Il Duce and His Women

by Roberto Olla

  Mussolini was unable to walk; a haemorrhage in the knee kept him bedridden. Rachele, who had had a premonitory dream of the accident, supervised her husband’s recovery. It was during this period that she realized his relationship with Margherita Sarfatti was something more dangerous than a rapid, casual sexual encounter.

  One day, in 1921, while Benito was convalescing from the plane crash with Redaelli, Sarfatti came to the house to see him about work. I pretended to know nothing about their relationship. She behaved impeccably, and yet I was annoyed she had dared to come to my house. After she’d gone, while I was adjusting the bed for Benito, I said as if absent-mindedly: “The cheek of some people! They deserve to be thrown out of the window…” I could see Benito’s conscience was uneasy; he didn’t pursue the argument, merely remarking, with not much conviction, that I was always getting the wrong end of the stick.10

  Mussolini’s curt reaction was characteristic, made more so because he was on crutches and didn’t want more problems. His priority was to get better and recover the physical strength which would become such an important element in the myth that grew up round him. In his report, Giovanni Gasti remarked on Mussolini’s “strong physical constitution, despite his syphilis, which allows him to work uninterruptedly for long periods”. He writes that Mussolini had a fifteen-hour working day, from about midday when he left his house for the office to three in the morning, after he had checked the final edition of the paper for the presses. “His nature is sensual”, Gasti continues, “as is shown by his many sexual affairs of which the most important are with Sarfatti and with Dalser.” Gasti uses many adjectives to describe Mussolini’s character: emotional, impulsive, suggestible, persuasive, sentimental, disinterested, prodigal, intelligent, shrewd, measured, reflective, a good judge of men, quick to take for or against people, capable of self-sacrifice, a harbourer of long-term grudges and hatreds, brave, daring, well organized, highly ambitious. Gasti’s conclusion was that all these qualities added up to a character which was capable of attracting many people and had made him an acknowledged political leader. Mussolini knew that he was kept under observation by the authorities, but can have had no idea that he was being studied in such detail. The richness and precision of the report’s analysis owe everything to the intelligence of its author, who also remarked on Mussolini’s tendency to change his opinions according to his prevailing interests: “As I have already pointed out, Mussolini’s political aims are changeable. It would not be difficult to make him collaborate, at least to some degree, but it is also quite possible that in certain circumstances – because of the turn of events or in order not to be overtaken by other parties or for some other external or internal motive – he will change direction and help to undermine institutions and principles which he has hitherto supported and advocated.”11 Later Mussolini would attempt to justify his tendency to “change direction” by describing it, with a daring rhetorical flourish, as “absolute relativism”.12

  In response to the advertising contract from Ansaldo, Mussolini decided to close Il Popolo d’Italia’s offices in Rome and move them to Genoa to start producing a local edition there. The announcement of the change was carried in the issue for 1st August 1918: “Genoa, 31st July, evening. We remind our readers – although such is the expectancy there’s no need to – that tomorrow evening the new offices of Il Popolo d’Italia will open in Genoa, in Via Palestra 2, on the ground floor. Correspondents, journalists and a few specially invited friends will gather at the newspaper’s head offices at 7 p.m. for the war dinner to be hosted by Mussolini at the Fiaschetteria Toscana in Via Ettore Vernazza.”

  There were also opportunities in Genoa to form links with the associations for mutilated and disabled ex-servicemen. If we are to choose one date to symbolize Mussolini’s definitive change of political direction it would be the same day – 1st August 1918 – on which the first issue of the Genoese edition of the paper was printed, for the usual subtitle “Socialist Daily Newspaper” had been removed. The alteration was announced the following day: “As from yesterday the word ‘socialist’ has been removed from the newspaper’s subtitle, replacing it with a new one which all who read us and also those who don’t will appreciate for its actuality and stirring commitment: ‘The Daily Newspaper of Combatants and Producers’.”13

