A Bold and Dangerous Family

by Caroline Moorehead

  Later that month, Arnaldo Mussolini, one of the very few men whom Mussolini trusted and who was now editor of Il Popolo d’Italia, announced that he would visit Florence on 7 December. It would take the form of a ceremony conducted with great pomp in the Piazza Mentana. On the night of the 6th, Carlo, Ernesto and Paolo Rossi and Traquandi, with Nello driving Bianchina, met by one of the high walls that give on to the Arno River, immediately opposite the Piazza Mentana. Paolo was lowered over the side, and while the others kept watch, carefully painted in large white letters, using thick, indelible paint, ‘Viva L’Italia Libera’ along the wall. The Florentines on their way to work next morning gathered to stare and laugh. Arnaldo was furious. The local fascist leaders, struggling and failing to erase the words, were deeply embarrassed. It was another pinprick to fascist pride.

  By late 1924 it was beginning to look increasingly unlikely that Mussolini would be toppled. The Aventine Secession had proved impotent, its leaders divided and irresolute; the king was silent, fearing to make a ‘leap in the dark’, the public accepting. Many possible antagonists had deftly been co-opted into positions of minor power. Mussolini, to save himself from being swamped by a wave of moral indignation, had cleverly blocked all constitutional channels by which criticism could have been expressed legally and peacefully. For six months, Italy had oscillated between what Salvemini called ‘a moralistic and puritan rebellion’ and plotting in the corridors of power. But the plotters were proving the stronger force.

  Meanwhile, Filippo Filippelli, the owner and driver of the Lancia in which Matteotti had been kidnapped, and Cesare Rossi, the head of information, had both written statements that directly implicated Mussolini in Matteotti’s murder. ‘We live’, wrote Kuliscioff toTurati, ‘on a knife edge.’ Rossi’s revelations were published in Il Mondo on 27 December. For a moment, it was thought that the king would act, but he did not. As Salvemini wrote, he ‘slid from capitulation to capitulation, from complicity to complicity, from shame to shame, ever seeking a foothold from which to make a stand and never findng it. He is the roi fainéant.’

  By now, in any case, Matteotti’s assassination had lost the power to shock. And still the opposition havered. But the squadristi and the fascist militia, to whom the army had helpfully handed over 100,000 war-surplus rifles, did not. As Ernesto Rossi would write, to oppose what came next was ‘to mount an assault on Monte Bianco armed only with a toothpick’. Until now, it had all been boyish antics; the real war was about to begin.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘Non Mollare’

  On 30 December 1924, the seconda ondata, the second wave of fascist violence, was unleashed. It struck in many parts of Italy, but Florence was its epicentre – by 1924 a quarter of all the fasci in Italy were said to be in Tuscany. Just as the city and its surroundings gave birth to an exceptional number of anti-fascists – entire families who by upbringing and instinct were profoundly hostile to fascism, young men and women driven by a sense of deep disgust, Catholics who considered it at odds with Christian teaching – so it was also home to Italy’s most corrupt and brutal squadristi.

  In Florence, as elsewhere, the first squadristi had been war veterans and the piccola borghesia, shopkeepers and artisans, inspired by a hatred of the Bolsheviks and of the ‘mutilated victory’ of the war, and filled with a mishmash of pseudo-revolutionary ideas drawn from Garibaldi, Freemasonry and socialism. They were quickly supported by much of the aristocracy, who had never concealed their fury at having been ousted from local government by the socialists, along with military men, lawyers, notaries and rich industrialists. Many of the new podestà, the men who replaced mayors under the fascists, came from patrician families. Landowners in particular were eager to take revenge on the peasants who had rebelled against them, and happy to turn their estates into assembly points from where the squadristi could set out on their punitive raids. Further encouragement came from the Florentine Futurists and a handsome young man with glossy black hair and long black eyelashes called Kurt Erich Suckert, later known as the novelist Curzio Malaparte, who had greeted fascism as the rebirth of a virile Italy and who Gobetti called ‘fascism’s mightiest pen’.

