Il Duce and His Women

by Roberto Olla

  In January 1921 a split in the Socialist Party led to the creation in Livorno of the Partito Comunista Italiano (Italian Communist Party). In an editorial which appeared in Il Popolo d’Italia on 27th January, Mussolini held out the possibility of a truce between the warring factions: “We are equipped for war; we are ready for peace.” In the meantime, the increasingly frequent attacks on the part of the Fascist squads, added to the fact they were protected by the army and often found themselves fighting alongside the forces of order, led to a growth in their numbers. According to their own records, there were 249,036 signed-up members by the end of 1921; the Ministry of Internal Affairs calculated the figure in May 1921 as 187,098. Whatever their accuracy, the figures show how rapidly a new and aggressive political force had emerged. Far from creating an atmosphere of fear, the Palazzo D’Accursio massacre led to an increase in membership. On 28th February the Fascists destroyed the Chamber of Labour in Trieste as well as what had become their favoured target, the Milan headquarters of the Socialist Party newspaper Avanti!. In the countryside, the Socialist Party made little headway; the striking day labourers were hit hard by the organization of the Fascists among the agricultural population; they armed and financed gangs of brutally violent thugs and murderers. For Mussolini, taking control of this phenomenon spelt the definitive abandonment of any of the vague ideals he might have held; he did so in the belief that it furthered his political strategy. He praised the violence of the squads, especially their attacks on the Avanti! offices, and declared himself to be “reactionary and or revolutionary, as circumstances dictate”; he was beginning to see the road ahead that would lead him to power. When the metalworkers occupied the factories, he momentarily adjusted his political balance to lean slightly towards the left, but De Felice comments that

  it is hard to believe he seriously thought he could deceive anyone, if the metalworkers’ occupation had turned into a real act of revolution. Even if he had given them total support, the rift between him and the Socialist Party was now so deep that he would have become the revolution’s first victim. It seems more probable that he wanted firstly to emphasize Fascism’s socialist “aspirations”, to show the workers he was on their side in their battle for fair pay… and secondly to present himself as a mediator between the factory owners and the metalworkers.8

  Mussolini had a meeting with the Socialist Party deputy and tradeunionist Bruno Buozzi to reassure him that as long as the factory occupations were the result only of trade-union action there would be no Fascist attacks on the workers. His aim was to sound out the possibility of mediation, and he also wanted to show his opponents how easily he could control the armed wing of the movement, which was where his real political strength lay. Furthermore, Mussolini was also aware that his room for manoeuvre was threatened if the movement fell under the sway of the agricultural landowners: he duly launched an attack on the phenomenon of “rassismo”, the power of the various “ras” or gang chiefs who were responsible for the attacks in the countryside (the word “ras” comes from the Ethiopian term for “chieftain”).

  In the midst of the highly unstable political situation, Giolitti as prime minister dissolved parliament with an incontestable argument: Italy’s newly annexed territories should be allowed to vote in an election. The 15th of May was fixed as the date for the vote. Little more than a month before polling day, an anarchist attack played into the hands of Mussolini and his Fascist squads. On the evening of 23rd March, at a theatre in Milan, a bomb explosion killed twenty-one people and wounded two hundred. The aim of the anarchists behind the attack was possibly to kill the police chief Gasti – the same man who’d written the report which, as we’ve seen, provided the most perceptive analysis of the new movement. There were many women and children among the victims. Mussolini saw the electoral possibilities in the attack and declared that it represented a challenge which the Fascists would not hesitate to accept. He tactically changed course, perhaps to confuse his enemies, by talking of a truce when he addressed the crowds at the funeral for the victims. At the same time he ordered the squads to increase their attacks, while he also made the first moves towards forming an electoral alliance with Giolitti. In his report, Gasti had warned the authorities about Mussolini’s skill in political manipulation and also given a psychological analysis of the man, but his remarks had fallen on deaf ears. But even Gasti can’t have realized how many opportunities Mussolini was able to find, in the midst of his activities as a journalist and a politician, for the sensuality he had noted in him.

