The lusts of the regime’s satraps were also a matter of public knowledge. During the disastrous military campaign in Greece in the winter of 1940-41, Mussolini’s son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano installed himself and his entourage in a large hotel in Bari, where twenty or more girls were brought in by government officials every week for orgies in which the participants divided into teams and squirted water from soda-siphons at one another’s genitals while hacking at their clothes with scissors. Just to make sure everyone knew what was going on, the windows were left wide open.