  Of the several different quarrelsome squadre in Florence, constantly struggling for supremacy, the most enduring and powerful in late 1924 was that run by Tullio Tamburini, head of the recently formed 92nd Legion of the city’s Militia. Tamburini had an office in the Post and Telegraph building in Piazza Santa Maria Novella and could count on some 2,000 members. Aged thirty-three in 1924, Tamburini was a wily, profoundly corrupt man, who had extorted cars and money in return for protection, and had once spent five days in prison for swindling. With his scented pomades and various bits of jewellery, he regarded himself as a modern proconsul. He had a terrible temper and a facial tic, which caused him to purse his lips and screw up his eyes, giving him a cynical and malevolent expression. But he had a gift for making people if not exactly like him, then depend on him, and had built up an intricate web of spies and informers. His enemies referred to him as another Nero or Attila, but Mussolini trusted him. During the darkest hours of the Matteotti affair, Tamburini had sent him a telegram, saying: ‘For you, for Fascism, for Italy’. When letters came to Rome accusing Tamburini of excessive corruption and brutality, Mussolini threw them away.

  Renato Ricci, a member of the Fascist Party’s executive junta, arrived in Florence on 30 December to help Tamburini orchestrate the second wave of violence. The choice of targets for their ‘surgical strike’ was to be left to them. Tamburini called for a ‘general mobilisation’ of fascists for 2 o’clock on the afternoon of the 31st. Hundreds, then thousands, of men began to converge on the city by bus, train, lorry and car, carrying rifles, sticks, agricultural implements and manganelli. They carried banners with the words ‘Opponents, you have done enough!’ and ‘Duce, free our hands!’, and sang ‘For Benito Mussolini, dictator, Eia! Eia! Eia!’ Tamburini and Ricci addressed the excited crowd in the Piazza della Signoria and then despatched the men to march through the deserted streets from which the Florentines had fled to hide behind bolted doors. When they reached the offices of the Nuovo Giornale periodical, which had published attacks on Mussolini, they set about breaking them up, threw the furniture and the archives out of the windows, destroyed the printing presses and then set fire to the building. Firemen called to the scene were prevented from approaching. Their next stop was the Association of Independent Veterans, which they looted, after which they turned their attention to offices belonging to left-wing lawyers and to a Masonic lodge in the city centre. Any unfortunate passer-by who was slow to doff his hat was beaten up. Carabinieri and policemen stood by and watched. A small plane circled above, dropping leaftets: ‘Anti-fascists: Your last hour has come!’

  The Disperata, one of Florence’s most brutal squadre

  Towards six in the evening, the mob reached the Borgo Santi Apostoli. It was New Year’s Eve, and the Circolo di Cultura was empty. The reading room, which had seen so many heated debates on the meaning of democracy, was ransacked. Carlo’s comfortable armchairs, the newspapers and books, the rugs, the lamps and the American stove were all thrown out into the square below, where a pyre was lit. Soon, there was nothing left. The mob moved on. As soon as the fire died down, a rubbish lorry arrived to sweep up the ashes.

  News of the attack soon reached Carlo, Nello and the other club members; they decided to make the Rosselli house in Via Giusti their headquarters. Amelia was out, there were gates at the front, and the garden behind would make it possible, in case of need, to escape. Look-outs were posted. From time to time the younger members were despatched to find out what was happening.

  A ‘punitive expedition’ against a socialist trade-union headquarters

  Late that night, Amelia returned. She found armed guards by the door, Carlo and Rossi writing press releases and young people asleep in the hall. Not long before, she had admonished Rossi and the others for the dangers into which they were leading her sons. Now, she sa
id nothing beyond complaining mildly to Carlo that her favourite walnut table had been lost. Smiling and calm, looking elegant among all the dishevelled young men, she slipped away to her room.

  The Rosselli house survived the night unscathed, but next day news came that the prefect of Florence had ordered that the Circolo, a nest of ‘anti-national agitators’, be formally abolished as ‘disruptive to public order’. The second wave spread to Arezzo, Livorno and Lucca. In Pisa the damage was such that the archbishop, Cardinal Maffi, sent a telegram to Mussolini expressing his ‘disgust as a Christian, and humiliation, as an Italian’. By 3 January, the raids had reached Emilia-Romagna and Lombardy. In due course, a sculpture of a Madonna and child, brandishing a club, was erected in Monteleone. It was known as La Madonna del Manganello, Protectress of the Fascists.

