Il Duce and His Women

by Roberto Olla

  The maestro called the guests to attention and even succeeded in gaining Mussolini’s, who was sulkily sitting on a sofa by himself, licking the wounds of his recent electoral defeat. Their lack of success had not discouraged Toscanini who, despite the defeat, made a donation of 30,000 lire to Mussolini, which he had promised him before the election. He called for silence, and all the guests turned to look at him expectantly – although they couldn’t have foreseen the tense situation which would soon develop. Toscanini presented Príhoda to them, praising his talent to the skies, much to the amazement of the guests, since the conductor had a reputation as a tyrannical perfectionist who didn’t hesitate to sack reputable orchestral players if he didn’t think them good enough. He was extremely grudging with his praise, yet here he was pouring commendations on a young refugee whom he had spotted by chance in a café. Príhoda played a short piece and was thunderously applauded by the guests; he indeed deserved Toscanini’s high esteem. Then the hostess of the evening, Margherita Sarfatti, asked Mussolini, in front of all the others, if he would care to play to them. There was consternation among her guests: here she was, asking a self-taught amateur violinist to play in front of Toscanini and the exceptionally talented young man they had just listened to – it must be some kind of cruel joke. “All eyes turned on Mussolini, who muttered something about being indisposed. But he clearly hadn’t realized what Margherita was capable of, since she went on to ask him to agree to play if only for her sake.”1 Mussolini furiously hissed at her to stop and left the party without having had to take up the violin. Their quarrel continued the next time they met. Sarfatti was taking her revenge for his continuous infidelities with other women. She showed him that a mistress could be more jealous – and much more perfidious – than a wife. This was another problem among the many at this time on Mussolini’s plate. He had been defeated in the elections. Il Popolo d’Italia was also facing a financial crisis: the funding which the paper had received from the British and the French during the war had stopped. A certain amount of financial support came from Genoa, but only just enough for the paper to keep on publishing. Many of the Fasci had been dissolved, while others had only a very small number of members. The left-wing supporters of the movement started to melt away, such as Pietro Nenni, who left the Bologna League. The Fasci still attracted new members, but they were younger and firmly on the anti-populist and anti-socialist right. Moreover, they were frequently asocial, maladapted types in search of violence.

  Many books have been written about Mussolini’s rise to power, but the report on him drawn up Giovanni Gasti in 1919 when he was the chief police officer in Milan still stands out for its lucidity and intelligence. His analysis of Fascism is remarkable when one thinks that it was written when Mussolini was making his initial moves. Gasti writes that the political programme of the “sepolcristi” was aimed at blocking the spread of Leninist ideas by official Socialists, as much as to say, in Gasti’s opinion, that the Fasci were made up for the most part of “non-official Socialists”. One figure who stands out in the report is Ida Irene Dalser: “A reference to Mussolini’s relationship with her will not be out of place”. According to the report, Dalser was the daughter of the mayor of Sopramonte, a village near Trento. She was three years older than Mussolini. She had worked as a housekeeper in Milan and then had gone to Paris to take a diploma to become a beautician, although Gasti writes that all she learnt was the job of manicurist: “In 1913 she returned to Milan, where she set herself up as a so-called ‘specialist in aesthetic hygiene and massage’ with a beauty salon in Via Foscolo 5.” She had a relationship with a well-off sales agent for the Erba company, and when it ended gave the first signs of the threatening and outrageous behaviour she was prone to. Gasti then says she started to work for Il Popolo d’Italia, but he doesn’t add in what capacity. Dalser was receiving – though only irregularly, as we’ve seen – a monthly sum of two hundred lire every month from Mussolini, sent via the lawyer Ermanno Jarach, who had an office at Via Santo Spirito 7 in Milan. Gasti points out that he was the brother of the banker Jarach, whose bank held the account where Manlio Morgagni kept the supporting funds for Il Popolo d’Italia. On one occasion, during a police interrogation, Dalser had accused Mussolini of selling himself to the French: she said that on 17th January 1914 in Geneva Mussolini and Naldi had received the sum of a million lire from the former French prime minister Joseph Caillaux, which they had deposited in an account in the Jarach bank in Via Santo Spirito in Milan. She added that she had contributed to setting up the newspaper with the not unsubstantial proceeds from the sale of the beauty salon. Dalser’s accusation was detailed, and the details intrigued Gasti. How did this former mistress know that the early discussions on starting the newspaper were held in the Bella Venezia hotel in Milan? And that a certain Commendatore Iona had deliberately been excluded from the discussions by Mussolini and Naldi so that he wouldn’t find out about where the supporting money for the newspaper was coming from? Dalser was undoubtedly “neurotic and hysterical and driven by a desire for revenge on Mussolini”, but subsequent police checks on her statement showed that the only slip in the details she gave was a date. Mussolini and Naldi had certainly been in Geneva, at the Hôtel d’Angleterre, but ten months later, on 13th November 1914; while there they had not only signed an advertising contract with the publicity firm Haasenstein and Vogler, but had also met with leading French politicians, as mentioned in a report drawn up by the Italian consul in the city. Mussolini’s briskly dismissive description of Dalser as crazy and hysterical didn’t quite fit: she knew a lot. From what she said, one has the impression that the “not unsubstantial” sum she’d given her lover was actually a considerable amount of money, and that it represented a lifeline at a crucial moment when the financial survival of the newspaper was in doubt and Mussolini’s other contacts had not yet produced any cash. Dalser knew enough to single out certain men who collaborated with Mussolini – Ugo Clerici, for example, whom Gasti was also investigating. Clerici had entered Mussolini’s circle as a lowly sales agent for coffee, but he was working in partnership with Angiolino De Ambris, the brother of the revolutionary syndicalist. He soon abandoned this job and started trafficking in Switzerland, where he appeared to have had “ample financial resources”. In any case, Gasti’s report continues, “it is public knowledge that Mussolini has received money from the Fascio delle Associazioni Patriottiche [League of Patriotic Associations] under its director Candiani, from Freemasonry and from the Republican Party…”2

