Pact Of Steel Quotes

The next month Mussolini and Hitler signed a ten-year alliance, known as the Pact of Steel.

Days passed until they threatened to make a week, and Jimmy could glimpse how weeks might eventually become months. Outside the steel door in the upper room, the men outside were trying to get in. On the radio, they yelled and argued. Jimmy listened sometimes, but all they talked about were the dead and dying and forbidden things, like the great outside.

Italian fascists were so arrogant that they believed they were secure siding with Hitler, signing the Pact of Steel in May 1939. This was arrogance, and the residents of Italy paid gravely for this, leading the country into ruins.

Mussolini was tempted to revert to his old anti-Nazi stance but convinced himself that to renounce an aggressive policy now, along lines parallel with Hitler’s, would be equivalent to turning his back on the whole revolutionary project of Fascism and the totalitarian state, the same as giving in to the hated peace-loving Italian bourgeoisie. Thus when he and Hitler met in May 1939, Mussolini insisted on going beyond Hitler’s suggestion of a formal diplomatic alliance, asking instead for a complete military alliance that could be called the “Pact of Blood.” This was more than Hitler had asked for, since technically it bound Italy to go to war whenever Germany did, and he changed the name to the less melodramatic “Pact of Steel.

The initial step to realize this idea was to create the European Coal and Steel Community, consisting of France, West Germany, and Italy, as well as Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg (often referred to as the Benelux countries). This pact fully integrated the coal and steel industries of these countries so as to make their economies mutually dependent. This marked the beginning of the European project, one that over the following decades would evolve into the European Community (EC) and later still the European Union, which over time came to broaden its membership and enhance the authority of its institutions of collective governance to extend to economic and foreign policy.

I drive this cart, this platform on four wheels, Wherever the roads may take us, I drive Through steep gorges and across vast plains A transitory endeavour, a lifelong quest, of wood and metal, creaking in the night, steel tires hauled across rocks, some rebelling with sparks, others with silence under the steadfast rhythm of cloven hoofs Spokes turn, like perpetual clockwork, until we reach the next inn, where hopefully awaits another drink