Il Duce and His Women

by Roberto Olla

  The family had various domestic pets in their new residence, including three dogs, called Pitini, Charlot and Brock, and an angora cat called Pippo. During the war the very popular singing sisters known as the Lescano Trio, whose records were always hits with the Italian public, recorded a song with the strange line “But Pippo Pippo doesn’t know / That when he passes everyone in the city laughs…” Pippo was the name of the Allied Forces’ small reconnaissance aeroplane which regularly flew over Italian cities after they had been bombed to assess the effects of the raids. However, some preferred to see an allusion to Mussolini’s cat. Despite their phenomenal success (one of their records sold more than 300,000 copies) the three sisters happened to be Jewish and were dragged into the tragic events of the Holocaust. “I knew about the importance of race as early as 1921. How can they think I’m imitating Hitler, who hadn’t even been heard of then. The idea is laughable. The race must be defended. […] It’s necessary to instil Italians with a sense of the race, so that they don’t go on to produce half-castes who will destroy all that’s finest in us” – a remark of Mussolini’s transcribed by Petacci.15

  For a long time Mussolini’s anti-Semitism appeared as a kind of undertone, as if submerged in the flood of political and promotional activity, the often self-contradictory articles, declarations and speeches he produced every day, and this lack of prominence given to the theme is reflected in the view – widely held even now – that Italian anti-Semitism was a “minor” phenomenon, milder or in any case different from the Nazi version. In the interview he gave to Ludwig, Mussolini declared: “Anti-Semitism doesn’t exist in Italy. Italian Jews have always been good citizens and courageous soldiers. They occupy leading positions in universities, in the armed forces, in the banks. Several army generals are Jews – such as Modena, the commander in Sardinia, while another general is head of the artillery regiments.”16 It should be remembered when reading this statement that Ludwig was himself Jewish, that he was writing for a non-Italian public, and that Mussolini immediately came to regret having allowed the publication of the book.

  In 1936 several officials from the Fascist Ministry of Internal Affairs visited the concentration camp in Dachau and wrote a report praising the efficiency with which it was run. In the same year, in an article which was published on 31st December in Il Popolo d’Italia, Mussolini wrote: “People who don’t give much thought to the matter – or pretend not to – ask how anti-Semitism comes about, in what ways and for what reasons a man becomes an anti-Semite even though reality has provided him with some clear evidence? The answer is simple: anti-Semitism is inevitable whenever Jewishness appears excessive, too visible, too intrusive, too dominating. The excessively Jewish gives rise to those who are anti-Jews.” Even if Italian Jews were never forced to wear yellow stars, the regime’s racial laws against them can by no stretch of the imagination be described as mild. Mussolini kept Italian Jews – the citizens of his state – hanging on as he decided what was best to do about them. They became his hostages. It was the laws he passed which provided the legal basis for their subsequent deportation, and when the round-ups began, it was his state which paid five thousand lire to anyone who denounced or captured a Jew. His real attitude towards the Jews is evident in the numerous remarks found in Petacci’s diary: “They look on us as goyim. They exploit us and hate us. They’re rootless and godless – one day they’re Poles, the next Turkish or French. They settle down wherever it suits them best, and they squeeze you dry. They’re a cursed race, they killed God. They think that we took our God from them – I reply that they denied him and killed him because he wasn’t one of them – otherwise they would have recognized him. He didn’t belong to their race, so they killed him. They’ve got no excuse.”17

  Hitler, when he was once challenged by a woman over the Jewish question, replied by saying that no one remembered the Armenian massacre, and we find the same reference to the first genocide of the twentieth century in Mussolini’s remarks as written down by Petacci in her diary. Despite the grammatical mistakes and the illegible words, the meaning is only too clear: “Ah [?] these filthy Jews, they [word illegible] should all be destroyed just destroyed once and for all [?] not because I was generous but because I was scared by Roosvel [sic] because they’re so powerful [I] couldn’t touch them, I’ll massacre them just like the Turks did I interned seventy thousand Arabs, I could put fifty thousand Jews into internment, all shut up on a big island, or I’ll destroy them. […] They’re filthy. I regret [not having?] come down hard on them. But on 7th November [they’ll see?] what my iron fist is capable of. I’ll destroy [them?].”18