  It was now, while Italy was in turmoil, that Mussolini staged his most brilliant coup de théâtre. He recalled parliament, which had been closed for the Christmas holidays, telling the deputies that he planned to deliver a major speech. Since the Aventine secessionists were continuing with their boycott, he knew that he could count on a clear majority. On 3 January, rising theatrically before a silent and partly empty Chamber, he announced ‘a me la colpa’, I am to blame, and that he personally, he alone, took responsibility for everything that had happened. He was responsible for the wave of violence, for the castor oil, the manganelli and the beatings – and for Matteotti’s death. He told the assembled deputies that he had admired Matteotti, whose courage and determination ‘sometimes equalled my own’, but Matteotti was, lamentably, dead, and Italy needed a firm hand; and he, Mussolini, alone, was the man capable of ‘dominating the crisis’. If parliament was willing to endorse his personal dictatorship, then he would speedily put the country to rights. The attributes of a great political leader were many, he said, but one of the most important was that of ‘having the power to halt, with a decisive show of will . . . the collapse of a situation which appears in every way to be crumbling and lost’. There were a few feeble protests, a few murmurs of dissent, but they fizzled away. The speech had been an audacious gamble, but it had worked. It was now a question, he said, of ‘fascistizzare la nazione’, imposing the full weight of fascism. ‘The opposition won’t be curbed: well, I’ll make them obey! In forty-eight hours, all will be sorted out.’

  Hearing from Turati what had been said, Anna Kuliscioff observed: ‘We live in a country of slaves. They don’t lack certain sentimental values, but they are incapable of standing up to political brigandage.’ When the Chamber formally reopened on 12 January, one fascist deputy noted with satisfaction: ‘The blackshirts are now ready for everything that the opposition has to send at us. They are in a state of complete efficiency.’ It was indeed brigandage, at its most naked. The king, meanwhile, had approved a new cabinet, in which Mussolini, bit by bit, would assume control of all the major ministries. Under him, he brought in loyal fascists – Dino Grandi to foreign affairs, Italo Balbo to aviation. Roberto Farinacci, the former ras of Cremona, became party secretary. He was a crude, gross, vituperative man with a jaunty manner, immense black eyebrows, and a peculiar, V-shaped moustache. It was said that Mussolini kept hidden in his drawer a copy of Farinacci’s university thesis, with proof of plagiarism.

  Across Italy, telegrams went out to local prefects to suppress all hostile reaction to Mussolini’s speech. Ninety-five suspect clubs and associations were closed down, 150 ‘public establishments’ suppressed, 25 ‘subversive’ organisations disbanded, and 111 ‘dangerous’ people arrested. And the cult of Mussolini himself took flight, that of a virile, decisive, paternalistic, above all sporting Duce, who swam, rode, fenced, flew, boxed and took cold baths. Thousands of photographs were taken of him, in hundreds of different poses, many with his manly torso on display, his piercing eyes glaring out at the camera, his mouth pouting and scowling, his large balding head thrown back. Even his colleagues grovelled. A journalist called Leo Longanesi coined the phrase: ‘Mussolini is always right.’

  On 31 December, even before Mussolini’s triumphant speech, Carlo, Nello, Salvemini, Rossi, Traquandi and the others in Italia Libera had met in the Rossellis’ house to discuss starting an underground paper to stir up those they called the ‘feeble spirits’ who had appeared to accept fascism as a fait accompli. Someone proposed calling it Il Crepuscolo, ‘Twilight’, but the word seemed ambiguous and defeatist. Then Nello suggested Non Mollare – ‘Do Not Give Up’ – and the others agreed that this was precisely the message they wished to get across: resist fascism, work for Mussolini’s overthrow, despite the violence of the militia, the impunity of the squadristi, the decrees signed by the cowardly king. As Carlo wrote in the first issue early in January 1924, printed on two sides of a single sheet of paper, ‘We particularly honour Mazzini because he did not weaken . . . Since we have been denied the freedom to speak, we will take it upon ourselves to do so.’ Only by fighting back would Italians be able to regain their stolen liberty. Matteotti would be their inspiration, the man who had shown the world that it was possible to ‘non mollare’; the Risorgimento would be their ideology. Rossi said that it did not matter what they wrote, because the point of Non Mollare was to inspire disobedience, incite others to exercise their rights, available to all citizens of civilised countries. The young men had taken to repeating a joke doing the rounds of Florence: ‘There are three things that don’t go together: honesty, intelligence and fascism. He who is honest and fascist is not intelligent; he who is intelligent and fascist is not honest; he who is honest and intelligent is not fascist.’

