When Milwaukee's Italian community read the news that a group of Americans – including many prominent city residents – would protest Italian intervention in Spain outside the Italian Consulate in June 1937, it must have awaited the event with at least some trepidation.

After all, although American relations with Italy had not been bad over most of the 15 years Benito Mussolini had been at the helm in their homeland – even Britain's Winston Churchill was "charmed" by Mussolini in 1927 – with Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 cracks had begun to appear in America's esteem for il Duce.

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Source: http://onmilwaukee.com/