  Once her hysterics were over and she could reason more calmly with the police officers who were questioning her, Dalser pointed out how much Mussolini’s style of life had changed. He’d left the editorship of Avanti! without a penny, scornfully refusing to take any redundancy payment, but not long afterwards he was publishing his own newspaper, was able to pay the journalists who worked for him good salaries, moved into a fine house in the Foro Bonaparte area of the city, lunched and dined in restaurants, owned several cars, could pay for a network of informers and also, in fear of reprisals after the attack on the offices of Avanti!, for a team of bodyguards – made up of twenty-five ex-Arditi, each of whom received fifteen lire a day – stationed permanently outside his office as well as accompanying him wherever he went. From the middle of May onwards, their number was reduced to five. Dalser was right – 1920 had seen a sudden and marked improvement in Mussolini’s personal finances – and Gasti duly continued his investigations in the wake of her accusations. Mussolini had purchased a new car, a four-seater Bianchi Torpedo fitted with jumpseats. He had also moved the newspaper’s operation to a new and well-appointed building, where he had a large office as well as a special room for his fencing lessons and training. He started to dress elegantly, in grey or black suits, stiff-collared shirts and beautiful ties. This was also true for Rachele as she herself notes: “I followed the fashions of the day and wore beautiful dresses, wide in the skirt and narrow at the waist. I also liked to wear buttoned-up boots, like tho
se worn by elegant ladies in the nineteenth century – they really suited me. A bit later we started to employ a chauffeur; we were indistinguishable from any other middle-class couple in Milan.”3 What Rachele didn’t know was that there was another reason for her husband’s new sartorial elegance – the smart gaiters, the white handkerchief sported in the breast pocket, the bowler hat and the straw boater. Margherita Sarfatti was also responsible for Mussolini’s new dress sense; in a sense she was re-educating him.

