"Mussolini’s Secret Weapon: Castor Oil " Topic

"Castor oil is a vegetable oil that in Beach's parent's generation was used as a panacea for problems of the digestive tract. Unlucky children who had complained of a poorly stomach, perhaps with the foolish idea of missing school, were given a table spoon. Castor oil has no miraculous effect on the body but it does work as a mild laxative. So how could castor oil (olio di ricino in Italian) become the most valuable weapon of a dictator with the renown of Mussolini? There are many rumours – none of which can be substantiated – that castor oil was used by Gabrielle D'Annunzio's dreadful regime at Fiume in 1919: this rumour is repeated again and again and seems in D'Annunzio's style, but there is no early source. There are stories, too, that castor oil was used by the blackshirts in Italy's low grade civil war in 1919-1921, where it came to be known as ‘the golden nectar of nausea': and here there is some solid documentary evidence. Roberto Farinacci, for example, the worst of the fascist leaders, and later Ras of Cremona, allegedly tried to write, in 1919, his final thesis in a law degree on the use of castor oil against subversives! The illustration above shows how castor oil was believed to be capable of converting even communists…"
Full article here.
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Amicalement
Armand

According to "Campaign for North Africa" what he really needed was pasta that cooked without water… (it is famed for having the pasta cooking water rule)

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Interesting.

Amicalement
Armand

That stuff should have been banned by the Geneva Convention, for cruel and unusual punishment, since it is horrid.

Well it is a monster game, for sure, but I think you are being a bit harsh.

Castor oil? No secret, when I was a wee lad my mother told me he used it on enemies.

Isn't that Olive Oyl's brother?

Boom, boom, tish! He's here all week folks!

Very Italian. The Nazis tortured or shot you. The Fascists made you drink castor oil.

Don Camillo forces the castor oil drink to a returning fascisti post WW2 in one of the Guareschi stories.The communist mayor Peppone also gets a dose & then Camillo takes his "medicine" to represent Italian society starting to heal itself.

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