"A Silly Little Monkey"

God sons
Originally uploaded by Vincenzo Pioggia

An interesting piece of art, this is. On today's date, Mussolini met Hitler in Venice, afterwards describing him as "a silly little monkey". I doubt somehow that that description ever reached Hitler. If it did, he probably thought that he needed Mussolini at the time - a lot more than Mussolini needed him. By that time, Mussolini had been in power almost a decade. He wanted to build a New Roman empire. He thought he was a latter-day Caesar. Actually, he was more like Caligula and just as "silly" as Hitler. The portrayal of Mussolini by Jack Oakie in Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" was priceless.