of some lost utopia, like neon melting through marble. I pretend I'm running through Tokyo in the rain, not Fascist Rome.

6:45 AM, I arrive at the Palestra dil duce, my home gym/palace. It's empty except for my trainer and one of the OVRA goons, clipboard in hand, stopwatch ticking. No music here, just the sound of my breath and the metal rings creaking.

I do 3 sets of 10 pull-ups with 30 kilograms in a weighted vest. Between sets I rest exactly 90 seconds. No more, no less. Then 4 sets of push-ups, slow, deliberate, almost ritualistic. The weight in the pack goes up by 10 kilos. I can feel my tendons screaming. I keep going. Squats, 3 sets of 10.

After squats, five minutes of stretching. I look in the mirror. I see Mussolini. But not the real one. The idea of one. The abstraction. The polished, mythologized demigod they wrote about in elementary textbooks. Not me.

8:30 AM, I shower. Clara is already there, waiting. Submissive. Still beautiful in a ruinous way. We have sex under the hot stream. Violent. Joyless. I don't cum. I haven't in over a year.

9:15 AM, I'm in the car. My driver doesn't speak. Oatmeal, strawberries, honey. Cold milk. I eat it slowly while listening to Mayonaka no Door by Miki Matsubara in my mind. I imagine her voice is Sofia's.

10:00 AM, Council chambers. The ministries sit around me like exhausted apostles. They offer reports like holy scripture. Army—holding steady. Treasury—positive growth. Interior—more roundups. Navy—always a disappointment.

I nod. I smirk. I say little. I pretend to listen.

On the inside, I'm staring at Sofia again, the last time I saw her, hair backlit by a dying Rwandan sun when she came to visit me. Turn it into love by Wink plays softly in my mind. I miss her in a way I can't even articulate, like missing a limb I was never born with.

Di Stefano is talking. Something about trade volumes. I nod again. He's competent. A rare thing these days. I let him speak.

Then the Interior Minister tells me about another Serbian priest. Drugged. Filmed. Compromised. Good. A serpent in the church, another lever we can pull. When we're done with him, we erase him. Like erasing lines of code.

Noon, lunch. I skip the garlic and oil. I want pizza. Napoli style. Extra olive oil, thick crust, sweet tomato. I devour it like it's a substitute for emotional fulfillment.

Clara comes again. Blows me while I'm eating. I pretend to finish. She asks me to meet tonight. I nod. I already know she'll show up.

2:00 PM, we reconvene. More reports. More failures disguised as progress. Then: Cavagnari. My daily dose of blood pressure.

He enters, overly formal. Hair combed back, medals polished. A coward dressed as a soldier.

I smile. Warmly. The way a cat might smile at a mouse.

"Cavagnari," I say gently, as Dance in the Memories by Meiko Nakahara plays faintly in my head.

"Duce," he nods. The cowardice is palpable.

"How goes our Navy?" I ask. Hands folded. Patient. Benevolent.

He breathes in. "Progressing. Coordination with the Regia Aeronautica has—"

I wave a hand. "Not the cruisers, Cavagnari. The submarines."

His face tightens. He tries not to blink.

"We are making refinements—"

"Refinements?" I interrupt. "To coffins?"

His mouth opens. Closes.

"Submarines slower than gondolas. Air systems that poison the crew. Turrets with no use. Engines designed by blind men. I read the reports. Depth limits at seventy meters? Seventy? That's suicide."

"I understand—"

"No, you don't understand, Cavagnari," I snap. "Because if you did, I wouldn't be reading about another fucking depth-charge massacre every goddamn week while listening to Chisato Moritaka sing about Stress."

He's sweating now. Good.

"Our enemies aren't men. They're wolves. And we send them bloated, leaking coffins with flags."

"I'm working with engineers—"

"Then fire them. Replace them. Build new hulls. I don't care. I want predators. I want nightmares with propellers. I want them to dive silently beneath British warships and rip their fucking hulls open like a murder scene in a bad French film."

A silence. I let it sit.

"Fix it."

He nods, robotic. Broken. Still the best we have. I don't fire him. Not yet. Too loyal, too competent, a rare mix. I play good cop after, telling him I believe in him, that he can do it. He looks at me like a wounded puppy, the urge to strangle him is still there.

6:30 PM, I retreat to my office. Signatures. Executions. Censorship orders. Death warrants. Memos to ministers I hate. I hum Telephone Number by Junko Ohashi.

8:00 PM, Clara arrives. We fuck on the couch. Again, violent. I imagine she's Sofia. Her face, her voice, the little gasps—nothing lines up, but I fake it. Clara tells me she loves me. I don't respond.

9:00 PM, dinner. Spaghetti with basil. Parmesan. Eggs. A steak, rare. I eat it like punishment.

10:00 PM, back in my bedroom. My wife wants to talk. She wants Bruno and Vittorio promoted. I agree. Who cares? They're mannequins with my last name. They'll die like good Roman soldiers—smiling and oblivious.

I lie in bed. Eyes open. I feel the night like a weight.

In my dreams, the original Mussolini appears. We talk. He complains. He praises. He's the only one I can relate to.

There is an idea of a Benito Mussolini. A glimmer of flesh over steel. But beneath that idea?

Nothing.

Just a name echoing into silence.

-

May 9, 1941
Gian Galeazzo Ciano's Personal Journal (Eyes Only)

He's losing his mind.

No—has lost it.

I sat across from him in council today and watched a man who once held the fate of nations in his palm bark like a junkyard dog about submarines. Submarines! As if those rusted steel phalluses will win this coming war for us. As if drowning a Turkish cargo vessel will fill the spiritual abyss that yawns behind his eyes.

It was just after lunch. He'd returned to the hall reeking of pizza, sex, and desperation. His shirt collar open—never like before—tie loosened just slightly, like some noir detective unraveling at the climax. His face... there was a sheen to it. Not sweat, not oil—film. Like a projection of the Duce was melting right before our eyes.

He tore into Cavagnari with the fervor of a priest on morphine, slamming the desk, hissing insults wrapped in poetry. Floating mausoleums, he called them. Steel sarcophagi. Cavagnari looked like a schoolboy about to vomit on his exam. And I—God help me—I laughed. Not because it was funny. Because it was terrifying.

And then...
He started singing.

Softly.

Under his breath.

City pop, some Japanese nonsense he's been obssesed with lately. Yurie Kokubu, Tomoko Aran—names that meant nothing to me two years ago, and now haunt the edges of every meeting. He says it relaxes him, but the effect is closer to derangement. As if the smooth japanese crooning from half a world away is the only thing keeping him from putting a bullet in someone's skull—and I don't know if that someone would be Cavagnari or me.

But the worst part wasn't the tirade. The worst part came after.

He sat back, sighing, suddenly calm, suddenly lucid. He told Cavagnari he believed in him. That he was his man. That he was the only one who could fix this.

The entire council froze. This wasn't mercy. This was madness masquerading as grace. The Duce is playing both priest and executioner, lover and tyrant. His affections come like lightning—burning and unpredictable. His hatred, like a tide: slow, inevitable, and devastating.

He barely looked at me today. When he did, it wasn't at me—it was through me. Like I was a prop in his performance.

There's a story I once heard about Roman emperors: how Caligula appointed his horse to the Senate. People laugh at that. They don't understand—it wasn't a joke. It was a test. Mussolini is testing us now, each of us, every goddamn day. And we're all failing.

After the meeting, I passed his office. The door was slightly ajar. I heard Clara laughing, breathless, and him whispering something in Japanese. Japanese.

He doesn't even dream in Italian anymore.

I miss the old Duce. The one who bellowed from balconies and stirred nations with a single phrase. That man is dead. What remains is a ghost in a well-tailored suit, fucking mistresses and reciting japanese lyrics while the world tilts toward annihilation.

And yet... he wins.

The British fear him. The Germans are wary
of him. Our own people still bow. Even now, in the shadow of his mental decline, Italy wins.

God help us all if it starts losing.

—Ciano

May 30, 1941
Palazzo Venezia
Rome, Italy

We were knee-deep in the kind of meeting that made me want to gouge my eyes out with the tip of a fountain pen. Stefani was droning on about trade negotiations with Switzerland—neutral, smug little gnomes swimming in gold teeth and Nazi loot. I stared at the long mahogany table, tracing a knot in the wood grain with my thumbnail while "Mayonaka no Joke" looped in my skull like a taunt. Takako Mamiya, please save me.

My temples throbbed. I wanted to stab Stefani in the neck with a letter opener. His voice was a wet sock in a blender. I counted the seconds until I could get out of this room and throttle someone.

Then the door slammed open.

"Duce!" my aide gasped, practically hyperventilating. He looked like a boy who had just walked in on his parents having sex with Mussolini and Hitler masks on.

My guards lunged for him—I almost let them. Watching someone get beat to death might've finally made this day interesting. But I raised a hand. "No. Let's hear what he has to say."

He gulped, eyes darting. "Germany has invaded the Soviet Union. War was declared. This morning."

I blinked. My mouth twitched. The timeline was off. That wasn't supposed to happen for weeks. It was supposed to be summer, not spring. I remembered it from college—one of the few things that stuck between cheap 4loko and all-night study sessions.

So, I was really doing it. Changing things.

And that meant Constantinople was now in play.

I rose slowly. "Meeting adjourned." I didn't look at anyone. I didn't need to. They'd follow like the lapdogs they were. "Get a plane ready. We leave for Greece immediately. Graziani, Cavagnari, Pricolo—you're coming. Have a message sent to Pangalos. The war with Turkey is moving up."

As I turned on my heel, I imagined the whole room bursting into flames behind me, Stefani screaming as the Swiss decapitated him with a fondue fork.


May 30, 1941
Ciampino Airport
Rome, Italy

The drive to the airport was quiet, and I liked it that way. My driver didn't speak unless I told him to. I respected that. The sun was low, Rome casting long, golden shadows like a painting I'd once seen in an art textbook, or maybe a dream. I couldn't tell the difference anymore.

I kept thinking about Tatsuro Yamashita's "Bomber'" as we pulled up to the airstrip. His voice cooed in my memory. City pop: the soundtrack of a life I'd never get back.

The SM.79 was fueled and ready. Graziani climbed aboard with the enthusiasm of a man who thought conquering Turkey would validate his existence. He looked at me like he wanted praise, like a dog who brought back a stick.

I gave him a nod that might as well have been a death sentence. "Maps?"

"Yes, Duce."

Cavagnari and Pricolo followed. I resisted the urge to scream. They all smelled like old paper and Catholic guilt.

As I boarded the aircraft, I told myself again: we were going to take Constantinople. No, reclaim it. I would stand in the Hagia Sophia. I would listen to Yuko Saito's "Itsuka" in my mind under the golden dome while Greek Orthodox chants echoed against the stone. That was the dream. That was the only dream left.

May 30, 1941
En Route to Athens
Over the Ionian Sea

We were in the air. The cabin was cramped, and the air smelled like sweat and petrol. I sat by the window, watching the blue-green Ionian slip beneath us.

Graziani leaned in. "Our landing in Greece is scheduled for 20:30. Pangalos will meet us at the base."

I nodded slowly. "Good. Has the message been sent to our people in Syria and my son?"

"Yes. They're preparing our forces now."

I could feel my heartbeat in my jaw. I imagined myself on the shores of the Bosphorus, blood soaking the marble streets. I imagined crucifying Kemalists in front of Hagia Sophia like some Old Testament fever dream while their families watched.

"Any word on Kurdish contacts?"

"Initial feelers sent through arab intermediaries. We think they'll cooperate if we promise independence."

Of course they would. Everyone's got a price. "Do it, have our ambassador in Athens reach out to the soviets. Discreetly, tell them we'll be backing Kurdish independence and letting Kurdistan be under the Soviet sphere. Do this once we land. We'll send our recognition for Kurdish independence once the war starts. I expect the soviets to do the same."

I shut my eyes. "Bay City" by Junko Yagami was next on the mental playlist. I imagined leather driving gloves and neon signs. A glass of something cold. Silence.

But instead, I had Pricolo, clearing his throat. "Duce, should we reconsider pushing toward Ankara after securing Thrace?"

I opened my eyes and stared at him. "No. The British won't let us."

May 30, 1941
Athens Airport
Athens, Greece

We landed smoothly. The warm air of the Aegean hit me like a memory. Greece always smelled like thyme, motor oil, and unresolved trauma.

Pangalos waited, dressed in his absurd uniform like a cartoon general in a Punch magazine sketch. He saluted too crisply.

"Duce. Welcome to Athens."

I saluted, wanting to get it over with. "Let's get to work."

May 30, 1941
Athens Military Headquarters
Athens, Greece

The headquarters was a repurposed villa. Marble floors. Chandeliers. Ottoman ghosts.

We gathered around a massive map table. Officers filled the room like bad cologne. The hum of military planning buzzed in the air.

I tapped the map. "Two prongs. One from here—Greece—direct push to Constantinople. The other, from Syria: take Adana, Hatay, Tarsus. Fast, clean. We split the Turkish army's spine."

Pangalos lit a cigarette. "And the Bosphorus?"

"We take it. The European side only. State all ships will be allowed to pass and that nothing will change."

He raised an eyebrow. "And the Kurds?"

"We give them what they want. Enough guns to keep Turkey bleeding out the ass for months."

I caught my reflection in the window. Mussolini's face. My face. God, I missed Spotify. I missed hot showers that didn't smell like rust. I missed not having to pretend to be this bloated fascist balloon while keeping the world from tearing at the seams.

But we were so close.

"Operation Nikephoros," I whispered.

"What?" Pangalos asked.

"That's what we'll call it. After the general who retook Antioch. It's poetic."

No one said a word. Good. They didn't get it. They never did.

But I would stand in Constantinople. I would hear Momoko Kikuchi echoing through the Hagia Sophia in my thoughts.

And maybe then, I could finally breathe.

"How soon can we start?" I snapped back to reality.

"Late June." Pangalo's replied. "Early July."

"Good."

WAR CABINET MEETING TRANSCRIPT
Location: Cabinet Room, 10 Downing Street
Date: 2 June 1941
Time: 11:15 BST

Churchill:
Right, let's begin. The soviets are in the thick of it now—Hitler has turned east. Our Soviet friends are now in the lion's mouth. What's the latest on the Italians?

Menzies:
Prime Minister, we have confirmation from our Athens station and intercepted traffic: Mussolini is mobilising forces in both Greece and Syria. Two-pronged operation, likely aimed at Turkey. The name "Operation Nikephoros" has surfaced in some coded transmissions.

Churchill:
So he really means to take Constantinople. The bloody madman's trying to revive Byzantium now. Any formal declaration of war?

Eden:
None. Italy remains formally neutral. But Pangalos—Greece's tinpot generalissimo—is cooperating fully. Our attaché in Ankara believes the Turks are preparing for war. Mobilisation has begun in eastern Anatolia.

Dill:
They'll be hit on two fronts: north from Greece and south through Syria. The Italians have troops in the Levant—a mix of local troops, Italian army and elite Alpini. It's a real hammer and anvil maneuver.

Churchill:
Is it credible? Does Mussolini actually have the teeth for it?

Beaverbrook:
He's not the man he was in 1939. He's cunning, dangerous, that business in Yugoslavia. Vienna. The military reforms. And the meeting with Roosevelt a few months back.

Churchill:
(pauses, lights cigar)
A pact with the bloody devil. (Scoffs) He wants to carve up the Middle East like it's the bloody Congress of Berlin. And he expects us to watch.

Menzies:
He's promised to keep the Bosphorus open, His only demand is non-interference in the war.

Churchill:
(grumbling)
The man's a peacock in jackboots, but he might be our peacock once he enters the war. Eden, draft a communique to Ankara. Offer matériel support, and suggest we dispatch Free French units to reinforce Anatolia—make it clear the Turks won't be alone. If this war spills east, we must be seen as defenders, not aggressors. If Mussolini wants Thrace and the southeast so badly let him bleed for it.

Dill:
We can dispatch elements of the 1st Free French Brigade from Iraq, along with some RAF support. It'll be modest, but symbolic.

Churchill:
Good. Symbolism counts. As for Mussolini... let's keep the channels open. Once he's in the war on our side we need to keep all eyes on him. We cannot let him take Europe under the pretext of siding with us.

Beaverbrook:
—Then we welcome him to the family, awkward bald head an
d all.

Churchill:
(with a wry smile)
Indeed. The enemy of our enemy, gentlemen... might just be our Byzantophile lunatic in Rome.

Meeting Adjourned: 12:02 BST

Excerpt from Mussolini: The Rise and Reign of Il Duce by Christopher Hibbert (2008)

On the morning of July 1st, 1941, under a sweltering Aegean sun, Benito Mussolini launched what would be one of the most audacious and controversial military campaigns of his long career: Operation Nikephoros, the Greco-Italian invasion of Turkey. It was a war of opportunity and ambition, conceived in the halls of Rome and Athens, and executed with characteristic fascist flair—ruthless efficiency mingled with theatrical bravado.