  Nello in his early twenties

  Carlo in his early twenties

  Salvemini and Carlo were to do much of the writing; Traquandi and Rossi agreed to find and deal with the printers. Marion typed and kept the files, and was soon to be seen with the pockets of her clothes bulging with bits of paper. Carlo and Nello would cover much of the cost from the income from their Siele shares, which had grown greatly in value since the end of the First World War. Traquandi’s talent lay in his ability to recruit trustworthy people and soon dozens of former supporters of Italia Libera were distributing copies all over the city, with instructions that, when read, Non Mollare was to be passed on, from hand to hand. ‘If we want to win,’ wrote Salvemini, ‘we will. Winning signifies for us a return to the laws of our fathers, a return to those liberties that guarantee a civilised life.’ ‘I sense’, wrote Carlo to Salvemini, ‘that it is our duty to provide evidence of character and moral strength to the generation that will come after us.’

  No one had yet dared to make public the memorandum written by Filippelli, the owner and driver of the Lancia in which Matteotti had been kidnapped. In the fifth number of Non Mollare, in February, it was printed in full, with a run of 12,000 rather than the usual 3,000. Circulating from hand to hand, the paper was taken north by Rossi and given to Riccardo Bauer and Ferruccio Parri to distribute in Milan. Giovanni Amendola, fully realising the dangers he was running, published the second memorandum, by Cesare Rossi, in one of the very few newspapers still willing to print his contributions. What both statements made perfectly plain was that Mussolini was deeply implicated in Matteotti’s murder, that he was, in Filippelli’s words, the ‘inspiration’ behind it. Then Salvemini got hold of other incriminating documents and these were published in Non Mollare too. They caused a huge stir. The fascists were outraged. A hunt for these mysterious and subversive writers and editors was launched.

  But the little group in Florence was both imaginative and canny. The editors changed their printers with every issue. Vannucci, the student doctor, kept the clandestine material in the freezer of his hospital morgue. Rossi had a secret compartment built at the back of a cupboard in his house. A former socialist deputy, Gaetano Pilati, who had lost his right arm in the war and had since risen from being a bricklayer to owning his own successful building firm, used his workers to distribute copies and went out at night himself and glued copies on to the walls for people to read as t
hey went to work. Why not give me more copies? Pilati kept asking. As they came off the presses, they were collected by the district leaders, and in turn handed over to train-drivers and postal-workers. Each had a note: pass this on. Sometimes an issue would be printed in Milan or the Veneto. Though Carlo, Nello and Salvemini had yet to be formally identified by the fascists, Ernesto Rossi had his house raided eleven times. The police came away with nothing, but he was a marked man.

  At the end of March, police closed in on a communist typesetter called Renzo Pinzi in the San Frediano district of Florence. He got away before he could be caught, and Rossi advised him to leave Italy. He gave him 1,000 lire, while Salvemini provided him with introductions to friends in Nice and Cannes. A month later, the offices of three socialist lawyers were raided and packets of Non Mollare found on the premises. The militia decided that this was the paper’s headquarters and charged the men with publishing attacks on the king and his government.

  Pinzi, meanwhile, had been growing restless in the South of France and began demanding more money. Angry at not being given as much as he asked, he secretly approached the Florentine militia and negotiated a reward and immunity from prosecution in exchange for giving evidence at the lawyers’ trial. By now, the editors of Non Mollare had grown suspicious. After they intercepted a letter from Pinzi to his wife saying that he had made a deal with the fascists, Rossi, Salvemini and Carlo, fearing arrest, went to hide in a villa outside Cortona. Non Mollare continued to appear. When the king announced that he would be paying a visit to Florence, Non Mollare advised the Florentines to stay at home, saying that he could no longer be regarded as the King of Italy, but only that of the fascists. It bore unexpected fruit. On the appointed day of the royal visit, two rows of Blackshirts lined the route between Piazza della Signoria and Piazza Cavour; but of the Florentines there was little sight. A few bemused tourists looked on.