June 4, 1944: The Liberation of Rome

June 4, 1944, 80 years ago: Allied troops liberate Rome, the capital of Italy, one of the nations of the Axis.

In 1922, Benito Mussolini took advantage of Italy's post-World War I chaos, and had his Fascists make their "March On Rome." For 21 years, "Il Duce" (The Leader) ruled the land of Garibaldi, Leonardo and Vivaldi with a fist more iron than ever imagined by Caligula, Commodus or Diocletian. George Seldes, an American journalist who covered his entire career (and lived to be 104), wrote a book about him titled Sawdust Caesar.

The reputation of Italy having a weak army -- which both Mussolini and Giuseppe Garibaldi had taken advantage of in the preceding 80 years -- still held, as British and American troops kicked them out of North Africa, and then invaded Sicily, and finally the Italian mainland. On July 25, 1943, his own Grand Council of Fascism passed a vote of no confidence in him, and King Victor Emmanuel III, who had appointed him Prime Minister, dismissed him and ordered his arrest.

The Allies rolled into Rome on June 4, 1944, and, to borrow a phrase that would haunt later American leaders, were welcomed as liberators. Among them was an Army stenographer from The Bronx, Staff Sergeant George Goldberg -- my grandfather.

Within a year, Mussolini was dead, and so was Adolf Hitler.