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>General Alberto Pariani, Chief of Staff of the Army and Under Secretary for War. He helped make the Versailles Treaty, was one of the planners of the Ethiopian campaign, introduced the goose step and forebade swearing in the Army, believes in lightning warfare. Pro-Axis, at least outwardly, he conferred with Germany's Chief of the High Command Wilhelm Keitel just before Italy took Albania.
>Edmondo Rossoni, Minister of Agriculture, gentlest Cabinet Minister, who used to see everybody, promise everything, do nothing. Stanch friend to Soviet Ambassador Boris Stein, he had hoped that the Moscow-Berlin and Rome-Berlin Axes might mesh.
>Minister of Corporations Ferruccio Lantini, Minister of Trade Felice Guarneri, Minister of Communications Antonio Stefano Benni, Minister of Public Works Giuseppe Cobolli-Gigli, Under Secretary of State Giuseppe Medici del Vascello.
This castor-oil operation may, as the Italian press claimed, merely have removed faithful servants so that other faithful servants might have their hour. But foreign commentators could not help noticing an obvious common denominator: the important purgees were strongly pro-Axis. Only ministers left were Foreign Minister Count Ciano, popular Minister of Justice Dino Grandi, Premier Mussolini himself (War, Navy, Air, Interior), and three others—the neutrality bloc. Italy, it seemed, wanted no entangling alliances.
After removals, the jigsaw puzzle was only half there. What would the picture be when the new pieces were put in?
Many of the new ministerial appointments seemed routine enough. But two key jobs—Secretary of the Fascist Party and Chief of Staff of the Army—fell to men with plenty of significance. Italy would be neutral but strong, isolated but ready. Two of the toughest bambinos in Italy came in:
>The biggest political job was given to a man with no political but plenty of military fame, a 37-year-old child of iron named Ettore Muti. Signor Muti marched with Poet-Hero Gabriele D'Annunzio when he seized Fiume in 1919, by 1922 had let enough blood in the province of Ravenna so that it was ready to be healed by Fascism; dropped bombs on Ethiopia and Spain—until, today, his is known as the most decorated chest in medal-rich Italy. He is handsome, slim-waisted, athletic, merciless. If Starace was a panther, he is a tiger.
>The military plum fell to one of the grimmest, crudest men in Italy, Marshal Rodolfo Graziani. His family motto is: "An enemy forgiven is more dangerous than a thousand foes." He ruthlessly subdued Libya in 1921-29, led the murderous southern campaign in Ethiopia. Nicked by a would-be assassin's hand grenade in Addis Ababa in 1937, he had 1,600 natives slaughtered. When Mussolini chided him, he is said to have answered: "Mild measures never retained conquered soil." Shortly afterwards he returned to Italy because of "ill health."