Claretta

by R. J. B. Bosworth

  24.The ‘B’ and ‘P’ that appear on the Petacci bed thus have nothing to do with Ben and Petacci. For D’Annunzio, see the English biography, Lucy Hughes-Hallett, The pike: Gabriele D’Annunzio, poet, seducer and preacher of war (London: Fourth Estate, 2013).

  25.For a visual version, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sGaIytJ-WI (accessed 3 February 2016).

  26.Roberto Festorazzi, Claretta Petacci: la donna che morì per amore di Mussolini (Bologna: Minerva Edizioni, 2012), pp. 285–6.

  27.Roberto Gervaso, Claretta, la donna che morì per Mussolini (Milan: Rizzoli, 1982).

  28.See reports in Alto Adige, 1 November 1949; 26 April 1950. I owe this reference to Professor Gerald Steinacher of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

  29.Fondo Monelli, b. 139. According to Monelli, Francesco Saverio would have preferred a villa on the more decorous Aventine Hill but the family could not afford it.

  30.For a newsreel image from 1947, see http://www.britishpathe.com/video/clara-petaccis-villa (accessed 11 October 2015).

  31.The Times, 7 March 1960.

  32.Francesca Romana Castelli and Piero Ostilio Rossi, ‘Una villa per la “banda Petacci”’, Capitolium, III, 1999, p. 89. Cf. the photographic representation in Casabella, October 2011, with much praise for the young architects Amedeo Lucchienti and Vincenzo Monaco.

  33.For the story, see R.J.B. Bosworth, Mussolini (rev. edn; London: Bloomsbury, 2010), pp. 335–6; for an autobiographical account by the body-snatcher, cf. Domenico Leccisi, Con Mussolini prima e dopo Piazzale Loreto (Rome: Edizioni Settimo Sigillo, 1991).

  34.Ministero dell’Interno Gabinetto 1957–1960 [hereafter MIG], b. 43, Ministero dell’Interno to Direzione Generale di Pubblica Sicurezza, 8 January 1954. The Times, 17 March 1956, did report the presence of the Francoist Spanish press attaché at the interment, while ‘Prince Farouk’, perhaps the exiled Egyptian king, sent a wreath.

  35.See http://www.ilmessaggero.it/roma/storie/il_verano_tra_museo_e_palco_pellegrinaggio_dai_grandi_artisti/notizie/217502.shtml (accessed 12 July 2014).

  36.See http://www.vivisanlorenzo.it/News/News_gennaio_2004/visite_verano_san_lorenzo.htm (accessed 12 July 2014).

  37.For this subject, see my analysis in R.J.B. Bosworth, Whispering city: Rome and its histories (London: Yale University Press, 2011).

  38.For Rachele’s complaint about the matter, see Bruno D’Agostini, Colloqui con Rachele Mussolini (Rome: OET, 1946), p. 86.

  39.The tomb thereby seems to affirm the view of historian of emotions, William Reddy, that modern ‘Western romantic love is particularly unusual insofar as love continues to stand in contrast to lust’ and is typically armed with ‘spiritual expectations’. See W.M. Reddy, ‘The rule of love: the history of Western romantic love in comparative perspective’, in Luisa Passerini, Liliana Ellena, and Alexander C.T. Geppert (eds), New dangerous liaisons: discourses on Europe and love in the twentieth century (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), p. 51.

  40.Il Tempo, 28 October 2015.

  41.Il Giornale, 22 August 2016; Il Tempo, 8 September 2016.

  42.See http://www.ok.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=301569753224072&id=108180412563008&stream_ref=5 (accessed 14 July 2014).

  43.See http://www.storiainrete.com/7237/rassegna-stampa-italiana/morte-mussolini-lanpi-modifica-la-targa-a-giulino-a-modo-suo/ (accessed 11 October 2015).

  44.MIG, b. 43, 23 February, 5 April, 5 September, 1 October 1959, 18, 27 February 1961.

  45.MIG, b. 43, 19, 20 September, 22 November 1962.

  46.For a curious example, see Paul Ginsborg, Silvio Berlusconi: television, power and patrimony (London: Verso, 2004) and his warning that Berlusconi was creating a Fascistoid following and state.

