More on the Unreliability of “Talks with Mussolini”
Mussolini was interviewed on dozens of occasions over the course of his long career by both foreign and Italian journalists. Many of these interviews were published or re-published in his official newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia.
The infamous “Talks with Mussolini” with Emil Ludwig, however, never appeared in the Duce's newspaper and was never publicly acknowledged by Mussolini, as Emil Ludwig did not faithfully transcribe the words of Mussolini. Instead, the Jewish journalist altered many of the Duce's words, falsified entire passages and inserted many of his own anti-Fascist opinions into the book. The Duce attempted to prevent the publication of the work, but he was unable to stop it. In 1932 an Italian edition of the book was published by Mondadori under the title “Colloqui con Mussolini.”
The book and its author was ultimately banned by the Fascist government. According to Fascist secretary Gaetano Polverelli, the Head of the Press Office, Mussolini was very angered and appalled by the book, he ordered to cease its printing immediately. In March, April and June 1932 the Press Office three times warned Italian newspapers to ignore Ludwig's book.
With the exception of the Fascist journal L'Impero, which published an article on June 18, 1932 attacking Ludwig and Mondadori as profiteers, the Italian Fascist press remained silent on the matter, so as not to bring any unnecessary attention to Ludwig's fraudulent work.
After some months, the printing eventually came to a halt; thus the book remained virtually unknown in Italy until after the war, when the same Mondadori republished the book in 1950.
However, the book was widely-diffused in the English-speaking world and in Germany, and members of the NSDAP became quite vocal; National Socialist journalists promptly responded and published several articles exposing book as a hoax. The most important was an article entitled Das Mussolini-Geschäft des Emil Ludwig Cohn, published in Nationalsozialistischen Korrespondenz by the Roman correspondent Friedrich C. Willis. Writing under the the pseudonym Georg Heinzmann, he proclaimed "This is not our Mussolini!" (“Dies ist nicht unser Mussolini“).
Despite being exposed as a hoax and banned some eighty years ago, the book still continues to circulate today as if it were authentic.
For a more accurate look of Mussolini’s sentiments, look no further than here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here
