Il Duce and His Women

by Roberto Olla

  By the time the Fascist cult of Rome had reached its apotheosis with the conquest of Ethiopia and the revival of the “new” Roman Empire, Margherita Sarfatti had already been marginalized and excluded. The Ethiopian campaign was a period of crisis for the anti-Fascists too. Italian Communists, already weakened by the harsh repression carried out by the regime’s secret police, had a radical change of tactics: judging the Italian masses who were cheering Mussolini on to be now completely under the sway of Fascist ideology, they decided to make this appeal to them, published abroad in the newspaper Lo stato operaio: “We stretch our hands out to the Fascists, our brothers in labour and in suffering, since we want to wage alongside them the sacred battle for food, for work, for peace. […] We declare that we are ready to fight alongside you and the whole of the Italian people to carry out the aims stated in the Fascist manifesto of 1919 and for all causes which involve the specific or general interests of the workers and the Italian people.”

  The change of tactics had been decided by the International Communist Organization, the Comintern; Italian Communists, who were working in exile and in isolation, remote from what was actually happening inside Italy, knew that the appeal would create an uproar in the anti-Fascist camp. The Fascist regime did not enjoy solid support among the industrial workers in Turin and Milan; Mussolini was well aware of the fact, but limited himself to keeping the situation under tight control. A challenge which did, however, take him unawares came from within the Fascist ranks themselves when intellectuals and the younger generation more generally started to demand a more active participation in political life. At first Mussolini bided his time as he considered how to respond to this new and unexpected phenomenon, but after the war in Ethiopia began he decided to impose his authority and rally the party to the old cry of “Believe, obey, fight”. Once the war had been won and the new empire proclaimed, however, he re-examined, in a swing to the left, the demands being raised by the young in an effort to work out how much room for manoeuvre they gave him. They represented a feeble wind of change which hoped to push the regime towards a degree of liberalization; Mussolini responded by modifying certain restraints and making limited concessions and waited to see what reactions this would produce.

  His position as far as international politics was concerned was also strong; the rest of the world now accepted that Ethiopia was Italian and once again began to look to Mussolini as the sole European leader who could restrain Hitler. The regime was more firmly established than ever before; it authorized various publications, including a journal edited by the former leader of the Italian Communist Party Nicola Bombacci, who had become a Fascist supporter and would be a follower of Mussolini until the capture and death of both in 1945. As for the discontents on the extreme right wing of the Fascist Party, Mussolini chose to ignore them. It is also the case that he was preoccupied at the same time with a family tragedy: his youngest daughter, Anna Maria, fell seriously ill with polio and was in danger of dying. The event shook Mussolini, who had never been able to deal with the prospect of illness either in himself or in his children. His worried wife thought, with her usual down-to-earth common sense, that this might be a good moment to appeal to her husband to stand down; plucking up her courage, she told him he had reached the pinnacle of his political career, the moment of his greatest success; the time had arrived to retire in order to be with his family. Mussolini’s reply was brusque: “So you think I should hand in my resignation? So we can go and raise chickens in Romagna? Be serious, Rachele!”33

  His success intoxicated him. Rachele could go on looking after the house, he would forge ahead in the mission only he could accomplish. In this period he was convinced he would die in his bed only after he had achieved his life’s work and transformed Italy into a great nation. He began to see himself as an invincible and invulnerable hero, trailing a cloud of glory: weren’t the bombs and bullets that had been thrown at him and missed him proof? He told journalists he liked living dangerously, whereas in reality he was bald, short-sighted, stout despite his rigid diet, preoccupied with his various ailments, from his stomach ulcer to his constipation, isolated and without a single close friend. The newly dubbed “Founder of the Empire” was undergoing a profound transformation in 1936. The continual psychological tension was a source of stress, but he couldn’t operate without it – he needed it to hold the regime in his grasp. On 11th June he reshuffled the government, abolishing various ministries and introducing new ones. The change that attracted most attention was the appointment of his young and ambitious son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano as Minister for Foreign Affairs. It was widely thought that at the zenith of his career Mussolini had with this choice elected his successor, the new Duce-in-waiting who would ensure the future glory of the regime.

  And what if Mussolini had gone into retirement in 1936?… Counterfactual history can be fascinating, even entertaining, and many have asked themselves this question. The truth is that in this period Mussolini began, so to speak, a second life which followed on wearily from the first. “I am Mussolini, not some kind of fool who can spend time talking about matters outside his work. If people saw me they’d think I’d gone crazy or soft. I’ve got a whole world to take care of, a people to govern, it all comes down to me. I’m not just any person – I give you too much of my time as it is. Sometimes I think I’m stupid.”34

  Despite his complaints at the direction their relationship was taking, Petacci’s transcription of these remarks serve as a sign of her own victory: Mussolini had conquered the Empire, but she had conquered him. Her diary is filled with sentimental passages like this one from 4th November 1937: “With amazement we watch the sun set in a blaze of gold and red. There are rays of light striking through the clouds, while on the left of the sky it’s like something out of the Bible: across a backdrop of lead there are grey, weird, stormy-looking tangles of cloud formations coloured cyclamen-pink. The sea on that side glints steely-grey while on the right it is blue. The sun sets behind the horizon, a marvellous golden disk. Every now and then he gives me a small kiss and hugs me. Now the sun has gone down completely, we feel moved, we’re almost shaking. ‘I’ve never done this with a woman, kissing her as the sun goes down. I love you. […] You would make an enchanting imperial Marschallin.’”35

  It is not hard to imagine the expressions on the faces of Hitler, Goebbels, Göring, Himmler as they read the transcripts of such remarks, made in telephone calls from Mussolini to his mistress that were regularly intercepted.