  47.For its standard history, see Piero Ignazi, Il polo escluso: profilo del Movimento Sociale Italiano (Bologna: il Mulino, 1989); cf. also his Postfascisti? Dal Movimento Sociale Italiano ad Alleanza Nazionale (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994).

  48.For their website, see http://www.casapounditalia.org/ (accessed 3 February 2016).

  49.For a recent typical example, see the six-month diary Benito Mussolini: lo stato sociale nel Ventennio: pagine di storia dimenticata (Rome: I Libri del Borghese, 2016). It includes only one image of the familial Duce, with wife and five children. There is no sign of Claretta.

  50.Vittorio Mussolini, Vita con il mio padre (Milan: Mondadori, 1957); Mussolini: the tragic women in his life (London: NEL, 1973). The first account ignored Claretta. By the second she had risen to share billing in ‘tragedy’ with his sister and mother.

  51.Edvige Mussolini, Mio fratello Benito: memorie raccolte e trascritte da Rosetta Ricci Crisolini (Florence: La Fenice, 1957); and cf. Benito Mussolini, Opera omnia (ed. E. and D. Susmel) (36 vols) (Florence: La Fenice, 1951–62), vol. 36, pp. 479–80, which does list Claretta in a chronology of Mussolini’s death. An additional eight volumes, still without Claretta, were added in Benito Mussolini, Opera omnia (ed. Edoardo and Duilio Susmel) Appendici I–VIII (vols 37–44) (Florence: Giovanni Volpe Editore, 1978–80).

  52.Emilio Settimelli, Edda contro Benito: indagine sulla personalità del Duce attraverso un memoriale autografo di Edda Ciano Mussolini, qui riprodotto (Rome: Casa Editrice Libraria Corso, 1952).

  53.Edda Mussolini Ciano, My truth (as told to Albert Zarca) (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1977); La mia vita: intervista di Domenico Olivieri (ed. Nicola Caracciolo) (Milan: Mondadori, 2001).

  54.Fabrizio Ciano, Quando il nonno fece fucilare papà (ed. Dino Cimagalli) (Milan: Mondadori, 1991). This Ciano died in 2008.

  55.Romano Mussolini, Benito Mussolini: apologia di mio padre (Bologna: Rivista Romana, 1969); My father Il Duce: a memoir by Mussolini’s son (New York: Kales Press, 2006).

  56.For background on the highly fissiparous neo-fascist zone in Italy, see Andrea Mammone, Transnational neofascism in France and Italy (Cambridge University Press, 2015).

  57.Scandal never ended. In 2015, for example, it was reported internationally that her husband, Mauro Floriani, an officer in the Guardia di Finanza, allegedly known to his friends as ‘Captain Mussolini’, was to be prosecuted for ‘paying for sex with teenage prostitutes’. See Daily Telegraph, 26 June 2015.

  58.See www.casadeiricordi.it (accessed 3 February 2016).

  59.Maurizio Ridolfi and Franco Moschi (eds), Il Giovane Mussolini 1883–1914: la Romagna, la formazione, l’ascesa politica (Forlì: Neri Wolff, 2013).

  60.See, for example, Claudio Mussolini, La parentesi: 1914–1924 dall’entrata in guerra alla presa del potere: le vie del fascismo: un esame di bibliografia comparata (Milan: Baldini e Castoldi, 2002).

  61.See La Repubblica, 5 September 2006; and a campaign, launched by Guido, eldest son of Vittorio (died 2012), to exhume Mussolini again and restart a trial of the details of his death.

  62.Davide Fabbri has some local celebrity as Davide il Vichingo, a rightist satirist, and has at times talked of somehow replicating his antecedent’s March on Rome or, perhaps, Perugia. See Il Tempo, 23 February 2011 and http://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2014/04/29/forconi-a-bologna-ce-il-pronipote-del-duce-tiro-le-banane-al-ministro-kyenge/968156/ (accessed 15 October 2015). In the initial lessons, Fabbri was reported to be supported by another relative, Benito Moschi. See Libero, 25 June 2006.

  63.Rachele Mussolini, La mia vita con Benito (Milan: Mondadori, 1948). Cf. The real Mussolini (as told to A. Zarca) (Farnborough: Saxon House, 1973). The latter book contained a photo of Claretta’s lavishly furnished bed at the Villa Camilluccia. The earlier Italian account did not.

