Il principio della fine

Preface: Italo Garzia – Paolo Nello – Sergio Romano – Ioannis Stefanidis

The story of Emanuele Grazzi, Italian Ambassador to Athens from 1939 to 1940, tells of the year in which the policy of the fascist regime definitively lost all contact with reality in the vain attempt to try to respond in fact to the lightning and devastating German advance in Europe, thus seeking, in the belief of certain victory, to be able to sit with dignity at the table of the victorious. The first step of this reckless journey was the Greek affair, which began with hopes of renewed friendship after the somewhat difficult precedents following the First World War and ended with the fateful ultimatum of 28 October 1940 that Grazzi, at 3am in the morning, delivered to Metaxàs.

It is the story of how Italian politics had lost any reference to reality, the story of how a certain uninformed bravado ignored the evidence to throw itself, unconsciously, at the wrong time, into a conflict against a Greece which, instead, had found in this moment compactness, spirit and vigour, so much so as to drive the invading Italians across the border. Grazzi narrates all the precedents, living as an astonished protagonist, often unaware, forced to chase directives that did not come from Rome or trying to justify clumsy actions and in the meantime, trying to best serve that State that he realised with great pain, was unprepared and one which was continually improvising.