  It was not only in public life that Mussolini used his iron fist; his private life was far from being untouched by his violence. On the night of 15th July 1935, Ida Irene Dalser committed a fatal error, the last such mistake in her life. She managed to prise open the grating on the window of her cell in the psychiatric hospital in Pergine. Perhaps sheer desperation gave her the strength, as it gave her the ingenuity to soak various sheets and tie them together to form a rope by which she could climb down out of the window. An official visit by Mussolini to Trento was about to take place; the city’s police chief gave strict orders that the “mad” woman was to be captured as soon as possible, something which, given the number of spies there were around working for the regime, was easy to do. Dalser was sent to another psychiatric hospital on the island of San Clemente in Venice, where she was kept in isolation and her relatives forbidden from visiting her. The treatment was harsh, and she died on 2nd December 1937. Her son Benito Albino was still alive, although in 1932 the Ministry of Justice had changed his surname from Mussolini to Bernardi – Giulio Bernardi, who’d been brought in by the regime to help to camouflage this embarrassing offspring, was the boy’s guardian or foster-father. But since it wasn’t possible to stop the boy talking to other young people of his age, it was decided to enrol him in the navy and send him off to Shanghai on a ship. The ship’s captain, however, soon realized how disturbed the young man was and did not feel capable of taking responsibility for him; he had him sent back to Italy in 1935 with the order that he be referred to the naval hospital for examination. The medical checks found him to be fit mentally and physically, but despite this, rather than being dismissed, he was sent straight to the asylum in Mombello, near to Milan. His clinical file shows that he had asked voluntarily to be admitted as a patient to a psychiatric hospital so that he could receive appropriate treatment. A doctor declared it was necessary to administer the method of induced coma, an alternative to electroshock therapy; nine separate times he was put into a coma by being injected with insulin. He died on 26th August 1942, given a pauper’s funeral and buried in the cemetery at Lambiate. For security reasons his name was not written on his tomb, which was marked only by a small column and a number: 931.

  As the effects of the Great Depression spread throughout the world, the women of Milan and Turin took to the streets chanting “Long live the Duce, but give us food!” The sudden fall in industrial output meant that half a million factory workers found themselves jobless and destitute. Mussolini, as usual, was uncertain how to react. He intervened directly in the services set up to distribute food to the neediest, insisting that portions be increased by adding rice or suchlike. He gave orders that whoever wished to emigrate were to be allowed to apply for passports, as long as they had no criminal record and had done their military service. He took measures to save some banks from collapse, such as the Credito Italiano and the Banca Commerciale, and he set up the Istituto Mobiliare Italiano or IMI to oversee reforms to the country’s economic and financial system. But it was the secret services – the OVRA – which were given most to do during the crisis. The workers who came out on strike tended to be supportive of the Duce, but among their leaders and organizers Communist agitators had begun to re-emerge; the regime’s repression was harsh, and many arrests were made. Remembering perhaps his own past activities as a socialist revolutionary, Mussolini decided to test for h
imself the mood of the working classes in the north, but was disconcerted by what he found. In Turin, where Fascism had always been less popular than elsewhere, the regime’s trade-unionists could hardly manage to control the situation. In the nearby cities of Novara and Vercelli even the mondine or rice-weeders had gone on strike, while the workers in the industrial town of Sesto San Giovanni on the outskirts of Milan listened to a speech from the Duce in silence – what applause there was noticeably coming only from the local Fascists gathered round the podium.

  In this climate of tension, a new wave of terrorist attacks was unleashed. Explosive devices were sent to the editorial offices of Il Popolo d’Italia and Corriere della Sera, while a bomb killed two railwaymen at the Tiburtina station in Rome. In 1931 and again in 1932 the police arrested individuals accused of plotting to assassinate Mussolini. Despite the fact they had not carried out their attempts, both Michele Schirru, a migrant, and Angelo Sbardellotto received death sentences which were immediately executed.

