Hello everyone, and thank you once again for listening to the saga of World War II,

Akassas Belly project. To get started, I apologize for the poor audio quality of the last

episode. I went back and re-recorded it if you want to give it another chance. Second, periodically

I received submissions from the website, which I appreciate and try to respond to, but some of the submissions are blank or the email address entered isn't valid.

So if some of you have contacted me there and I haven't responded, it's not because I'm ignoring you, I promise.

It may be because the Squarespace submissions form is a bit wonky, or just typos, but if I haven't gotten back to you there,

just send me an email directly at Cassusbelly guy at gmail.com, and I promise I'll respond.

Anyway, on to the actual show. In this episode, we will cover the operation to free Mussolini,

the Italian campaign until January 1944, and the state of Italy in late 1943.

So let's begin episode 38, the Italian slog.

Ah, have been astonished.

The Japan should in a single day have plunged into war against the United States and the British Empire.

What kind of a people do they think we are?

Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them

until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget.

The world will never forget. The

The After Mussolini was arrested by the Carbonieri, he was taken to their barracks and placed under arrest.

His stay at the police barracks did not last long, however, as he was soon taken to the Hotel

Campo Imperatore and the Grand Saso di Italia, a mountain retreat high in the Apennines, reachable only by a finicular railway up the steep mountain slope.

This was completely unknown to Hitler, or German intelligence though. As far as they knew, Mussolini had disappeared after his arrest, and rumors flew about his location,

some saying he was in Spain, some that he had killed himself, and others that he was disguised

as a commoner. Hitler said one SS-Lutennant Colonel Otto Scorzni on the task of tracking

...