Il Duce and His Women

by Roberto Olla

  A good example of the way the relationship between the two brothers worked was the marriage of Edda, Mussolini’s favourite daughter. Like her father, Edda was headstrong, capricious and impetuous; she had had various love affairs which risked becoming formal engagements. Mussolini, who kept an eye on his daughter’s goings-on, had discouraged the suitors. The first had been a Jewish boy. Writing to his sister Edvige, Mussolini said: “In the letter I wrote to Edda, I’ve asked her to think seriously before taking a step which would scandalize everyone – not to mention that ninety per cent of mixed marriages turn out badly.”24 The second boyfriend managed to get himself invited to supper at the Villa Torlonia, a rare honour, but put paid to any chances he might have had by asking Mussolini at the end of the evening how much Edda’s dowry would be. “There was no dowry, and my brother’s startled riposte was the only possible and appropriate one (it’s likely that the very word ‘dowry’ struck him as odd and out-of-place, like something from another world).”25

  Yet Mussolini was intent on finding a husband for Edda before she settled the matter with one of her headstrong decisions. He asked his brother to find a suitable man, and Arnaldo set to work. Scions of the nobility were ruled out at the outset: the idea of a girl “from a poor background” setting up house with a young aristocrat was unacceptable. Arnaldo in turn asked a friend of his, a Sicilian member of parliament, who was intimately familiar with high society in Rome, to help out; thanks to him, they succeeded in picking out the right candidate, and it was a good choice, since Edda did in fact fall in love with the young count Galeazzo Ciano. It’s true he was a nobleman, but his family’s ennoblement was very recent, acquired by his father Costanzo Ciano for heroism during the First World War. The father, who was also a prominent Fascist and held the “medaglia d’oro”, which was one of the country’s highest honours, also happened to be close to Mussolini – he had been one of the few people to have supported him during the Matteotti crisis. He had become rich when Mussolini had given him the post of Minister of Communications, and his brother Arturo had founded a company to import coal from Germany, which thus became the “preferred” source of supply for the state railway in Italy, for which Ciano’s ministry was responsible. Noble status and wealth made the young Galeazzo a good catch. On 24th April 1930 the regime put out the flags in staging the wedding of Mussolini’s daughter to Ciano, and so recaptured the focus of public attention. Among the 512 guests included on the “exclusive” invitation list for the reception held in the gardens of the Villa Torlonia there were the most famous names of Rome’s upper middle classes and aristocracy, surrounded by more than fifteen hundred security agents to keep order. The newspapers talked about the bride’s elegant wedding dress, made by the Roman designers Montorsi, because the regime wished to support the Italian fashion industry, and also the hats and fur coats and capes worn by the female guests. Amid trays of cakes and chocolates, all of them made in Italy, the wedding party was a fitting continuation to the equally successful church ceremony: “At the top of the steps leading to the church doors, two rows of ‘the Duce’s musketeers’, gloomy and rather sinister-looking in their black shirts and with their fierce expressions, awaited the exit of the bride and bridegroom, with their swords raised to form an arch, while behind them, gaily dressed in traditional costume, peasant women from the Romagna danced as at some country celebration. In later years several middle-class Roman weddings imitated the device of having the happy couple leave church under an arch of raised swords, sometimes held by children dressed in the uniforms of the Fascist youth movement.”26

  Mussolini presided at eight weddings in all: apart from Edda’s, there were those of the three daughters of his sister Edvige and of Arnaldo’s children, as well as the marriages of his own sons Vittorio and Bruno. All the ceremonies were held in the church of San Giuseppe, on the Via Nomentana, which became a kind of Mussolini family chapel, with the usual display of uniforms and fashionable dresses, and the tunnels of drawn swords – one of the regime’s favourite symbols – held aloft to form a kind of arch of honour for the couple to pass through. And it was always Mussolini, as the head male of the clan, who accompanied the bride to give her away.