  In 1931 Gandhi paid a visit to Rome as part of a European tour to win support for the cause of Indian independence. The Pope refused to see him, since Vatican diplomats ruled that his dhoti – the traditional white cotton garment worn by poor peasants in India, which Gandhi had woven with his own hands – was unseemly. Mussolini received him, but decided to avoid an official ceremony in the Palazzo Venezia and organized a reception instead in the cinema room in his private residence in Villa Torlonia. Gandhi’s anti-British stance was not unwelcome to Mussolini and, according to his wife, he also admired the methods Gandhi adopted, telling his children that the Indian was a saint who had had the genius to hit on a political weapon no one had used before: goodness. Bruno and Vittorio were entertained by the small half-naked visitor who caused such headaches for the security services on the occasion of his visit. “I can still see the faces of all those guests from the beau monde who had been invited to the reception when Gandhi entered the room, leading a pet goat on a leash: a great silence descended on the crowd, all of whom were taken aback by the sight – his scanty clothing, first of all, and then the goat.”19 Gandhi was pleased with his welcome and gave a speech thanking and praising the Duce.

  In dealing with the effects of the Great Depression on the world’s economy, Mussolini found that a policy he had devised for other purposes came in useful. On 24th December 1928 he had had a law, bearing his name, approved to set up a project for the reclamation of vast tracts of malaria-infected marshland. The work had begun in July 1929, just before the Wall Street Crash. The aim of the project was the so-called “ruralization” of Italy, to increase the country’s agricultural output to the point where large numbers of the urban population would move into the country. From this point of view, the policy turned out to be a complete failure, however the regime’s propaganda and Mussolini’s rhetoric tried to paint it: “A life spent working in the fields is a healthy life both physically and spiritually. Breathing the fresh air out in the sunshine makes the body strong; country living provides families with the best conditions for their own security and development. In industrial and urban societies women have no time to attend to their homes and families, whereas in the countryside women rule their houses and their families like queens.”20

  But the policy of public works proved useful in confronting the economic crisis: the reclamations and the building of new towns offered jobs and land to cultivate at a time when there were millions of unemployed. Mussolini’s demographic policies were a failure, however; despite the tax on unmarried men, the bonuses for large families, the loans to help young couples get married, the creation of associations and centres of assistance for mothers, there was no sudden boom in population growth, something on which Mussolini was relying for the future of the regime, the “true” Fascism of the coming age when a new generation would have grown up now purified of the all too characteristic “Italian” shortcomings of their parents.

  Mussolini did not trust the Fascist comrades with whom he had come to power, nor did he respect them – on the contrary he was openly scornful of their abilities. The only one who aroused his fear and envy was the quadrumviro from the March on Rome, Italo Balbo, whose exploits as a pilot threatened to overshadow Mussolini’s own image as an “expert and daring airman”, a key component of his public persona. He may have asserted confidently in his interview with Ludwig that he believed there “could never be a second Duce, and if there were the Italians wouldn’t accept him”,21 but all the same he preferred not to risk the possibility. Balbo was the only man who could have become “a second Duce”, and as such win the support of the country, a valid substitute in the event that an assassination attempt on Mussolini’s life proved successful; so he made sure Balbo was relegated to Libya as the colony’s governor, out of harm’s way. Shortly after the beginning of the Second World War, Balbo’s plane was shot down at Tobruk by “friendly fire” from an Italian warship; the regime organized a solemn funeral service in Rome for the former quadrumviro.

