Il Duce and His Women

by Roberto Olla

  Today, however, after many books have appeared on Mussolini’s mistresses, new light has been shed on Mussolini’s sexuality and love life, and it no longer seems so implausible to suggest that he decided at such a critical juncture to spend several days with a new woman. If the woman in question had a particular sexual appeal for him, it is even probable that this is what he did, especially if, at the same time, passing time in enjoying himself sexually in some villa or castle in the countryside outside Rome also meant that he was away from the insurrection in Milan, which was clearly destined to end in failure. The affair would also have provided him with a convincing cover, especially for the men who surrounded him, behind which he could work on his own plan in secret. He had suppressed the rebellion of the ras and he had put paid to every potential rival within the movement. His real rival, the only man who might become an alternative “duce”, was external: Gabriele D’Annunzio. The poet had distanced himself from the Fascist movement; his initial reluctance to speak from the balcony of Palazzo Marino is just one proof of his detachment. Mussolini could not overlook D’Annunzio, because otherwise he risked finding the latter against him when he least expected it. The plan he devised was a bold one: to organize a top-secret meeting involving himself, D’Annunzio and Francesco Saverio Nitti with the purpose of forming an alliance to set up a strong and stable government, capable of restoring the state’s authority. It’s enough to recall how the whole of Italy had been amused when D’Annunzio, during the assault on Fiume, had contemptuously nicknamed Nitti “the snail” to see that Mussolini’s plan to bring the two men together required a certain stretch of the imagination.

  The meeting was fixed for 19th August in the Tuscan villa belonging to the baron Romano Avezzana. The country was in such a dire state that Nitti, who as a former prime minister had had the power to release Mussolini and his fellow Fascists from prison, had to get a permit from Mussolini and be driven in a Fascist-chauffeured car to get to the destination. Nitti was just about to leave when he received a telegram telling him that D’Annunzio had fallen out of a window and was in a critical condition. The meeting was called off. “A rumour went round that Mussolini was behind it… which was neither true nor even plausible. It seems it was all the result of a quarrel between the poet and one of the new recruits among his mistresses, who happened to have a younger sister – a much younger sister well below the age of consent: her youthful charms had attracted the great man, whose lusts were insatiable and not inclined to admit defeat. The elder sister in her irritation pushed the impenitent D’Annunzio off the window sill.”27 The lover in question was Luisa Baccara and the little sister who attracted D’Annunzio’s attentions was called Jolanda. While Luisa was playing the piano, D’Annunzio began to molest Jolanda. The most likely version of the story is that the girl was annoyed and pushed him too hard on the balcony where they were sitting. The medical report speaks of a fracture to the skull and contusion. Yet the French translator André Doderet tells a different story: “By the beginning of September there was no trace of a fracture or bruising on Gabriele’s skull, easy to note because he was bald. We can assume that D’Annunzio, like ‘the great mythomaniac’ he so notoriously was, had invented the whole story of the fall from the balcony in order to get out of a meeting which he regretted agreeing to attend, since he had realized he wouldn’t be able to dissuade Mussolini from carrying out his plan to march on Rome.”28

  Whether it was by deliberate political choice or by chance, D’Annunzio’s exit from the scene was a boon to Mussolini. If their meeting had gone ahead as planned, it would only have increased the poet’s standing and turned him into the leading protagonist of a project which was supposed both to bring peace to the country and at the same time help to establish a new government. Mussolini saw D’Annunzio in a secret meeting in the latter’s home in Gardone on 11th October. It was the last thing he did before giving orders for the March to begin. The situation had changed, and the prospect of D’Annunzio taking over a prominent role no longer worried Mussolini. The armed squads had all been brought into line: the rules and regulations governing them had been published in three instalments in Il Popolo d’Italia.

