Victor Emmanuel III (1869-1947) was king of Italy from 1900 to 1946. His cooperation with Mussolini helped bring an end to the Italian monarchy.

Victor Emmanuel was born on Nov. 11, 1869, in Naples. After his father, Umberto I, was assassinated in 1900, Victor Emmanuel succeeded to the throne. His lifelong preference for matters martial had been set by military training and army service. But the political circumstances of his time prevented him from asserting a commanding personality in either war or peace.

In 1896 Victor Emmanuel married Princes Elena of Montenegro. They had five children, among whom were Umberto, the last legal king of Italy, and Mafalda, whose death in 1944 at the Buchenwald concentration camp enrolled her among the list of victims of that Fascist holocaust her father had helped to unleash upon Europe.

In Italy, as in other countries of Europe, the impact of World War I produced unforeseen shifts in the...