{"id":313,"date":"2012-03-18T18:23:21","date_gmt":"2012-03-19T00:23:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=313"},"modified":"2012-03-18T18:23:22","modified_gmt":"2012-03-19T00:23:22","slug":"this-week-in-the-war-18-24-march-1940-brenner-pass-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=313","title":{"rendered":"This week in the War, 18&#8211;24 March 1940: Brenner Pass meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?attachment_id=328\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-328\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-328\" title=\"Hitler and Mussolini at Brennero\" src=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Whitlermusso1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"204\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Whitlermusso1.jpg 204w, https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Whitlermusso1-102x150.jpg 102w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 204px) 100vw, 204px\" \/><\/a>A much publicized meeting between right-wing dictators, Adolf\u00a0Hitler and Benito Mussolini, took place this week in the war, on\u00a0Monday\u00a018 March. Only Franco was missing from the mix. Snow was falling in the Brenner pass as the Fuehrer&#8217;s train rolled to a halt in the town of Brennero, on the Italian side of the border with Germany. Ostensibly, discussions were to focus on a peace proposal that Hitler had drawn up and shown to American Secretary of State, Sumner Welles, when\u00a0the latter\u00a0had visited Berlin at the beginning of the\u00a0month.<\/p>\n<p>In reality, the purpose of the rendezvous was to arrange how and when Italy would join in the war against Britain and France. Hitler deliberately concealed his\u00a0intention to invade Denmark and Norway, but laid out his planned\u00a0invasion\u00a0of France.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?attachment_id=329\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-329\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-329\" title=\"Hitler and Mussolini at Brennero\" src=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Whitlermusso2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"240\" srcset=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Whitlermusso2.jpg 300w, https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Whitlermusso2-150x120.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Mussolini promised to enter the war, once it became evident that the German offensive would\u00a0prove victorious. And\u00a0enter he did. On 10 June, in with France&#8217;s army in full retreat and with the evacuation of the French capital well underway, Mussolini declared war from the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia in Rome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A much publicized meeting between right-wing dictators, Adolf\u00a0Hitler and Benito Mussolini, took place this week in the war, on\u00a0Monday\u00a018 March. Only Franco was missing from the mix. Snow was falling in the Brenner pass as the Fuehrer&#8217;s train rolled to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=313\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[28,7,16,15],"class_list":["post-313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-war-ii","tag-brenner-pass","tag-hitler","tag-mussolini","tag-sumner-welles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=313"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":353,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions\/353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}