  Numerous instances can be found in the biographies which look at these aspects of Mussolini: for example, the incident which took place in May 1921, when Mussolini was opening the office of a new section in the Porta Vittoria neighbourhood in Milan. He gave his usual rabble-rousing speech, after which Gigi Lanfranconi, a lawyer and an enthusiastic Fascist who was in the audience, came up to greet him. Mussolini barely acknowledged Lanfranconi, but couldn’t take his eyes off the young woman who accompanied him; Lanfranconi quickly understood the situation, so that when he subsequently went to the newspaper offices to request an interview with Mussolini, he took the young lady along as well. Within fifteen minutes he was ushered in to Mussolini’s office. They spoke about the situation in Lanfranconi’s local Fascist branch, after which the lawyer made his excuses and left. “As soon as he was left alone with Lanfranconi’s wife, Mussolini wasted no time in small talk, but went straight to the point by asking her if she would like to spend the evening with him.”9

  Another person who asked to see Mussolini in the spring of 1921 was Giacomo Cucciati, the son of prosperous landowners. Mussolini could not deny his request, since Cucciati was an old companion from his Socialist Party days who now had a serious family problem. He came with his daughter Angela, whose husband was Bruno Curti, the son of a bronze industrialist. Curti was in prison facing a charge of murder. He belonged to a Combatants’ League that had attacked a certain Professor Gadda who subsequently died from his injuries. The fact that firearms had been used in the attack made it impossible for the police investigators to dismiss the case. From his prison cell Curti was appealing to Mussolini to intervene, so his wife Angela went to see him, accompanied, in the proper middle-class way, by her father. On entering the private apartment in Via Paolo da Cannobio which was used as the newspaper’s offices, the journalists pointed out to the couple the door to Mussolini’s study. That first meeting was friendly – but the friendliness was soon to intensify.

  The relationship between Mussolini and Angela Curti lasted, on and off, for more than twenty years. Curti bore him a daughter, Elena, very early on in their relationship, on 19th October 1922. Elena later described her mother’s regular meetings with Mussolini:

  I see my twenty-two-year-old mother, a pretty ‘coquette’ to use one of the French borrowings typical of the belle époque which she liked to use, wearing the fashions of the day, waiting for Mussolini on the bridge over the Naviglio canal. My brother used to accompany her, because a woman should never wait alone on the street. […] In Rome, my mother would go always to the same hotel – at first the Quirinale in Via Nazionale, until she was pestered by a man who had followed her and guessed her secret, when she started to go to the Minerva near the Pantheon.10