  Entire provinces in the country were in the hands of the Fascists. In Bolzano the mayor had been expelled after the town hall was attacked; in Trento the governor of the region had been forced to resign, and the city was now under military control. Mussolini hadn’t bothered to inform even the party’s executive of this latest coup, and they were resentful of the high-handed treatment. But his aim was to show them that he and only he was the leader, the Duce. With a series of articles and speeches spelling out and guaranteeing a programme for a future government, he had won the support of the industrial and financial sectors in the country. The movement’s former anti-monarchist stance had been allowed to fade away; Mussolini had also encouraged the otherwise fortuitous cultivation of the man who was second in line to the Italian throne, the Duke of Aosta, who was known to sympathize with the movement’s aims. As early as 1919, Gasti had noted in his report that the Fascist squads “would welcome the King’s abdication and his assumed replacement by the Duke of Aosta as regent”.29

  Despite his antipathy towards Freemasonry, amply demonstrated at the Socialist congress in Ancona when he succeeded in getting Freemasons expelled from the party, Mussolini succeeded in obtaining the support of the Italian obediences – Piazza del Gesù and Palazzo Giustiniani – thanks also to the numerous Fascist leaders who belonged to Masonic lodges. And he had got D’Annunzio’s tacit assent: after paying him the tribute of making him the principal and last person he spoke to before the March went ahead, he called the leaders of the armed squads together and told them the time had come for action. On 21st October the party’s national executive ceded power to a so-called quadrumvirato, four men chosen by Mussolini: Italo Balbo, Emilio De Bono, Cesare De Vecchi and Michele Bianchi. Mussolini’s actions during the March on Rome often seem to contradict each other, but it should be remembered that there were also differences of opinion among the four men appointed to oversee the March, while the political situation itself was constantly changing and possible developments along with it. There was no one who enjoyed Mussolini’s complete trust. He had delegated the practical organization of the March to others, but he sought to keep for himself the main role as the man in control of all the moves. “Without Mussolini, the March on Rome would not even have been attempted, just as D’Annunzio never attempted it, despite all the plans and repeated declarations of intent. Many leading Fascists feared it or wanted to prevent it, and even after it had begun continued to shuttle between the Quirinale and Viminale palaces in the hope of agreeing some compromise solution with the more conservative and reactionary political forces.”30

  On 24th October in the San Carlo opera house in Naples a Fascist conference was held which was attended by leading representatives from the city’s administration and its universities. In addressing the conference Mussolini launched a new tactic: he declared that only three ministers serving in Facta’s weak government were against the Fascists, thereby extending an implicit invitation to the others to start manoeuvring themselves into the good books of the soon-to-be-victorious party. Before returning to Milan, he put the final touches on the plan for the March in a meeting in the Hotel Vesuvio: it would set off at midnight on the 26th. The following evening, back in Milan, he went to the theatre, making sure he was noticed as he took his seat in the stalls. There are differing interpretations of why he acted like this. Perhaps he wanted to reassure the middle classes of Milan by this display of normality. Or he was keeping his distance in case the March was a failure, so he could restart his political manoeuvring more easily. According to his wife Rachele, he did it because he wanted to avoid a test of strength with Facta, the prime minister, who was prepared to introduce a state of emergency:

  On the evening of the 27th, Benito suggested we go to the Manzoni theatre to see [Franz Lehár’s] The Merry Widow. The suggestion irritated me. �
�How on earth can you go and see The Merry Widow with everything you’ve got on your mind?” I asked. He didn’t reply, but started to whistle as he buttoned up his shirt collar. This surprised me even more, because he was always annoyed if he caught an errand boy or one of the maids whistling. It was only when we were on our way that he explained to me why he was behaving so oddly. “Everything’s ready for the March on Rome,” he said. “If I’m seen at the theatre, that will throw the police off the scent. They’ll think that nothing can be happening if I can spend time amusing myself.” And so it was: he made sure people noticed him, Edda and me, like any ordinary middle-class family out for a night at the theatre, and twenty minutes later we quietly left the theatre.31