  64.Anita Pensotti, Rachele e Benito: biografia di Rachele Mussolini (Milan: Mondadori, 1993), p. 9.

  65.Rachele Mussolini, La mia vita con Benito, p. 273 and cf. pp. 250–3.

  66.Francobaldo Chiocci, Donna Rachele (Rome: Ciarrapico Editore, 1983), p. 12.

  67.See, for example, Bruno D’Agostini, Colloqui con Rachele Mussolini; Anita Pensotti, La restituzione dei resti di Mussolini nel drammatico racconto della vedova (Rome: Dino Editore, 1972).

  68.Post
humous journalistic biographies have not demurred. See Francobaldo Chiocci, Donna Rachele; Anita Pensotti, Rachele: sessant’anni con Mussolini nel bene e nel male (Milan: Bompiani, 1983); Rachele e Benito (1993); Le italiane (Milan: Simonelli Editore, 1999); Elena Bianchini Braglia, Donna Rachele: con il Duce, oltre il Duce (Milan: Mursia, 2007).

  69.In regard to reality, see Ruggero Zangrandi’s celebrated account of his own passage to the Resistance after a gilded teenage life in Rome and a friendship with Vittorio Mussolini. Ruggero Zangrandi, Il lungo viaggio attraverso il fascismo: contributo alla storia di una generazione (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1964), p. 20, where he remembered Rachele, almost always in her apron, feeding the two bread and butter, just as his own mother did.

  70.Cristina Baldassini, L’ombra di Mussolini: l’Italia moderata e la memoria del fascismo (1945–1960) (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2008), p. 5.

  71.Ibid., p. 14.

  72.Silvia Pizzetti, I rotocalchi e la storia: la divulgazione storica nei periodici illustrati (1950–1975) (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1982), p. 80.

  73.Cristina Baldassini, L’ombra di Mussolini, pp. 2–6.

  74.Silvia Pizzetti, I rotocalchi e la storia, p. 70.

  75.Luigi Cavicchioli, ‘Il testamento di Claretta ha commosso il pubblico: Al processo di Brescia Clara Petacci è risultata una donna fedele e coraggiosa’, Oggi, 10 July 1952.

  76.Myriam Petacci, ‘Questa è la mia storia’, Oggi, 14, 21, 28 April, 5 May 1955.

  77.Myriam Petacci, Chi ama è perduto: mia sorella Claretta (ed. Santi Corvaja) (Gardolo di Trento: Luigi Reverdito Editore, 1988).

  78.See Cronache, 20 October 1945, as preserved in Fondo Monelli, b. 139.

  79.Zita Ritossa, ‘Mia “cognata” Claretta Petacci’, Tempo, 7, 14, 21, 28 February, 7, 14, 21, 28 March, 4, 11, 18, 24 April, 2, 9 May 1957; ‘La mia vita con Claretta Petacci’, Oggi, 9 April 1975.

  80.See http://www.jus.unitn.it/users/pascuzzi/privcomp00-01/topics/3/Cass_1963.htm (accessed 18 October 2015).

  81.Cristina Baldassini, L’ombra di Mussolini, p. 278.

  82.Anita Pensotti, Le italiane (Milan: Simonelli Editore, 1999), p. 8.

  83.Rachele Mussolini, La mia vita con Benito, pp. 267–8; Benito Mussolini, Opera omnia, vol. XXXII, pp. 267–8.

  84.See, notably, Sergio Luzzatto, Il corpo del duce: un cadavere tra immaginazione, storia e memoria (Turin: Einaudi, 1998), pp. 197–8, based on a reading of Anita Pensotti, Rachele e Benito, pp. 126–7. The account, itself decidedly vague, is repeated from Anita Pensotti, Rachele, pp. 118–19.

  85.Anita Pensotti, Le italiane, pp. 12–14.

  86.Elena Bianchini Braglia, Donna Rachele, pp. 22–5.

  87.Renzo De Felice, Mussolini l’alleato 1940–1945, vol. I, L’Italia in guerra 1940–1943, part 2, Crisi e agonia del regime (Turin: Einaudi, 1990), pp. 1069–78.

  88.Ibid., pp. 1536–40. There is a slightly different version in Fondo Monelli, b. 139.