The plan was bold, and its name—Nikephoros, or "Bringer of Victory"—was a deliberate echo of Byzantine martial glory. The campaign had two principal thrusts. The first moved eastward from Greek Thrace, along the ancient invasion route of emperors and crusaders, through the Maritsa valley, and toward the fabled city of Constantinople. The second, more logistically complex, drove northwest-ward from the Italian client state of greater Syria, with forces—many under the command of Mussolini's son, Benito Albino—striking into southern Anatolia. These troops, seasoned from prior Levantine operations against the free french, took Adana on July 25, bolstered by air superiority, superior armor, and the liberal—indeed controversial—use of chemical weapons.

Kurdish separatists, long at odds with Ankara, were courted and armed by Italian agents, encouraged to rise up and disrupt Turkish lines from within. Their effectiveness was mixed, but the resulting chaos played into Rome's strategy of destabilization.

The Turkish response was both immediate and tenacious. Despite being caught off-guard, Ankara mobilized swiftly. Free French units were transported in by the British via Iraq to aid the Turks, while British material aid—arms, fuel, and aircraft—began pouring in through neutral Persia and the Black Sea. Turkish forces dug in along the Çamak Line, a formidable defensive belt protecting Constantinople from the west.

The turning point came on August 4, when Italian paratroopers landed behind the Çamak like while the main Greco-Italian army, supported by a rolling artillery barrage and clouds of mustard gas—breached the Çamak Line in a withering assault. The ensuing week saw brutal house-to-house fighting across the Thracian plain and into the ancient suburbs of the Queen of Cities. On August 11, 1941, Italian and Greek flags flew over the Hagia Sophia. Constantinople, once thought unconquerable, had fallen to a new Caesar.

Simultaneously, the southern front saw a violent Turkish counterattack into Adana on August 11. For six days, Turkish troops fought with desperate courage, reclaiming suburbs and temporarily surrounding key Italian positions. But by August 17, the combined use of tanks, chemical agents, and aerial bombardment by Mussolini's legions had crushed the offensive. Adana remained in Axis hands.

Operation Nikephoros was a triumph in strategic terms, but a moral catastrophe. The Italian use of chemical weapons—openly and without apology—was condemned internationally, even by Hitler. Yet for Il Duce, it was proof of the strength of his emerging ideology of Romanism: an evolution of fascism, a fusion of religious fervor, imperial ambition, and political will that reshaped the Eastern Mediterranean in his image.

As he addressed cheering crowds from the ruins of Constantine's city, Mussolini spoke not only as a conqueror, but as a man convinced he had turned the clock of history back to the era of empire.

In the wake of Operation Nikephoros, the Greek banners had scarcely settled over Constantinople before troubling reports began to emerge from the hinterlands of Thrace and southern Anatolia. While the Italian high command triumphantly declared the region pacified, a different reality was unfolding beneath the surface—one of vengeance, score-settling, and ethnic cleansing.

Much of the Greek army that marched into Eastern Thrace had been drawn from communities of Anatolian Greeks—descendants of those displaced by the catastrophic population exchanges and pogroms following the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922. For many, the campaign was not merely a military operation; it was a pilgrimage of retribution. Every Turkish or Muslim village was razed. Civilians were summarily executed or expelled in death marches across the Bosporus.

In the south, in Hatay, Adana, and Tarsus—where Italian forces held control under the leadership of Benito Albino Mussolini—the pattern repeated itself, this time under an Italian banner. Turkish populations were driven from their homes, accused of resisting occupation or collaborating with Ankara. Syrian officials issued orders with euphemistic language: "ethnic realignment", "strategic relocation". Behind these phrases hid atrocities—rapes, massacres, and death from starvation or exposure during mass expulsions.

International observers, including Red Cross delegates smuggled through Cyprus, began compiling discreet reports of what would later be described as "the second Smyrna." Entire Turkish communities disappeared from the map. The Italian press, tightly controlled by the regime, painted a different picture. Il Popolo d'Italia ran headlines like "Order Restored in the East" and "Hellenic and Syrian Brothers Reclaim Ancient Lands."

Benito Mussolini, sensing international condemnation mounting, addressed the issue with characteristic bravado. In a radio speech from the steps of the Hagia Sophia, he declared:

"What we have done in Thrace and Cilicia is not atrocity—it is justice. For Smyrna. For the Armenian children butchered in the snows of Anatolia. For centuries of oppression under the crescent. History remembers the victor, and I write that history with steel and fire."

This rhetorical pivot—casting the ethnic purges as righteous vengeance and a religious crusade—resonated among certain nationalist and religious circles in Europe. Mussolini extended an olive branch to the Armenian diaspora, announcing that resettlement land and homes would be offered to Armenians willing to return to the ancestral homeland in southeaster turkey, recently annexed by Greater Syria. Thousands took up the call, settling in what had been emptied Turkish villages under Syrian military supervision. New towns were christened with names like New Yeveran and Ararat, reinforcing Mussolini's narrative of rebirth through conquest.

Privately, his advisors worried about the instability of such demographic engineering. The Turkish resistance had not been extinguished—merely scattered. Cells of nationalist fighters continued to harass supply lines, and whispers of Kurdish separatists about to turn on their Italian patrons added to the uncertainty.

Nevertheless, by the autumn of 1941, Mussolini presented the campaign not merely as a military victory, but as a civilizational one. The Eastern Mediterranean, he claimed, was no longer a battlefield of empires but a crucible for a new roman order—one forged in blood, history, and myth.

While Mussolini stood before cheering crowds in Constantinople proclaiming the dawn of a new Roman East, the halls of diplomacy in London, Washington, and Moscow buzzed with alarm. What had once been a neutral Turkey—an unpredictable but independent actor—had now become a powder keg.

And behind the scenes, the Italian Duce had been playing an even deeper game.

Since early 1941, Mussolini had quietly probed the Allied powers with offers of cooperation—contingent on timing. Mussolini went on an official state visit to the US, officially signing a trade agreement but in reality offering his support for the allies should the US enter the war and recognize it's conquests and giving evidence of the Holocaust to president Roosevelt. The US, already giving lend lease aid to Britain couldn't turn away this opportunity, and so they lobbied Britain to focus on the war against Germany rather than Italy.

To the dismay of Ankara, Allied pressure mounted. With their armies bloodied and Istanbul in enemy hands, the Turkish government under İsmet İnönü found itself increasingly isolated. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, promised a sphere of influence in Turkey by Mussolini, offered only silence. The Americans, more focused on preparing to enter the and war, advised compromise. The British, overstretched by the continuing blitz and battle on the Atlantic pressured Turkey to accept a settlement.

Thus, under intense trilateral pressure from London, Washington, and Moscow, Turkey was forced to accept terms that it considered humiliating.

On September 29, 1941, the Treaty of Salonika was signed. Turkey ceded Eastern Thrace, Constantinople and it's Aegean islands to Greece. Hatay, Adana, and Tarsus meanwhile were given to the Italian satellite kingdom of Greater Syria. Constantinople was declared the new capital of Greece. A Turkish delegation stormed out during the signing, declaring it a "treaty of chains."

The internal reckoning was swift and violent.

Just one week after the treaty was signed, a group of ultranationalist officers led by a young officer named Alparslan Türkeş staged a coup in Ankara. President İnönü was arrested and later executed on charges of cowardice and "collaboration with the enemy." The new junta declared the Kemalist era dead and issued a chilling decree: the Kurdish people, having "sided with foreign invaders," were now enemies of the state.

Within weeks, what began as arrests and relocations devolved into full-scale genocide.

Villages in Diyarbakır, Van, and Erzurum were leveled. Men, women and children were shot en masse. The Turkish state, now under military rule, portrayed the genocide as a necessary purge to restore national unity. Propaganda posters labeled the Kurds "the knife in our back," echoing post-World War I German rhetoric.

Mussolini, ever the opportunist, remained silent. Privately, he instructed his diplomats to use the Kurdish massacres as leverage—secretly suggesting to the allies that a Soviet occupation of Turkey was necessary as they would bring order to the current situation. It was a grim and cynical calculation and his way of paying back Stalin for him turning a blind eye.

The Allies issued only perfunctory condemnations. The Soviets were silent. The Americans were focused on preparing to enter the war. The British filed the tragedy under "unfortunate but internal."

For Mussolini, it was a geopolitical coup. With a weakened, brutalized Turkey on one side and new Syrian colonies in the south east brimming with settlers and roads, he could now portray his empire not just as a fascist experiment, but as a necessary buffer—between East and West, chaos and order.

And that was just the beginning.

Excerpt from Mussolini: The Rise and Reign of Il Duce by Christopher Hibbert (2008)

Publicly, Mussolini beamed with pride in August 1941. With Constantinople in his grasp and the Eastern Mediterranean reshaped in his image, he spoke of destiny fulfilled. Crowds cheered. Newspapers proclaimed the "rebirth of empire." Yet behind the marble smiles and choreographed spectacles, Il Duce fumed.

What was meant to be a triumph of modern fascist warfare—swift, precise, devastating—had instead become a grinding affair. The operation that Mussolini had envisioned as a Mediterranean Blitzkrieg, modeled in spirit on Hitler's lightning strikes into France and the Low Countries, had dragged on for over six weeks, with unexpectedly fierce Turkish resistance bogging down both the northern and southern advances. Italian paratroopers, instead of soaring symbols of the Rinnovamento, had struggled through weeks of logistical disarray and spotty coordination with ground forces. Supplies arrived late, units fought disconnected, and the terrain—harsh, mountainous, and hostile—punished even the most disciplined formations.

On August 19, just days after the fall of Constantinople and the repulsion of the Turkish counteroffensive at Adana, Mussolini demanded a full internal assessment of the campaign's performance. It was not a rhetorical gesture. He summoned Marshal Graziani, Chief of the General Staff Ugo Cavallero, and Air Marshal Francesco Pricolo to his private study in the Palazzo Venezia. According to aide diaries, he stood before them and spoke not in fury, but in cold, methodical disappointment:

"We were promised thunder. I heard nothing but shit."

The report that followed—compiled in what later became known within the General Staff as the Libro Nero di Nikephoros—was clinical, candid, and painful.

Despite two years of reforms under Il Rinnovamento, the Italian armed forces remained a work in progress. The Army had improved in doctrine and logistics, but many of its officers still clung to prewar habits. Communications broke down under strain. The three-regiment divisional model was better, but not yet universal. Light tanks—outmatched by Turkish anti-tank guns—suffered significant losses in Thrace.

The Navy, though spared the worst of the campaign, had failed to interdict British material aid reaching Turkish ports in the Black and Mediterranean Sea. Poor coordination with land forces, outdated doctrine, and a lingering disdain for combined operations rendered the Regia Marina more an ornament than an instrument.

And the Air Force—though boasting newer fighters and bombers—was still plagued by uneven fuel distribution, limited radar coverage, and patchy command integration. While air superiority was achieved, it was not decisive. Turkish fighters, many British-supplied, continued to harass Italian columns well into August.

Yet it was logistics, not valor, that nearly undid the campaign.

Fuel convoys from Albania to Thrace were delayed by mountain sabotage thanks to Serbian partisans. Ammunition dumps were hit by Turkish stay behind units. Italian troops sometimes fought without maps, relying on outdated pre-1923 Ottoman charts. The Army's rear echelons, reorganized but overstretched, struggled to feed, clothe, and arm a modern force advancing through hostile, depopulated terrain.

Mussolini read the report in silence. According to Graziani's postwar memoirs, the Duce placed the file on his desk, lit a cigarette, and muttered:

"We need to continue with the process of getting our shit together."

He did not punish his generals. Nor did he reward them. Instead, he doubled down on reform. Procurement for motorized transport was expanded. Field radios were to be universal by 1942. Air-ground integration exercises were ordered across occupied Yugoslavia and Libya. And most tellingly, Mussolini authorized the creation of Scuole della Guerra Moderna—"Schools of Modern War"—designed to retrain fascist officers in combined arms warfare, logistics, and armored doctrine, borrowing liberally from both German and Soviet models.

In public, the Duce continued to roar. But in private, he no longer believed his own propaganda. Victory in Anatolia had been purchased at the cost of illusion. Italy was now a power, yes—but not yet a great one. And Mussolini, who had waited and planned in the quiet years of neutrality, understood something his more reckless contemporaries did not:

That the empire he was building could only survive if it learned to fight not like Rome—but like the future.

Among Mussolini's most enduring legacies, the Scuole della Guerra Moderna—the "Schools of Modern War"—stand as one of his least theatrical, but most consequential innovations. Born not out of triumph but dissatisfaction, they were Duce's answer to the lessons of Turkey.

Operation Nikephoros, though victorious, had revealed fatal fractures within the fascist war machine: tactical rigidity, fragmented communications, and a lingering culture of obedience over initiative. The campaign had been won with brutality and chemical weapons, not finesse. For a man obsessed with futurism and the myth of efficiency, it was unacceptable.

Thus, in October 1941—barely two months after the Treaty of Salonika—Mussolini issued Ordine Supremo 74/41, establishing the first Scuola della Guerra Moderna in Livorno, followed by secondary academies in Milan, Taranto, and Naples.

The goals of the program were ambitious, and unorthodox by fascist standards:

1. To break the hierarchy of incompetence – Political appointees and aristocratic officers were to be re-evaluated on tactical acumen, not pedigree or party loyalty. Some were quietly retired. Others were sent back to the schools themselves.

2. To train a new generation of "war artisans" – Not merely soldiers or engineers, but masters of combined arms, logistics, and psychological warfare. The curriculum was aggressively interdisciplinary. Officers studied Clausewitz, Tukhachevsky, Liddell Hart—and, controversially, even Sun Tzu and Mao's guerilla theory.

3. To marry theory with terrain – Unlike traditional academies, which trained in sanitized parade grounds, the Scuole drilled in Sicily's hills, Libya's deserts, and the forests of Dalmatia. Live-fire exercises were relentless. Failure was not punished with demotion, but with repetition—until excellence became instinct.

4. To emphasize information warfare – With input from philosopher-turned-propagandist Giovanni Gentile, a unique psychological warfare module was introduced. Officers learned not just how to win battles, but how to shape narratives: planting rumors, countering Allied radio, and exploiting ethnic fractures—as seen with the Kurds.

5. To prepare for total war, not total victory – Reflecting Mussolini's shift in thinking, the Scuole taught war as a long, grinding process. Logistics officers were trained with the same intensity as tank commanders. A motto emerged from one of the first Livorno classes: "Il silenzio della linea di rifornimento è più forte del ruggito del cannone." — "The silence of the supply line is louder than the roar of the cannon."

Graziani, who oversaw much of the implementation, described the schools as Mussolini's "monasteries of mechanized devotion." They operated outside the traditional chain of command, reporting directly to the Comando Supremo. Graduates received not just commissions, but placement within reformed divisions, tasked with testing doctrine in Yugoslavia, Libya, and later, Germany.

By late 1942, evidence of their impact was unmistakable. Italian armored battalions in Libya, once ponderous and brittle, began to demonstrate tactical fluency rivaling the Wehrmacht's Panzer divisions during military exercises. In Albania, modernized regiments deployed radio-coordinated artillery strikes in seconds, not hours. Even air-ground operations—long Italy's Achilles' heel—showed signs of lethal synchrony.

The Allies, noting the shift, quietly revised their assessments. A 1943 British intelligence report declared: "The Italians no longer simply imitate German doctrine—they now interpret it."

Yet Mussolini never allowed the Scuole to become shrines to himself. Their iconography was sparse, their instructors unadorned. The focus was not on loyalty to the Duce, but on loyalty to the mission: to win. To endure. To evolve.

In private, he told Marshal Cavallero:

"I need an army that kills, not one for parades."

And indeed, in the decades after the war, as Italy's imperial ambitions faded and fascism evolved, the Scuole della Guerra Moderna endured as institutions of raw competence.

For in the end, Mussolini understood what so many dictators did not: that glory fades, flags fall—but systems remain. And he intended to leave behind a system sharp enough to outlast even his own shadow.

-

British Foreign Office & War Office – Joint Intelligence Committee
TOP SECRET
Ref: BFO-WO/Nikephoros-9/41
Date: 12 October 1941
Subject: Strategic Assessment of Italian Performance in Operation "Nikephoros"

Summary:
Italian-led Axis forces (principally Italian and Greek) have concluded offensive operations against the Republic of Turkey with the occupation of Eastern Thrace and portions of Cilicia. Despite the operation's eventual success, its execution exposed numerous deficiencies in Italian doctrine, coordination, and capability. However, signs of structural reform and modernization are visible. This merits continued observation, particularly in light of potential postwar realignment.


---

1. Strategic Overview:
Operation Nikephoros, launched 1 July 1941, was a two-pronged Italian-Greek offensive into Turkish territory. The northern axis advanced via Thrace toward Constantinople; the southern thrust originated from Italian-held Syria and targeted Adana and Hatay. Kurdish uprisings were encouraged and materially supported by Italian intelligence.

Initial expectations (including Mussolini's own) suggested a rapid campaign, modeled on German blitz operations. In practice, terrain, stiff Turkish resistance, and uneven Italian command execution resulted in a protracted and costly fight. Constantinople fell on 11 August; Adana was secured by 25 July, though the front did not stabilize until late August after significant Turkish counterattacks.


---

2. Operational Conduct:
Army:

Italian ground forces displayed mixed performance. Unit cohesion and morale were high in elite formations (notably elements of the Ariete Armoured Division and Divisione Alpina Julia), but coordination between Greek and Italian forces was inconsistent.

