SML 091Collection of 19 photos of the visit of the Princess of Piedmont to Mogadishu in 1936. m
Price: $520.00
Note: (From Wikipedia). Marie José of Belgium (Marie-José Charlotte Sophie Amélie Henriette Gabrielle; 4 August 1906 – 27 January 2001) was the last Queen of Italy. Her 35-day tenure as queen consort earned her the nickname "the May Queen". On 8 January 1930, she married in Rome Crown Prince Umberto of Italy, from the House of Savoy, and so became Princess of Piedmont. In October 1939, Princess Marie-José was made President of the Red Cross in Italy. The Princess and Duchess of Aosta attended the ceremony where Marie-José was installed as President of the Italian Red Cross.
During the Second World War she was one of the very few diplomatic channels between the German/Italian camp and the other European countries involved in the war, as she was the sister of Leopold III of Belgium (kept hostage by the German forces) and at the same time close to some of the ministers of Benito Mussolini's cabinet. A British diplomat in Rome recorded that the Princess of Piedmont was the only member of the Italian Royal Family with good political judgment.
SML 091
Mussolini's mistress, Claretta Petacci, claimed in her diary that in 1937 the then princess and wife of the heir to the throne tried and failed to seduce the dictator at a beach resort near Rome. However, Mussolini's son, Romano, claims that the princess and dictator entered into a sexual relationship.
In 1943, the Crown Princess involved herself in vain attempts to arrange a separate peace treaty between Italy and the United States; her interlocutor from the Vatican was Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, a senior diplomat who later became Pope Paul VI.
Her attempts were not sponsored by the king and Umberto was not (directly, at least) involved in them. After her failure (she never met the American agents), she was sent with her children to Sarre, in Aosta Valley, and isolated from the political life of the Royal House.
She sympathized with the partisans, and while she was a refugee in Switzerland, smuggled weapons, money and food for them. She was nominated for appointment as chief of a partisan brigade, but declined. Following Italy's defection to the Allied side in the war, her discredited father-in-law, King Victor Emmanuel III, withdrew from government. 
SML 091Her husband became acting monarch under the title of Lieutenant General of the Realm. He and Marie José toured war torn Italy, where they made a positive impression. However, King Victor Emmanuel III refused to abdicate until only weeks before the referendum.
Upon the eventual abdication on 9 May 1946 of her father-in-law, Marie-José became Queen consort of Italy, and remained such until the monarchy was abolished by plebiscite, on 2 June 1946.
Umberto and Marie-José had been widely praised for their performance over the last two years, and it has been argued that had Victor Emmanuel abdicated sooner their relative popularity might have saved the monarchy. Following the monarchy's defeat (54–46%), she and her husband left the country for exile on 13 June 1946.