  89.For my own account at the end of the 1990s, see R.J.B. Bosworth, The Italian dictatorship: problems and perspectives in the interpretation of Mussolini and Fascism (London: Arnold, 1998). For more up-to-date commentary on Italian views, see Studi Storici, 55, i, 2014.

  90.Here see the massive and important comparative work, Paul Ginsborg, Family politics: domestic life, devastation and survival 1900–1950 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014).

  91.See, for example, Guardian, 12 September 2003. Cf. La Repubblica, 27 January 2013 after Berlusconi chose Holocaust Memorial Day to downplay Fascist anti-Semitism.

  92.See Daily Telegraph, 9 November 2011.

  93.Roberto Festorazzi, Claretta Petacci. The book sought to replace the earlier accounts of Roberto Gervaso (see n. 27 above) and Franco Bandini, Claretta: profilo di Clara Petacci e dei suoi tempi (Milan: Sugar Editore, 1960). Festorazzi doubled the dose with a book about Mussolini’s women in general but gave quite a bit of space to Claretta. See Roberto Festorazzi, Mussolini e le sue donne (Varese: Pietro Macchione Editore, 2013).

  94.Roberto Festorazzi, Il nonno in camicia nera (Como: Il Silicio, 2004).

  95.Roberto Festorazzi, Claretta Petacci, pp. v–vi; 111; 129–30.

  96.Ibid., p. 283.

  97.Ibid., p. 286.

  98.Benito Mussolini, A Clara: tutte le lettere a Clara Petacci 1943–1945 (ed. Luisa Montevecchi) (Milan: Mondadori, 2011). Apart from the editor, Elena Aga-Rossi and Giuseppe Parlato provided polite commentary following a preface by Agostino Attanasio.

  99.Ermanno Amicucci, I 600 giorni di Mussolini (dal Gran Sasso a Dongo) (Rome: Editrice ‘Faro’, 1948), p. 18.

  100.Roberto Festorazzi, Claretta Petacci, p. 129.

  101.Anita Pensotti, Le italiane, pp. 37; 60–1. By the time she found refuge on Lipari in 1945, Edda herself only weighed 42 kilograms. Marcello Sorgi, Edda Ciano e il comunista: l’inconfessabile passione della figlia del Duce (Milan: Rizzoli, 2009), p. 35.

  102.For the most authoritative version, see Galeazzo Ciano, Diario 1937–1943 (ed. Renzo De Felice) (Milan: Rizzoli, 1980). The English version is Ciano’s Diary 1937–1943 (ed. Renzo De Felice) (London: Phoenix Press, 2002). For the latest English-language biography of Ciano, see Ray Moseley, Mussolini’s shadow: the double life of Count Galeazzo Ciano (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).

  103.See Giuseppe Bottai, Diario 1935–1944 (ed. Giordano Bruno Guerri) (Milan: Rizzoli, 1982); Bruno Bottai, Fascismo famigliare (Casale Monferrato: Edizioni Piemme, 1997). For a forgiving biography of Bottai, see Giordano Bruno Guerri, Giuseppe Bottai: un fascista critica: ideologia e azione del gerarca che avrebbe voluto portare l’intelligenza nel fascismo e il fascismo alla liberalizzazione (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1976).

  104.Edvige Mussolini, Mio fratello Benito, p. 163.

  105.Mimmo Franzinelli, Autopsia di un falso: i Diari di Mussolini e la manipolazione della storia (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2011).

  106.Ibid., pp. 11–41.

  107.Ibid., pp. 41–53.

  108.Ibid., pp. 56–7.

  109.Ibid., pp. 60–6.

  110.Ibid., pp. 68–73.

  111.Ibid., pp. 74–6.

  112.Ibid., pp. 82–3.

  113.Ibid., pp. 196–8.

  114.Anon, ‘Introduzione’, I diari di Mussolini [veri e presunti] 1939 (Milan: Bompiani, 2010), pp. 12; 29–30; 42.

  115.But cf. a deeply negative analysis, approved by Franzinelli in a foreward, Nicola Ciccolo and Elena Manetti, Mussolini e il suo doppio: i diari svelati (Rome: Pioda Editore, 2012).

  116.Mimmo Franzinelli, Autopsia di un falso, p. 180.

  117.I diari di Mussolini [veri e presunti] 1939, pp. 68–70.

