When the Palestinian revolt intensified and its danger grew, and when the revolt resumed in 1947 following the United Nations decision to partition Palestine, the Holy War Army under the command of the martyr Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni seized it and handed it over to the command of the Iraqi volunteers. Finally, it became the building of the Umarian School التابعة to the Jordanian Ministry of Education.
The famous Mrs. Elizabeth Sursock, who married Prince Andrea Colonna and became known as Elizabeth Colonna or Signora Colonna, had a major hand and role in the events that took place in Italy at the end of fascist rule and led to Mussolini’s fall. I previously related part of these events when I wrote about meeting Mussolini, and mentioned Mrs. Elizabeth’s role in serving the Allied states in the Second World War. She had close connections with the ambassadors of those states at the Vatican. Through her intelligence, courtesy, and cunning, she was able to influence Count Ciano, the Italian foreign minister, one of Mussolini’s closest associates, and the husband of his daughter Edda. She lavished honor and hospitality on him, inviting him to her splendid palace and sumptuous tables with many nobles, noblewomen, princes, and wealthy people, until her palace came to be called “the Society of Ciano’s Friends.” It is enough for the reader to know that the Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII, stayed with his consort as her guest. Because she strongly favored the Allies, she suggested to Ciano that the Axis states were inevitably doomed to defeat, and that he, Ciano, was the only person acceptable to the English, Americans, and French and qualified to succeed Mussolini in power and save Italy from a disastrous outcome because of his qualities and merits.
Thus Ciano turned against his leader and father-in-law Mussolini and began conspiring against him with Grandi, Bottai, and Marshal De Bono. These three were members of the Fascist Grand Council, which consisted of nine members besides Mussolini. They betrayed Mussolini, succeeded in persuading a majority of the Grand Council to remove him, and agreed among themselves to take power. King Victor Emmanuel III appeared to approve, while secretly agreeing with Marshal Badoglio to hand him the reins of power.
When the Fascist Grand Council abandoned Mussolini and asked him to resign and enter negotiations with the Allies to save what could be saved, in a session that lasted from ten in the evening until five in the morning on 25 July 1943, Mussolini went at eleven that morning to the royal palace, Villa Savoia, explained the situation, and said: “I will convene a meeting of the Grand Council and we will continue the war. Hitler has informed me of confirmed reports about new weapons that will change the course of the war and achieve victory for Germany and the Axis.” The king pretended to be convinced and told Mussolini that he remained trusted and could continue his work, adding that he would telephone him at the Palazzo Venezia, the seat of government.
Mussolini left Villa Savoia, which the Egyptian government later purchased and made its embassy. As Mussolini departed, a gendarmerie colonel named “Carabinieri” received him and led him to a door other than the main one, where Mussolini’s personal guard stood, claiming that demonstrations threatened Mussolini. Mussolini relied on fascist forces, especially a fully German-armed armored division with tanks and artillery, made up of three brigades totaling more than 12,000 soldiers, stationed at Tivoli about fifteen kilometers from Rome. This division was not subordinate to the army but belonged to the fascist militia command, directly under Mussolini. They placed Mussolini in a closed ambulance and took him to the Piazza del Popolo barracks, where he stayed one day. He was then moved to the island of Ponza for about twenty days, and then to Campo Imperatore near the city of L’Aquila, on the summit of the Apennines at an elevation of 2,700 meters. He remained there for about fifty-three days, until 14 September 1943, when the German officer Otto Skorzeny descended like an eagle at the head of a German airborne force and rescued him from captivity.