  Other contemporary witnesses, however, claim to have seen Mussolini at the theatre, but accompanied by his mistress and colleague Margherita Sarfatti and her daughter Fiammetta. In the short justificatory memoir she wrote after the end of the Second World War, My Fault, Sarfatti wrote: “The 26th in the evening, the Duce in Milan goes to a Wagner opera at the theatre, the first night of Lohengrin at the Dal Verme theatre. […] On the evening of the 27th we are surprised to see him, an unexpected guest, enter our box at the Manzoni theatre.”32 It is hard to reconcile these differing versions of the events, even more so because Sarfatti has provided us with yet another one, again written after the fall of the regime and the end of the war: in this, on the evening of 27th October Mussolini went to join her at her country villa in Cavallasca, very near the border with Switzerland, in order to escape but, as they sat by the fireside, she managed to calm him down and persuade him to wait and see how events would turn out. His wife’s account seems more reliable: she goes on to write that Mussolini spent the rest of the evening holed up in his office at Il Popolo d’Italia and glued to the telephone. He knew of course that his telephone was being tapped and made sure that no word he uttered betrayed any sign of weakness.

  The armed squads met with no resistance in the various towns and cities they passed through on their route; they would occupy prefectures and railway stations, the civil authorities would withdraw and hand over power to the army, and then, bringing the process full circle, the military authorities would enter into negotiations with the Fascists. On Mussolini’s instructions, Cesare Rossi, Aldo Finzi and Manlio Morgagni paid calls on the editors-in-chief of the various newspapers to suggest they wrote nothing which might impede the Fascists’ path to power. At the Corriere della Sera Rossi spoke with Eugenio Balzan, the managing director, and Finzi contacted the newspaper’s co-editor, Alberto Albertini, by telephone. They spoke to Mario Missiroli at Il secolo, who was sceptical about how successful the March was actually proving in practice. As for Avanti!, Nenni described their visit:

  I received the Fascist delegation in the main office in the Avanti! building in Via Settala, where broken bits of furniture and charred books remained from the last incursion of the Fascist squads. The delegation was made up of Finzi, Cesarino Rossi and Morgagni, who would all go on to hold important posts in the new regime a few days later – unluckily for the first two, since they soon fell out of favour (Morgagni went on to prosper, but he committed suicide on the day Mussolini was arrested in 1943). A fourth person was there at the door: Amerigo Dumini, the man who would assassinate Matteotti.33

  Clearly the delegation sent by Mussolini was not going to get any firm undertakings from Avanti! that they wouldn’t come out against the Fascists, so the alternative option was adopted: a squad was dispatched to destroy their offices as soon as possible in order to prevent them publishing the paper over these crucial days. Facta and the government he led resigned, at the same time suggesting that the King sign a decree declaring a state of emergency. The King refused. Cesare Rossi recounted the episode: “The prime minister Facta chose to resign rather than oppose the sedition – a very bad mistake which both justified and facilitated the Fascists and induced the King to refuse to sign the declaration of the state of emergency on the morning of Saturday 28th October. He said to Facta: ‘You’re an expert in constitutional law, yet you’ve forgotten that a government which has resigned no longer has the moral authority to impose such a serious measure.’ And he handed the decree back to him.”34

