Eighty years ago abdication offers a last minute chance to save the monarchy in Italy

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 r/monarchism - King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy with his son Crown Prince Umberto, 1938

 Victor Emmanuel III abdicated as King of Italy in favour of his son Umberto II. A referendum had already been called on whether to make Italy a republic and the abdication offered the only way in which the monarchy might have been saved. The removal of Mussolini and the armistice in 1943 had been designed more to protect Victor Emmanuel on the throne, but Umberto who had exerised most of his father's powers since 1944, had achieved little to rescue the monarchy from its tarnished image. King since 1900, Victor Emmanuel  had appointed Mussolini and actively supported Fascism, making no attempt to restrain Mussolini's destructive policies. He had become Emperor of Ethiopia and King of Albania when Italy invaded these countries in 1935 and 1939 respectively.

Senator McFarland's amendment to the bill approving to the US loan to Britain was defeated in the Senate by 45 votes to 40. McFarland had sought to make the loan conditional of the US being granted full ownership of Caribbean bases granted by Britain on  99 leases in the 1940 destroyers deal. Even more dangerous for Anglo-US relationship, McFarland wanted to include these aspects in a fresh negotiation of Britain's First World War debts to the US. 

The talks between the communal leaders, the British Cabinet delegation and Lord Wavell the  Viceroy broke down finally with no glimmmer of a settlement.  The gulf between the congress Party, de facto representing Hindus, and the Muslim League was too deep to bridge. It was left to the British side to sit down and devise their own model for independent India.

 

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