  There must have been something in Mussolini which attracted women, and, remembering what her mother used to tell her, Elena Curti believes she can identify what it was: “There were certain moments when his face seemed like that of an overgrown boy. At others his gaze took on a special luminosity.”11 Even a woman like Angela Curti from the wealthy and sophisticated middle classes fell for Mussolini’s usual seductive tricks. All the women, married or unmarried, saw first the famous orator, the rough-mannered revolutionary, the aggressive journalist, the successful editor-in-chief, the hardbitten soldier who commanded the ex-Arditi, the legend in his own lifetime everyone was talking about; then, with a suddenness that made them dizzy, they found themselves close up to him. Without their realizing it was
happening, he broke through that natural and invisible social barrier which protected their honour and was busy whispering phrases like “my sweet little girl… I want this moment never to end… I could look into your eyes for ever… you are the only thing I live for…” and so on. Most women probably couldn’t resist. It was unlikely that their boyfriends or husbands lavished such attention on them, or perhaps they were in difficult marriages where the couple’s problems were not aired for the sake of preserving appearances. Angela Curti was beautiful, and when she met Mussolini she already had a two-year-old son. She and her husband Bruno had married too young and were now paying the price. And suddenly Mussolini appeared on the scene, who was inflexible with everyone but unexpectedly gentle with her, ready to dedicate precious time from his very busy life just to be with her. Bruno Curti got out of jail. The bronze industry went bankrupt, so Angela Curti stepped in and opened a dress shop. Elena grew up surrounded by the mirrors, fur coats, lace trimmings, coat dresses and chiffon of her mother’s shop without ever finding out who her real father was. She met him for the first time only in 1929, but neither he nor Angela ever gave the slightest hint of their involvement. She became a fanatical Fascist supporter and never asked why she, out of all the others, was always close to the Duce. She didn’t even pose the question when she found herself in one of the cars which accompanied Mussolini on his final attempt to flee across the frontier into Switzerland and then the Valtellina, on 25th–27th April 1945. In this final act, like that of a Greek tragedy, amid the mountains and the clouds which shut in Lake Como, Elena’s mother, fearing that they might all end up in front of a Partisan firing squad, told her who her real father was. By strange coincidence, also in the line of cars which threaded their way along the lake was a young pilot who was particularly close to Mussolini: Virgilio Pallottelli, the son of his long-standing mistress Alice De Fonseca Pallottelli. “Whether Pallottelli was yet another of his illegitimate offspring or not, it is certainly the case that Mussolini regarded him as especially loyal, employing him at his headquarters during the Republic of Salò. It is unsurprising therefore that on 26th April 1945 Virgilio was in the escape motorcade organized by a leading Fascist, Antonio Pavolini, as it drove to Menaggio. Another passenger in his car was Elena Curti, the daughter of Angela Curti Cucciati and Benito.”12

  With the self-confidence which derived from the education they had received from their cultivated and wealthy families and from the fact that both their husbands had recognized and accepted their illegitimate children, Angela Curti and Alice Pallottelli had no qualms about meeting Mussolini for more or less secret assignations. They would go to meet him wherever he required them, without making problems, and only bothered him with requests for small favours, often on behalf of friends and acquaintances. Angela gave birth to Elena nine days before the March on Rome; during her pregnancy she had made no demands or protests, never complained or betrayed any sign of jealousy. If anything, it was Mussolini who became agitated when he learnt she had spent time on her own with another man. It’s also quite possible that he gave her some financial help during 1922, since his own circumstances were much improved. Angela was a perfect mistress, in that time spent with her was pleasurable and relaxing; she never threatened to disrupt his busy life.

  And Mussolini’s life was at the time full of problems. He was playing a game of tactics with Giolitti, but the men in the Combatants’ Leagues hero-worshipped D’Annunzio and hated the prime minister. So Mussolini was obliged to mend bridges with the great poet who, after Fiume, had withdrawn from active political life. At a rally in Bologna attended by a huge crowd of Fascist supporters Mussolini paid eloquent tribute to D’Annunzio and was thunderously applauded. The episode enabled him to renew contact with the poet and to go to visit him at his house in Gardone on 5th April; spreading his net carefully, Mussolini succeeded in bringing about a reconciliation and in getting D’Annunzio to agree to support him. Another element in Mussolini’s trap was a tactical alliance with the so-called Blocchi Nazionali (National Blocs), a right-wing parliamentary coalition led by Giolitti. During the month of April there was a notable increase in the number of Fascist attacks, which Mussolini defended as being a transitional but necessary violence, stressing that the Fascists were a party of order and that he would never allow the squads to run “out of control”, and taking care to leave the door open for a future collaboration, at ministerial level, with Giolitti. Mussolini’s moves were deft, Giolitti’s clumsy: the prime minister misinterpreted the Fascist phenomenon, thus allowing Mussolini to enter parliament at the head of thirty-five Fascist deputies among the 275 elected for the National Blocs. The Socialist Party lost thirty-four seats, while the Communists entered parliament for the first time with a small group of sixteen deputies.