Deployment of chemical agents during the Çamak Line breakthrough (4 August) and later at Adana underscores both desperation and a willingness to breach accepted conventions of warfare.

Italian officers relied heavily on overwhelming artillery and airpower to compensate for poor tactical flexibility in complex terrain.


Navy:

The Regia Marina was largely absent in meaningful operational terms. Failure to interdict British supply to Turkey via the Black Sea or Eastern Mediterranean is notable. Intelligence suggests continued doctrinal backwardness in carrier and convoy warfare.


Air Force:

Marked improvement observed in Italian air operations, including use of newer fighter types (Macchi C.202, Reggiane Re.2001). Air superiority was eventually achieved over southern Turkey.

Bombing campaigns lacked precision but were persistent. Significant civilian casualties reported in Adana and Tarsus, with potential long-term reputational damage.



---

3. Command & Control:

Mussolini's direct involvement in strategic planning is evident; sources suggest frustration at operational delays.

Italian high command demonstrated improved logistical management compared to campaigns in Ethiopia and early Libya, though the system remains brittle.

Notably, Italian command has begun integrating newer officers and restructured divisions, suggesting ongoing military reform (see: Scuole della Guerra Moderna initiative, ref. BFO/Training/8/41).



---

4. Political Ramifications:

Italy is quietly positioning itself for postwar accommodation with the Allied powers. Documents obtained via SIS sources indicate prewar diplomatic backchannels remain open.

Italian propaganda has framed the conquest as revenge for Smyrna and restitution for Armenian and Greek suffering. Public calls have been made for Armenian resettlement in Cilicia, an overt bid to consolidate control via demographic reshaping.

Widespread atrocities reported in Thrace and Hatay, particularly targeting Turkish civilians and minority populations. Greek irregular units implicated in ethnic cleansing operations. Verification pending.



---

5. Strategic Assessment:
While the Italian war machine remains inferior to British or German standards, a dangerous evolution is underway. Operation Nikephoros revealed:

A willingness to adopt and adapt modern military doctrine.

A degree of operational resilience previously unseen in Italian arms.

A political regime capable of both brutality and flexibility.


Italy's continued trajectory will depend on its industrial capacity and the success of internal military reform. While still second-rate, the Italians are no longer amateurs.

RECOMMENDATION:

Continue intelligence penetration of Italian General Staff and training institutions.

Monitor Kurdish insurgency and Italian political overtures to minority groups.

Reinforce naval presence in Eastern Mediterranean to check further Italian adventurism.


Prepared by:
F. C. Rawnsley, War Office – Middle East Division
Co-signed:
E. L. Shenton, F
oreign Office – Southern European Desk

Distribution:
Prime Minister's Office (PMO)
Chiefs of Staff Committee
Mediterranean Fleet Command
SOE – Levant Branch

July 15, 1941
South of Adana, Turkey

The heat was punishing. The kind of heat that made the air shimmer and your thoughts blur at the edges. I kept my eyes on the village ahead, nestled behind a grove of citrus trees and Turkish machine gun nests. My uniform clung to me, soaked through. Dust caked every crease, every pore.

General Benito Albino stood beside me in the command car, gloves resting on the doorframe like he was out for a morning drive. He didn't flinch when the mortar landed near the convoy, didn't so much as blink when one of our Syrian boys was turned into rags. I did. Not out of cowardice. Out of memory.

I gave the report: trenches under the citrus grove, a tunnel system under the mosque. He didn't even wait for me to finish before he said it. "Then bury it."

"Sir…" I hesitated, not from fear, but because I still had a sliver of something left. "They've already deployed the gas."

He didn't say a word. Just watched.

From our vantage point, we saw the canisters roll in—our own artillery, Syrian-manned, German-designed. Chlorine. Mustard. The sort of things you're not supposed to use. The sort of things we swore after the last war would never be used again.

But this wasn't Europe. This was Albino's war. His father's war. And we were just hands pulling triggers.

I saw the fog roll out over the grove, soft and almost beautiful—like something divine, until the screaming started.

The Turks writhed and choked in the trenches, clawing at the gas, at the air, at their own eyes. Some dropped their rifles and begged. Others crawled. The Syrians mowed them down without hesitation.

I watched the general light a cigarette with calm hands. I wanted to believe they were shaking from guilt.

---

July 16, 1941
West of Hatay, Turkish Police Station, Field HQ

The map of Cilicia was laid out in front of him like a half-carved corpse. I delivered the intercepts—Turkish troops redeploying from the plateau. A good sign. Ankara was feeling the pressure.

He nodded. "That means Father's hammer in the north is working."

I watched his eyes as he glanced at the photo on the table—Constantinople, Hagia Sophia. His father had sent letters about it, mad scribblings dressed as strategy. Albino read them like scripture. I never saw him pray. But he believed in something. Or someone. And it terrified me.

Gas was used again on the road to Hatay. Targeted, they said. Not indiscriminate. As if that changed anything.

Some of our boys laughed at the aftermath—at the twisted corpses, at the spasms. I didn't laugh. Neither did Albino.

But neither of us stopped it.

---

July 25, 1941
Adana, Governor's Office

Three tries. It took three brutal pushes to take the city. I was in the command vehicle when we finally broke them. The Syrian tanks flattened the last trenches like vermin under bootheels. Bombers turned the palace into a funeral pyre.

We used gas in the sewers. He gave the order without blinking.

But later—he told them to treat the bodies with respect. He said they died fighting. I believed him. I believed he meant it.

That didn't make it better.


---

July 26, 1941
Adana Airfield

We walked the ruins side by side. British aircraft lay twisted and gutted like fish. The tarmac was ash and oil and blackened bone.

I gave the report. Adana secure. Tarsus holding. Hatay pacified.

He turned from the wreckage like it bored him. "Dig in."

"Sir?"

"You heard me. Dig in. No further."

I knew what he meant. The orders were from Rome. From his father. This wasn't conquest. This was calculus. A border carved with fire, nothing more. The Russians could take the rest.

And thank God for that.


---

August 1, 1941
Adana Civil Administration Center

The new administrators arrived from Damascus. Italian-trained Syrians, trying to look like proper provincial governors. They smelled like ink and ambition.

They took over everything: roads, post, education. Turkish was banned by the end of the week. Arabic and Italian went up on signs like graffiti sprayed over history.

The civilian deportations began soon after. Quietly. Efficiently. I didn't ask where the bodies were buried. I didn't need to.


---

August 11, 1941
Southern Adana Province

They hit us hard. Ankara's desperation in uniform. They had men. We had gas.

The 2nd Syrian Gas Battalion hit them under cover of fog. The screams came quickly. I heard them even from the armored column. Some Turks dropped their weapons and ran into the night.

I watched Albino give the order to let the Syrians hunt the stragglers. I said nothing.

Behind the lines, Kurdish raids tore holes through Turkish supply routes. It was working. But we were barely holding.

I wondered how long before the wind changed. Before this whole damn thing came back on us.


---

August 17, 1941
Adana, Rooftop Overlooking the River Seyhan

The night was mercifully cool. The front was quiet. For now.

I joined him on the roof, handed him the report. More Turkish assaults repelled. Some losses.

He asked about the north.

I told him. Constantinople was his father's now.

He didn't smile. Didn't shout. Just nodded. Lit a cigarette and watched the ash fall into the river.

A holy fire burned in his father. And here he stood, the son—drenched in smoke and silence—laying the southern stone of a mad empire.

I didn't know if he believed anymore.

But I did.

We would hold.

Because we had no other choice.

-

July 15, 1941
South of Adana
Turkey

The sun beat down on our convoy as it snaked through the jagged hills south of Adama. My hands rested on the edge of the command car, leather gloves stained with dust and sweat. The air reeked of scorched metal, diesel fumes, and something darker, heavier—like burnt almonds, probably corpses. It had been the same for 15 days ever since the war started.

Our new medium tanks crawled forward under the cover of Macchi fighters circling overhead, hunting for Turkish artillery positions. We had air superiority—thanks to dad and his obsession with the Regia Aeronautica, well, the military in general—but the Turks weren't rolling over. No, they were fighting like cornered dogs. Desperate. Vicious. Admirable.

A mortar round exploded 20 meters to our right, throwing a Syrian conscript into the air like a broken doll. I didn't flinch.

"General," came the voice of Colonel Haddad beside me, half-Syrian, half-armenian, all nerves. "The village ahead is still resisting. Trenches dug along the citrus grove. The scouts found a tunnel system under the mosque."

"Then bury it," I said. "We've wasted enough time here."

He hesitated. I looked at him.

"Sir… they've already deployed the gas."

Of course they had.

From my position on the ridge, I watched the 7th Syrian Infantry deploy the canisters—modified shells of chlorine and mustard gas, made from German blueprints. I'd authorized their use before we crossed the border. Dad's orders. This wasn't Geneva. This was war, war did not tolerate delay. And dad wanted the objectives captured at any costs necessary.

The wind held steady. The shells hissed out from the howitzers like mechanical snakes. A greenish fog rolled over the orchard where the trenches lay.

At first, nothing.

Then the screaming began.

The Turks clawed at their throats as they stumbled from their pits, eyes seared shut. Their rifles were dropped, hands raised in primal panic. A few crawled toward the syrian lines only to be cut down by automatic fire from the Syrian troops.

No mercy. No quarter.

I lit a cigarette with shaking fingers, not from nerves, but rage. Not at the Turks. At myself.

Because it didn't bother me.

Not anymore.

July 16, 1941
West of Hatay
Temporary Field HQ, Former Turkish Police Station

I stood over the map table as the final reports came in. Adana was still contested. Turkish reinforcements had arrived by train, throwing themselves against our flanks like suicidal ants. We had the armor. We had the skies. But they had the land and the will to bleed for it.

Haddad returned with intercepted messages. "They're pulling forces from the central Anatolian plateau. Ankara's feeling the pressure."

"Good," I muttered. "That means Father's hammer in the north is working."

I glanced at the black-and-white photo clipped to my orders. Constantinople. Hagia Sophia, towering over a skyline of domes and spires. I wondered what he saw in it. What madness whispered to him from those marble walls.

He wrote me letters—pages of manic prophecy. Constantinople this. Justinian that. Byzantium reborn under his shadow. I read them by candlelight, like scripture penned by a drunk angel. I wonder what mom, god rest her soul, would think of all this? She probably wouldn't have approved.

The chemical strikes occured on the road to Hatay. Not indiscriminately. Thank god. But we used them—on fortifications, tunnels, dug-in strongpoints. The Syrians grew used to it. Some laughed when they saw Turkish soldiers convulsing in the gas. Animals.

Though I didn't laugh. I didn't stop them, either.

Because every kilometer we gained brought us closer to our objective. And like a faithful son—or a broken weapon—I would deliver it.

Even if I had to burn all of Cilicia to do it.

-

July 25, 1941
Adana, Turkey
Former Governor's Office, Temporary Command Post

We took Adana on the third try. The final push broke their lines just before dawn. It wasn't elegant. Most victories aren't. The tanks crawled over trenches like bloated beetles, flattening corpses into the mud. Our planes came down like avenging angels, torching the last pockets of resistance. The final Turkish holdouts in the mayoral palace fought to the end. Gas was used there as well as the sewers. I didn't flinch when I gave the order. I don't think I flinch anymore. I still ordered them to treat the corpses with respect, they died fighting I'll give them that

They gave us hell. But in the end, we gave them a chemical cocktail of chlorine and firebombs. No contest.

-

July 26, 1941
Adana Airfield
Adana, Turkey

I walked the ruins of the Turkish airstrip with my staff including Haddad. The tarmac was cratered, blackened by weeks of bombing. The bones of downed aircraft jutted like metal ribs from the scorched earth. British as far as I could tell. Spitfires, hurricanes, a headache for the air force.

I lit a cigarette as Haddad reported the obvious.

"Adana secure."

"Tarsus holding."

"Hatay has been pacified. The Syria army is in charge of perimeter security."

I turned away from the wreckage. "Dig in."

"Sir?"

I met Haddad's eyes. "You heard me. Dig in. We're not going further. Father's orders were clear. These three provinces—no more. Hold the line."

He nodded. I knew what he was thinking. We could push to Kayseri. Maybe even Konya or even Ankara. But no—this wasn't conquest for conquest's sake. The rest would go to Russia's sphere of influence. Let the British have two heart attacks instead of 1. And even if we did, then what? Guerrilla warfare all over Anatolia? Our supplies were thin enough as is. I'd read the reports from Bulgaria, most of what was once Serbia was under their heel and they were still getting hell for it. No thank you.

August 1, 1941
Adana Civil Administration Center
Former High School Converted to Government Office

The first wave of bureaucrats arrived from Damascus—Italian-trained Syrian administrators with stiff collars and poor Italian accents. They smelled like ink and old ambition.

Greater Syria. That was the name now. A polite fiction. A paper crown handed to the Syrians by my father while the real authority sat in Rome, wrapped in military dossiers and grand speeches.

I oversaw the transfer of infrastructure: post offices, telegraphs, road commissions. Turkish street signs were pulled down. Arabic went up alongside Italian. Turkish was forbidden in schools and broadcasts by the end of the week.

Resistance simmered. Not for long. The trucks filled with the Turkish civilians the Syrians hadn't butchered were already leaving Adana. They were going to be Turkey's problem soon.


August 11, 1941
Southern Adana Province

They came at us in waves—infantry divisions from central Anatolia, scraped together in haste. They had numbers. We had everything else.

The Macchis tore their lines apart from the sky, while our armor rolled through the cotton fields like divine wrath. The Turks fought hard. I respected that. But respect doesn't stop Chlorine and mustard gas.

The 2nd Syrian Gas Battalion hit their flanks under cover of fog. The screams came a few minutes later, followed by retreat. Some didn't even drop their weapons—they just ran until they collapsed. I gave the order to let the syrians take the stragglers.

Reports came in daily of Kurdish attacks deep in eastern Turkey. Ammunition depots sabotaged. Convoys ambushed. Turkish units redeployed from our front to deal with them.

It was working.

We were holding. Barely.

August 17, 1941
Dawn
Adana, Rooftop Overlooking the River Seyhan

The air was cool, for once. Quiet. The front was stable. I stood on the roof of the old customs building, looking west to where the Frontline was. Even from here I could hear some gunfire. Not as intense as days ago, but still there.

Haddad joined me with a radio report in hand. "More Turkish probing attacks repulsed near Adana. Some losses."

Of course there were losses. A cornered animal always fights hard

"Any word from the north?"

He nodded. "Yes sir, Constantinople, it's captured. It happened the day the Turkish counter assault started."

I nodded. I could feel it, even from here—his obsession, his madness, burning toward Constantinople like a holy fire. I could see him now, wrapped in a Roman cape, muttering about Theodora as he ordered the sack of the Queen of Cities.

And here I was, his son, laying the southern foundation of his empire with gas and tanks.

I flicked the ash from my cigarette and watched it tumble into the night.

We would hold.

And
when he raised his banner over Constantinople, I would be ready for whatever hell he next sent me to.

"Of course it was captured." I sighed.

July 25, 1941
Çamak Line, Thrace
West of Constantinople

Diary of Pvt. Mattias Berg, 3rd Italian Expeditionary Corps

I used to dream of this. Glory. Fire. Flags waving over shattered lines.

Father warned me. Said war was rats and mud and screaming.
Mother cried.
My fiancee called me a fool.

Still signed up.
Me and Giustino. Idiots in uniform. Border guards playing legionnaire.

"To Constantinople or death," he laughed. Sounded like a game.

It isn't.

This line—Çamak—is hell.
Trenches. Hills full of bunkers. Concrete like bones. Machine guns barking day and night.

They're not running. Turks are dug in. Fighting like they've got nowhere else to go.
Maybe they don't.

They told us two weeks.
"Army's reformed. Stronger than ever."

Three days to cross the Evros. We lost a quarter of our regiment.
Edirne was worse. Gas masks. Poison. Street by street. Seven days of choking and screaming.

Now it's been fifteen days.
Still fighting.

"If they fight like this, maybe we'll get there by Christmas," Giustino joked yesterday.
I laughed. Couldn't help it. More like a cough than a laugh.

Our tanks groaned like beasts, crawling over blackened fields.
First shell hit the lead tank.
Second lit the grass on fire.

Then the gas.
Our gas.

Green clouds, low and fast.
Orders: advance under cover.

Mask on. Sweat in my eyes.
No choice. Move or die.

Giustino grabbed my arm, said something under the mask—probably some joke.
Didn't hear it.

Then a shell landed ahead.
Man in front torn in half.
I think it was Di Angelo.

We crawled forward. Inch by inch.
Short bursts.
No time to think.

The Turks didn't break.
Never do.

Civilians fought too. Women. Kids.
I saw a boy—maybe 13—try to strangle a Greek with wire.

I shot him.
Didn't hesitate.
God help me.

---

July 26, 1941
Çamak Line

Aircraft woke us.

Buzzing above. Italian bombers. Gliders.
Paratroopers dropping behind Turkish lines.

Operation Iupiter.
Two-pronged assault.

We pushed from the front.
They hit from the rear.
Bloodbath.

Took a trench near dusk.
Me, Giustino, dozen others.
Narrow, dark, reeking of piss and death.