  “I stare at the portrait of Sandrino which Arnaldo sent me with a dedication written on it: ‘To Benito, our leader, this branch of the tree broken off at the age of twenty’.”27 In August 1930, barely four months after Edda’s wedding, Arnaldo’s eldest son, Sandro, died; his father never recovered from the blow and passed away on 21st December 1931. Mussolini thus found himself without the support of his brother, increasingly harassed by the thought of having to deal with things on his own and a lack of trustworthiness among his associates and the party leadership. At the same time, his relationship with Sarfatti, the only other person in whom he could confide, was drawing to an end.

  It is possible to speculate that a psychological connection might exist between the death of his brother, the end, shortly afterwards, of the relationship with Sarfatti (the only really meaningful one in the 1920s and early 1930s) and the increasing frequency of short-lived affairs, involving no emotional commitment, with women who must have flattered his male pride and confirmed to him, even in this private sphere of activity, his prestige and magnetism. […] Whatever the case, it is certainly true that Arnaldo’s death made Mussolini’s human solitude almost total and exacerbated his psychological tendency to distrust people, his feeling that the associates who surrounded him were weak and vacillating, and that therefore he alone was the prime mover, the leader who had to do everything and to whom everything referred.28

  From this time onwards, Mussolini turned in on himself completely, indulging in a series of brief but frequent sexual adventures. When he finally re-emerged from this period, he would come to rely more and more on the cloying, nest-like intimacy constructed for him by his new mistress Claretta Petacci.

  Chapter 17

  Home Is Where the Heart Is

  Mussolini’s sexual activities have been described as a whirlwind, but the term can be misleading; though prolific, they were in fact remarkably well organized by the staff in Palazzo Venezia. One only needs to look at the procedures carried out by the relevant secretarial office. Every day saw the arrival of numerous letters as well as telephone calls from female admirers; the women who already had Mussolini’s private number could call him direct, while the others were put through a filtering process – in the office responsible for his private affairs – to ascertain whether they were suitable enough candidates for the Duce’s consideration. The letters presented a real problem; the so-called experts in the private office examined each letter individually – they acquired in effect a real expertise in recognizing the handwriting on the envelopes. If it belonged to one of the women who was on the “authorized” list, the letter was forwarded to Mussolini unopened; if the hand was an unfamiliar one, then the envelope was opened and its contents examined. Once this had been done, the information contained in the letter was forwarded to a special police unit so that the appropriate security checks could be carried out. After the selection based on these checks was made, the letters which survived the filtering process were delivered to Mussolini, so that he could make a further selection of the women he wished to see; the preparatory procedures meant that he could be sure there were no problems of security with any of them.

  He usually saw them in the late afternoon. The social niceties were not observed – no introductory small talk to break the ice, no tea and biscuits were offered (only Claretta Petacci managed to get this). Mussolini’s office, in the vast room known as the Sala Mappamondo (World Map Room), contained just three pieces of furniture: a huge desk, his own chair, and an armchair opposite for his visitor. The visits never lasted more than half an hour, and the women were never allowed to leave in a ruffled state – they would emerge with their hair combed and their clothes adjusted and trim. “Mussolini’s technique varied according to the category of visitor: with the ‘regulars’ he would use the huge
carpet under the desk, while the ‘newcomers’ would be taken to one of the long stone seats which formed part of the window bays, covered with a thick mattress-like cushion designed to fit them. I realized this only because I was surprised to see Mussolini and his lady friends always in lively conversation, so I took to carrying out an inspection of the room: after a search I would find that the cushion in the window seat was rumpled, while from time to time I’d come across a dropped hair clip on the carpet.”1

  Mussolini’s valet also recalled the different physical types of women who visited Mussolini, in demonstration of the fact that he had no particular preferences as far as this aspect was concerned: Signora B. was tall, dark-haired, plump and attractive, while T. from Rome, though still dark-haired, was skinny and plain; C. from Milan again was dark-haired but tall and well built, not too refined but not common either, whereas the Countess R. from Rovigo was a beauty, blonde and curvaceous.