  In the first issue’s editorial, Mussolini declared that all the forces were in place for a new politics, it was only a question of recognizing them. They were the masses who had fought in the Great War, the “men of the trenches”, the workers and peasants who had answered the call-up and now, on their return, were asking for a better life. Shortly afterwards, another article by him appeared which explained the use of the word “producers” in the subtitle. It was no longer a question of class struggle, of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie: engineers and mechanics, entrepreneurs and workers were all “producers”. “Producing” was the fundamental activity: only by producing could the proletariat improve its living conditions. In saying this Mussolini was using some of the ideas which had struck him while listening to Pareto’s lectures during his time in Switzerland: Fascism stemmed from a handful of superficial concepts.

  Perhaps no period in Italian history has been studied more than that between the Italian defeat at Caporetto in 1917 and the March on Rome in 1922; hundreds of books have been published, but you’d read them in vain to find a coherent line of development, since it does not exist. Mussolini was not following a deliberate strategy with the personal aim of acquiring power; on the contrary, he was pushed forward by a train of events which unfolded too rapidly for him to stay in control of by taking the decisions. When Italy was declared one of the victorious powers at the end of the war on 4th November 1918, Mussolini was above all a journalist, confident in his communicative abilities, an editor-in-chief aware of the potential which a well-established and widely read newspaper offered and prepared to ensure its survival by any means. He was sure his cynical adroitness would enable him to stay in control of any alliance of convenience he might be obliged to make as well as the vested interests of any financial supporter. He believed that a newspaper which enjoyed a wide circulation was the best way of obtaining political influence, but he didn’t have a clear idea when or how he’d acquire political power. While the war was still continuing, although activity on the Italian front had been at a standstill for months, he wrote that the important thing was to win the war, to come out of it victorious, and – brushing aside the criticisms of the nationalists – if that meant thanks to the French or the Americans, then so be it. In a way events proved him right. Italy won the war at the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, which some historians do not even consider to be a proper battle. The war was not won solely by the sacrifice of the lives of soldiers, sailors and airmen; it was the clash between two different economic, industrial and financial systems. One of them, backed by the capital which arrived from the United States, managed to hold out a day longer than the other. The Austrian-Hungarian Empire imploded, the Kaiser in Germany no longer had the capacity to defend himself, let alone his country, Italian troops marched down into the plains without encountering any resistance. In southern Europe, a third great empire, the Ottomans, crumbled.

  On 22nd April 1918, while the war was still being fought, Rachele Mussolini gave birth to their third child, Bruno. She was still having to breastfeed the new baby when, at the beginning of 1919, she came down with the Spanish influenza, which was then sweeping Europe. In Italy alone more people died in the outbreak than had during the war. Many ex-soldiers who had survived all the hardships of trench warfare and enemy fire in battle succumbed and died from fever, coughs, pulmonary bleeding, in hospitals and at home. The outbreak eventually killed more than fifty million people, and already by the time the powers assembled for the peace conference in Paris in January 1919 it was a pandemic which was out of control. The Italian delegation was snubbed by the others round the table: the request to annex Fiume was turned down, despite the agreement which had been ma
de in the 1915 Treaty of London before Italy entered the war. The Spanish flu virus had been brought over with the American troops, but no one knew then that this was the cause. President Woodrow Wilson presented the bill for American participation in the war; he became the new leader in international politics.

