Foreign Relations of the United States, Conferences at Washington and Quebec, 1943

740.00119 EW/9–143: Telegram

The British Ambassador in Spain (Hoare) to the British Foreign Office ¹

secret

Madrid, August 28, 1943.

I gathered from Minister for Foreign Affairs² in San Sebastian yesterday that the Spanish Ambassador in Rome³ who is in San Sebastian thinks that the Badoglio Government cannot last more than two or three days. The Ministry are most perturbed as they fear outbreaks of communism which may have serious repercussions in Spain will inevitably result from General Badoglio’s fall. The Brazilian Ambassador⁴ tells me that the Spanish Ambassador in Rome informed him yesterday that there had been two attempts at a coup in Italy, one Fascist and the other military and that the military won. When Mussolini left the meeting and called his car an Italian colonel stepped up and said he had orders to take Mussolini with him. Mussolini was now detained on the island of Maddalena north of Sardinia.

1. Printed from a copy made available to the Department of State on September 1, 1943, by the British Embassy at Washington.
2. General Francisco Gómez Jordana.
3. Raimundo Fernández Cuesta.
4. Abelardo Roças.