  The 15th and 16th of May saw a sudden intensification of Fascist attacks which killed many people, although the wave of violence, paid for by the landowners, had already led men like Pietro Nenni, the future leader of the post-war Socialist Party, to distance themselves from the movement. On 23rd March, the day of the attack at the theatre in Milan, Nenni offered his support to Avanti!. His experiences in the Bologna Combatants’ League had disappointed him, and he had made a decision to abandon journalism, but when Avanti! suggested he take on the job of their Paris correspondent he accepted the offer immediately. The political situation made it clear that the newly elected Fascist deputies in parliament would not agree to become part of the broad front which Giolitti thought he could somehow control. Mussolini remarked to his sister that, among the heterogeneous political creatures who made up the alliance, he was the one who remained “a completely unknown beast to the eyes of that old explorer Giolitti”.13

  On 18th May in Milan the city’s chief of police, who was still Giovanni Gasti, had twelve Fascists arrested. The squads protested and, faced by their threats of violent retaliation, the prefect in Milan, as the main authority in the city, decided to release the twelve men. In carrying out his political strategy, Mussolini could now draw on the resources of a vast nationwide movement, a large group of deputies in parliament, a newspaper with a healthy circulation and financial backing, and a strong private army. On 21st June, in his maiden speech as a deputy, he continued with the tactic of blowing hot and cold, this time turning to the left, by suggesting a realignment with the Socialist Party in some kind of political truce. The idea of calling a halt to the continual clashes had been proposed by four parliamentary deputies, all of them former combatants in the war: two Fascists, Acerbo and Giurati, and two Socialists, Zaniboni and Ellero. Mussolini described the Fascists as the new party of order, but at the same time did nothing to stop the violence which was being wreaked by the armed squads. In conversations with his family, however, he was careful not to appear to praise the use of violence. His sister Edvige wrote her memoirs immediately after the Second World War, when the full extent of the Fascists’ atrocities had been made public, and she naturally felt obliged to diminish, as far as she could, the personal responsibility borne by her brother; she maintained that he disliked the violence of the squads, regarding it as a kind of fever which had to be undergone if the body politic were to return to health, which may strike us as a somewhat spurious justification. In this context she writes a revealing passage: “Whenever I spoke to my brother about the phenomenon of the armed squads, there was always a kind of shadow or reserve in his words, which went from outright and bitter denunciation of the cruelty and ill-advisedness of certain incidents to the lightly condescending irony with which he spoke of the type of certain regional and provincial condottieri who were emerging within the Fascist squads.”14

  These condottieri were the local ras, the bloodthirsty leaders of the local squads who were responsible for torture, mayhem and murder. When one reads the newspaper reports of the assaults and the attacks on vulnerable individuals, frequently involving violent sexual abuse, from raping women to pushing sticks up men’s rectums, an attitude of “condescending irony” is entirely out of p
lace.

  Against the backdrop of continuing violence, Giolitti resigned, on 27th June 1921, to be followed by an ineffectual government led by Ivanoe Bonomi; Mussolini thrust himself forward with the aim of making sure the democratic process did not leave him high and dry. On 13th July the Fascists destroyed the headquarters of the Republican Party in Treviso; in Sarzana, on the other hand, when they occupied the railway station and tried to march into the town, they were forced back by the carabinieri acting in conjunction with left-wing groups calling themselves “Arditi del Popolo” (“Arditi of the People”), which had been formed with the aim of countering the Fascist attacks. Eighteen Fascists were killed and thirty were wounded in the confrontation in Sarzana. The episode gave Mussolini food for thought: quite unexpectedly, even to the surprise of his own deputies who were listening, on 23rd July he gave a speech in parliament proposing an alliance of the Fascists, the Partito Popolare Italiano (Italian People’s Party) and the Socialist Party, which would adopt a basic, minimal programme of measures all three parties could agree on. Two of the most prominent ras, Dino Grandi and Roberto Farinacci, fomented the unease felt by the rank and file in the squads and cast doubts on Mussolini’s real intentions by reminding them that he was a former member of the Socialist Party. They knew that the real power lay in their hands: without them and their weapons all the tactical toing and froing in the parliamentary hothouse would come to nothing. Mussolini might think he was the leader of the movement, but they were the men who organized and carried out the military attacks.