Didn't see the sniper.

One second, he was talking.
Next—wet crack. Blood.

Hit in the neck. Arterial spray.
Dropped fast.

Held him.
He gasped. Eyes wide.

"Am I dying?" he asked.
Didn't sound scared. Just… surprised.

"No," I lied. "You'll be fine."

He looked at me.
"You… damn liar…"

He died in my arms.

---

August 1, 1941
Çamak Line

We took the line.

Every inch of it soaked in blood.
Turks fought till the end. Wounded ones too.

Greek and Italian flags raised over bunkers full of corpses.

Didn't feel like victory.
Just felt heavy.

Sat in a foxhole. Mask still on.
Couldn't take it off.
Couldn't take him off me.

Greeks were executing prisoners.
"Vengeance for Smyrna," they said.
Officer told us not to interfere.

All I thought of was Giustino.
Grinning like a fool.

Now silent.
Cold.

---

August 10, 1941
Outskirts of Constantinople

We reached the Marmara.

March after march. Town after burning town.
Snipers on rooftops. Traps everywhere. Dogs rigged with grenades.

We bled for every meter.

Saw the city from a hill near Silivri.
Constantinople.

Domes in the haze. Minarets slicing the sky.
The Hagia Sophia—timeless.

Giustino should've seen it.

Bullet whizzed past.
Dropped. Cursed. Moved on.

Camped a kilometer out.
Artillery in olive groves.

Officers barking in Greek and Italian.
We were ghosts.

Duce and Pangalos are flying in tomorrow.
He's obsessed. Has been since he joined the Greeks.
Talks about Byzantium like it's his mistress.

He'll walk through the Golden Gate.

We're the ones who opened it.

Sat by the Bosphorus that night. Quiet. Calm.
Watched scuttled ships burn.

Held Giustino's dog tags.

"Almost there," I told him.
"But it cost too much."

Didn't cry.
Not yet.

---

August 11, 1941
Constantinople

They abandoned the city before dawn.
Rumor: Duce threatened to gas the city if they didn't surrender.

We marched in. Full kit.

Through the Land Walls. Past broken gates.
Greeks cheered. Flags. Bruises on their faces.
Probably revenge.

Latin priests in purple.
Orthodox priests in gold.
Incense everywhere.

Duce wore a laurel crown. Looked like a bad Caesar.
Eyes on the Hagia Sophia.

He and Pangalos gave a speech. Long. Boring.
We clapped. Officers ordered it.

Then the mass.

Inside, the Greeks held their own. Chanting. Icons. A new patriarch.
The church hadn't seen this since before the Ottomans.
Two rites, side by side.
Neither at peace.

Rome and New Rome.
Uncomfortable marriage.

I stayed outside.

Tired. Dirty. Hollow.

By afternoon, the expulsions began.

Turkish families lined up. Quiet. Afraid.
Suitcases. No resistance.
Just fear.

"Thrace to be pure," a Greek officer said.

Pure.

That word tasted like bile.

Saw a boy crying for his dog.
Soldier kicked it, shot it. Almost shot the boy.
An Italian stopped him.

I wanted to kill that bastard.
Instead, I smoked.

That night, I went back to the plaza. Alone.

City was too quiet.

Looked at the dome.
Didn't feel proud. Didn't feel like a conqueror.

We took the city.
But lost something.

Giustino didn't cheer.

Neither did I.

Held his tags.
Looked up.

Finally let myself cry.

August 12, 1941
Outside Constantinople
Province of Thrace, Greece

The car reeked of sweat and leather polish. My mind crackled out Ordinary world by Duran Duran of all things—it had been looping for hours, because it made me feel something, anything. I larped so fucking hard yesterday. Constantinople, my little twisted crusader fantasy forged by hours of playing EU4, CK2 and endless browsing of Wikipedia was fulfilled. Yet it felt so ordinary, so meaningless. It reminded me of Griffith's little dream sequence before sacrificing the band of the hawk, him reaching for that castle in the sky while the bodies piled beneath him. I bet my pile was bigger than that closeted Twink.

Still I felt nothing.

I made them stop the convoy.

Had to piss. Had to breathe. Had to feel anything.

The weight of empire sat like wet cement in my skull. I pissed behind the corpse of a villa that smelled like roasted masonry and melted shoes while some guards stood close to me. The city—my prize—loomed just a few kilometers behind me, but it felt like it was light years away. Nothing feels real anymore. Not the uniforms, not the grand speeches, not the LARPing. Not the endless shallow toasts with generals who have the emotional range of dry toast. I finished and zipped up my pants. God I just wanted to be home.

And that's when I heard it.

A sound. Tiny. Mewling.

I turned.

The ruins of a house, charred and half-collapsed. And there she was.

A baby.

A girl upon closer look. And next to what I assumed to be the bullet riddled corpses of her parents.

Skin smudged with soot, little fists trembling like she was trying to hold onto life with the same desperation I used to have before I woke up in this nightmare timeline. She wasn't Turkish anymore. She wasn't Greek. She wasn't anything, just a baby. She was just there. Like a note out of place in a Tatsuro Yamashita track. Fragile. Wrong. Perfect.

And her eyes.

Brown.

Sofie's eyes were brown.

The same soft brown that made me stupid every time she looked up from her phone, chewing ramen, telling me I needed to stop doomscrolling and take a picture of her. Jesus Christ, what was that life? Was that real? Was she real?

I dropped to my knees. My uniform pants soaked in dust and blood.

I didn't cry.

I don't cry.

I just stared.

At her. At the eyes. At the echo.

"What have I done?" I whimpered.

The words slipped out before I knew they existed. They hung in the air like a curse. The baby didn't answer. She just blinked, her lips wobbling, as if she could feel the weight of me collapsing inside.

The Duce of Italy. Destroyer of the Balkans. The man who gassed mountains and split nations and wanted to drape the double-headed eagle in Roman purple.

And now I'm shaking in front of a fucking baby like a coked-out raver in a Berlin alley.

I scooped her up. She didn't fight me. She didn't even cry.

I walked back to my car with my guards behind me and looked at my adjutant and said, "She's mine now. Get a nurse. Get three. Make sure she lives. And bury her parents." I pointed to their corpses. "Give them actual graves, Mark them, have their locations written out, just do it and don't ask questions."

He asked what her name was.

I didn't hesitate.

"Sofia."

Of course it was.

Because if I can't go back to that life, maybe I can delude myself into thinking I never left. Maybe if I raise this little remnant of the world I burned, the building realization of what I've done along with my budding guilt will ease.

But I know it won't.

It never will.

May 30, 1941 – The Kremlin, Moscow, USSR
Emergency Session of the Politburo

The room was cold, though not from the temperature. The kind of cold that seeps in when history decides to pivot. The long table in the conference chamber was full, every chair taken, every ashtray already overflowing with half-smoked cigarettes. The smoke curled under the chandelier like ghosts. Guards stood by the door, silent and still.

Stalin sat at the head of the table, a thick file open before him. He wasn't speaking yet. Just... smoking, staring, brooding. He hadn't taken off his overcoat. That alone put the rest of the Politburo on edge.

To his right, Andrey Vyshinsky fidgeted with his pen, a nervous tic picked up from too many late nights writing accusations. He'd only just taken Molotov's seat after the latter was purged post-Finland. Some said Stalin did it for the embarrassment. Others said because Molotov talked too much. Maybe both.

Stalin finally looked up. His mustache twitched ever so slightly.

"They've begun," he said simply.

Everyone knew what he meant. Operation Barbarossa was no longer a rumor or theory. Hitler had launched it—nearly two million men tearing through Belarus, Ukraine, and the Baltics like wolves through a field of sheep.

Lazar Kaganovich was the first to speak, the old Bolshevik unable to hold back.

"Comrade Stalin, we must act immediately. The lines are strained in the west. Luftwaffe bombings have already reached Minsk!"

"Of course we act," Stalin said, his voice low but sharp as a blade. "I am not Molotov. I am not here to negotiate with fantasy." He shot a glance at Vyshinsky.

Vyshinsky adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat. "The People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs is prepared to denounce the German treachery at once. We've already begun messaging our embassies—"

"Shut up, Andrey," Stalin interrupted. "We are not pen-pushers today. We are warriors now."

Georgy Malenkov leaned forward, his voice oiled with the usual bureaucratic calculation. "Mussolini's reports were accurate, Comrade Stalin. His information was precise. Romanian troop movements, the buildup in Lviv, even the SS divisions shadowing Army Group South. It all lines up. Perhaps we should consider... expanding our cooperation?"

Stalin's eyes flashed dangerously.

"Mussolini is a snake," he said. "But sometimes a snake tells you where the fire is so it doesn't burn itself. He'll have his sphere of influence soon enough." He tapped the file with two fingers. "He warned us. He delivered. I don't like it, but I respect it."

Nikolai Voznesensky, young and sharp, spoke up. "Then why didn't we strike first? If we knew... if we had months of warning—"

"Because we were not ready!" Stalin snapped. The room went dead quiet. "And don't presume to question hindsight, Comrade. That's the privilege of the dead."

Beria sat with his fingers steepled, eyes gleaming like a vulture. "The NKVD is already preparing purge lists in the western districts. Traitors, saboteurs, kulak remnants—there are many we can remove to ensure rear security."

Stalin gave him a dark look. "No mass purges this time, Lavrentiy. Not now. We need every warm body with a gun who can walk straight. We will cleanse later. First—we bleed them."

There was a grim silence.

Voroshilov, still nursing his humiliation from the Winter War, asked bitterly, "What of the Red Army's deployment? We can't repeat Finland. Are we mobilizing the reserves?"

Stalin lit another cigarette. "The army was alerted months ago. We held exercises in Ukraine, Belorussia. Our defenses are not perfect, but they are ready enough. We'll bleed Hitler white in the forests and fields. I want scorched earth. If the Nazis take a town, they take ashes."

Zhdanov, ever the ideologue, spoke with a grim smile. "And what of the people, Comrade Stalin? How shall we explain to them that we trusted the Germans... but took advice from a fascist in Rome?"

"We'll say nothing about Mussolini," Stalin growled. "Let the papers call it treachery, a coward's ambush. The people don't need to know who gave the warning. They only need to know we were prepared."

Vyshinsky scribbled frantically. "So... an official statement? Perhaps I draft one by nightfall?"

Stalin glanced at him with cold disdain. "Make it short. Dramatic. Righteous."

He stood up slowly, the room rising with him.

"Let Hitler come. Let him throw his armies at us. He will find more than frost waiting for him. He'll find rifles. He'll find fire. He'll find hell."

And without waiting for approval or applause, Stalin walked out of the chamber.

The Politburo stood in silence as the door slammed behind him. Only Beria spoke again, his voice dry and amused:

"Well. It seems the war has begun."

-

August 17, 1941 — Kremlin, Moscow
Extraordinary Session of the Politburo

The heavy doors to the Politburo chamber groaned as they swung open. A damp summer light filtered through the high windows, stained with the soot of Moscow's factories. The air smelled of cigar smoke and ink. Around the long mahogany table, each member took his seat in grim silence.

At the head of the table sat Stalin, his overcoat shed but his posture as rigid as ever. A sheaf of couriered dispatches lay before him—one marked with the royal seal of Rome. His expression was inscrutable as the room settled.

Vyshinsky, seated immediately to Stalin's right, cleared his throat. "Comrade Stalin, we have just received word from Rome via our back channels. Signore Mussolini writes that he has completed his campaign in Turkey—occupying Constantinople, Thrace, the Anatolian Aegean islands, and the Cilician provinces as per our secret understanding last year. He further states he supports our placing Turkey wholly within the Soviet sphere of influence."

Stalin's eyes flickered once. He tapped a finger on the sealed envelope. "So the snake keeps his promise," he murmured.

Lazar Kaganovich leaned forward, excitement in his lined face. "A boon to our southern flank, Comrade! With Italy controlling the Straits, the Germans will be kept at bay. Our Black Sea Fleet can operate unmolested."

Stalin nodded slowly. "Good. The letter."

Vyshinsky broke the seal and extracted the letter. He read aloud in measured tones:

> "Il Duce extends his congratulations on your successes against the German invader. As agreed, Italy will not contest Soviet claims to Turkish territory and will withdraw all forces to agreed demarcation lines once formal annexation is complete. May our alliance—however unholy—endure for the defeat of Hitler."

He folded the letter back into its envelope. "That is all, Comrade."

A murmur of satisfaction rippled around the table.

Stalin steepled his fingers. "Report on the front."

Marshal Kliment Voroshilov cleared his throat. "The Germans have been halted outside Smolensk and Minsk. The spring rasputitsa combined with our pre–Barbarossa fortifications and preparations along the Dvina and Dnieper slowed the Germans at the start of their campaign and gave us time to consolidate our defenses. Their supply lines are strained already. Our partisans are active behind their lines, sabotaging rail and fuel convoys."

Nikolai Voznesensky added, "Lend-Lease shipments from America have begun arriving at Murmansk and Vladivostok. We've received trucks, jeeps, and enough aviation fuel to keep our Yak fighters aloft. The British have sent Spitfire squadrons to defend Leningrad's skies."

Stalin tapped his pipe on the table. "And Leningrad?"

Georgy Malenkov answered crisply, "The siege has begun, but the city holds. Civilians have been evacuated along the Neva; factories moved east. Our new T-34 brigades are engaging the Panzers at the outskirts—inflicting heavy casualties."

Stalin nodded once. "Good. And our defenses in Moscow?"

Voroshilov's lips tightened. "The anti air defenses are almost complete. Every able bodied man, woman, and child is either on the factories or working on fortifying the city."

A grim smile touched Stalin's lips. "Good. Let them come. The only things they'll get is ashes."

Vyshinsky spoke again, voice cautious: "Comrade, with Italy securing the Straits, he has allowed free Transit of all ships. Given the Germans lack of naval assets, It's safe to say lend lease will flow as long as we can control the black sea."

Stalin considered this, then turned to Beria. "Lavrentiy, what of internal security? Now that the Germans occupy our western territory, we must guard against espionage and fifth columns."

Beria's eyes gleamed. "NKVD detachments are already in position. Any suspected agents will be dispatched to 're-education' camps."

Stalin gave a curt nod. "Very well. But keep it quiet. We do not need rumors of massacres distracting our people."

Andrey Zhdanov leaned forward, voice earnest: "Comrade, we should broadcast Mussolini's letter as proof of Soviet strength. Portray him as the one forced to capitulate to our might."

Stalin's gaze hardened. "No. We don't mention Mussolini. Let the people believe that Britain and America are our only allies. We must keep the fascist collaboration secret—at least until after we have beaten Germany."

Zhdanov's face fell but he bowed his head.

Stalin rose. The table fell silent. He surveyed his colleagues one by one.

"Gentlemen," he said, voice cold steel, "the enemy bleeds. Our allies keep their word—however begrudgingly. Soon we will push them back to the Oder and the Elbe. But until then, we fight on every front. Mobilize another million conscripts. Transfer the 5th Guards Tank Army to the Smolensk sector. Increase production of 122 mm howitzers. And maintain the scorched-earth orders—no German shall live off the land."

He paused. "As for Italy—watch them closely. A viper's promise is no shield. But for now, they serve our purpose."

He swept out of the chamber without another word.

The Politburo sat for a moment, absorbing the weight of his commands. Then Beria exhaled.

"Comrades," he said softly, "let us prepare for the winter of
our discontent."

They rose as one, the echo of boots on marble marking the Kremlin's resolve: steel in the forge, unbroken.

August 19, 1941
Palazzo Venezia
Rome, Italy

There was a wasp in the room. It kept bumping against the high windows—desperate, suicidal, elegant in its own pathetic way. I envied it. At least it had a goal.

I hadn't eaten in sixteen hours. Coffee didn't count. Neither did wine. I could hear the echo of footsteps in the marble corridor—polished too bright, like we were trying to blind history into submission. The guards at the end of the hall stiffened. Graziani was back. Cavagnari too. Pricolo would come waddling in after. They were on time. Of course they were. Fear is always punctual.

"Free" by Chakra looped in my skull like a cursed memory. I used to dance to it with Sofie in our kitchen, back in the other life. Spaghetti boiling. Wine half-finished. Her calling me an asshole with a smirk that made me forget I was one.

The door creaked open.

"Duce," Graziani said, voice tight. "The preliminary report is ready."

Of course it was. Surprisingly quick. An after-action report. Black ink, black thoughts, black outcomes. I motioned for them to sit. They obeyed like dogs waiting for the whip. Cavagnari's cane clicked politely against the floor. Pricolo dabbed sweat off his lip. I hated them all. I needed them all.

"Begin," I said.

Graziani hesitated, opened the folder, and began to read. Tactical failures. Supply breakdowns. Outdated maps. Turkish resistance more "resolute than projected." All true. All banal. I already knew every word. This war was a shit show.

I didn't interrupt. Not yet.

As Graziani droned on, I stared at the window again. The wasp was still there, beating itself bloody against glass it didn't understand. I wondered if it had a family.

Sofie would've laughed at that. "You always notice the little things," she used to say. "It's cute."

Graziani finally paused. "Duce… should we proceed with the disciplinary board?"

"No."

They all looked at me.

"Reprimands won't fix rot," I said. "We're not dealing with bad men. We're dealing with a bad machine."

