In the words of the Encyclopedia Britannica, “Mussolini remained a hero to his own people and was profoundly respected around the world. He was hailed as a genius and a superman by public figures all over Europe and in the United States, compared to Caesar, to Napoleon and to Cromwell. The American Cardinal O’Connell of Boston said that Mussolini was a genius given to Italy by God. Winston Churchill declared that he himself would have donned the Fascist black shirt, had he been an Italian.”¹³ In 1934, Mussolini had even stood alone against German attempts to take over Austria. Hitler backtracked when Italian troops were rushed to the frontier. While the Western Allies enthusiastically applauded the Duce’s action, he noted bitterly that they left him to confront the Third Reich alone.

Their long honeymoon with the Fascist leader ended quite suddenly when he threatened to invade Abyssinia. Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, banged the League of Nations’ podium, declaring that his country stood “for steady and collective resistance to all acts of unprovoked aggression,” referring to Italy. “Steady and collective resistance to all acts of unprovoked aggression!”, he emphatically repeated to a standing ovation of all members, save Baron Pompeo Aloisi, the Italian representative. In a statement generally understood to threaten war against Italy, Hoare declared, “If risks for peace are to be run, they must be run by all. The security of the many cannot be ensured solely by the efforts of the few, however powerful they may be.”¹⁴

Belgium’s representative, Paul Hymans, concluded, “The British have decided to stop Mussolini, even if that means using force.”¹⁵

Mussolini responded, not with words, but by mounting a public display of his armed forces on 18 May 1935. An immense public audience cheered wildly when a large formation of bombers roared over the mock-up of an enemy factory, which exploded into thousands of fragments. Massed corps of flamethrowers spewed great swaths of fire across the staged battlefield. Dozens of the army’s largest artillery pieces thundered, while machine-guns rattled at imaginary targets, and whole battalions of infantry were put through their paces.