  Sarfatti’s view of Mussolini at this period, as described in her memoir My Fault, is rather different from Petacci’s sugary tones. She writes that he could no longer brook the slightest remark which might be intended as a criticism of him. His former mistress attributes a notable courage to herself for not hiding from Mussolini her disapproval of the false empire he was building in Ethiopia or her horror at the alliance with Germany into which he was leading Italy. There is no trace of what she had earlier emphasized – her friendship with Göring and her own contribution to the complex diplomatic relations between the two regimes – in her final judgement on Fascism: “I distanced myself from Fascism, much to my grief, when it started to degenerate, when it began to imitate what itself had started out as an imitation of Fascism, or rather a sadistic and grotesque parody of it: Nazism.”36

  During an official visit to the Third Reich in 1937 Mussolini spoke these words in the toast at an official banquet in honour of Hitler: “From my arrival on German soil, I have been surrounded by the spirit of a great nation, allied in friendship to us: the Germany of the Brownshirts, Hitler’s Germany.”37 In the evening he would telephone Petacci and their sentimental conversations would no doubt once again have been listened to with surprise by the German official who had the job of tapping the calls. Just one year after they had first slept together, Mussolini’s relationship with Petacci was firmly established, and the couple called each other on average twelve times a day. Hitler and other prominent Nazis must have been privy to these c
onversations through the transcriptions provided by the German intelligence services, but were nevertheless still capable of listening, with the appropriate demeanour, to such expressions as the following from Mussolini’s speech in German at the banquet: “We both have an exalted idea of work in all its manifestations as a sign of men’s nobility; we both rely on our country’s youth, to whom we hold up the virtues of discipline, courage, tenacity, patriotism and a stoic refusal of an easy life. The new Roman Empire has been the creation of this new spirit at work within Italy, and German renewal is likewise the creation of the spirit…”38

  After 8th September 1943 Mussolini would deliver up Italian Jews to the concentration camps in the culminating gesture of his alliance with Germany. On returning to Italy after his official visit in 1937 he declared in a public speech: “Blackshirts! I have brought back from Germany and from my conversations with the Führer a lasting impression. The friendship between our two countries, which we have consecrated in the formal political alliance of the Rome-Berlin Axis, is now implanted in our hearts for ever.”39

  He thought that he had opened a new phase in the development of the Fascist regime. It hardly mattered that he was contradicting the consistently anti-German stance he had maintained up till then. As he approached sixty he was ageing rapidly; he was entering a political tunnel in the conviction that this new development would be accompanied by new life. He was aware of physical decline, but thought he could control it and that his new and much younger mistress would help him to continue exercising and preserving his sexual vigour. Petacci would clasp him to those breasts which filled him with ecstasy.

  His new mistress was seeing off one by one Mussolini’s other lovers, but she was also busy advancing the fortunes of her own widespread clan around her own privileged access to the Duce. First and foremost among the beneficiaries were her brother and her father. She was given a hidden account for the ostensible purpose of charitable works. The money was supplied, in secret, far from the possibility of any public accountability, by the undersecretary at the Ministry for Internal Affairs, Guido Buffarini Guidi, who was directly answerable to Mussolini and to him alone. Her sister profited from the connection too, being taken on as an actress – under the name Miriam di San Servolo – in the Rome film studios at Cinecittà. When her first film, Le vie del cuore (The Ways of the Heart) was shown at the annual Venice Film Festival, the audience was made up of leading members of the regime – ministers, businessmen, academics, senior civil servants – who flocked to pay homage to the new star. The gerarchi who sensed they could take advantage of the connection were soon buzzing round the Petacci clan, while those who found themselves excluded started to plot against them. But whatever their attitude, all the men around the Duce were aware that with the political alliance with Hitler and the relationship with Petacci Mussolini had opened a new chapter in his career. “Darling, please don’t keep on asking me – especially when you call me – what work I’m doing, who I’m seeing, and especially what my meetings are about. It’s risky doing that, do you understand? I don’t want to tell you about what I’m doing, especially over the telephone. I don’t know if my calls are tapped. They might be. So just remember this when you start asking questions… I’m working my guts out and you treat me badly. I’ve become a real idiot, a fool. It’s just not on, you’ve got to show some respect for the work I’m doing.”40

  Nevertheless, with a smile and undeterred, she went on transcribing their conversations. She would reread them to herself and smile again: the powerful Duce came across as touchingly uncertain of himself. But she felt sure of herself and of the new and inspiring direction her life was taking. The stage was set: herself and the new empire, linked by a single man, the man who was her lover.