  Dalser’s hysterical anger is understandable: in Trento she had formed a relationship with a man barely able to keep himself, she had sold her beauty salon to support him, she had given him his first son, she asserted she was his legal wife, and now that fortune was smiling on him all she had to show for it was two hundred lire a month, and even that didn’t always arrive on time. On 3rd October 1919 she went once more to the main police station in Milan to lay new charges against Mussolini. In a torrent of accusations and insults, she let slip that she was receiving some financial support from the Ministry for Internal Affairs; the police chief immediately sent them a telegram. The historian De Felice discovered two letters in the Nitti papers which seem to show that Dalser was being used by the Ministry as a possible means of blackmailing Mussolini. Nitti had sent a friend to make approaches to Mussolini and soften him up; the friend had found that Dalser might be a useful way to do this and wrote to Nitti: “You should use Signora Darsen [sic]. Up to now she’s been under court orders, but there’s a possibility you could get Mussolini to stay quiet by offering to remove her from Milan. Let me know what you’d like to do.”4

  The situation grew embarrassing for Mussolini. Dalser’s continual disturbances were causing people to talk. A friend and follower of his, Cesare Berti, felt obliged to write and tell him that Dalser, by dint of sheer persistence, was persuading several people of her point of view. Berti had first met Mussolini in Trento and had followed him back to Forlì, where he later founded the local league in favour of Italy’s intervention in the war. He went back to Trento after the conflict was over, when he became the official representative there for the so-called Ministry for the Liberated Territories. He knew all about Mussolini’s relationship with Dalser and realized the damage she could cause him back in her home town of Trento. Mussolini reacted with alarm to Berti’s letter and didn’t mince his words when he replied:

  Milan, 15th February 1920. My dear Berti, the person who is the subject of your letter is a dangerous and unbalanced criminal, a blackmailer and fraudster. I had a relationship with her, I’ve acknowledged paternity of her son, but she has never been – and will never become – my wife. During the war she was put under house arrest and never stopped hounding the authorities. You are not deceived in calling her unhinged. Let me know what she’s doing now, where she is and how she makes a living. She must be kept under observation and put in prison, where she belongs. Unfortunately I have to send her 200 lire a month. I’ll wait to hear from you with the information I’ve asked for. Yours, Mussolini.5

  It was probably difficult for Mussolini to understand why Dalser was so angry, though it’s worth remembering that he was paying out 375 lire a day for his twenty-five strong bodyguard, and that she knew this. Luckily for him, the other women he was having relations with – or had had in the past – were a lot less trouble. With Bianca Ceccato, for example, he had had a son and she didn’t make any fuss about it. Bianca had been a secretary in the Il Popolo d’Italia offices. We don’t know how long she worked there before she caught his eye. She gave birth to a son in 1920, who was later to become a famous writer and screenwriter. Mussolini never acknowledged he was the father. Edvige always maintained that Dalser’s son was the only case where Mussolini admitted paternity, since this was the only child he had outside his marriage, but Edvige obviously wasn’t privy to the admissions her brother made to his last mistress, Claretta Petacci, as transcribed in her diary. On 19th December 1937 the latter mentioned to Mussolini that the whole of Rome was talking about an illegitimate son he had had with Romilda Ruspi. He admitted that the sensual and determined Ruspi indeed believed her son was his. He also brought in Bianca Ceccato, saying, as Petacci reports it:

  I never actually had full relations with her, I always pulled out before coming, which really wore me down. One morning in Via Rasella she told me she hadn’t had her period. “How’s that,” I said, “when I’ve always been so careful?” […] Her sister told me later she’d given birth to a boy. I wasn’t much moved. I’ve seen the lad twice – he’s now eight years old. To be honest, I felt nothing at all. But it was different with Ceccato’s son, who’s now eighteen – I felt he was mine. But it hardly matters, she’s of absolutely no interest to me now.6

  It was against this backdrop – Dalser’s manic and suffocating pursuit of him, his seduction of his tranquil employee Bianca Ceccato, his fascinated cultivation of the wealthy and accomplished Sarfatti, and his attempts to reassure an increasingly alarmed Rachele – that the political and social situation in the country started to disintegrate. On 1st December, during the King’s traditional speech on the opening of parliament, the Socialist Party deputies left the Chamber en bloc singing an anthem to the socialist republic. In 1920, at the start of the biennio rosso, a wave of strikes started in factories and in the countryside. The factory owners reacted by imposing lockouts, taking on thousands of non-strikers or scabs, and obtaining army intervention against the strikers. Mussolini organized a second national congress of the Combatants’ Leagues in Milan; the date he chose to hold it was significant: 24th May, the anniversary of Italy’s entry into the war. Many years later, in a reply he gave during the interview with the German journalist Ludwig, he said: “We celebrate the 24th of May – when the war began – not our victory over the defeated. You’ll find the whole of my political programme summed up here. We regard the date of Italy’s entry into the war as a revolutionary beginning. It was the people’s decision against the will of parliament. The Fascist revolution began that day.”7

