A collection of large copper medallions created for one of Mussolini's principal Fascist shrines in Rome and missing since American troops occupied the Italian capital in World War II has come to light at a cattle ranch here in southwestern Missouri.
Jay H. Anderson, who operates the 800-acre ranch near the Kansas border, said his father, a major in the United States Army who died in 1976, said that he had removed nine medallions from a marble map on the side of a building when his unit, part of the 45th Infantry Division, became one of the first to occupy Rome in June 1944. Maj. James H. Anderson then mailed the medallions to his home in Kansas City, his son said.
After his father's death, Mr. Anderson explained, he divided the medallions with his sister, Nancy Ekern, who lives in Mexico, Mo., and he and his sister have been using them, unaware of their significance, to decorate their homes.
Mr. Anderson said that his father had told him that he had asked his commanding officer if he could have the medallions, and the officer had said: ''Yeah, if you want them, get them!''Continue reading the main story
''My dad then got an extension ladder and pulled them off the wall,'' Mr. Anderson said. ''He told me he just tied them up with cord, and didn't even wrap them in anything. He put his address on them and mailed them home. And when he got back from the service, they were on our porch in Kansas City just the way he had tied them up.''
Mr. Anderson said that he and his sister have yet to decide what to do with the medallions now that their historical significance is known.
It is possible, although unlikely because of their limited monetary value, that the Italian Government will try to recover the medallions by filing a civil suit against the Andersons in Missouri.
The Andersons could be prosecuted under the National Stolen Property Act, which makes it a crime to knowingly possess stolen property. That is unlikely because the Andersons, until recently, were unaware of the importance of the medallions. The Andersons were contacted by a New York Times reporter who had learned of the existence of the medallions through a letter from a third party.
Scholars say that although the medallions are the work of Antonio Munoz (1884-1960), a prominent Italian artist of his time, and have artistic merit, their chief value is as historical artifacts that reveal Mussolini's carefully cloaked lust for empire.
''They're very important documents,'' said Denis Mack Smith, an emeritus professor of modern Italian history at Oxford University's All Souls College and the author of a biography and other works on the Italian dictator. ''Mussolini talked about imperialism in deliberately confusing and contradictory terms, but here you have exact illustrations of what he was thinking.''
The medallions, made of finely hammered sheets of copper, measure about 3 feet by 4 feet. They depict industrial, agricultural and maritime scenes, and were highlights on a wall-sized marble map of Mussolini's Fascist empire in 1936, when it dominated the Mediterranean and extended into North Africa through Libya, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia.
The medallions included place names, like Cairo and Suez, leaving no doubt that Mussolini intended to wrest Egypt and the Suez Canal from the control of Britain, an objective he would not acknowledge until at war with Britain in 1940.
The marble map on which the medallions were fastened was one of a series of five marble wall carvings facing the broad avenue Via dei Fori Imperiali between the Colosseum and the Palazzo Venezia where Mussolini used to address huge rallies.
The first four maps were constructed by Munoz on the wall of the Basilica Constantine in 1934 as Mussolini was preparing to conquer Ethiopia. They depict four stages in the growth of ancient Rome, from its supposed founding in 754 B.C. to the reign of Emperor Trajan (A.D. 96-117) when the Roman Empire reached its zenith, encircling the Mediterranean and reaching as far north as Scotland, the Rhine, the Danube and the Black Sea.
''The message was that modern Italy could do this, too, but Mussolini wouldn't come out and say it,'' Professor Smith said.
Shepard Stone, a European specialist for The New York Times in 1935, reported that year that copies of the marble maps in Rome were appearing ''throughout Italy.''
They were a powerful propaganda tool, Mr. Stone reported, used by Mussolini to excite his followers to near hysteria with the belief that fate had chosen them to restore the glory that was Rome.
Many European statesmen scoffed at Mussolini's posturing because Italy lacked the industrial, economic and human resources necessary to sustain a great power like Britain or France, not to mention a colossus like ancient Rome. But Mussolini's supporters shrugged off the criticism and took delight in chanting their leader's singsong slogan ''Roma doma,'' Rome dominates.
In the 1930's and early 1940's, the maps and medallions were a backdrop for military spectacles, and the site became revered by Italian Fascists much as the Nuremberg stadium in Germany was cherished by the Nazis.
Mario Bondioli Osio, chief of the Italian Government agency concerned with the recovery of cultural objects lost in World War II, said that after Mussolini's downfall and the collapse of his empire in 1943, the fifth map showing North Africa in the grip of Fascist Italy was destroyed. It has long been thought that the gleaming copper medallions were destroyed as well.
The four maps of ancient Rome still adorn the basilica of Constantine, where they are seen by throngs of tourists every year.
Mr. Osio said the discovery of the medallions had created ''great excitement'' among local art historians, and that if the objects are returned to Italy they would be placed in the Museo di Roma.Continue reading the main story