Pricolo cleared his throat. "Sir, the Air Force—"

"Has heart, but no lungs," I snapped. "You flew. They died. You bombed civilians in Adana with all the grace of a drunk pianist. And yet, it worked."

Cavagnari blinked. "You mean… the operation succeeded?"

"That's what terrifies me." I stood up. "It shouldn't have."

Silence.

I turned to the map. My fingers traced over Thrace, the jagged ridges like veins across a tired wrist.

"You don't win with heroism," I muttered. "You win with systems. Cold, mechanical, reliable systems. And we barely have one. What we have is nostalgia in uniform—men pretending they're Caesar's legions when they can't even keep their boots dry."

Graziani looked up. "What do you propose?"

"I want officers who think in steel. Who eat doctrine for breakfast and shit logistics by lunch. I want sons of Italy who've never worn medals but know the color of gun oil under moonlight."

"A new training program?" Cavagnari asked.

"No." I turned slowly. "A forge."

They didn't speak.

I continued, voice low. "I'm authorizing the creation of the Scuole della Guerra Moderna. Real war academies. No pageantry. No politics. Just evolution. You'll draft the preliminary structure tonight. Classes begin by winter."

They scribbled like clerks. Like students. Like boys.

My head buzzed. "Take On Me" by a-ha started to leak in—too bright, too synthetic, too perfect. I wanted to tear my brain open and scrub it out with a steel brush.

"You're dismissed."

They left. Not quickly. Not slowly. Like they were afraid the floor might explode.

When they were gone, I walked to my desk.

Another memory: Sofie in a summer dress, laughing in a life that felt impossibly far away. Her smile cracked something inside me every time.

I whispered, "I miss you."

Then I pulled open the bottom drawer.

Grappa. Half-full. And beside it, the pistol.

It wasn't ceremonial. It was worn, practical. I'd carried it for years. I'd thought about it before. Once or twice. Maybe more.

I stared at it. For a long time.

It wasn't melodrama. It wasn't despair, not exactly. It was... arithmetic. The mental math of guilt, memory, exhaustion. The final equation. I weighed it like a man weighs the weather before going outside. Just a possibility. Just a door.

I picked it up. Turned it in my hand. Cold. Clean.

What would happen if I ended it? Would they call me a coward? A traitor to history? Or would they finally understand—this wasn't about the war. This was about the man who woke up every morning and found less of himself in the mirror.

I set it down.

Not tonight.

I grabbed the grappa instead. Drank straight from the bottle. No ceremony.

The wasp had stopped moving. It lay curled on the sill. Dead. Quiet. Free.

Outside, Rome glowed in the amber dusk—beautiful and rotting.

And inside the palace, I lit another cigarette, pressed my forehead to the cool glass, and whispered into the marble silence:
"Take me home, Sofie."

-

August 19, 1941
Palazzo Venezia
Rome, Italy
Evening

The war couldn't reach here. Not really. The walls were thick. The air was soft.

I walked the long corridor like a man headed for a firing squad. But instead of rifles, there'd be linen napkins, warm bread, and the illusion of normalcy. I hated that it worked. That it made me feel something.

The door creaked open like it remembered me. Inside, the lights were golden, not white. The kind of light that forgives you a little. Not much. Just enough.

And then—

"Papà!"

A missile launched at my knees. Anna Maria, eleven going on philosopher, latched onto my leg and started talking about a cat who wasn't a cat. I let her. It didn't matter. Nothing did. Mussolini's youngest—bad legs from polio, lungs like tissue—but a will like granite. I had a soft spot for her. One of the few that hadn't scarred over.

Bruno hovered nearby. A little thinner now, eyes a little older. War does that. He looked like he didn't know whether to salute or hug me.

I saved him the choice. Pulled him close. I'd never done this before.

"You smell like cigarettes," he muttered.

"Better than blood," I muttered back.

Rachele stood at the head of the table in a simple dress, as if trying not to remember we used to be in love. She didn't look surprised. Just tired. The kind of tired that came from a thousand nights waiting for a man who was always somewhere else—even when he was in the same room.

"I didn't expect you," she said, not unkindly.

"I didn't expect me either," I replied.

She almost smiled.

Vittorio came in with a French newspaper, shirt half-buttoned like he was always mid-exit. "Is the press still lying, Father?"

"Probably," I said. "They're getting more creative."

He grinned. A rare thing. A real one.

Then I saw her.

On a blanket, in Edda's arms. A baby. Dark eyes. Too quiet. Too still. Watching everything like she'd already judged it.

Sofia.

The child I found outside Constantinople. Curled beside two corpses still holding each other, as if death had tried to tear them apart and failed. I didn't think. I just took her. She didn't cry. Just stared. Like me.

"She's been calm all day," said Edda. "I think she likes the music."

Ciano stood beside her. Even that lazy-eyed parasite had softened. For once he didn't look like a footnote pretending to be a headline.

There was music playing. I hadn't noticed. Something American. Vinyl hiss and strings. In my head, The Great Pretender echoed, Freddie Mercury singing me back into the grave I kept crawling out of. A ghost with a heartbeat.

Romano was in the corner, sketching something. Buildings. Or tanks. Or both. He never spoke much, but when he did, it mattered.

And for a moment—a brief, aching moment—they weren't historical figures. They weren't chess pieces or propaganda posters.

They were mine.

I walked over to Edda. Looked down at Sofia. She looked up at me and didn't blink. Just reached out one tiny hand and touched the cuff of my uniform. Not the medals. Just the cloth. Like she knew everything else was decoration.

"I missed this," I whispered.

Bruno looked over. "You almost missed dinner too."

"I'll eat now." I ruffled his hair. "Tell the servers to come."

"I'll call them," said Rachele, motioning to a chair. "Sit down already."

Romano came up and showed me his sketch.

"It's a city," he said. "But with no walls."

I didn't know what to say to that. So I just nodded.

Dinner came. Food arrived. Laughter bounced off the ceilings like we were a normal family. For an hour, we didn't talk about the front. We didn't talk about dead men or failed operations or how close I came to pressing that pistol to my temple earlier today.

We passed bread.

Argued about a football match that hadn't even happened.

Anna Maria told a story that made no sense, but had a perfect ending.

Sofia fell asleep in my lap.

And that's when it hit me.

I was starting to love them.

Not just remember them. Not just need them.

But love them.

It scared the hell out of me.

Was it wrong? Was it weakness? Was it betrayal?

Do I deserve this?

After everything I've done? After the blood? The lies? The theater of fascism stretched out over a rotting core?

What if I let myself love them… and then lose them?

What if I already have?

I excused myself. Said I needed air.

The hallway was quiet. Too quiet. I made my way back to the office. The door closed behind me like a tomb sealing shut.

I sat at the desk. Opened the bottom drawer.

The pistol was still there. Patient. Faithful. A loyal little demon.

I held it in my hand again. Then put the barrel in my mouth. I took a deep breath.

It didn't feel cold anymore.

It felt familiar.

Not as a threat. Not even as an escape.

Just… a constant. The only one I could trust. The only thing that never lied.

I placed it on the table beside the grappa. Lit a cigarette. Watched the smoke curl like a ghost's hand. "Damn it."

And I whispered to the empty room, not knowing who I was asking:

Is it worse to feel nothing… or to feel everything?

Sofia stirred in the next room. Maybe she'd cry. Maybe she wouldn't.

Maybe I'd still be here tomorrow.

Maybe I wouldn't.

Rome burned orange outside the window.

Inside, I just watched the pistol.

And waited for the feeling to pass.

-

August 19, 1941
Palazzo Venezia
Later that Night

The palace was asleep.

The children scattered to rooms down quiet halls. Sofia was curled into her blanket like a question mark that hadn't decided what to ask yet. Edda and Ciano had left early—duty, or boredom. Vittorio wandered off with his newspaper. Romano fell asleep at the table, arms still wrapped around his sketchbook.

I was in my room, me and Rachele. She stood by the window, watching the city glow like dying embers. Her silhouette was soft in the lamplight—familiar, distant. Like an old song I hadn't heard in years.

I poured two glasses of wine. Deep red. The kind that tasted like history.

One for her.

One for me.

But my hand shook.

The bottle tipped too fast. The wine spilled across the table, dripping down onto my hand. It clung to my skin, slick and thick.

It looked like blood.

And suddenly, I was back in that little town right next to Constantinople.

Sofie in the ruins, next to her dead parents. Me kneeling down next to her, and the field around me a lake of blood. "What have I done? What have I done? What have I done? What have I done? What have I done? What have I done? What have I done? What have I done?" It came over and over again, all while I stared at my hand. The red dripping down my wrist. I couldn't move. Couldn't breathe.

"Benito?"

Rachele's voice was soft. She came over. Touched my shoulder. The sea of blood, the town, the corpses, Sofia, all gone, I was back.

"I—" I couldn't finish. The words shattered in my throat. "It won't come off. Look. It's still there."

She looked down. Took my hand in hers. Gently, like I was porcelain.

"It's just wine," she whispered.

"No. It's all of it. It's all of them."

And then I broke.

I didn't sob like a man. I sobbed like a child—helpless and ugly. All the weight cracked at once. My body folded in on itself like bad paper.

She knelt beside me, took a cloth, dabbed at the wine. Didn't rush. Didn't flinch.

Her hand gripped mine.

"You're not alone," she said.

I looked at her. Into her. And I kissed her. Desperate. Stupid. Honest.

She didn't stop me.

She kissed back.

We moved like ghosts trying to remember how to be flesh. No words. No ceremony. Just two broken things rediscovering warmth in the shell of an empire. In my head, You are love for me By Yurie Kokubu played, the soft synth haunting my thoughts as we made love.

-

August 20, 1941
Morning

I woke up before the sun.

Rachele was still asleep beside me. Her hair loose. Her breathing slow. Peaceful.

For a moment, I just watched her.

I felt… lighter.

Not healed. Not clean. But lighter.

Like maybe, just maybe, there was a reason to keep standing. A reason not to pick up the pistol again. To keep moving.

I stood. Got dressed in silence. Poured one cup of wine.

Then I picked up the phone.

"Send her away," I told the aide. "Clara Petacci. Tell her I won't be seeing her anymore."

"But—Duce, she's already en route—"

"I don't care. She's not needed. Pay her well, she is not useful to me anymore."

A pause.

"Yes, sir."

I hung up.

Walked to the window. Rome was still Rome. Wounded. Proud. Pretending she wasn't tired.

Just like me.

I turned back to the room.

Rachele stirred under the sheets. She didn't open her eyes, but I heard her murmur something. Maybe my name. Maybe nothing.

I sat on the edge of the bed. Lit a cigarette. And for the first time in a long time—

I felt human.

December 1, 1941
Palazzo Venezia
Rome, Italy

Rachele had gone back to sleep.

The sheets were still warm when I sat up. My body ached in that soft, post-love kind of way. Not animal, not mechanical—just human. I glanced at her face, part-shadowed in the pale orange cast of a dying hearth. Peaceful. She hadn't looked at me like that when I first became Duce. Maybe because I broke, finally, in front of her. Because I cried. Because I saw the red wine on my hand last night and all I could see was Sofia's family—their bodies together while she held on to life, all while I saw a sea of blood around us.

I kissed her. I wept. She didn't flinch. She kissed me back and pulled me close. I let go.

This morning, I didn't reach for the pistol. It was still in the drawer, of course. Waiting. Patient. Cold metal always is. But for the first time in weeks, I didn't even look at it.

Instead, I poured a cup of coffee and stared out the window at a foggy Roman dawn. Pigeons fluttered from the rooftops like ash in reverse. I sipped and thought about Benito Albino.

Duce's firstborn son. A general. Surprisingly competent.

He was in Livorno now—under a pseudonym—slogging through mud and ice and lectures about Tukhachevsky and supply lines. I had forced him there. Ordered it. "Learn to fight," I told him. "you'll be an example to the others"

He didn't flinch either. He saluted. He went. He knew his place, I liked it.

They say he's doing well. The instructors call him precise, methodical, even cold. But there's warmth in him too. Good, he's human, almost like me. Maybe I should send Bruno, Vittorio and Romano as well. I'll keep that in mind.

Last night, after dinner with the family—Romano going on about jazz, Anna Maria trying to make Sofie laugh, Ciano pouring me a glass of Nero d'Avola without even smirking—I almost felt okay. Ciano... I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm starting to like the fucking parasite. He makes Edda happy. And maybe that's enough.

I smiled. A real one. Small. Faint.

Then the wine spilled.

A glass tipped in my hand. Deep red across the tablecloth. I saw it pool around my fingers like something sacred and cursed. Blood. Always blood. From Tripoli to Constantinople to Adana. My mind slipped. My heart shattered. I almost collapsed to my knees like a parody of a pope. But I held on, I was stronger now I guess.

And Rachele—sweet God—she didn't mock me. She went beside me. Took my hand. Cleaned it with the napkin. Clutched it. Her touch was soft, aged, but stronger than anything I've built. I held her like I was drowning. And we made love like two people who remembered how to feel afterwards.

The gun remains in the drawer.

But today, I don't need it.

Maybe I never will

-

From the Field – Livorno Scuola di Guerra Moderna
December 1, 1941
Benito Albino, pseudonym: "Tenente Marco Ferri"

Mud had frozen over the boots. Again. Morning drills were brutal—logistics relay, command simulation, live-fire maneuvers with the new autocannons. He never flinched anymore. But the memory of it remained: gunfire in Syria, the crack of rifles in the hills of Adana. He'd known war. Real war. But this was different. This was a school for killers who knew why they were killing. Then again he was no better wasn't he?

Instructors didn't care about medals or bloodlines. They cared about maps. Timelines. Fuel estimates. "A platoon that eats late fights like it's dying," barked Major Salvi during a night op. Benito wrote it down.

When he broke a comms exercise by improvising a backup signal protocol, no one praised him. They just said, "Again. Make it doctrine."

He felt tired. But it was a good tired. Purposeful. Earned.

At night, in his cot, he stared at a letter from his father. Short. Blunt. Full of quiet pride. "Keep doing what you're doing," it read. "You are making your mom proud."

He slept better after that.

-

British Foreign Office & War Office – Joint Intelligence Committee
TOP SECRET
Ref: BFO-WO/SGM-12/39
Date: 5 December 1941
Subject: Intelligence Summary on Italian Military Reform Initiatives

Overview:
Ongoing surveillance and interception efforts confirm significant restructuring within the Italian military educational system. Under direct orders from Mussolini—believed to be acting from both operational necessity and personal disillusionment—multiple "Schools of Modern War" (Scuole della Guerra Moderna) have been established, beginning with a pilot facility in Livorno.

Key Findings:

1. Curriculum Emphasis:

Combined arms theory, logistics, psychological warfare, and guerrilla counter-insurgency.

Notably, unorthodox material includes translated works by Tukhachevsky, Sun Tzu, and Mao.

2. Personnel Policies:

High-level reshuffling continues. Officers with political but no tactical experience reportedly dismissed or reassigned.

Rumors persist that even high-ranking generals have returned to training under aliases.

3. Political Implications:

Mussolini's rhetoric remains aggressive, but behavior indicates deeper fatigue and introspection.

Sources suggest renewed interest in familial affairs, with a reported adoption of a Turkish orphan named "Sofia." Psychological stability unknown.

Conclusion:
The Italian military is no longer merely aping German innovations. A new doctrinal identity appears to be forming. The long-term threat posed by this reform remains speculative, but the strategic competence of Italy's officer corps should no longer be summarily dismissed.

December 8, 1941
Palazzo Venezia
Rome, Italy

The Council was stunned—mouths ajar, brains still buffering.

Pricolo looked like he'd just caught his parents in bed. Cavagnari spat every word like battery acid. Even Graziani, usually a statue carved from marble and military doctrine, stared at me like I'd just strangled a puppy on live radio.


I stood at the head of the long oak table. Half a dozen generals and ministers glared like I'd gone mad. Maybe I had. I hadn't slept—just sat in the radio room all night, drinking and listening to American radio.


Pearl Harbor wasn't a catastrophe this time. Damaged? Sure. But not gutted. Ships damaged but not sunk. Fighter squadrons scrambled early. Casualties were light. Turns out Roosevelt took my little whisper seriously. For that, the self-righteous cripple earned a sliver of my respect.

Then came the questions.

"You warned the Americans?" Pricolo asked. He wasn't even shocked—just cold. Clinical. "When?"

"I did. When I went to Washington earlier this year. You know, for that 'trade deal.'"

Silence. Thick. Suffocating. Like breathing through wet cement.

Cavagnari stood. "We have an alliance with Germany."

I leaned in, both palms flat on the table. My voice came out smooth. Almost bored.

"So?" I shrugged. "Why should we chain ourselves to a corpse in the river?"

They didn't like that. Honor? Please. This is EU4 with better graphics—I don't answer calls to arms unless I smell blood in the water. And I smelled it, but from my allies.

"Germany," I continued, "is bleeding itself out in the East. They just took Kiev. Hitler sent Panzers into a frozen graveyard thinking the Soviets would fold like France. They didn't. Stalin moved his factories past the Urals. Whole cities on rails. The Red Army fights like rats in a burning house—cornered and furious. They'll break, sure—but not before they evolve. And once they do, they'll come back swinging."