  When Claretta Petacci, the curly-haired brunette whose breasts had caught and held Mussolini’s attention, started to make inroads, the bewildering number of lovers started to decline; only a few of the long-term mistresses, what might be called the “historical” ones, managed to survive. At this point the meticulous efforts of the “private office” in the Palazzo Venezia were directed towards making sure Petacci’s increasingly frequent visits were kept secret. Only two security guards and the valet Quinto Navarra were informed; the latter has described in his memoirs how the visits to Palazzo Venezia were organized so that no one ever saw her come or go. She would leave her home and take a taxi to a prearranged meeting place, where a motorbike with a closed sidecar would be waiting for her; she got into the sidecar, making sure the windows were covered with thick cloth panels. The motorcyclist was a plain-clothes policeman. They would cross the city, circle round Palazzo Venezia and enter through a rear doorway in Via degli Astalli. Any passer-by who saw the vehicle would assume it was just a courier carrying an urgent delivery. Once inside the inner courtyard, the “delivery” would emerge from the sidecar and take the private lift to the Duce’s personal apartments on the first floor. Rachele knew about the visits, and wrote about them in a tone of understandable defensiveness (though the assertion about her husband’s nights away from home is not true): “All the while this affair was going on, Benito never spent a night away from home. He never introduced Claretta Petacci to anyone or went out in public with her. They were forced to have brief rendezvous, usually in the small sitting room in Palazzo Venezia.”2

  Once in Palazzo Venezia, Petacci frequently had to wait for Mussolini to finish with his round of official visitors – the ministers, gerarchi, bankers and all the others who had been granted an audience with the Duce. One example of how such meetings were conducted can be found with Pietro Gazzera, an army general whom Mussolini had appointed as Minister for War in September 1929. He took up his post at a time when political and military conflict with France and Yugoslavia were real possibilities, and he found himself at the head of armed forces suffering from a lack of both real coordination and sufficient financial resources. “Once general Gazzera had crossed the wide space which separated the entrance from Mussolini’s desk he found himself opposite the Duce, who preferred to dress in a suit rather than in uniform when he was at work. Mussolini would remove his glasses when his visitor arrived, as he preferred not to be seen in them and, contrary to the rule that the Fascist salute was to be used on all occasions, would welcome him with an ordinary shake of the hand.”3

  Gazzera opened his files and started to take notes, but after a while Mussolini suggested he stop writing. Gazzera then had to commit everything to memory; when he left Palazzo Venezia he would sit in his car writing down everything which Mussolini had said to him, much of which was improvised and unofficial – insistent urges for military adventures, sudden surprise attacks, like the time Mussolini asked him to prepare an operation to invade France. Gazzera was a professional soldier and considered it his duty to inform Mussolini that the country’s armed forces were in no state to undertake an attack on another country, but the party gerarchi despised the general as yet another mere technician who’d been appointed to the government instead of a committed Fascist, and they continued to encourage Mussolini’s desires for conflict.

  In July 1933 Mussolini took over the running of the Ministry of War; for the military adventures he had in mind a professional soldier was of no use. While Gazzera and others came and went in Palazzo Venezia in the effort to reason with the Duce, in a private sitting room the women who’d been summoned to an appointment had to while away the time they spent waiting. Every so often Mussolini’s official valet Navarra – elegant and distinguished-looking – would quietly make an appearance to see if there was anything they needed and to keep their spirits up. He was aware that the higher the rank of the woman – whether it was Angela Curti just arrived from Milan or the restless Marchesa Giulia Brambilla Carminati or the refined Princess Sveva Vittoria Colonna – the more likely she was to be irritated by the fact she was kept waiting. Navarra would treat them kindly, hoping to soothe their impatience. He once found Claretta Petacci reading a book on Madame de Pompadour, and on another occasion leafing through a copy of the popular women’s magazine Vita femminile, the editor of which, Ester Lombardo, just happened to be yet another of Mussolini’s mistresses.

