capital, but the de facto capital became the small town of Salò on Lake Garda, midway between Milan and Venice, where Mussolini resided along with the foreign office of the RSI. While Rome itself was still under Axis control at the time, given the city's proximity to Allied lines and the threat of civil unrest, neither the Germans nor Mussolini himself wanted him to return to Rome. On 18 September, Mussolini made his first public address to the Italian people since his rescue, in which he commended the loyalty of Hitler as an ally while condemning Victor Emmanuel for betraying Italian Fascism. He declared: "It is not the regime that has betrayed the monarchy, it is the monarchy that has betrayed the regime". He also formally repudiated his previous support of the monarchy, saying: "When a monarchy fails in its duties, it loses every reason for being…The state we want to establish will be national and social in the highest sense of the word; that is, it will be Fascist, thus returning to our origins". From the start, the Italian Social Republic was little more than a puppet state dependent entirely upon Germany. Mussolini himself knew this; even as he stated in public that he was in full control of the RSI, he was well aware that he was little more than the Gauleiter of Lombardy. The SS kept Mussolini under what amounted to house arrest; it monitored his communications and controlled his travel. Mussolini later said that he would have preferred being sent to a concentration camp to the manner that the SS treated him. Real power rested with German General Plenipotentiary Rudolf Rahn and SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, the commander of the German occupying forces in Italy. The RSI had no constitution or organized economy, and its financing was dependent entirely on funding from Berlin. German forces themselves had little respect for Mussolini's failed fascism, and considered the regime merely as a tool for maintaining order, such as repressing the Italian partisans. This work was also carried out by the infamous Pietro Koch and the Banda Koch on Germany's behalf. The RSI received diplomatic recognition from only Germany, Imperial Japan and their puppet states. Even the otherwise sympathetic Spain refused to establish formal diplomatic relations with the RSI. The RSI took revenge against the 19 members who had voted against Mussolini on the Grand Council with the Verona trial