  Back in Rome, meanwhile, it was proving difficult to form a government with a stable majority. The political situation was full of uncertainty; the government headed by Francesco Saverio Nitti declared an end to the war and started to demobilize the army. Il Popolo d’Italia was, to all intents and purposes, the expression of the political line adopted by Mussolini, although “line” is to exaggerate its consistency: there was no long- or even medium-term project and no unifying vision. The immediate aim was to use the newspaper to acquire a political role in the new circumstances; just as war had been the theme of the paper’s interventionist campaign back in 1915, so it was the focus of its efforts to speak to the feelings and the needs of the ex-servicemen returning to their homes. Mussolini wanted to play on the mood of these men, especially the men who had belonged to the assault troops, the “Arditi”, the so-called “daring ones”. He had the right cards to play, and the game was made easier by the extreme anti-war position of the Socialist Party. He had been intransigently, fanatically in favour of Italian involvement in the war, he had fought against the enemy, he had been wounded and in danger of death: if from one point of view these experiences had served to demolish his socialist ideals and principles, from another they were exactly the credentials he needed in order to speak convincingly to the mass of ex-servicemen now returning home. His own experiences at the front gave him an understanding, even if it was only an instinctive one, of how the men from the assault troops must be feeling. Today we know a lot about the state of dependency which can be created in those on active combat; even “embedded” journalists who’ve covered the fighting in war zones have been known to become affected or addicted, and have difficulties when they need to go back to normal life. The Arditi were trained to operate behind enemy lines; only the bravest men were selected to join them, those who’d passed severely demanding tests of endurance and courage and who’d shown notable sangfroid in the face of death. They underwent intense physical training sometimes under conditions of real artillery fire – on several occasions men were killed. They needed to know how to fight at close quarters, sometimes with their bare hands. They learnt to slide forward on the ground with a dagger between their clenched teeth in order to attack enemy positions which ordinary troops would find impregnable. They threw themselves down into enemy trenches, often with bayonets unsheathed, and then would defend them until the regular troops arrived in support. Powered by adrenalin and frequently cocaine, they had complete freedom of action in a war that by the standards of the time saw particularly unrestrained fighting; now these men were being demobilized and sent back to resume their ordinary tranquil pre-war lives. But the freedom they had enjoyed in war was now their natural environment; they found the limitations of peacetime life unendurable. No emotions of homecoming were aroused in them as they saw again the places they’d left years before; while not yet asocial or maladjusted, they were well on the way to developing the potential to become so. No psychological help or counselling was available then to help them through the traumas caused by living for so long within sight of bloodshed and the sound of gunfire. In normal life they stood out as violent and undisciplined, a set of anarchic individualists. Their very physical existence was ill adapted to the tranquil routines of everyday life; they needed the constant stimuli they’d become used to during the war.

  In the pages of Il Popolo d’Italia Mussolini called for the formation of “fasci di combattimento”, “combatants’ leagues”. Many ex-combatants responded eagerly to the call. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who, along with other Futurist artists and writers, had fought with the Arditi, also signed up. A shrewd move was to offer a sum of money to all those who agreed to join; the financial support for this was provided by some of the bankers and industrialists who had grown rich during the war. Writing from her particular and somewhat privileged point of view, Edvige Mussolini describes the “enrolment” of the Arditi in the new Fasci: “By joining the ‘Fasci’ all those who felt dispersed and out-of-step were enabled to re-enter national political life; these men had been ignored by all the major established political parties, a huge mistake on their part because it condemned them to sterility, an impoverishment of energy and imagination. Their pointless good sense left them helpless in the face of the new barbarians.”14

  Mussolini also had a hero he could hold up as a model to the Arditi who joined the new Fasci: the eldest son of his mistress, Roberto Sarfatti, who had himself been one of the Arditi and had fallen while trying to carry out the impossible task of attacking a machine-gunner. The boy’s memory provided him with useful political capital. Margherita Sarfatti wished she had died instead of her son: she felt she was to blame for his untimely death; Mussolini’s focus on him, the ceremonies with all their paraphernalia of flags and daggers which he organized to exalt his memory, gave her new energy. She had developed a hatred for pacifists, socialists and other politicians who refused to praise the victory for which her son had sacrificed his life; she only valued being with Mussolini, and she was moved by the sight of him surrounded by Roberto’s former comrades. For his part Mussolini relished his association with them. Surrounded by them, he thought he struck fear into the hearts of others, a useful effect for a movement which freely exploited violence to achieve its ends.