"And Japan? Arrogant, vicious—and dumber than a bag of hammers. They think America's weak because it listens to jazz, eats Spam, and puts women in factories. But that same America has more industry than the Roman Empire had roads. They'll outbuild, outgun, and outlast the Japanese like a glacier grinding down a mountain."

"And when they do… I plan to be on the winning side."

I lit a cigarette. Nobody dared speak.

"War," I said, "isn't about loyalty. It's about survival. And I've spent the past two years dragging our army out of the abyss. No more binary divisions. Graziani's whipped the army into something almost sane. We've got medium tanks that don't look like wind-up toys. Logistics that actually logistic. The Navy has radar now. We've got a carrier under construction. And the Scuola? Working better than I hoped."

I turned to Pricolo.

"The Air Force flies monoplanes now. Not carnival acts on wings."

A few eyes flickered. Disbelief was giving way to something more dangerous: belief.


"I told you in '39—we'd profit from this war. We've spent two years rebuilding. Now we pivot. I want Il Rinnovamento to become La Tempesta. Triple production quotas at Reggiane and Macchi. Fast-track the Augustus carrier. Stockpile fuel like it's gold. Train alpine troops in the north. Get boots into the north. Because make no mistake—war with Germany is coming."

Graziani raised an eyebrow. "And if Germany wins in Russia?"

"They won't."

"And if they do?"

I took a drag, exhaled slowly.

"Then we die with clean hands. Not with Jewish blood and Baltic ash on them."

Still more silence. Good. Let them stew.


I pulled a thick folder from under the table and dropped it like a guillotine onto the wood. None of them knew. Only my OVRA people and Ciano were in the loop. The rest thought my visits to Russia and America were for trade. Let them believe it.

They opened the file. Photos. Camp reports. Emaciated men, women, children. Charts. Maps. Rot disguised as policy. Civilization disemboweled. They all went pale.

"This," I said, "is what our so-called allies are doing. The SS, Hitler's men in black in eastern europe. Hirohito's men in Nanking. This isn't war. This is a plague. You want to fight for this? If you want to, fine by me, but you'll have to shoot me and put someone else as Duce." I would be grateful if they did.


Di Stefani's voice was quiet. "So… when?"

"When the Soviets push west of Kiev. When the Americans land—Europe, North or South. '43, maybe '44. But we'll be ready. When that day comes, we'll strike from the Alps. Up to Austria and France. The Russians from the steppes. The Yanks from the beaches."

Graziani asked, "And until then?"


"We play the long game. Friendly to all. Allies to none. We build. We trade. We play both sides and profit. You said we were ready to fight Turkey this year. We were barely ready. Let's get ready to fight Germany and actually be ready. I want the army expanded. The air force doubled the navy fully prepared. 3 million men in the field. When?"

Graziani and Di Stefani flipped through charts and schedules. They finally spoke.

"We can hit 2 million by mid-'42. Three million by '45."

I sighed. Not ideal. I wanted to strike before the Americans showed up. But fine. Patience is also a weapon.

"Very well. Focus on expansion. Pricolo, Cavagnari—keep modernizing the air and sea. I want weekly reports. Gentlemen, we will be ready. Even with 2 million men, once the Allies land and the Soviets push—Germany will snap. Ciano, reach out to Franco, Boris, Horthy. See what their militaries look like. Graziani, Pricolo, Cavagnari—start drawing up war plans. Move divisions north. If Germany gets jumpy, we show them steel."


I paused. Looked around the room. They were listening now.

"You all wanted a new Roman Empire," I said, stepping away from the table. "Well, Rome knew when to fight—and when to wait. And when to betray a dying ally for the sake of an eternal Republic. I mean, we did this in the last great war right?"

I felt calm.

The storm was coming.
And I intended to ride the lightning.

December 11, 1941
Palazzo Venezia
Rome, Italy

The room was tense before I even entered. The air felt heavier, as if the walls had suddenly learned to sweat. Papers were shuffled. Cigarettes lit. Eyes avoided mine.

Graziani stood at attention, holding a telegram like it was a bomb.

"Duce," he said, voice low, "Germany has declared war on the United States."

I froze mid-step. For a moment, I thought I'd misheard him.

Then I laughed.

It wasn't the laugh of a statesman. It wasn't dignified. It was sharp and involuntary, the kind of laugh that bubbles up when the absurdity of the world reaches critical mass. The ministers stared like I'd gone mad.

I hadn't. Not for a while.

I walked to the head of the table, sat down, and let the silence stretch.

"He actually did it," I said, almost to myself. "The absolute madlad."

"Officially, yes," said Di Stefani. "Hitler cited Roosevelt's acts of aggression and the Tripartite Pact."

"Of course he did." I lit a cigarette with calm hands and a tired heart. "Because provoking the largest economy on Earth is defensive. Naturally."

Cavagnari adjusted his collar. "Duce, if I may, this puts us in an impossible position. The Americans will not take this lightly."

"No," I said. "They won't. And neither will I. We are not following Germany into this madness."

Pricolo's eyebrows shot up. "We have a pact, Duce, they're going to want us to respond."

"We had a pact," I corrected him. "One made when we thought Germany would flatten Europe before lunch. Now they're stalled in a Russian winter, and they've just poked a sleeping bear with an aircraft carrier."

Cavagnari frowned. "But if we refuse to support Berlin—what message does that send?"

"That we're not suicidal," I snapped.

They flinched. Good. Let them.

Graziani leaned in, calm as ever. "What if Germany pressures us to join? What if they demand Italian involvement under the Pact?"

"Then we stall," I said. "We cite logistics, supply lines, naval readiness. Make noises about support. But we do not declare war."

"Roosevelt will notice," said Di Stefani.

"So? That bastard owes me one and he knows it after pearl harbor," I said. "And he's smart enough to see what we're doing. Let Berlin hurl itself into oblivion. Let Tokyo swim in American steel. We sit. We wait. And we build."

I paused, staring at the cigarette smoke curling toward the high ceiling. In another life, I would've checked my phone. Opened a city pop playlist, put some Tomoko Aran on. Watched Sofie curl up next to me. I missed her so much. But that was gone. This was all I had now: marble walls, stiff uniforms, and war councils with ghosts. Outside I heard rain falling, reminded me of that one song by simple minds.

Rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling down, down, down.

Then I remembered, don't you forget about me.

I wondered if she would recognize me now. But no, she'd only see a monster.

"I told you all three days ago," I said, snapping back to reality, tone low. "Told you we'd wait for the right moment. That hasn't changed. If anything, it's more vital now. This war's going global. The world's about to turn upside down. And we are not going to get crushed under it."

"Roosevelt is going to want us to do something ," Pricolo muttered.

"Fuck him," I said. "He'll be too busy mobilizing america to make us force our hand."

Cavagnari looked unconvinced. "Duce, if we turn our backs on Germany, what if they turn on us?"

"Then we hunker down. We fair for the right time as the Americans and soviets grind them down. Then we strike from the Alps, from the sea, from behind if we must."

The table went quiet again.

"We are not their vassals," I said, voice low. "We never were. We've been rebuilding for two years. The army functions. The navy has teeth. Our pilots don't fly kites anymore. Every day we grow stronger. But we are not ready yet."

Graziani cleared his throat. "Then what's our stance?"

I leaned back. "We're shocked. Appalled. Caught off guard. We reaffirm our desire for peace on earth."

"And Berlin?" Di Stefani asked.

I smiled faintly. "We send flowers. And a polite reminder that we will continue allowing them to use us for trade with the outside world. We ask for more jews. And we keep letting in more Jews."

They chuckled nervously. But I saw it—relief. The tension draining. They'd expected madness. I gave them survival.

I stood slowly. "Gentlemen, I want plans drawn up. Contingencies for every possible outcome. Graziani, keep moving divisions north. Pricolo, I want our airfields fortified, have our pilots ready to strike Romania's oil refineries if Germany even dares move a muscle. Cavagnari, keep the carrier construction on schedule. Triple the radar budget. Ciano, continue reaching out to our allies in the Rome pact. This war is about to enter Act Two, and when the curtain rises, we will not be the jesters dancing in blood."

As they rose, I lingered by the window. The sky was gray again. Rome felt ancient in this light—tired, eternal.

I missed home. Not this one. The other one. The real one. The world I didn't get to finish living in. The world with music in my ears and Sofie besides me.

But I was here now. And history—bloody, stupid, relentless—had just given me a second chance.

Let the world burn. I'd be the one standing in the ashes, laughing last. Maybe I'll be a hero if I kill enough people.

December 13, 1941
The Reich Chancellery
Berlin, Germany

The room was thick with the weight of tension. The cabinets sat around the long, oak table, the faint smell of smoke from cigars hanging in the air. Hitler stood at the head of the table, his back to the map of Europe, his hands pressed against the wooden surface. He looked as though he might explode.

"Mussolini!" he seethed again, his voice laced with bitterness. "This fool—this coward! I've given him the Mediterranean, given him an entire continent of opportunity, and he dares to sit on his hands as if the war doesn't concern him."

He whipped around, glaring at his generals. "He won't even join us in a war against the Americans. He won't declare war against a country that has just declared war on us!"

Göring looked uncomfortable but tried to steer the conversation back to strategy. "Führer, we are embroiled in a war on multiple fronts. The Russians are pushing us back, Britain is still defiant, and now the Americans are entering the fray. Italy's position, while problematic, is not our greatest concern at the moment."

"No," Hitler snapped. "But Mussolini's refusal to take part is. I've given him the Mediterranean to use as he pleases, and yet, he treats me like some kind of business partner, offering me nothing but trade in return! How much longer do I tolerate this farce?"

The room fell into an uncomfortable silence. Ribbentrop, always the diplomat, cleared his throat and spoke up. "Führer, we must remember that Mussolini has his own concerns. Italy has never been as militarily strong as Germany. Perhaps he fears the consequences of fully committing to this war. We saw what happened in Turkey."

"Consequences?" Hitler's laugh was harsh. "The consequences of betraying Germany? The consequences of sitting idly by while the world burns? He should be grateful that I haven't had him killed! He's playing a dangerous game. A very dangerous game."

He slammed his fist against the table. "And the Jews—don't get me started on the Jews. Mussolini keeps allowing them to flee into Italy, resettling them in East Africa and Libya! He arms them and sends them to Palestine. He lets them run wild across the Mediterranean like they're running from some petty inconvenience!"

The generals were silent. Some shuffled in their seats. Hitler paced restlessly, his mind running wild with the images of what Mussolini's inaction had caused.

"We've stopped the flow of jews and what does he do? He doesn't even slow them down and let's them flee like rats. Do you know how many Jews have slipped through the cracks thanks to Mussolini's foolishness? He is a burden—not a partner."

Göring, ever the pragmatist, spoke up again, though with caution. "Führer, it's true that Mussolini has been more lax than we'd like in some matters. But we must remember that Italy is in a prime position. He's been playing all sides."

"Of course he has!" Hitler raged. "He cares more about his country profiting from this war than about the survival of Europe! Does he think I'll wait forever for him to come around? That I'll continue to build his empire for him while he sits there with his thumb up his arse?"

Hitler turned to Keitel, his chief of staff, his voice dripping with frustration. "What's the military situation? Can we afford to invade Italy while we're bogged down in Russia?"

Keitel shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "We're stretched thin as it is, Führer. We can't commit the forces necessary to invade Italy—not while the Soviet front is stagnant and the British are still a threat. Our position in the Mediterranean is already tenuous, and a campaign in Italy would divert resources we simply cannot afford to lose. Especially with the Americans now involved."

"And yet," Hitler growled, "Mussolini's actions have the potential to become a direct threat to our post war order should we overcome the current crisis. He refuses to commit to the war against the Americans, British or soviets. He gives them time to build up, time to organize. And he undermines our entire strategy by continuing to let the Jews flood into his territories! His colonies have become a sanctuary for our enemies."

Himmler, who had been silent up to this point, spoke in his quiet, measured voice. "Führer, we must recognize that Mussolini's actions are more than just a minor inconvenience. He is allowing the enemy to grow stronger within our reach. But an invasion of Italy would be costly, and we don't have the luxury of spreading our forces thinner. We may have to shift our priorities."

Hitler turned on him, his eyes wide with fury. "Priorities? What priorities do we have left? We're losing the east. I've invested everything into this war—the future of Europe—and Mussolini squanders it by standing idly by. He is no better than a traitor."

The room fell silent again, the weight of Hitler's words sinking in. He was right, in a way. Mussolini's neutrality was becoming an increasing liability. But even his generals knew that the resources for another campaign were limited.

Göring cleared his throat, carefully choosing his words. "Führer, the question is not whether Mussolini's actions are a problem—that much is clear. The real issue is whether we can afford to deal with him as we are fighting on multiple fronts. An invasion of Italy would be costly and could divert critical forces from the Eastern Front. We are not in a position to fight on every front at once."

Hitler's face reddened. He slammed his fist against the table again, sending papers scattering.

"I'll not be ignored," he hissed. "I've given that fool everything—everything he needed—and he spits in my face. I've suffered to give him the Mediterranean—he didn't earn it! I've sacrificed for him, and he dares to leave us vulnerable in a time like this?"

He turned to Ribbentrop, his foreign minister, a cold fury in his eyes. "I want Mussolini dealt with. I want Italy dealt with. If that man cannot follow through on our agreement, then we will find another way. Perhaps it's time to remind him who is in charge in Europe. He won't have a choice but to fight. And if he refuses—we'll crush him. No more negotiating, no more waiting."

The room went completely still. The generals exchanged glances, knowing that the situation was far more volatile than they had anticipated. An invasion of Italy was not a decision to be taken lightly, especially given the already strained resources on the Eastern Front.

Keitel sighed, resigned. "Führer, we will proceed as you order. But I must remind you that we are already at war on two fronts, and the third is now opening. We cannot afford to overextend our forces."

Hitler's glare never softened. "Then we will have to make a decision. Either Mussolini gets in line, or we force him to." He turned to Ribbentrop. "Send a message. It's time to show him the consequences of his inaction. He will declare war on the Americans. Either he is with us, or he is our enemy. We must ready ourselves for the need of Operation Saturnus."

December 15, 1941
Palazzo Venezia
Rome, Italy

The rain hadn't stopped in four days. The whole city smelled of wet stone and exhaust—the kind of scent that clings to your coat and follows you into bed. Rome looked like a tired woman standing at the window of a half-lit house, pretending not to cry.

I stood by the tall windows for a long time before anyone spoke. The city looked quiet. But I've lived long enough to know that quiet is just the sound history makes before it changes direction.

Graziani entered first—face carved from marble, eyes darting like a streetcat's. Then came Ciano, Pricolo, Cavagnari, Di Stefani. The usual suspects. A cabinet of tired men holding up a state that wheezed like an old lung.

Graziani handed me the telegram without a word.

From the German Foreign Office
To the Government of Italy
RE: Enforcement of the Tripartite Pact

"Given your silence regarding the United States' declaration of war, and under the obligations of our mutual alliance, we must insist upon your immediate entry into hostilities. Failure to comply will be interpreted as a hostile act and may result in the reclassification of Italy as an enemy combatant under Axis protocols."

I read it once. Then again. Then I laughed.

Not the healthy kind of laugh. Not even the madman's cackle I'd grown so fond of. Just a slow, hollow exhale—like a dying bellows.

"Well," I said, glancing at no one in particular, "that's certainly one way to ask for a declaration of war."

Ciano sighed. He looked like he hadn't slept since Bismarck sank. "They're bogged down in Russia and still think they can bully us."

"They can," I said, folding the telegram. "But that doesn't mean they'll like what happens next." I slipped the paper into my coat. "They're about to learn that 1939 is long gone—and so is the Italy they remember."

"Duce," Pricolo began, cautious, "if they're threatening to call us enemies… shouldn't we strike first?"

I turned to him, slowly. "We should. And we will."

I paced toward the fireplace. The warmth did nothing.

"Pricolo, I want the Regia Aeronautica on full alert. Bombers fueled, armed, and waiting. Draw up a strike plan for the Ploiești oilfields and refineries in Romania. If Berlin so much as sneezes in our direction, I want their Eastern Front rolling on bicycles. Firebombs. Chemicals, if we must. Let them inhale their own arrogance."

His lips tightened, but he nodded. "Yes, Duce."


I faced Ciano next. "Go to the Bulgarian ambassador. Quietly. Offer them Romania—whatever's left—as a puppet state. Time they remembered they were once more than Berlin's lapdogs. Then speak to the Hungarians. Remind them the clock is ticking. If Horthy dithers, the Alpini and OVRA will be ready in Budapest to help him... retire. And send feelers to the Arrow Cross, I want to see if they'll stand with us."

Ciano looked like he'd just swallowed a lit cigarette. "That's… bold."


"No," I said. "It's necessary. There's no honor in waiting to be pushed off a cliff when you can shoot the man holding you by the collar."

I turned back to the table and placed both palms flat on its dark wood. My reflection stared back in the polish—older, more tired, a man unrecognizable from the man who's body I was forced into over two years ago.

"Mobilize the army. Full deployment across the Alpine Line. Fortify the Slovenian corridor. Dig fallback lines. Make the Germans think we've lost our minds. We have, of course—but that's our advantage."