  There was an element missing in the image of Mussolini as an accomplished pilot. On 28th May 1935 Mussolini wrote in his diary: “Today Bruno passed his exams to become a pilot. I watched him land the plane, which he did brilliantly. Let it not be said that I’ve brought up my children to have an easy life.”22 Bruno had been named after the figure of Giordano Bruno; when his third son was born, in 1917, Mussolini was still fervently anti-clerical. When the boy passed the exam for his flying licence, Mussolini was undoubtedly and sincerely pleased, yet the boy’s success caused a problem, since he himself had not yet obtained one. The fact that Mussolini already had grandchildren was not mentioned by the regime’s propaganda machine; the Duce had to be seen as “eternally” youthful. Bruno’s success as a military pilot also threatened to cast a shadow over Mussolini’s image, making him seem old and behind the times. And yet he had invented the mythic coupling of Fascism and aviation, the Duce who governs the country like the pilot who controls the plane. There was a mystic element to this too: the Duce as a kind of archangel of Fascism descending from the skies in an act of “divine providence” rather than being born on earth to a “humble” family. And, finally, flying also equalled virility: over the main entrance to the Ministry of the Air Force visitors could read the words “Chi vola vale, chi non vola non vale, chi vale e non vola è un vile” (“The man who flies is brave, the man who doesn’t fly is not brave, the man who’s brave and does not fly is a coward”). The news bulletins started to carry information such as the following: “Today, at 3 p.m., the Duce left the hydroport on the Rome Lido and carried out a training flight on board a three-engine flying boat S.66 / Rome, 19, night. After a reception for the mothers of large families at Palazzo Venezia the Duce left for the Littorio airport, where he boarded an S.81 which he piloted during a training flight lasting nearly two hours.”23

  Finally the time came when Mussolini could take the test to obtain his pilot’s licence. It was 13th January 1937. The examining panel was made up of the head of the General Command, the head of the Cabinet and the commander of the airport. The idea that the Duce might fail the test was inconceivable. According to the rules, he had to pilot a plane in solo flight, but no one was prepared to take the responsibility for sending him up on his own without a support pilot, and no one was prepared to tell him that they were planning to do this. The night before the flight, a young but experienced pilot was smuggled into the cockpit of the plane, with some difficulty as there were numerous security patrols. Mussolini took off, leaving the Fascist officials below him gazing skywards anxiously; only the head of General Command, General Valle, knew about the second pilot and could remain serene. After the flight, Mussolini brought the plane down to land to a round of applause. The young pilot stowed away in the cockpit had to wait until darkness fell before he could get out.

  Making sure he was the focus of media attention was a recurrent problem for the Duce. Famous figures and gerarchi like Balbo were not the only ones who got in the way – the main obstacle w
as the monarchy and the fascination felt by the Italian masses for it. On 8th January 1930 in the Cappella Paolina in the Quirinale Palace, the heir to the throne Umberto was married to the Princess of Belgium Maria José; the wedding would have had less public impact if the Lateran Pacts had not been signed a few months earlier. The newly wed couple were received by Pius XI. The ceremony was followed by an enraptured crowd of onlookers, and the newspaper reports were full of details of the bride’s dress, the wedding cake, the guest list and the delegations sent by the different regions wearing their local costume. A few months later, in October 1930, another royal wedding took place: the Princess Giovanna, the daughter of Victor Emanuel III, married King Boris of Bulgaria. The austere ceremony took place in the Sacro Convento in Assisi; Giovanna was a lay member of the Franciscan order and didn’t want any pomp, also because of the economic crisis which was afflicting the country. Once again, the crowds went wild at the sight of the couple. In the procession out of the church, Mussolini, due to ceremonial protocol, found himself almost at the back after crowned heads and royal princes, with an unknown noblewoman on his arm, given that Rachele had refused to attend.

  With his feeling that the whole regime depended on him, and his distrust and scepticism about others, Mussolini could not abide the thought that someone else might establish a direct rapport with the masses and be acclaimed by the people he thought of as belonging to him. As we have seen, he only really put his entire trust in one individual, his brother Arnaldo, who not only replaced him as the editor of Il Popolo d’Italia and dealt with the family’s business affairs, but also acted as his advisor, the man who could be depended upon to do the difficult work in delicate negotiations, bringing together different lobbies and interest groups, his alter ego in all those potentially treacherous situations which it was absolutely necessary to tackle head-on, but where Mussolini himself could not or would not become personally involved.