  The militarization of political life began with the Fasci: the black flames and fezzes and pennants, the skulls with a dagger between their teeth – Fascism’s leading symbols were borrowed from the Arditi as was the party anthem, ‘Giovinezza’ (‘Youth’). Over the course of a few months, Mussolini found himself in possession of two inestimable weapons: a well-funded newspaper with a wide circulation and squads of ex-servicemen highly skilled in the handling of arms of all kinds. Every former member of the Arditi knew how to fire machine guns, pistols and rifles; in wartime they always carried a dagger and twenty hand grenades. The daggers, the grenades and the firearms would be employed again in the Fascist squads’ attacks. Mussolini hoped that the ex-members of the special assault forces who had joined the new Fasci would attract the allegiance of the vast majority of ordinary ex-servicemen.

  On 21st March 1919, the “Fascio Milanese di Combattimento” or the “Milan League of Combatants” was founded. Il Popolo d’Italia convened a general assembly of the Fasci or squads in the great hall of the building which belonged to the organization known as the Alleanza Industriale e Commerciale (Industrial and Business Alliance) in Piazza San Sepolcro in Milan: “On 23rd March an antiparty will be founded: the ‘Combatants’ Leagues’, which will lead a crusade against two impending dangers: the right with its hatred of the new and the left with its yen for destruction. The political goals of the Leagues will be few, but they will be precise and radical”. Those who assembled on 23rd March were asked to join a movement which would be anti-bourgeois, anti-socialist, anticlerical and anti-monarchist. Its political manifesto had an improvised, confused air; it did not so much anticipate the future regime as rehash former radical left-wing issues – an eight-hour working day, the state confiscation of property belonging to religious orders, the abolition of the Senate, universal suffrage including for women. Nor, in the gathering in Piazza San Sepolcro, was Mussolini seen as their leader or “duce”; he was merely one of the leading exponents of the new movement, perhaps the one who spoke with the most authority, but whose views nevertheless were open to discussion and on occasion contested. Il Popolo d’Italia added the further clarification that it remained Mussolini’s newspaper and was not the official mouthpiece of the Fasci. Those who gathered in Piazza San Sepolcro on 23rd March were not all men: there were also nine women, none of whom would play any part in the regime as it was established from 1922 onwards – “predictably, given Mussolini’s continual
changes of conviction, his sudden tactical switches, his readiness to form expedient alliances and to make what turned out to be merely face-saving concessions, and his declarations of firm-as-a-rock principles which crumbled to pieces when put into practice. And predictably too, given the political background of these nine women activists, all of whom were committed to the fight for women’s rights.”15

  The best-known of the women was the socialist – and secretary of the Unione Femminile Socialista (Socialist Women’s Union) – Regina Terruzzi; she was twenty years older than Mussolini, an unmarried mother who, long before it became a general cause, battled for the legal recognition of children born out of wedlock. Terruzzi had been part of the editorial team, along with Margherita Sarfatti, of the periodical La difesa delle lavoratrici (The Defence of Women Workers), founded by Anna Kuliscioff in 1912. After war started she sided with the interventionist movement. Joining Mussolini in the gathering in Piazza San Sepolcro must have come naturally to her, although later she withdrew when she saw the violence committed by the Fasci. Much later, in 1932, she once again drew nearer to the regime, accepting the presidency of the Federazione Nazionale Fascista delle Massaie Rurali (National Fascist Federation of Rural Housewives); she resigned a year later with the excuse that she had to follow her son who had gone to live in Nice.

  Cesare Rossi was given the task of summarizing the various speeches made by the so-called “sepolcristi”, those who were present at the first general meeting of the Fasci. Rossi was one of Mussolini’s leading collaborators. In his later memoirs he revised his view of the meeting given in his original report: he describes it as insignificant in terms of the numbers attending and the level of discussion, and points out that at least a third of those who turned up later became anti-Fascists. He also writes that Mussolini had no real sense of political direction at the time, given that at the very moment he was calling for the Fasci he was also testing the ground for a possible return into the Socialist Party fold.