  Antonio Salandra was asked by the King to form a new government, but his efforts came to nothing after only a few hours, whereupon, on the morning of 29th October the King summoned Mussolini. That day’s edition of Il Popolo d’Italia carried the announcement that victory was in sight and that the government would be largely made up of Fascists. Rachele Mussolini writes that the news sent their household wild. The only person who managed to sleep on, as the others tried to read the newspaper, was Mussolini: the imperturbability he displayed on this occasion and by going to the theatre two evenings before fed into the construction of his myth. Cirillo, the family chauffeur, was so overjoyed, according to Rachele, that he started to strum the piano and sing: “We’re on our way to the top…” In the general confusion, the two children, Edda and Vittorio, decided they could safely skip school. Before leaving Milan to be officially received by the King at the Quirinale palace in Rome, Mussolini demanded a telegram be sent to him confirming the King had asked him to form the next government. When he left the house to go to the station, Rachele came out with a characteristic remark: “Who would’ve believed it? My husband’s going to be the next prime minister!”35 The train Mussolini took for Rome left at 8.30 in the evening. It was an express, but it arrived in the capital only at 10.50 the following morning, since it had to stop at all the stations on the way which were occupied by the Fascists, who wanted to see and acclaim their leader. At 11.15, after arriving in Rome, Mussolini had a meeting with the King which lasted an hour. The school history books which were published under the regime always told the story of how Mussolini’s first words to the King as he entered his office were: “Your Majesty, I bring you the Italy which fought at Vittorio Veneto.” Rachele remembers reading these words in her small daughter’s school textbook and was surprised when Mussolini told her he had said no such thing. After his fall from power, during the twilight period of the Social Republic in Salò, Mussolini gave his final reflections on the March on Rome: “Was it an insurrection? Undoubtedly. It lasted more or less about two years. Did it bring about a revolution? No – if you define a revolution as changing, by force, not only the system of government but the institutional framework of the state. Seen from this point of view Fascism did not initiate a revolution in October 1922. There was a monarchy already in place, and the monarchy remained in place.”36

  The squads, known also as “Camicie Nere” (“Blackshirts”) as a result of their adoption of the sombre look of the Arditi, marched on parade in front of the Quirinale palace; it would have been better, as Mussolini intimated in the remark just quoted, if they’d been able to march into the palace itself, but that was not possible. The March on Rome came to a halt before the head of the Italian state, the King. A diarchy was born. Even though the Fascist squads were under the control and leadership of former officers from the Arditi regiment, they remained in effect the same disorderly, undisciplined and aggressive gangs they had always been, nothing like a real military force. Any army worthy of the name could easily have routed them – if it had received an order to do so, but the order in this case was never forthcoming. “The ‘March on Rome’ is one of the most interesting political events in modern times,” wrote Emilio Lussu in 1945.

  As they read the following passage, non-Italian readers should refer to a map of the kingdom of Italy. The decision to undertake the “March”, as envisaged by the new plans, was taken in Naples on 26th October. The Fascists started mobilizing over the next two days, between the 26th and the 27th. The March would start on the 28th. Rome or thereabouts would be the place where Italy’s destiny would be decided. Mussolini leaves Naples by train to return to Milan; the train goes via Rome. Milan is six hundred kilometres from Rome, at the other end of the country. If Mussolini had stayed in Naples, he would have been
much closer. It was, in short, a curious choice of battle positions. Even with the conveniences of modern warfare, six hundred kilometres from the main theatre of action is a long way off. On the other hand, Milan has the advantage of being only a few kilometres from the frontier with Switzerland. The Fascists mobilize as far as they can. Most regions in the country remain completely unaffected by their mobilization. It is not easy to attack a state which is prepared to defend itself. All over Italy people were saying that the marchers would end up behind bars. But then the government threw in the towel and resigned.37

  A king who acted like some unresponsive bureaucrat, a prime minister trapped by his decision to resign, an array of lily-livered political parties, a paralysed opposition and innumerable mistakes and miscalculations committed by the leading figures in the crisis – all these factors played straight into Mussolini’s hands and helped him carry out his plan. Those who bear the real responsibility for his success in October 1922 were the leaders of Italy’s democratic and liberal state. They in effect chose to commit political suicide. And the responsibility falls most heavily on the left-wing parties who were incapable of organizing even the most minimal resistance to the advancing Blackshirts. Mussolini was careful to remain at a prudent distance from the plot he was hatching, only, suddenly and surprisingly, to reappear at the centre of power before the squads on the March had even reached the outskirts of Rome. He knew very well that if he had arrived when the capital was invaded by hordes of armed Blackshirts, his room for manoeuvre would be severely reduced. He had to quell the squads he had mobilized for the March, tame them and turn them into just one of the many cards he could play. The Fascist squads were and had to remain his own private army. Margherita Sarfatti describes, without personal comment, the first day of Mussolini’s government: