Il Duce and His Women
Page 36
Right from the start Matteotti’s disappearance had made Mussolini’s position difficult. All the structural elements he’d put in place to underpin the regime were under threat. There was a general impression that he had betrayed his promise to bestow peace, tranquillity, order and security on the country, but to his great good fortune, there was no one capable of transforming this impression into a concrete strategy aimed at bringing down his government. Matteotti was the one man who could have done this, and he’d been removed, a sacrificial victim of the oil conspiracy. The opposition decided to withdraw from parliament in the so-called Aventine Secession, so condemning itself to a policy of non-intervention while it waited for some external event to overturn the political situation, which, however, remained in a stalemate. The King was on a visit to Spain, and his return was eagerly awaited by the anti-Fascists. “What was Mussolini’s mood like during these days? We know from several people who saw him on the 14th and 15th of June that he appeared to them deeply depressed and at the same time full of anger, and scared by the sudden absence of support around him. On the afternoon of the 16th, however, Finzi found his mood completely transformed; he was once more full of self-confidence.”12
A meeting between Mussolini and Victor Emmanuel took place on 17th June and was a disappointment for the opposition. The King limited himself to confirming Mussolini’s tactical appointment of Federzoni, the former leader of the Italian Nationalist Association, which had merged with the Fascists, as minister for Internal Affairs. No other business was dealt with. The silence on the Matteotti affair clearly signified that the King had no intention of putting the blame for it on Mussolini. Thus Mussolini was sure that the King would not abandon him to his fate, but would stand by him during the crisis. A second stroke of luck was that he had gained time to work out a new strategy. And a third was that he had immediately offered up plausible scapegoats, deliberately chosen, to pay the penalty for the crime. Rossi realized that he was going to be offered up to placate public opinion when he saw Mussolini’s secret police were following him. He escaped in order to avoid arrest and then wrote a blistering attack on his former boss which he sent to the opposition leaders in the Aventine Secession through the offices of the Grand Master of the Palazzo Giustiniani Masonic Lodge (the Piazza del Gesù rival lodge continued to support the government). It is probable that in his meeting with the King Mussolini had agreed that it would be necessary to schedule a parliamentary debate on the Matteotti affair, in the Senate at least. In the course of the debate, held on 24th June, he insisted that the government would remain in place and that he would “implacably” seek for justice to be done. The Senate approved the vote of confidence with 265 votes in favour and only 21 against, leaving the way clear for Mussolini to act.
Mussolini summoned all the deputies who belonged to his majority bloc in the parliament to the Palazzo Venezia and got them to sign a document confirming their support for him. Once he had informed the King of the vote in the Senate and the support of the deputies, he carried out an extensive reshuffle of the government. Yet the crisis showed no signs of abating; even though the opposition had withdrawn from active engagement, there were still signs that in the country at large the regime was haemorrhaging the support it had obtained at the outset. The internal opposition to Mussolini within the Fascist Party, especially from the extremist factions, who regarded him as inept and trapped in the web of his own pointless politicking, was also growing restive. Roberto Farinacci took centre stage by declaring himself to be the representative of the revolutionary Fascism which, starting out from the provincial grassroots, had wanted to conquer the state. Farinacci happened to be a lawyer – by no means a distinguished one – and agreed to act as Dumini’s defence counsel in the trial in which he was charged with the planning and execution of Matteotti’s murder. Mussolini duly availed himself of the weapon he had already made sure was in place for such an eventuality – he summoned a meeting of the Grand Council in which he declared his support for the “irreconcilable” factions in the party. He declared that in order to resolve the crisis it was necessary to silence the political opposition and also the Italian people. It was an astute move, since it stole Farinacci’s thunder by borrowing his views, thus leaving his main rival within the party and the other ras grouped around him only limited room for manoeuvre. At the same session of the Grand Council he also made the celebrated assertion – echoed by many subsequent dictators over the course of the twentieth century – that “History” would be the only judge of the regime, adding that if anyone were so foolish as to insist on putting the regime on trial, the entire Fascist movement would rise up in insurrection.
Mussolini’s new strategy was still developing when events took another turn with the discovery of Matteotti’s corpse on 16th August. The opposition parties stirred again into action. The regime wanted to prevent the funeral taking place in Rome, since it might become a flashpoint for protests which it would be hard to control; however, his widow chose to hold the ceremony in Matteotti’s birthplace, the small town of Fratta Polesine, far away from Rome and the centre of political power. A new wave of violence from the Fascist squads broke out in the provinces. During the violence, Armando Canalini, a Fascist Party deputy and representative of the trade-union movement, was shot dead, triggering an uncontrollable Fascist reaction. The second anniversary of the March on Rome took place in an atmosphere of conflict. A delegation of industrialists visited Mussolini to ask him to intervene to normalize the situation and guarantee the freedom for trade-union organization. With the country in crisis and Mussolini’s majority threatening to break up, the Chamber of Deputies resumed on 12th November. The opposition, still in purdah, refused to make any countering move; it continued to believe that the regime would collapse because of the moral scandal arising from the various reports and memoranda which were being sent to the King. But the King, who was perhaps less an impartial referee in the game than a secret player, declared the lower and upper chambers of parliament served as his “ears”, and without a vote from them he could not act. Thirty years later his son, the future Umberto II, explained: “[The opposition] was wrong in hoping that the King could intervene in the political struggle, it would have been inconceivable! They should not have abandoned parliament, which is the only place where deputies can speak on behalf of the nation, since outside the Chamber they are speaking only for themselves.”13
In the United States the press had for some time been linking Matteotti’s murder to Sinclair Oil’s use of bribes. Normally Mussolini is depicted as paralysed during this crisis, but in reality he was wriggling desperately in the effort to find a way out of it. He proposed a new electoral reform which would introduce the system of single representation for individual constituencies, in a bid to see off both the official opposition and the Fascist extremists. The thought of losing their seats caused many deputies to tremble.
The only real countermove of the anti-Fascists was to publish, on 27th December, the first extracts from Rossi’s memorandum with his accusations directed against his former boss. The publication caused an uproar. The Corriere della Sera suggested Mussolini give up his parliamentary immunity and hand himself over to the judiciary. Even the cabinet discussed the possibility of having to find a successor. But once again, at this climax of the crisis, no one was capable of transforming these feelings into concrete political action. The simmering discontent within the Fascist Party led to a plot being formed. Some of the “consuls” in the National Militia and various extremist groups fell in behind Farinacci and dared to speak out against Mussolini, warning him that his mandate for power rested on the local Fascist sections, and that therefore his actions should follow their bidding. They even quoted the Fascist motto back to him – “o con noi o contro di noi” (“either with us or against us”) – with the reminder that it also applied to him. In Tuscany ten thousand armed men threatened to revolt; Mussolini was forced to send a group of local ras to hear their grievances: either he abandoned his politi
cal games or they would withdraw their support for him.
Rossi’s memorandum had focused public attention entirely on Mussolini, and the King took advantage of this. Free from attack, he played his part by remaining silent. The opposition failed to find a new leader who was capable of bringing together all those who were prepared to fight the government. In the general paralysis Mussolini once again was the only one who was making the moves. He tried to persuade the King to let him dissolve parliament, as a way of putting pressure on the deputies, but the King was determined to stay on the sidelines and refused to sign the decree, although he implied that he would support the move if parliament voted in favour. Mussolini then decided to take the bull by the horns and resolve the issue with the one weapon in his armoury which had never yet failed him: his oratory.
His speech given on 3rd January 1925 was hard-hitting. He came straight to the point in confronting the deputies. He asked if any of them intended to invoke Article 47 of the Constitution, which gave the Chamber the right to lay formal charges against a government minister. The opposition remained silent, while the Fascists broke out into wild applause. Mussolini continued:
People say that Fascism is a barbarian horde which has invaded the nation; that it is a movement of bandits and predators! The question of morality takes centre stage, but we’re all too familiar with what happens in Italy every time a question of morality arises. You might as well go and catch butterflies under the arch of Titus. Well then, let me tell you this, before this assembly and before the entire Italian people: that I and I alone assume all political, moral and historical responsibility for what has occurred. If saying something which then gets distorted is enough to hang a man, then get the rope and gallows ready! If Fascism is nothing more than castor oil and truncheons rather than being the proud, enthusiastic expression of the finest of Italy’s young men, then the fault is mine! If Fascism is merely a gang of criminals, then I am the head of this gang!14
Once again he had carried it off. As with the March on Rome, the determining factor in Mussolini’s victory was the paralysis of the political opposition. After the speech the political climate throughout the country changed rapidly. Mussolini issued a series of strict orders to Federzoni, the Fascist colleague he had put in charge of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which had the ostensible aim of maintaining public order. Before night had fallen, the prefects in the various regions had closed down 110 clubs and 150 public meeting places, had placed 111 “subversives” under arrest and carried out 655 unannounced raids on private homes. All the opposition parties were affected: the regime had started to place a tombstone over them. They survived for two more years, continuing to hope in some miraculous event which would change the situation. But that day, 3rd January 1925, was the real turning point, the resolution of the long-drawn-out crisis, the watershed marking the end of the first phase of the regime, which had begun with the March on Rome, and inaugurated the second, which would lead to the installation of Mussolini as the country’s undisputed dictator.
After she had fled Italy, twenty years on from the events in 1923 and 1924, Margherita Sarfatti, in her memoir entitled My Fault, maintained that she had played a significant part in the Matteotti crisis. She decribes Mussolini as being “weak, confused, contrite”, even “grief-stricken”. In her view, these reactions prove that he had not been informed of the conspiracy to kill Matteotti. After the United Socialist leader’s body was found, she says that Giolitti sent the anarchist Virgilio Panella to visit her in order to try and get her to use her influence over Mussolini to persuade him to resign, although such a move seems uncharacteristic of such an astute and sophisticated politician as Giolitti. It is more probable that Sarfatti used her influence to push Mussolini into taking action. Her advice might have helped him in important ways to plan the speech he gave on 3rd January: “You must take up a clear, determined position on this issue; you mustn’t hesitate.” And she continued to urge Mussolini to take this line: “Keep on saying you’re not guilty, that on the contrary Matteotti’s murder was carried out as part of a treacherous and sinister plot against you. Make sure the perpetrators are punished like the criminals they are. But, as far as the political consequences are concerned, you can’t go on acting the part of the poor innocent who didn’t know anything about what his wicked associates were up to. You must clarify your position vis-à-vis the crime, but at the same time accept responsibility for the [Fascist] revolution.”15
The aristocrat Countess Martini Marescotti, née Ruspoli, tried to take advantage of the uproar surrounding Mussolini during the Matteotti affair to exact her own vengeance on him. She was one of Rome’s great ladies of fashion during the Fascist era, and had had no difficulty in getting intimate access to him. She knew nothing, however, of the behaviour which was well known to a restricted circle of gerarchi and other close associates: “Mussolini had a fairly contemptuous view of the opposite sex. Once he told me: ‘Women prefer men to be brutal, like cavalry soldiers.’ So he treated them brutally.”16 The Countess Marescotti found herself the object – like so many others – of Mussolini’s rough-and-ready approach to sex; alarmed and disappointed, it seems she decided to take her revenge by putting poison in his food, but he fell ill before she could do anything – with the same illness which the anti-Fascists were hoping would carry him off, since they had failed to defeat him politically.
