A hush fell over the arena as a military band played the German and Italian national anthems. Taking his cue from the final trumpet blast of the German anthem, Mussolini wheeled his horse round and spurred it into a gallop.5 As he rode up and down in front of the terraces, the display of machismo worked the crowd into a frenzy: ‘Duce! Duce! Duce!’ men roared, raising their hats and lifting them high in the air. Women, waving handkerchiefs, screamed hysterically; some, overcome by the sight of their idol, fainted.
Two men stood alongside Himmler on the podium, unmoved by Mussolini’s theatrics and the display of affection from the crowd. They were Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler’s deputy and chief of the Gestapo, and Ulrich von Hassell, the German Ambassador to Italy.
Like Himmler’s, Heydrich’s rise to power had been meteoric. One of the darkest figures in the Nazi elite, a man who even Hitler acknowledged had an ‘iron heart’, he was the founding head of the Sicherheitsdienst, an intelligence organization charged with seeking out and neutralizing resistance to the Nazi Party. His murderous career was just beginning. Two years later, when the Nazis invaded Eastern Europe, he would be directly responsible for the Einsatzgruppen, the special task forces that travelled in the wake of the German armies, killing over 2 million people. Later, in the winter of 1942, he would chair the Wannsee Conference, where the plans for the Final Solution to the Jewish Question – the murder of millions of Jews in extermination camps – were agreed.
Ambassador von Hassell – Himmler and Heydrich’s host for their short visit to Rome – cut an imposing figure. Tall, with a neat moustache and an aquiline profile, he wore the uniform of a major general in the NSKK.fn1 A pale grey, it stood out against the black, silver-braided uniforms of the police chiefs to his right. Two livid scars on Hassell’s left cheek immediately signalled that he was of a different class and background. Known as ‘Mensur scars’ or ‘the bragging scar’, they were the preserve of the aristocracy. Won in fencing contests, popular among aristocratic students at Germany’s elite universities before the First World War, they were prized marks of honour and courage. The victor in the contests was not the man who inflicted the wound, but the man who walked away with a scar, proving he was capable of taking a wound.
While the two police chiefs were unknown outside Germany, Hassell was a familiar figure to the crowds in the arena. Since 1932, when he was appointed Germany’s Ambassador to Italy, he had shepherded the burgeoning friendship between the two countries. At the great state occasions, photographs of which appeared on page after page of the Italian newspapers, Hassell was the man in the background, hovering at the shoulder of the two dictators. In the spring of 1934, he helped broker their first meeting in Venice, when the two men had circled each other warily. A few months later, after Engelbert Dollfuss, the Austrian chancellor, was murdered, it had fallen to Hassell to patch up their uneasy friendship. Mussolini, who was close to Dollfuss and had personally broken the news of his death to his widow, held the Nazis responsible. With his blessing, an Italian journalist had branded the Germans a ‘nation of murderers and pederasts’.6
It was only after Hitler supported Mussolini’s conquest of Abyssinia and Italy’s withdrawal from the League of Nations that relations between the two dictators had been restored. Now they were approaching their apogee. A month before, Hassell had accompanied Hitler and Mussolini on a tour of Germany. Flattered by Hitler, dazzled by the armaments factories he visited, and the military parades put on for his benefit, the trip convinced Mussolini that Italy’s future lay with Nazi Germany. The highlight was the rally he and the Führer attended in Berlin when a million people heard him deliver a speech in a thunderstorm. ‘They are fanatical about me,’ he boasted to his mistress on his return.7 ‘The ordinary people were completely conquered. They have felt my force … The crowd for the speech was so big you could not see where it ended. They have never given such a reception before, not to kings, not to emperors, not to anyone. Yes, I have conquered them. They have felt the power … the red banners behind us, the rays of light, the torches … We passed like two gods on the clouds.’
The temperature dropped that night and a thick fog rolled through the streets of Rome; a night, one writer commented, when the smells of ‘mould, mice and basements’ hung in the dank passageways behind the Piazza Navona.8
It took longer than usual for the cavalcade of Mercedes, flanked by police outriders on scarlet motorcycles, to push its way through the Rome traffic. Hassell was travelling in the lead vehicle with the two police chiefs. A retinue of SS officers and embassy officials followed in the vehicles behind. The Italian minister of propaganda was hosting a ball for Heydrich and Himmler, and they were heading for the Villa Madama on the other side of the Tiber.