"And your family, Duce?" Cavagnari asked, voice low.

"Send them to Tunisia. I stay here. Somebody has to turn off the lights when this place burns."

"Does this mean… war?"

"Not yet," I said. "But when it comes, we won't ask for terms. We'll bleed them dry, inch by inch. And when it's over, there will be no Third Reich—only wreckage and ghosts."

The room went still. The ministers watched me. There was no fear in their eyes anymore. Just a sort of reverent, stunned quiet. Awe, maybe. Or pity.

I could live with either.

"Graziani," I said, "how many men can we mobilize in a week?"

"One hundred thousand Blackshirts. Light arms only—rifles, machine guns, no armor. The regular army's already shifting. Three hundred thousand are massed in the northeast, another two hundred on the French frontier."

"Good. Use the Blackshirts as partisans if we're invaded. Let them sting like hornets. And put the army on alert. I want the Germans to second-guess their every step."

I moved toward the door, but paused. "Ciano—one more thing."

He straightened.

"Send a message to the Holy Father."

His brow furrowed. "The Pope?"

"Yes." I turned, slowly. "Tell him I'll be delivering reports—testimonies, photographs, letters. From the Jews we've helped flee through the southern ports. Proof of what the Reich has been doing. What they are."

"You want him to speak out?"


"No." I looked him dead in the eye. "I want a crusade. And I want Him to remember who gave Him the truth—when everyone else gave Him silence."

The ministers left. Their boots echoed against the marble.

I remained, still.

Somewhere, faint through the walls, a record was playing. A woman's voice—soft, distant, heartbreakingly clear.

"I'm just a dreamer, I dream my life away..."

I closed my eyes.

In my dreams, Sofie still calls me by my old name. Not Duce. Just… me. The man I was, before the shouting, before the uniforms, before the blood.

But that man's long gone.

What remains is what history demanded.

I just wanna go home.

Later that evening
Vatican City
Private Audience Hall

The rain hadn't followed me here—but the silence had. The kind that breathes beneath vaulted ceilings and whispers through centuries of marble. The kind that makes you feel like a trespasser in time. I still heard it outside, rain falling down.

Rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling down, down, down

I got simple minds out of my head and locked in. I didn't have time to remember my old life. I was on a quest. Not the world of warcraft kind but a real one, something that mattered.

They brought me through side corridors, past gilded saints and ancient doors, all watched by Swiss Guards who looked too young to know what the world was turning into. They didn't speak. Neither did I.

The Holy Father sat beneath a golden crucifix, hands folded, robes as white as snowfall in a graveyard. He was older than the last time I saw him—more fragile, like the world's weight had begun settling into his bones.

I bowed my head slightly. "Your Holiness."

He offered the smallest nod. "Duce."

We regarded each other in silence for a moment. Two men in costumes, speaking across the ruins of civilization.

I reached into my coat and laid the leather folder on the table between us. Black. Unmarked. Heavy with the sins of others.

"These," I said, "were gathered through our ports. Testimonies, letters, photographs. Reports. Some smuggled out of Poland. Others from Vienna, from Prague. Names. Camps. Train schedules. Experiments."

He didn't touch it. Not yet. But his eyes lingered. The weight of it had already reached him.

"The Germans are not just fighting a war," I said. "They are exterminating a people."

He was quiet.

"They use words like relocation. Cleansing. But there are no towns at the end of those rails. Only ash. These people vanish like fog."

"Why bring this to me?" he asked. His voice was soft, like parchment crumbling.

"Because truth has become a crime. And silence a sin."

Still, he didn't speak. I leaned forward.

"You are the voice of hundred of millions of souls. You sit on Peter's throne. You preach of justice, mercy. Then preach it. Now. While there's still someone left to hear. Unless you want your silence to damn us all."

His gaze was long and unreadable. "And what would you have the Church do?"

I didn't blink. "Call a crusade."

The words hung in the air like incense smoke—strange, heavy, heretical.

"A crusade?" he repeated, barely above a whisper.

"Yes. With swords. With words. With fire in the pulpits and thunder in the pages. Declare the Nazi Party a blasphemy. Make its membership grounds for excommunication. Strip them of sacraments, bury them without rites. Force every German bishop to choose between Hitler and Christ."

He looked at me as if he didn't recognize the man sitting before him. Maybe he didn't.

"I want the Church to tell the world that siding with Berlin is siding with damnation."

A pause.

"Is this about faith, Duce?" he asked. "Or politics?"

"Both," I answered. "And survival."

Finally, his hand moved. He opened the folder.

The silence returned, deeper this time. He read a letter—cramped handwriting, a girl begging someone to find her mother in Krakow. He stared at a photograph—piles of shoes, a fence crowned with frost, eyes staring through barbed wire like ghosts trying to remember they were once people. I could see the horror building up in his face. Good, let him feel how I did.

"I didn't know it was this—"

"I did," I interrupted, gently. "Now you know as well. You and I both know you can't look the other way now ."

He closed the folder.

"You ask much of the Church."

"I ask for Justice," I said. "And for you to choose the side God already has."

I stood.

"I will not force your hand. But if you choose silence again, history will." I hesitated in saying that.

He didn't stop me as I turned to leave.

Outside, the night pressed against the Vatican walls like a tide waiting to rise.

I lit a cigarette under the colonnade and stared up at the dome.

If God lived here, He'd heard everything.

And now He had to answer.

Later that night
Palazzo Venezia
Press Conference Room – Secure Session

The rain had finally stopped, but the air smelled like metal. Like something had broken in the sky and was still bleeding behind the clouds.

The heads of the major newspapers and radio syndicates gathered around the long oak table. Il Popolo d'Italia. La Stampa. Il Messaggero. Radiotelevisione Italiana. All of them had the same look—tired, cautious, and waiting to see which way the wind was blowing before they set their sails.

I didn't sit. I stood at the head of the table, folder in hand.

"I'm not here to ask you for loyalty," I said. "I already have that. What I'm asking for is something far rarer." I placed the folder on the table and opened it, slowly, as if unsheathing a weapon.

"Truth."

I turned the folder around so they could see. Letters. Photos. Documents. Lists. Not forged. Not embellished. Just raw. Too raw.

"This," I said, "is what Germany is doing in the East. Not to armies. Not to governments. To civilians. Jews, Poles, Slavs. Children. They are being exterminated. Systematically. Silently."

No one spoke. They flipped through the contents with gloved hands and sickened expressions. One of the editors—a man from Corriere della Sera, I think—covered his mouth and gagged when he saw the image of a shallow mass grave.

"They call it the Final Solution," I said. "I call it butchery."

I let it sink in for a moment. Then I produced the second item. A fresh telegram, sealed and stamped.

"From Berlin," I said. "Delivered this morning."

I broke the seal and read it aloud:

"Given your silence on the war declaration by the United States, and under the obligations of our mutual alliance, we must insist upon your immediate entry into hostilities. Failure to comply will be interpreted as hostile action and may result in reclassification of Italy as an enemy combatant under Axis protocols."

I tossed it on the table like garbage. "What a fucking joke."

"They threaten us while they drown in Russia. They demand our loyalty while feeding Europe's jews into ovens. Give. Me. A. Break."

I leaned forward, voice lowering.

"I want both published. In full. The telegram. The photographs. The testimonies. Front pages. Lead broadcasts. Let the Italian people, no, let the world see exactly what Germany is. And let Berlin see that we no longer fear their shadow. I'm going to be declaring war soon gentlemen. And I need you all to whip Italy up into a righteous fervor. I want the presses running by dawn. I want radios screaming from Palermo to Turin. No euphemisms. No hiding behind passive verbs. If the Germans are beasts, then say so. And if any of you are afraid, leave now. I won't stop you. But don't ask to return."

No one moved.

Good.

"You are no longer propagandists," I said. "You are prophets. And the world has forgotten how to listen, so you will make it hear."

I started to turn, then stopped and looked back.

"One last instruction: if you mention me in any of this, call me what I am. Not 'Duce.' Not 'Savior of Italy.' Just a man who woke up too late—and refuses to go back to sleep."

Then I left the room.

Behind me, I could already hear the rustle of paper, the hiss of cigarette lighters, and the hum of a thousand words clawing their way toward the truth.

Tomorrow, the world would read.

And it would never unsee.

I wanted to see that smug bastard's reaction in Berlin. You don't fucking threaten me like that.

December 16, 1941
St. Peter's Basilica
Papal Address, Delivered Live via Vatican Radio

The bells rang at noon, but the square was already overflowing by dawn.

Rain had left the marble slick, reflecting the crowd like a broken mirror. Priests, peasants, soldiers, mothers clutching children—they all stood together beneath the looming dome, waiting to hear the impossible.

When the Holy Father finally stepped onto the balcony above the square, he was not the frail, quiet figure many had remembered. His voice, transmitted across the world on Vatican Radio, was calm—but flint-edged.

"It is not customary for the Chair of Saint Peter to speak in the language of war. But what is unfolding across Europe is not war—it is a slaughter of innocents. And silence, in the face of evil, is not neutrality. It is complicity."

He held up a single sheet of paper.

"These are testimonies gathered by our brethren. Photos, names, graves, unmarked and unspoken. Evidence of the German Reich's campaign to exterminate the Jewish people and others they deem unworthy of life. These crimes are not the actions of a rogue element. They are the policy of a government embraced by millions."

His voice sharpened.

"From this day forward, the Nazi Party is declared a blasphemous institution. Any Catholic who remains a member past the Feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord—January 1st, 1942—shall be considered self-excommunicated from the Church of Rome."

Gasps echoed from the crowd. But he did not flinch.

"To those who renounce Nazism: take heart. If you are imprisoned, you are Christ's prisoners. If you are executed, you die martyrs in His sight. Heaven will welcome you."

Then, the words that would echo across Europe for generations:

"I call now, not to kings or generals, but to all men of faith—Christian, Jew, Muslim, and all who hold life sacred. Join us in a crusade. Like the ones of old. But today's crusade will not be a war of nations, but of souls. The Reich has declared war on the image of God itself. We must with defiance, and truth, and sacrifice."

As the bells began to ring again, louder this time, the crowd knelt as one.

Some cried.
Some crossed themselves.
Some whispered prayers they hadn't spoken in years.

And far away, in the forests of Poland and the deserts of North Africa, radios crackled with a voice that promised, finally, that the heavens had taken a side.

Excerpt from Christopher Hibbert's 2008 Novel Mussolini: The Rise and Reign of Il Duce

"The Papal Crusade," as it came to be called by foreign correspondents, marked an extraordinary rupture in the axis of 20th-century power. On December 16, 1941, Pope Pius XII—long criticized for his caution—stepped into the moral vacuum left by global war and did the unthinkable: he named the Nazi Party a blasphemous institution and declared its adherents cut off from the Body of Christ. And he called for a crusade for the first time in hundreds of years.

It was Mussolini, curiously, who delivered the spark. The documents he presented to the Vatican—eyewitness reports, photographs, and intercepted communiqués—shattered the last illusions of Berlin's innocence. But it was the Pope who gave the moment eternal weight. His speech, broadcast in twenty-seven languages, reached not only Catholic faithful but resistance networks, Allied policymakers, and German bishops who had so far kept their heads low.

Historians still debate whether the speech was a stroke of genuine conviction or carefully timed political calculation. What is certain is that its impact was seismic. Thousands of Nazi officials, particularly in Austria and Bavaria, quietly withdrew from the Party by the end of the year. In some cases, they were arrested or executed by the SS within days. True to the Pope's word, the Vatican canonized several of these individuals after the war—ordinary bureaucrats, secretaries, and translators who had simply said 'no' when it was no longer safe to do so.

For Mussolini, this alignment with the Church marked a bizarre transformation—from cynical dictator to something approaching prophet. But even his harshest critics could not deny that in 1941, at the edge of a darkening world, Benito Mussolini lit a match and dared to call it salvation."

December 16, 1941
Rome
Palazzo Venezia

I stood on the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia, a cigarette between my fingers and a folder in my other hand—black, leather-bound, and damning. Below me, a sea of Roman faces stared upward, all expectation and tension, the crowd wrapped tight in wool coats and uncertainty.

The December wind was sharp. Sharp enough to make a man feel alive, or at least aware that he's not dead yet. I envied the wind. It had purpose. It cut through things. Me? I was still trying to cut through the fog in my own damn head.

Over two years. That's how long I'd been in this fucking skin. Two years since I got yanked from a world of LED lights, subway noises, family dinners, and soft beds. Now I was here, playing dress-up as a fascist, war crimes, and broken empires. My family—my real family—was gone. My girlfriends laugh? Fading like cigarette smoke. Her perfume? Replaced by the stench of burnt oil and nationalism. I could almost hear her humming that one Tomoko Aran song in the kitchen. Midnight Pretenders. God, I'd give anything to pretend again.

But here I was instead—about to throw Italy headfirst into war against a psychotic painter with a vendetta and a superiority complex.

I adjusted my collar. Scratchy wool, always. The uniform looked good in pictures, but it itched like hell. Another lie, like glory, honor, or the idea that this was all going to end well.

Behind me, the ministers waited. Ciano, pale as usual. The others, stony. Waiting for me to say the words that would either immortalize us or get us all shot. Probably both.

I cleared my throat and stepped forward.

The roar of the crowd quieted, like God had pressed the mute button.

"Italians! Romans! Brothers and sisters, heirs of Augustus, of Caesar, of Romulus and Remus!"

Okay, dramatic start. Gotta keep the theatre alive—it's Rome, after all. Bread and circuses, now with radio waves.

"Yesterday, I received this letter."

I held it up. The letter from Berlin. The Reich's ultimatum. Thin, papery blackmail dressed up in Gothic font.

"The German Reich has demanded our complicity. Demanded that we aid and abet them in their crimes—the mass murder of innocents, the annihilation of the Jews, and the perverse industry they have made of death. They demanded we kneel."

Pause. Let the silence sit. Let it ache.

"I will not kneel. Because Romans are not slaves!"

The crowd didn't cheer yet. They were listening. Really listening. That was rare.

"I would rather they come to Rome, bring their tanks, their SS, their hate, and find me and all of us here—standing on these stones, pistols and rifles in hand, the air thick with blood and courage—than live as a coward complicit in atrocity."

Still nothing. That's good. They're afraid. They should be.

"Let them come! Let them come with their ideology of ash and bone. We will meet them not as Nazis, not as fascists, not even as Italians—but as human beings refusing to be animals!"

There it was—the silence cracking. Murmurs. Then fists raised. Then voices. I could feel the momentum like a pulse, a heartbeat that wasn't mine.

"Today, I declare war on the German Reich—not just as its former ally, but as its eternal enemy. And I do so with open eyes. This will not be a clean war. No war is. But this? This is worse than war. This is about whether the world has the right to have a soul."

I could feel the sweat collecting under my hat, itching down my temple. I ignored it.

"To all members of the press, the clergy, the military, the workers: you have been given the truth. Not propaganda, not promises—truth. And I expect you to act like you've seen it."

I paused, looking out at the crowd. The sun was beginning to break through the Roman fog, spilling gold onto the rooftops. A miracle, or just timing? I'll take either.

"I don't expect history to be kind to me. I don't expect you to love me. Hell, I barely love myself most mornings. But I will not sit on this balcony and lie to you. This is it. The line. We cross it together—or we vanish, one by one, in silence."

I could feel it building now. That terrifying, gorgeous tension. Like the synth swell before an 80s hook. I could almost hear Cindi Lauper's time after time whispering in the background of my mind. It always comes back to that music. A cleaner world. No ash. No genocide.

"If they come, we'll fight. If they fight, we'll bleed. And if we bleed—we'll die knowing we chose not to be monsters."

I raised my fist. That old Roman salute, rebranded so many times it barely meant anything. But this time, maybe, just maybe, it meant survival.

"To hell with Hitler. Deus Vult!"

And finally, the square exploded.

They shouted. They screamed. Some cried. Some prayed.

But me?

I just stood there.

Dead inside, alive outside. Haunted by a thousand regrets, fueled by one truth:

I might be damned.

But I sure as hell wouldn't be his demon.

Not today.

An Excerpt from Diary of a young girl: The story of Ann Frank

Wednesday, 14 August 1940
We arrived in Haifa today. The heat clings to everything. Dust and salt and sweat. Our kibbutz overlooks the port. You can see British destroyers in the harbor like dull steel sharks.

Grandmommy runs the house like a general. She's set up a kitchen, a garden, even a system for sharing the single bathroom between six families. She mutters in Yiddish, dutch, German and Arabic now.

The men from the Lehi come by often. Daddy speaks with them late at night. The whispers are urgent. Mommy says not to ask questions.

Saturday, 7 September 1940
I've been made a runner. I wear a red ribbon in my hair to mark I'm cleared for internal messages. The adults treat me like a secret passage—they hand off envelopes while pretending to tie my shoes or pat my shoulder.

Margot helps in the community infirmary now. She's learning how to sew skin as well as fabric.

The British soldiers don't look at us. They look past us. That's their mistake.

Monday, 30 September 1940
Our unit lost two boys yesterday in the outskirts of town. The British caught them planting mines along the railway and executed them. They were seventeen. The kibbutz held a funeral at dusk. No words, just silence and the smell of smoke from the fires.