  The nature of the movement intended by Mussolini had changed, as had many of the men who belonged to it. The first congress had been made up of groups all vaguely coming from the left; now when the editor of Il Popolo d’Italia rose to speak he faced an audience which was explicitly right-wing. The movement needed to reorganize itself if it was not to remain isolated. There was an armed wing, and it had a newspaper with which to undertake the political struggle. On 13th July, against a backdrop of increasing trade-union agitation and strikes, Fascist squadrons set fire to the Balkan Hotel in Trieste, the headquarters of the city’s Slovene associations, while in Rome they wrecked the printing works responsible for producing Avanti!. The various forces of order – the police, the carabinieri and the Regia Guardia per la Pubblica Sicurezza (Royal Guard for Public Safety) – derided and insulted, as they frequently were, by anarchists and subversives, attacked as they patrolled the streets or wounded in clashes with demonstrators, began to have some sympathy for the Fascist squads. Moreover, many of them, like the men in the squads, were former soldiers. As for the army, if it had to be called in to deal with strikes, it’s natural to suppose that the soldiers felt a fraternal bond with the ex-military men and former Arditi who belonged to the Fascist squads. Mussolini had a long meeting with General Pietro Badoglio, the head of the country’s armed forces, who was quick to understand the potential of the Fascist fighting bands. The heads of the prefectures of several large cities warned the government of the widespread sympathy in which the Fascists were held. Following the massacre at Palazzo D’Accursio in Bologna, Cesare Mori had been appointed as head of the prefecture in the city (the same man who would later be asked by Mussolini after he had come to power to deal with the problem of the Mafia in Sicily through military intervention); in a report drawn up for the government in Rome, Mori indicated that the police did not always obey his orders, or at least obey them in full, in countering the squads. The prefect in Florence, Carlo Olivieri, also mentioned the sympathy felt for
the Fascists in the army, among the carabinieri, the Royal Guards, town-hall officials and the magistrature, while his colleague in Pisa pointed out that not only did many officials in the local administration belong to the movement, their daughters did too. It should also be remembered that while the forces of order were capable of suppressing strikes and countering left-wing street disturbances, they were not so well equipped to deal with the kind of attacks carried out by the highly trained former Arditi who fought in the squads.

  In trying to understand how rapidly the situation was developing, a note which was circulated on 24th September 1920 to all commanding officers from Colonel Camillo Caleffi, in charge of the Office of Information of the General Staff, is significant: “It is clear from information being received on the activities of the Combatants’ Leagues that they are playing an increasingly important role in the general political picture and could eventually be used to counter the unpatriotic and subversive elements in the country.” Caleffi could only have issued such a statement with the full knowledge and backing of the entire high command of the armed forces. It must also have had tacit if not explicit approval from the head of the armed forces, the King. At the same time, Giovanni Giolitti, who on 15th June became prime minister for the sixth time in his career, was seeking out allies and support among right-wing forces. He was either unaware of Gasti’s report or didn’t take it seriously, given that his attempts to harness the forces of Fascism for his own political ends stemmed from a fundamental misreading of the phenomenon.

  Mussolini now found himself in the kind of situation for which he was best suited. The two weapons in his armoury – the newspaper and the armed gangs – enabled him to wield the political power he had failed to obtain through the ballot box. It wasn’t even necessary to incite the squads to take action. On 21st November in Bologna the installation of the new Socialist Party-controlled city council was being celebrated in Palazzo D’Accursio; the Fascists stormed in and a massacre ensued – nine people were killed and more than fifty wounded. A month later three Fascists died in clashes in Ferrara on 20th December, which led to harsh retaliation from the squads, backed up by the official police forces. As for the events in Fiume, time had played into Mussolini’s hands. D’Annunzio’s adventure had reached a dead end, and politicians decided to call time on his “rule” of the city. Italian troops attacked on 24th December, and there was a battle over what became known as “Bloody Christmas”. On 18th January D’Annunzio handed over his power to the national council for Fiume and left. Mussolini condemned the attack on the city, but at the same time it meant that his principal rival, the alternative “duce”, had been removed from the scene to return to his writing.