The route from the German Embassy took them past the Colosseum, and through the Piazza della Repubblica; but the fog was so thick it was impossible to see more than a few yards. Even the graffiti that the Duce’s supporters had scrawled in white paint on the walls of churches and palazzi was obscured. All that was visible were the tiny points of light from the headlamps of other cars on the road, and the dim orange glow from the braziers on the street corners. Shadowy figures, some of them small children, were gathered around the fires – families of peasants who had come into the city from the countryside, bringing the first harvest of chestnuts.
After crossing the Tiber, the cavalcade picked up speed on the Via di Villa Madama, the long, winding road up to the house. The air was clearer here, the fog now a thin mist. On either side of the road, ivy-covered walls and high, clipped hedges concealed the famous treasures in the villa’s gardens: the curious elephant tomb, commemorating Annone, an Indian elephant given to the Pope by the King of Portugal in 1514, and Bandinelli’s Giants, a pair of sculptures, each 14 feet tall, that guarded the entrance to the secret garden.
The villa, designed by Raphael for Cardinal Giulio de Medici in the early 1500s, stood on a hill overlooking the Vatican. One of the most glittering society venues in Rome, it had belonged to Count Frasso, whose wife was the wealthy American heiress Dorothy Caldwell-Taylor. Having inherited $15 million from her father in the 1920s, the countess had restored the villa from its dilapidated state and used it to host lavish parties for her Hollywood friends. Her guests included the leading film stars of the day, among them Marlene Dietrich, Cary Grant, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers and Clark Gable. Now, the villa was on loan to the Italian government as a venue for official parties.
It was almost nine o’clock and the forecourt was crowded with luxurious cars – Delahayes, Bugattis, Daimlers.9 It was customary for a servant to travel with the chauffeur and they stood smoking in groups, their liveries as resplendent as the gleaming vehicles. Small silver badges were pinned to their lapels on which were etched the coats of arms of the houses they served: Ruspoli, Colonna, Torlonia, families who owned swathes of Italy, akin to small kingdoms, and who belonged to the elite papal nobility.
For the most part, the Italian aristocracy had embraced Fascism. Mussolini’s agricultural reforms had helped revive estates that had been hit by the depression at the turn of the century and, in towns and cities across Italy, he had been careful to bolster the landowners’ authority by appointing them to senior positions within the party hierarchy. His strong stance against Communism further endeared him to families who feared losing their ancient castles and palaces in the event of a revolution. The relationship was symbiotic; Mussolini enjoyed the glamour and prestige his connections within the aristocracy conferred and they in turn – keen to curry favour with the regime – competed to host opulent Fascist gatherings.
As Himmler’s cavalcade drew up, young men, carrying lighted torches and dressed as Medici pages, stepped forward to open the car doors. Hassell hung back discreetly as Arturo Bocchini, the Italian chief of police and the man responsible for Mussolini’s personal safety, greeted his German counterparts. A dapper figure, famous for owning eighty suits by Saraceni – Rome’s most expensive tailor – Bocchini was the son of a wea
lthy landowner. Anxious to impress Himmler and Heydrich, he had sought advice from well-connected Germans living in Rome. Eugen Dollmann, a young academic, whom Himmler occasionally used as an interpreter, was one of the people he consulted: ‘I advised him to make the most of the fortunate coincidence that his home was at Benevento, near the famous battlefield where the valiant Manfred, favourite son of the great Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick II, had forfeited life and throne … I further advised him against exaggerated courtesy and excessive friendliness.10 What was considered a prerequisite of social intercourse in his native land was only too readily construed by northerners as weakness, effeminacy, smarminess and lack of proper solemnity.’
The large entourage of SS officers and embassy officials waited behind as Bocchini escorted the two police chiefs and the ambassador up the steps to the villa. Ushering the three men across the stone-flagged hall, he led them into a large salon where the other guests were gathered.
An orchestra was playing Wagner’s Tannhäuser in the background as the guests milled around, waiting for dinner to be announced.11 Italy’s leading politicians and pro-Fascist aristocrats had been invited, and a large contingent of White Russians: men and women who had known the Tsar and Rasputin and who had fled Russia during the revolution with their jewels sewn into their clothes. Galeazzo Ciano, the newly appointed minister of foreign affairs, was also there. Just thirty-three years old, he was married to Mussolini’s daughter. On his appointment, his father-in-law had conferred on him the highest decoration existing in Italy, that of ‘Collare dell’Annunziata’, the possessors of which ranked as the king’s cousins. Most of the assembled women dreaded being placed next to the arrogant and lascivious Ciano at dinner: ‘his only method of conversation was a stream of clichéd chaff accompanied by a great deal of pawing,’ one commented; ‘in the case of women over “a certain age”, he became absolutely dumb.’12
Armies of servants had kept the fires in the villa burning for the previous few nights to take the chill off the rooms, but they were still cold, and the women, adorned with glittering necklaces and tiaras, wore fur stoles around their shoulders. As the German delegation entered, they craned their necks to catch a glimpse of the guests of honour. Heydrich, with ‘his sharp, pale asymmetrical face’, and Himmler, with his weak chin and puffy features, disappointed: ‘We Italians enjoyed the statuesque blonds the Nazis usually sent over,’ one woman remarked.13, 14 Only Hassell, wearing white tie and tails, conformed to their high standards. ‘The Ambassador looked superb and he knew it,’ Himmler’s interpreter noted.15 ‘The eyes of Roman feminine society dwelt pleasurably on his aristocratic countenance, and he suffered their gaze with equal pleasure.’
A gong sounded – the signal to move through to dinner in the villa’s magnificent salone. Crimson roses, sent by special train from San Remo, crowded the long table, their scent almost overpowering. Banners bearing the Nazi swastika and the black Italian Fascist flag, imprinted with the fasces, the ancient Roman symbol for power and governance, hung from the vaulted ceiling, next to exquisite religious scenes painted by Renaissance artist Giulio Romano.
Himmler and Heydrich were placed in the position of honour at the centre of the table, beside Ciano and Bocchini. Hassell, seated some distance from them, was next to Guido Buffarini Guidi, the Italian secretary of state for the interior – a man for whom, as one acquaintance described, ‘politics, intrigue and the secret accumulation of power were his life and his ruling passion’.16
Halfway through dinner, emboldened by several glasses of wine, Buffarini Guidi began to quiz the ambassador: ‘We were just wondering what an educated and distinguished individual like you can possibly have to say to these, your compatriots, and how you can get on with them? Himmler? He is an idiot with no intelligence at all. And Heydrich?’17
The answers Hassell gave to Buffarini Guidi’s questions stuck in his craw. Later that evening, he noted the awkward conversation in his diary: ‘When I insisted that Himmler was very clever, he remained sceptical and when I, as a diversionary tactic, extolled the “energetic personality” of Heydrich, he parried unfavourably: “We know his type well.18 He is a brutal man, a bloodhound.”’
Among the pro-Fascist and predominantly pro-Nazi guests attending the dinner at the Villa Madama, Hassell’s nickname was Il Freno (The Brake); his opposition to a military alliance between Germany and Italy was widely known. But only a handful of people – among them Heydrich and Himmler – knew the extent of his contempt for the Nazi regime. For almost a year now, Heydrich’s Gestapo spies had been watching him. Masquerading as servants, they were installed in the Villa Wolkonsky, the ambassador’s residence, listening to his conversations, tapping his telephone and making lists of the ‘anti-people’ who visited.
The Gestapo’s reports reflected the malevolent prejudice taking hold in Germany at that time: Hassell was observed to be too friendly with his Jewish dentist; his daughters’ education in Britain was construed as proof that he was an Anglophile whose ‘interests lay principally in England’; he had been overheard making derogatory remarks about the Italians; he associated with anti-Nazi German academics and intellectuals.19 This social circle came under close scrutiny. Primarily, his friends were anti-Fascist aristocrats: Principessa Santa Hercolani, the Borghese heiress; Marchese Misciattelli, whose palazzo in the Piazza Venezia he regularly visited; Contessa Pasolini, famous for the tea salons she hosted for prominent intellectuals; and Irene di Robilant, the rebellious daughter of Contessa Robilant, who ran a Fascist organization for women. Every morning, it was noted, Hassell rode out with the Hercolanis. Breakfast would follow at the Villa Wolkonsky, where they had been overheard discussing the dangers of their respective regimes.
Heydrich had circulated the reports to Mussolini and Ciano, the Italian foreign secretary. ‘Unpleasant and treacherous’ was Ciano’s verdict; ‘he fatally belongs to that world of Junkers, who cannot forget 1914 and who, being deep down hostile towards Nazism, does not feel solidarity towards the regime.’20
Hitler had not sanctioned Hassell’s appointment. Posted to Rome in 1932, he was one of the last ambassadors to represent the Weimar Republic. Born in Prussia in 1881, he came from an old Hanoverian family who belonged to the landed nobility. His upbringing was typical of a young man of his class. Attending the famous Prinz-Heinrich-Gymnasium in Berlin, a school for Prussian nobles, he was taught absolute fealty to the King of Prussia and to Prussian ideals, which implied service and, if needed, sacrifice for the greater good.21
Yet, while Hitler despised men of Hassell’s class, he depended on their expertise. In the early years of his regime, he was content to allow the ambassadors inherited from the Weimar Republic to hold on to their posts while he consolidated his power. Tipped as a future foreign secretary by his colleagues in the pre-Nazi Foreign Office, Hassell was held in high regard. ‘A German nobleman from top to toe’, as one described him, he was admired for his ‘natural, often charming manner, his deep education, his excellent pen’ and ‘his cool, sharp mind’.22 Another praised his ‘trenchant humour, his diplomatic finesse and his unshakeable political principles’.23
Opposed to Hitler from the beginning, Hassell had used his position in Rome to fight for the ideals he believed in. After the debacle of the Treaty of Versailles, he was determined to build a bridge between Germany and the nations of Western Europe. Convinced that, for her own salvation and the security of her neighbours, a way had to be found to integrate Germany, he played an important part in the negotiations leading to the Four-Power Pact – an initiative between Britain, Italy, France and Germany to preserve the peace in Europe. Hitler, however, never ratified the pact and, as his aggressive foreign policy unfolded, Hassell found himself more and more at odds with the instructions issued to him from Berlin.24
By the autumn of 1937, Hassell knew that he was being watched by Heydrich’s spies and that Hitler and his circle wanted to replace him.25 Earlier that year, Mussolini, whom he was close to, had tipped him off during a
conversation at the opera.26 Immediately, Hassell had asked Mussolini to intercede on his behalf, protesting his loyalty to the Nazi regime.
His protests were a bluff that would have been easily called had the Gestapo found the diaries he kept locked in a drawer in his desk. Dating back to the start of his posting, Hassell assigned codenames to individuals and countries – even to meetings and events. Sometimes he used several: Hitler was ‘Inge’ or ‘Inges Chef’; Mussolini was ‘Dein Tischherr’ (Table Companion) or ‘Calvino’; Himmler, ‘Zöllinger’; England, ‘Lady Hay’; Göring, ‘The Man with the Wineglass’ or ‘Sepp’s Brother’; the Nazi Party, ‘Inges family’.27 But the codenames were primarily for his own amusement; read in context, it would not have been difficult for the Gestapo to decipher them.
The diaries added up to a damning indictment; from his position at the heart of the German and Italian dictatorships, Hassell had charted the inexorable rise of Fascism, noting every deviation from the values he upheld – prudence, a firm moral outlook and a rigid adherence to the principles of law.
Yet his patriotic sense of duty, his natural reserve and the discretion instilled into him over the course of his many years as a diplomat prevented him from openly criticizing the Nazi regime. Aside from occasional outbursts, prompted by the boorish behaviour of visiting Nazi apparatchiks, the diaries tell us little about the man. He was careful to veil his criticism beneath dense, arid accounts of diplomatic discussions, internal manoeuvrings at Wilhelmstrasse – the German Foreign Ministry – and his own observations on European foreign policy. He never wrote about what he was actually feeling.
Far more revealing, however – and an irony, given the Gestapo’s goal to expose Hassell’s opposition to the Nazi regime – is the diary his daughter kept during the same period. Aged twelve when her father took up his post in Rome, Fey idolized him. Between 1933 and 1937, she noted his reaction to the rise of Nazism and the negative feelings he was unwilling to commit to paper, but which he confided to his family. Unlike her father, Fey wrote her diary in plain language. She did not hide it away; she left it lying around her bedroom at the Villa Wolkonsky – effortlessly accessible, had the Gestapo thought to read it.
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