I asked Raoul if we cry after every death. He shook his head and said, "No. You remember. Then you reload."

Friday, 11 October 1940
We smuggled weapons through another funeral procession today. I carried a revolver wrapped in a prayer shawl. No one searched the casket. I wanted to laugh.

I didn't.

Monday, 11 November 1940
They hanged Daddy outside the governor's office.

British officers caught him with explosives and a map. They didn't give us a trial or a visit. Just a public execution.

I watched it. I watched the rope stretch. I heard his neck snap.

I didn't scream. I didn't cry. I memorized every soldier's face in the crowd. Especially the commander's.

Thursday, 28 November 1940
I asked for a weapon.

Mordechai said no. I followed him to the range and disassembled a rifle in front of him. He didn't speak, just handed it to me when I was done and sighed.

I sleep with it under my bed now.

Monday, 2 December 1940
Raoul—the French boy—is dead. He stepped on a British mine outside Haifa. His legs were gone. I held his hand while he bled out. He told me to "kill ten for me."

I nodded. I will.

Friday, 13 December 1940
My first kill.

British patrol. Three soldiers. I was lookout, but they came early. I warned the others, but one turned, saw me.

I shot him. Twice. He fell. The other two opened fire but the others came and killed them.

His name tag said "Martin." I haven't slept.

Tuesday, 1 January 1941
I don't think about Martin much. Not since grandma died. Typhus, not enough medicine, all of it goes to the fighters. Margot tried tending to her but she couldn't save her.

I don't blame her, I blame the British.

I carry a pistol and an Italian Beretta rifle whenever I'm with the Lehi. Mommy kisses my forehead before each operation. She makes grenades now—potato mashers, the others call them. She says she names each one after a memory she's lost.

Thursday, 13 February 1941
British checkpoints are everywhere now. We smuggled two crates of weapons under baskets of fruit. I kept smiling at the soldiers while holding a live grenade in my lap.

They never noticed.

They never noticed when we came back and shot them.

Sunday, 23 February 1941
The order has come. The uprising begins in one week. Haifa will burn.

I was given five targets. I'll take the first with a scoped rifle from the roof of a grain silo. Then I move to cover the northern block while explosives are set at the garrison HQ.

Margot cried when I told her. She still has hope. I envy her.


Saturday, 1 March 1941
Explosions at the docks, the barracks, the radio tower. Lehi fighters poured through alleyways like ghosts. British soldiers ran blind. Some tried to surrender. Others fought to the last. They all died.

I shot at six soldiers. Maybe more. I stopped counting. One of our units attacked the commander's hq and burned it to the ground, I heard he was in it. Good.

The streets are soaked. I killed a young officer who looked like Peter—Peter from school, who gave me a marble on my eighth birthday. I don't think he was even aiming. One bullet, right through the chest.

He hesitated. I didn't. His fault.

We hold the north quarter now. But they're sending reinforcements from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. We won't hold it forever.

But that was never the plan. The plan was to show the world we exist. That we fight. That we don't forget.

Saturday, 15 March 1941

The British came after 7 days, we dispersed before they could start shelling the city.

Curfew was declared a week ago, anyone out after dark is taken. Never to be seen again. I still go out, deliver messages, weapons, food, medicine. I don't care anymore.

One soldier, around daddy's age saw me. I shot him before he could even call out.

I stopped hesitating long ago.

Tuesday, 1 July 1941

Word arrived this morning on the wind: Turkey is at war

An Italian-Greek force crossed the Evros at night. By dawn, they were planting tricolor flags on the ruins of an Ottoman fort according to the radio. Thrace is on fire

They say it will be over in a week. I doubt it.

Mussolini and Pangalos gave a speech in Athens over the radio and declared the "Rebirth of Byzantium" in the East. A new alliance is forming—a "Third Way," the men whisper.

Our commanders cheer Mussolini, some call him Cyrus reborn. And the weapons keep coming. They always do.

Sunday, 20 July 1941
Another uprising.

We held part of Haifa for three days again and killed a lot of British. By the fourth, the British bombarded from sea and sky. We fled underground—tunnels and sewers, hiding beneath a city that one day will be ours.

My old school was turned into a British barracks. The market I loved was burned to the ground.

But we still fight. Italian boats snuggle in crates by night. Rifles, medical supplies, and sometimes leaflets: "For Zion, For our friends."

I hide by day. Run messages by night. I am 13 now. I don't remember what childhood felt like.

Wednesday, 3 September 1941
We were raided again.

British paratroopers struck the northern tunnels. We lost seven. They killed Mommy.

I watched her through a crack in the stones as she screamed. Her arms were burnt, she clutched a satchel of explosives like a baby.

They shot her when she refused to drop it.

I didn't scream. I held the wall. My fingers bled.

Margot hasn't spoken in three days. I don't want to speak either.

Saturday, 11 October 1941
Margot is gone.

She went to help evacuate an infirmary after a tip that the British were coming. It was a trap. Bombs. Fire from above.

I found her silver Star of David in the ash.

She had engraved a line from the Psalms on the back:

"Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death..."

She never finished it.

I carry it now.

I'll never finish it.

Thursday, 20 November 1941

The Italians have been sending better weapons—submachine guns, radios, boots that actually fit.

They call us Partigiani dell'Alba—Partisans of the Dawn.

An OVRA agent named Giuseppe meets us once a week in the ruins of a synagogue. He gives us drop off points for weapons, coordinates the arrival of new fighters from Libya.

Monday, 1 December 1941
Every time I write my pen feels like lead. My hands too bloodstained.

But something's changed. I feel it.

The air is different. Radios buzz more. Italian agents smile less. One of them said something about "German camps" and "gas". The new Lehi fighters smuggled in from Lybia say the same thing.

I don't smile anymore.

Wednesday, 17 December 1941
Today… the world changed.

In the evening, our cell commander burst into the room shouting: "He's done it. Il Duce has told the truth."

Mussolini went on Italian radio. He declared war on Germany.

He read intercepted German memos. Photos of corpses. Eyewitness accounts from Polish partisans. He said "to hell with Hitler."

He then recognized the independence of Israel, Stern has been declared president in exile. He dmanded the British open up settlement of Israel, called them complicit with what the nazis did for closing up Israel and condemning millions to die.

Stern came on the podium besides Mussolini a few minutes later. Pledged Israel's loyalty to Italy and joined the Rome pact. King Victor Emmanuel is now our king. Offered the British a truce in return for allowing the unlimited flow of Jews to Israel.

Everyone cried. People screamed. Some saluted Mussolini. I fell to my knees.

Because he's the only one that gave us the means to strike back.

And today, he stands with us.

I'm the last Frank now. 13 years old, and I have buried my childhood beside my mother, father, grandmother and sister.

I still dream somehow. I dream of home. Of grandma, mommy, daddy, and Margot.

I dream of seeing them again.

I miss them.

I still love them.

But I can't even cry anymore.

Sunday, 21 December 1941

Churchill came on the radio, he sounded upset, good.

Says in light of the events in Italy he will allow unlimited flow of Jews to Israel. Announced amnesty for all Lehi fighters.

Orders came in from Stern. Fighting is to stop. All Lehi fighters to go on standby. Per Rome pact protocols we are at war with Germany now.

The call came in for volunteers. I volunteered. When I came they told me I was too young. My cell leader told them what I did, that I had no one left. They took pity on me and handed me a rifle.

I'm on a boat again, to Italy now, back to where it all started. The Germans began an invasion. They're trying to cross through Austria and France, the Italians are holding on. If I die, I hope I can at least take another 10.

Sunday, 28 December 1941

Landed in Venice two days ago, arrived at the front yesterday, near the Austrian border.

It's so different from fighting in Haifa. They gave us uniforms, helmets and rifles. Mine is a little too big as always.

Trenches, just like in the great war. They made me a runner. Reminds me of Haifa, back when I had a family. The only family I have now are the bullets, rifles, shells and my unit.

Friday, 2 January 1942

We were pushed back. We made them pay for every inch. We're in a little village a few kilometers inside Italy. House to house fighting. I killed a German, shot him in the legs while hiding inside a pantry, strangled him with wire to finish him.

The other people in my unit emerged from their hiding spots and killed the Germans. They never show us mercy, we give none either, not after what Duce showed to the world.

I looked down at the German's face after he stopped breathing. It was swollen and purple, his eyes a bloody mess. It didn't even bother me, nothing does anymore.

Thursday, 8 January 1942

Another day, more fighting.

More italians started to arrive in the front. Better armed, tanks,planes and gas on our side now. No longer outgunned. No longer being pushed back.

Our unit captured a few Germans. We took turns kicking and hitting them. The soldiers all laughed and jeered; Wladimir, one of the kids from the camp in Libya pulled out his pistol and shot him while everyone laughed and cheered. I just stood there.

The Italians didn't bother stopping us, they give us looks of pity, particularly this one soldier. I hear their officers tell them to let us have our vengeance. They don't know I understand Italian.

I don't see the point to all this anymore. I miss my family.

Monday, 12 January 1942

Pushed to a small town today. Took heavy casualties but paid the Germans back. Entered the town, most of the people evacuated, some couldn't. We entered a house for shelter, went up to the bedroom, it was a child's room, a girl maybe.

Walked around, found a book. Tales and Legends of the Netherlands .

I remembered, my birthday almost two years ago. The gifts my family gave me.

Something in me broke. I started crying. Mordechai, Anissa, and Daniel came over to comfort me but I couldn't stop. Not until nighttime.

Why am I still alive? Why couldn't it have been mommy? Or daddy? Or Margot? Or grandmommy?

Diary of Mattias Berg
Sargeant, 3rd Alpine Infantry Division "Julia"
Italian Front, Austria, 1942

August 20, 1941
Taranto Naval Base, Italy

They cheered when we got off the ship.
"Heroes of the Bosphorus," they called us.
Medals. Flowers. Brass bands. The whole theater.

I kept my eyes low. Couldn't stand it.
Giustino should've been here.

They handed me a citation. Medal for Valor.
Pinned it to my chest like it made sense.

It didn't.


---

August 23, 1941
Syracuse, Sicily

The train south was quiet.
Every station, someone asked for stories. I gave them lies. Told them the food was bad. The weather worse.

Never mentioned the gas. The screaming. The boy with the wire.

Sicily was warm. Too warm. The air smelled like the sea and fruit.
Didn't feel real. Like I stepped into someone else's life.

Giustino's village was small. Whitewashed stone. Olive trees twisting in the wind.

His mother hugged me before I said a word.
His father put his hand on my shoulder. Didn't speak. Didn't need to.

I gave them his tags. And then I couldn't speak either.


---

August 27, 1941
Outside Giustino's family home

They asked me to stay a few days. I said I couldn't.
They insisted.

His mother cooked for me every night. Called me "figlio mio" like I'd always been hers.
His father poured wine in silence. Patted my back once. That was enough.

I met Anna in the garden. She had dirt on her hands, hair tied back, a smudge of ash on her cheek.
Said she remembered me from a picture Giustino sent.

She looked just like him.
That smile.


---

September 2, 1941
Syracuse

Anna and I walked by the cliffs today. The sky was blue, sea bluer.
We talked about Giustino. About the war. About nothing.

I caught her crying when she thought I wasn't looking.
I looked away.

That night we sat on the roof. No words.
She rested her head on my shoulder. I didn't move.


---

September 5, 1941
Giustino's Room

It just happened.
The wine. The warmth. The grief.
Our bodies moved before our minds did.

After, we lay there in silence. I wanted to say something. Didn't know what.

"Sorry," I finally said.

She shook her head. "Don't be."


---

September 6, 1941
Back porch

Told her I'd marry her. Said it like a confession.

She smiled. Touched my hand.

"You're kind," she said. "But this isn't love. It's just… mourning."

"I don't want your pity. I want you to be happy."

She kissed my cheek. "Then go home."


---

September 9, 1941
Train North

I didn't say goodbye. Couldn't.

Giustino's mother cried again. His father nodded once.

Anna wasn't at the station.

Maybe it was better that way.


---

September 12, 1941
Val di Vizze

Sofia met me with flowers.
Her eyes were bright, like nothing had changed.

Everything had.

She hugged me. I didn't hug her back.

She knew. I saw it in her face. Her smile cracked.
"I missed you," she whispered.

I couldn't lie again.

That night I ended it.
Told her the truth, or enough of it.

She slapped me. Called me a coward. Said I should have died in Thrace.

She was right.


---

September 15, 1941
Military Office, Naples

Signed up again.

They said I didn't have to.
Said I'd earned a discharge, a pension, a quiet life.

I told them I didn't belong in that life.

War is hell. But it's the only place I don't feel like a ghost.


---

October 2, 1941
Reassigned – Alpine Front Training, Trentino

Mountains. Cold. Clean.

Nothing like the trenches. But I know that won't last.

They say the Germans are watching us. Quiet now, but not for long.


---

December 17, 1941
Field Camp, Alto Adige

The world shifted.

The Duce went on the radio. Exposed the Holocaust. Camps. Graves. Eyewitness accounts. Photographs.

My stomach turned.

He declared war on Germany.

I sat there, listening in the dark. Others cheered. Some cursed.
Me? I just lit a cigarette and stared at the snow.

Another war. Another front.

I wonder if Giustino would've laughed or cried.

Maybe both.


Thursday, 8 January 1942
We retook my Hometown today. Snow up to the knees, bullets singing through the trees. The Germans don't retreat—they splinter, dig in, and bleed into the rocks.

The Lehi captured three of them in the ravine nearby. Young, frightened. Maybe 19 or 20. We dragged them to the edge of the clearing.

They took turns kicking and hitting them. The soldiers all laughed and jeered; One of them, a boy no older than 15 pulled out his pistol and shot him while everyone laughed and cheered.

They walk like ghosts, those kids. All of them too thin, too sharp around the edges. One of them—a girl, small, dark hair, eyes like broken glass—stood silent just watching.

She didn't flinch.

Our officers tell us to let them their vengeance. I want to stop it, they're kids, they shouldn't be doing it. I argue but my officer tells me to stop being so soft hearted towards those animals. I sigh and pull out a cigarette, the same girl looks at me, I think she understands Italian.

--


Saturday, 18 January 1942
We pushed through a frozen village in the Austrian border today. I found her again—the girl from the ravine. She was cleaning her rifle beside a stove. Someone called her "Anne."

She looked up when I passed. Just nodded. No smile. No warmth. Her hands moved like clockwork over the bolt, the sling, the magazine.

I asked one of her comrades—an older boy with a bandage across his face—what she did before this.

"killed British," he said. "Now she kills Germans."


---

Wednesday, 22 January 1942
The Germans shelled us all night. Broke through the right flank at dawn. Our section fell back behind a ridge, laid mines, and waited.

They walked into the traps like cattle. The screams didn't stop. One man lost both legs—he tried to crawl away. The girl—Anne—walked past him, rifle slung over her shoulder, pulled a pistol and ended it without a word.

I saw one of our men cross himself. She didn't.


---

Friday, 24 January 1942
We found a German squad holed up in a chapel. Six of them, out of ammo. They dropped their rifles, hands up, shouting in broken Italian and French.

We watched as the Lehi formed a semicircle. Anne stood at the center. The Germans looked at her—maybe they saw a child, maybe they saw a ghost.

One muttered something in German. She answered. Fluently. Bitterly. Her voice didn't crack once.

Then one of the Lehi boys raised a revolver. Another knife. One of the Germans pissed himself.

Anne didn't touch any of them.

She just watched.

After, I saw her sitting alone near the bell tower, writing something in a little book. Her fingers shook slightly.


---

Monday, 27 January 1942
We took shelter in a farmhouse. Snowed in. Anne sleeps near the hearth. Her rifle is never more than a few inches from her hand.

Today, we shared a can of beans and some bread. She barely spoke, but when someone asked what day it was, she whispered: "My sister's birthday."

That was all.

Later, I saw her cut a small strip of cloth from her jacket and burn it in the fire. A sort of offering, maybe.

Grief clings to her like frost. But it never slows her down.

---

Thursday, 29 January 1942
The Germans counterattacked today. They brought tanks. The snow turned red in places, yellow in others. Our boys held the line with fire, gas and screams. The Lehi emerged from foxholes and ruined homes, rifles barking in Hebrew rhythm.

Anne was on the ridge, covering us with a scoped rifle. She dropped three, maybe four. She doesn't shout. Doesn't even breathe heavy. Just loads, aims, fires, like she's writing lines in a diary.

I helped her down after the smoke cleared. She brushed past me, but not before I heard her mutter, in Dutch, I think: "For Margot."


---

Saturday, 31 January 1942
Captured a courier today. Blonde, blue-eyed, soft-spoken—looked barely older than me. Cried when we stripped his pack. Letters, documents, and a small photo of a girl in a summer dress.

The officers wanted to interrogate him.

The Lehi didn't wait.

Anne wasn't there when they dragged him to the barn. But she showed up when the screaming started.

They gave her the pistol.

She looked at the boy. Said something soft in German. He nodded, tears rolling.

Then she pulled the trigger.

Clean. Quiet.

Then she walked out into the snow.


---

Tuesday, 4 February 1942
Anne sits by the fire with us now, sometimes. She doesn't laugh, but she listens.

I asked her once what she dreams about.

She stared into the flames and said in perfect Italian "my family ."

I cried.