# Hitler & Mussolini Talks

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-mussolini-talks/269768>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [October 18, 2004, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-mussolini-talks/269768 "2004-10-18T03:18:44Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![rippingtons\_fan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rippingtons_fan/32/11767_2.png) [@rippingtons\_fan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rippingtons_fan)\
**Post date:** [October 18, 2004, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-mussolini-talks/269768/1 "2004-10-18T03:18:44Z")

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I imagine that Hitler & Mussolini had translators along with them when they had meetings, but if it was just the two of them, was Mussolini expected to speak German or was Hitler expected to speak Italian?

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**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\
**Post date:** [October 18, 2004, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-mussolini-talks/269768/2 "2004-10-18T04:42:27Z")

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Mussolini was a multilinguist who spoke Italian, German, French, English, and some other languages fluently. Hitler spoke German.

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**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\
**Post date:** [October 18, 2004, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-mussolini-talks/269768/3 "2004-10-18T19:34:48Z")

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Mussolini was relatively fluent in German and thus didn’t bring any translator with him for their meetings. However, when seeing him, Hitler invariably exercised the customary right of a head of state to have a translator present during meetings with their foreign opposite numbers, even though the conversation was being conducted in German. Usually this would be Paul Schmidt.  
In addition, there was a suspicion amongst aides, on both sides, that Mussolini’s German actually wasn’t up to the task and that he persisted, in the face of the complications this got them into, simply out of pride.

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**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\
**Post date:** [October 18, 2004, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-mussolini-talks/269768/4 "2004-10-18T23:22:40Z")

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Wre there any transcripts of these talks?  
Are they available today?

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**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\
**Post date:** [October 19, 2004, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitler-mussolini-talks/269768/5 "2004-10-19T00:07:29Z")

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Not that I know of. It’s a fairly common pattern about Hitler’s summits with foreign leaders that one of the sources historians have to fall back on is Schmidt’s memoirs. He was both sitting in on most such occasions, even the one-to-one meetings, and survived the war to publish what he recalled having been said.  
Of course, Mussolini privately tended to claim that such meetings usually just involved Hitler ranting on at length about stuff. And there are examples of those sorts of rant, in other settings, summarised in the Table-Talk.