Grazzi’s Memoir: “I Felt Disgust for My Profession” After Handing Metaxas the Ultimatum

Two days before the 86th anniversary of Oxi Day, a remarkable firsthand account has resurfaced. Italy's own ambassador in Athens in 1940, Emanuele Grazzi, left a memoir describing exactly what happened when he knocked on Ioannis Metaxas's door in the early hours of October 28, 1940, carrying Mussolini's ultimatum.

Grazzi arrived at Metaxas's small villa around ten minutes before 3 a.m., accompanied by a military attaché and an interpreter. The servants were asleep. Metaxas himself came to the door in a dark wool dressing gown.

"I think there is no man in the world who has not at least once in his life felt disgust for his profession." — Emanuele Grazzi, Italy's ambassador who delivered Mussolini's ultimatum

As the Greek prime minister read Mussolini's demands, Grazzi watched him closely. "The hands holding the paper trembled slightly," Grazzi wrote, "and through his glasses I saw his eyes well up, as they used to when he was moved."

Metaxas's response was immediate: "Alors, c'est la guerre." So, it is war. Grazzi told him Italian troops would begin moving at 6 a.m. Metaxas asked how he could possibly reach the king and organize a response within three hours, and which strategic points Italy was even demanding. Grazzi admitted he had no idea.

"You see very well that it is impossible," Metaxas told him. "The responsibility for this war lies exclusively with the Italian government."

Then came the line Grazzi himself could never shake. Looking back on that night, he wrote: "I think there is no man in the world who has not at least once in his life felt disgust for his profession." The man sent to deliver the ultimatum that started the war came away ashamed of what he had done.

Italy's forces crossed the Albanian border half an hour before the ultimatum even expired. Mussolini had boasted he would be in Athens within three days. The Greek army pushed the Italians back deep into Albanian territory. Greece held until Nazi Germany entered the war in April 1941.