  In July 1936, the year of his greatest triumph, barely a month after the crowds had gathered to celebrate the conquest of Ethiopia, Mussolini, together with Hitler, sent arms and airplanes and troops to fight in the civil war which had broken out in Spain. Like many of us when we feel we’re starting a new chapter in our lives, Mussolini decided to reorganize some of the small details of his daily life, including his desk, the vast table in his huge office in the so-called World Map Room in Palazzo Venezia. Many an awestruck journalist or gerarca or general had sat on the far side of the desk; now Mussolini placed a trinket on it, a small model of a little cottage and a heart with the words “Home is where the heart is”. With this knickknack in front of him Mussolini would draw up his plans for his country’s participation in what would become the greatest tragedy ever to befall humanity, the Second World War. And like a talisman, the trinket protected the Petacci clan as it went about its business. As things turned out, it was Petacci herself who showed the most integrity: unlike her family, she never sought to make money out of the relationship and she ended up paying for her loyalty with her life. But no one cared about how she had lived when she was killed alongside Mussolini, after she had made a final desperate attempt to prevent the execution. Her body was put onto a lorry and displayed in Piazzale Loreto, where she was strung up by the feet. People took pity on the nakedness of the upside-down corpse and pinned up her skirt to conceal it, but when the body was taken to the mortuary no autopsy was thought necessary. No one cared how she had been killed. Her own end became a mere appendix to the mystery surrounding Mussolini’s death. But a detailed historical account of the period between the high point of Mussolini’s myth in 1936 and its end in his death and that of his mistress will only emerge when all the relevant documents have finally been released; when that happens, there will be another – and a different – story to tell.

  APPENDICES

  Appendix 1

  Mussolini and the Crowd

  Nothing could stop the crowd. They tried driving them back by letting off the water cannons, forming a cordon to resist the pushing and shoving, pointing rifles against them and then firing into the air. There were so many people blocking all the roads around it that it was difficult to get into the square. Those on the edges of the throng tried to push their way forward or stand on tiptoe to get a better view over the sea of heads and hats; a few young lads climbed up the lamp-posts. There were many women, soldiers in uniform, firemen and several photographers. A soldier with a film camera had jumped onto an open lorry which was slowly trying to make its way through, while another cameraman in a white raincoat was shouting at people to clear the view as his right hand rewound the machine’s spring mechanism. At the centre of the crowd was a circle of corpses thrown on the ground any old how, just as they’d been unloaded from a lorry some hours earlier, at dawn. Those who’d got near them had spat and urinated on them; others, armed with pistols, had shot randomly at the bodies, while others preferred to throw rotten vegetables on them as a sign of their contempt. “Come on, make one of your speeches!” jeered some of those who’d been forced to listen too often to the Duce’s rallies. Kicks were aimed at Mussolini’s head and Petacci’s body. The crowds wanted to see them and wanted to strike them; their day of revolution had arrived.

  It was the vast crowd pressing around those corpses that was in control. Whoever the individuals were who made it up – couples holding hands, housewives who’d left their household chores behind for the morning, elderly teachers who’d never handled a gun in their lives, even at a funfair – they had all been transformed into a single mass of people. The ridiculous and despised Achille Starace, the former secretary of the Fascist Party, had been identified as he stood among them, wearing of all things a tracksuit, just as if he was on his way to compete in the stadium of the National Olympic Committee, of which he had once been the chief. The crowd made way for one brief frozen minute as the Partisans took aim and shot him then surged forward again, their bloodthirsty frenzy unassuaged. Those who had just arrived tried to push forward to that circle of dead bodies that marked the end of a long story. Someone had the sensible idea of hanging the bodies up so that everyone would be able to see them. He hung them by the feet from the roof of the petro
l station, an act which has been described as one of “Mexican butchery” transposed to the psycho-political drama of contemporary Italian history, but one doesn’t need to know much about human anatomy to realize that if they’d been strung up the other way round their bodies would have dropped off leaving only their heads hanging.

  At the sight of the bodies the crowd went wild. A priest who seemed unaffected by their rage calmly approached Petacci’s corpse and concealed what perhaps struck him as especially obscene by tying up her skirt round her legs with a safety pin and a bit of string. The Partisans forced a nearby printing firm to reopen so that a poster showing a photograph of the fifteen Resistance fighters whose bodies had been put on display in the very same square less than a year before could urgently be produced and distributed. A woman started to collect contributions from the crowd for the families of the men who’d been killed. But the bystanders only had eyes for the bodies dangling from the roof. Anyone approaching the square from one of the surrounding avenues was inevitably sucked in and became part of the audience witnessing this final act. That morning in Piazzale Loreto is the subject of a poem by Salvatore Quasimodo. Entitled ‘Laude 29 aprile 1945’ (‘Laud for 29th April 1945’), it describes a mother who in the crowd talks to her dead son who has been killed earlier by the Fascists: