cause they obtained a new passport in Venice on August .
While waiting for word from Mussolini, Göring strolled around
the island city. A street photographer snapped the already quite
stout Hermann with his surprisingly tall wife as they fed the pi-
geons in a piazza on September . In the Italian political crisis
that flared up after Fascist thugs murdered the Socialist Mat-
teotti, Göring adopted a different tack. His letters became
effusive. Hearing that leftists had retaliated by butchering
Casalini, one of Mussolini’s lieutenants, he scribbled an offer to
Negrelli to place himself “as a simple fascist” at Italy’s disposal in
any showdown with the Communists that might result now: “I’d
be very sad,” he wrote, “if I couldn’t join in when the balloon
goes up. Please pass on my request to Bastianini or your com-
mander. I beg you to do all you can so I can help the fight: at
very least I could go along as a liaison man to our own move-
ment. And if things got really hot, as an aviator!”
He sent a similar letter to Mussolini the next day. Impa-
tient at receiving no reply to any of these letters, on September
he picked up his pen again. “I’d be very grateful,” he wrote
tersely to Negrelli, “for a few urgent lines as to... how far the
matter has got and what steps are being taken to expedite it. In
fact I should be glad to hear that anything at all was coming of
our negotiations.”
He continued this letter with an important insight into the
way his political thinking was developing:
The attitude of Austria [he wrote, referring to the
South Tyrol issue] is of no consequence, since this lit-
tle state percent of whose people want Anschluss
[union with Germany] anyway will be incorporated
into Germany as soon as we are strong again. Thus
Germany will be more or less obliged to face the...
issue of the South Tyrol. If, when that time comes, a