  Petacci wanted to bring a halt to the constant stream of women in Palazzo Venezia and so eliminate her competitors. Her campaign was helped by the fact that Mussolini’s libido was no longer as powerful as it used to be. “There was a time when I had fourteen women on the go and would see three or four of them every evening, one after the other – at 8 p.m. I’d have Rismondo, then Sarfatti, then Magda [Brard]. On one occasion I rounded off the evening at one in the morning with an insatiable Brazilian woman who’d have finished me off if a huge storm hadn’t damaged one of the walls. That was what my sex drive was like. I wasn’t in love with any of them, I had them because they attracted me, I enjoyed it […] But you’ve put paid to all that, believe me. […] I’ve gradually stopped seeing all of them.”4

  Giulia Brambilla Carminati was one of the regular mistresses who attempted to hang on, even writing to Mussolini criticizing Petacci. But the younger woman took her revenge by transcribing in her diary, with obvious relish, the vulgar remarks of her lover which signalled her own victory: “Yes, you’re right, Brambilla is like an old slack cow – you could fit several… well, you get my meaning. […] She’s an old whore, a filthy bitch. Women like her or Sarfatti, once they get to a certain age, will go with their drivers, their menservants, the porter – and they’ll pay them for the pleasure.”5

  The death of Mussolini’s brother Arnaldo was also advantageous for Petacci; Mussolini, plunged in the emptiness he had created round himself, continued to distrust everyone and concentrate work in his own hands. In the Pensieri Pontini e Sardi, the notes he jotted down during his first period of imprisonment after his fall from power on 25th July 1943, he wrote: “In the whole of my life I have never had a single friend. I’ve often wondered if this was an advantage or a disadvantage to me. I now think that it was an advantage, because it means that many people are free from feeling sorry for me – I mean, free from suffering with me.”6

  In the summer of 1932 Mussolini got rid of Augusto Turati, the Fascist Party secretary; his private life was fairly chaotic, and on his dismissal he was the subject of open criticism from other leading members of the party. Mussolini had Giovanni Giurati elected in his stead, but didn’t like him, and so had him replaced only a year later with Achille Starace, notorious for his slow-wittedness, something that was the butt of innumerable jokes, such as his having to write “Salute the Duce!” on the palm of his hand so that he wouldn’t forget to. Starace became the Duce’s faithful mouthpiece, the loyal mastiff who’d set off to carry out Mussolini’s slightest wish, docile and ready to submit when told off, an enthusiastic organizer of Fascist ceremonies and parades, down to the most ridiculous details.
At one point Starace issued an order that all official communications should end with the phrase “Long live the Duce!”, much to the intense irritation of Mussolini, who yelled at Starace, asking him how on earth he imagined a father might feel receiving a letter from the army telling him: “Your son Corporal X has broken his leg. Long live the Duce!”

  It was Starace who handled the daily administration of the regime’s infiltration into every aspect of social life in Italy. Even new blocks of social housing had to be constructed in such a way that, seen from the air, they formed the word DUX. Huge Ms would be displayed at local fairs and festivals. The myth of Mussolini, now fully synonymous with his politics, spread throughout the country: “I saw distinctly, perhaps more clearly than any other Italian, how serious the situation was in Italy. The dictatorship which ruled over us was not merely political, ideological and military; its power extended over internal combustion engines, borax powder, bicycle tyres, translations from the Latin classics, cameras, refrigerators, electric lamps, fizzy-drinks factories. Mechanically I would open and close the door of Mussolini’s office, where he sat alone and isolated, trying desperately, throughout the working day, to stay in touch with a nation whose reality eluded him, with problems he pretended to know about, with men who, most of the time, came to see him either to deceive him or deceive themselves.”7