But the other opposition to Mussolini, the internal one, was more active. Farinacci now presented himself not only as the gerarca who had saved Fascism by insisting that Mussolini betray neither himself nor the March on Rome, but also a potential new leader who would lead the way to the real revolution. In the face of Farinacci’s pressures, Mussolini seemed to cede ground to him and in a decree issued by the Grand Council appointed him to the leading position of party secretary on 12th February 1925. In reality the intention was to give Farinacci enough rope to hang himself. The ruse threatened to go badly wrong, since on 15th February Mussolini was struck down again with a severe relapse of the duodenal ulcer. The regime’s propaganda tried to cover up what was happening. Rachele, who was kept informed, decided to join her husband in Rome. She quickly packed and left for the station in Milan, where she found the city’s police chief waiting for her. “He made a proper little speech to me, explaining that if I rushed to the Duce’s bedside it would be interpreted as a sign his illness had got worse, which would in turn provoke a new political crisis. In the interests of the country, therefore, it was my duty to stay in Milan. I accepted, somewhat sceptically.”17
Rachele might be able to accept “reasons of state” for keeping away from her husband, but the fact that he was in the hands of Margherita Sarfatti and of her representative, the housekeeper Cesira, was harder to swallow. Rachele was allowed to visit Rome only in the following year, and before she returned to Milan she extracted a promise from Mussolini that he would stop seeing Margherita Sarfatti as a lover and also that he would have her dismissed as a journalist. Rachele knew about the others – Bianca, Giulia, Paolina, Virginia, Gigia, Fernanda, Eleonora – she had counted over a dozen of them – but they didn’t bother her. However, the situation was rather “livelier” than she thought. In an effort to show Claretta Petacci that despite his advancing years his virility remained untouched, Mussolini recalled the period in Via Rasella: “Look at your giant, your big naughty boy, go on, touch him, look at his big hairy chest. I’ve told you I like screwing around – it’s true, I used to be like that. I don’t have women any more, I’m chaste by comparison with what I was then. When I lived in Via Rasella, it was like a whorehouse, I had four or five women a day. I can remember almost all of them, like Mercedes who was so ugly you wanted to throw up. She wrote to me the other day, she’s working for the Party in Milan.”18
Bianca Ceccato too, the young secretary who’d worked at Il Popolo d’Italia, was a frequent visitor to the apartment in Via Rasella. She and Cesira had now become very familiar with each other to the point that Bianca could ask the houseke
eper how frequently the sheets were changed on Mussolini’s bed, worried how many times other mistresses had slept in them. “Every three days,” Cesira told her – perhaps not often enough given the number of women passing through. Ceccato often brought her little son Glauco with her. Mussolini would give him a moment’s attention, but it was enough. Cesira then confided in Bianca that she had noticed Mussolini had tears in his eyes every time he kissed the little boy before he left. By dint of bringing Cesira little gifts, like a blouse from Milan, showing her a certain deference, and spending time in chatting to her, Bianca soon became such a normal part of the household that she took to having long hot baths there, with Cesira to wait on her, and was often invited to lunch, with meals cooked specially for her, given that Mussolini’s own diet was spartan. Bianca Ceccato’s importance was now such that Sarfatti could no longer easily control her. In any case, Mussolini’s relations with the wealthy writer were gradually growing more distant. It is curious that this cooling-off coincided with the publication of the biography of him she’d been working on for over two years. The first edition came out in English in 1925 with the title The Life of Benito Mussolini, published by Thornton Butterworth. A year later, it came out in a slightly revised Italian version, with the new and more striking title Dux. It was an immediate best-seller. It was also translated into French and sold well everywhere. Helped by a Jewish friend and associate, Lisa Foa, Margherita Sarfatti was personally responsible for the book’s publicity. She paid special attention to its distribution: she knew that if it were to sell as widely as possible people should be able to buy it not only in bookshops but also in newsagents, especially in stations, where crowds of travellers would come across it. It was not the first book on Mussolini, but the intention behind the writing of it made it more than a straightforward biography: “Compared to the earlier books, Dux was the first piece of Mussolini propaganda to have been carefully worked on and put together by means of the author’s continual and active promotion of the subject. A close analysis, however, of the book’s structure, made up in part of a skilful collage of Mussolini’s sayings, reveals more ambitious aims than merely creating an icon of the new man.”19