  118.I diari di Mussolini [veri e presunti] 1937 (Milan: Bompiani, 2012), pp. 73–4.

  119.For a lively popular account, see Robert Harris, Selling Hitler (London: Faber and Faber, 1986).

  120.See Arrigo Petacco, La storia ci ha mentito: dai misteri della borsa scomparsa di Mussolini alle ‘armi segrete’ di Hitler: le grandi menzogne del Novecento (Milan: Mondadori, 2014).

  121.Inevitably they do feed conspiracies nurtured around Churchill, with regular ‘proof’ of how close he and Mussolini were. See, for example, I diari di Mussolini [veri e presunti] 1937, p. 368; I diari di Mussolini [veri e presunti] 1939, pp. 344; 484.

  122.See, for example, I diari di Mussolini [veri e presunti] 1939, p. 531 (cited by Mimmo Franzinelli, Autopsia di un falso, p. 139). The diaries also contain no reference to Margherita Sarfatti or to those other women (see following chapters) who were, during these years, his sexual partners.

  123.Claretta Petacci, Mussolini segreto: diari 1932–1938 (ed. Mauro Suttora) (Milan: Rizzoli, 2009).

  124.Mauro Suttora, ‘Questo diario’, in Claretta Petacci, Mussolini segreto, p. 8. For Re, cf. Emilio Re, Storia di un archivio: le carte di Mussolini (Milan: Edizioni del Milione, 1946), where, p. 32, he did agree that Mussolini may have kept a diary.

  125.It is published in Roberto Festorazzi, Claretta Petacci, pp. 308–24.

  126.Avvocatura Generale dello Stato, Ecc.ma
Corte di Appello di Roma per il Ministero dell’Interno patrocinato dall’Avvocatura Generale dello Stato (avv. Salorni) contro gli Eredi di Clara Petacci, patrocinati dagli avvocati De Pilato, d’Amico e Luciani (Rome: Tipografia Consorzio Nazionale, 1953), pp. 9; 16; 32–3; 37.

  127.For background, see R.J.B. Bosworth, Whispering city, pp. 197–9; 252–4.

  128.La Repubblica, 20 August 1991.

  129.Ibid., 22 August 1991.

  130.Rizzoli are again meant to be the publishers.

  131.Federico Robbe, ‘Il neofascismo delle origini e l’ossessione antibritannica’, Nuova Storia Contemporanea, 19, 2015, p. 99.

  132.Mimmo Franzinelli L’arma segreta del Duce: la vera storia del Carteggio Churchill–Mussolini (Milan: Rizzoli, 2015).

  133.Ferdinando Petacci, ‘Clara Petacci spia o tramite fra Churchill e Mussolini?’ in Claretta Petacci, Mussolini segreto, pp. 11–21.

  134.Ferdinando Petacci, ‘Claretta: un agente inglese a Palazzo Venezia?’ in Claretta Petacci, Verso il disastro: Mussolini in guerra. Diari 1939–1940 (ed. Mimmo Franzinelli) (Milan: Rizzoli, 2011), pp. 407–19.

  135.Ibid., p. 417.

  136.The phrase is Pieter Geyl’s and springs from his reckoning with his Second World War. For my own background in this regard, see R.J.B. Bosworth, Explaining Auschwitz and Hiroshima: history writing and the Second World War 1945–1990 (London: Routledge, 1993).

  Chapter 1 Sex and the coming dictator

  1.One per day: Quinto Navarra, Memorie del cameriere di Mussolini (Milan: Longanesi, 1946), p. 200; 5,000: Pier Luigi Bullone, La psicologia di Mussolini (Milan: Mondadori, 2007), p. 119, ascribing the figure to ‘Farrel’ [sic]; 400: Franco Bandini, Claretta, p. 55; 162: Giordano Bruno Guerri, Galeazzo Ciano: una vita 1903–1944 (Milan: Bompiani, 1979), p. 69, with a note that Ciano surpassed that number in his seven years as minister of foreign affairs (the number is ascribed to Duilio Susmel); about 20: this low figure was Rachele’s and, she stated, it did not infringe her man’s eternal love for her and their children: Bruno D’Agostini, Colloqui con Rachele Mussolini, p. 27, and Rachele Mussolini, La mia vita con Benito, pp. 268–9.