After he became prime minister, Mussolini quickly plunged into the conduct of foreign policy. In late November 1922, he attended his first international conference. The subject discussed over three days in Lausanne was how the three major Allied governments would deal with the Turks. They had smashed an initially successful Greek invasion and were demanding a drastic revision of the humiliating peace settlement forced on them at the end of World War I. Mussolini contributed very little to the talks and agreed to follow the lead of the two other powers. Eight months later, after extensive negotiations, the Turks would get most of what they wanted. During his three days in Lausanne, Mussolini went out of his way to charm the British and to treat the French with disdain. In December, he traveled to London to meet with the British and French leaders for the second time in three weeks. The vexing subject of German reparations provided the subject for discussions.1
Remembering his influenza in Berlin in 1919, I insisted: “You cannot travel to London in December without an overcoat.” I managed to convince him. But he asked me to buy it for him. In those early days in power, he felt ashamed to personally acquire something so luxurious. At the same time, he hated to be cold and loved creature comforts. I purchased a fine leather coat for him. It pleased him greatly but he still expressed the worry that wearing it would make him look soft and less masculine.
I had agreed that while Mussolini was in London, I would telegraph him daily. He wanted an ample report on the contents of Italian national and provincial newspapers. In those days, the Italian press was still free. Mussolini was interested not only in comments on his policies but even local events across the country. He was less interested in the big events in which he was participating in London than in those small news items. Once a journalist, always a journalist, I suppose.
Nonetheless, I must admit that no one appreciated more than he did how ordinary newsprint can be transformed into the detonator of revolutionary action. By then I had come to understand him very well. After Mussolini returned, he congratulated me on my excellent synopses of the Italian press.
As for what had happened in London, he told me:
I argued strenuously for setting the amount for reparations reasonably high. I said we should leave it to the Germans decide how to pay it. But it should be in the short term. That way, the countries owed reparations would have been quickly freed of this complicated international issue. Then the Europeans could work together toward peace and renewed prosperity. But the British indicated no more than lukewarm interest. Worse, my proposal drove Poincaré2 to fury. Ah! That’s the petty thinking of an accountant! [Mussolini shouted, lifting his arms to heaven in mock despair.] The French refused to set a figure for their reparations, even though the amount is growing monstrously out of proportion. They fear losing even one sou of their nominal treaty rights. So in the end, they will not get back one sou in hard cash!
By springtime, Mussolini had grown to revel in his office and the privileges it brought him. On an intoxicating April morning in 1923, he and I rode our horses along the old Appian Way in the countryside outside Rome. (Mussolini was a good horseman even though his seat was a bit heavy and he looked somewhat awkward in the saddle.) I vividly remember the mellow sweetness of that long-ago day. The air was infused with that balmy golden light so special to Lazio. Around us stood tall cypresses, the ruined marble slabs and statues of ancient tombs, the arches of aqueducts dating back thousands of years, all shining in the sun. They spoke of eternity, the silent witnesses of the sunset of Roman history.
But in our hearts we held the dream of a new dawn of history for our country. At the time, Italy was recovering from two victorious wars, a disappointing peace settlement and a chaotic revolution. Our dream for her was made of unity, justice and peace, achieved through hard work. There next to me was the man whom every Italian looked to as the possible builder of a new Italian history: Benito Mussolini, appointed six months earlier as president of the council of ministers.
Suddenly my riding companion said: “In the end, there is someone that nobody, not even a statesman nor a prince could ever get rid of, no matter how much power he has or how ruthless he may be.” Who was the man who could say such things? Someone who would shortly transform himself into a dictator. Eventually he would die in another Italian April, in an awful tragedy without grandeur, without even the purifying catharsis of beauty in the face of death.
But April 1945 was far away from that glorious spring of 1923. The darkness and terror of the future was mercifully hidden from our human eyes. If foreseen perhaps it might have been prevented or avoided. But that is exactly what fate does not allow.
That long ago morning I asked Mussolini: “And who could that ‘someone’ ever be if he were so invulnerable and invincible that even the highest authority could not overcome him?” With a short, bitter laugh Mussolini answered me; “His successor. That old cynic Machiavelli was so right!”3 Then he spurred his blonde Arabian horse, a recent gift from King Fuad of Egypt,4 and galloped straight across the freshly tilled fields.
Since I was only a woman, I retained my privilege of always telling Mussolini the truth. I did this from the first day to the last and whether he liked it or not. At least, I did so until this became too unnerving to him and too difficult for me. Then I decided to stop speaking to him and to keep at a distance.
On that morning on horseback in 1923, we rejoined again and returned slowly back along the old paved Roman way. Then I said to him in jest: “Machiavelli offers a splendid lesson! How useless it is to murder one’s enemies if one cannot also erase one’s fate. But who wants to talk about death on such a beautiful day!”
But he was not in the mood for jokes. He seemed lost in thought. His mouth began to twitch in the way that I knew so well. Was he applying that same truth to himself? I knew that he saw himself as the future emperor, the successor to the King of Italy. At the time, that did not seem outlandish. In fact, he entertained such political ambitions. Was he thinking about murder to reach that goal or was he thinking about what his own successor might do to him?
After a while he said: “You are wrong. One can do something about the problem through a slow and well planned act of elimination. That allows one to delay before removing a potential successor.” The fact that Mussolini knew he would have an inevitable successor led to his inner struggle to defy or delay such a fate. This grew into a real obsession, the cause of many of his mistakes and crimes during his final years. They cannot be explained otherwise. This fear also explains his dread of growing old.
At age twenty-nine, he had risen to the leadership of the extreme revolutionary wing of the Italian Socialist Party and editor-in-chief of its daily newspaper. At thirty-nine, he had been appointed head of the Italian government. He had become the idol of the younger generation of Italians, as well as an internationally renowned political figure. These achievements made Mussolini extremely proud. He gloried in the unlimited dynamic power he believed his youth gave him.
Lord Byron5 said that a man can endure any catastrophe so long as he can bear the worst of all misfortunes: to live beyond the age of twenty. Since Byron, no man has clung more desperately to the golden shores of youth than Mussolini. No one else has struggled so hard to distance himself from old age. During the Fascist regime, he tried to do so with dieting, sports, young women, corruption, lies, and propaganda about his eternal youth.
Mussolini had learned to ride with the same intense, determined concentration he put into every other sport in which he engaged. For him, sports were not just displays of grace and agility. They were milestones that had to be reached as he climbed to the summit of society. He was unable to conceive of sports competition as moments of enjoyment and relaxation in which winning and losing were less important than taking part. Even when he played croquet with my children in the garden of our country home, far away from the public eye, he could not bear to lose. If he sensed his defeat coming, he would throw away his hammer. Sometimes he claimed he had to make an urgent telephone call. More often, he would make no pretext and just shout what he would in similar situations: “Buttiamo per aria il baldacchino!” (Let’s throw the whole thing away!6)
In horseback riding, fencing and other physical exercises, he chose to adopt the “winner take all” attitude of his first instructor, a rough former non-commissioned officer in the cavalry named Camillo Ridolfi,7 After he became prime minister, he brought Ridolfi from Milan to Rome. The relationship between Mussolini and Ridolfi never changed except for the promotions Ridolfi received.
Cirillo Tambara,8 a rather stupid young man employed by Il Popolo d’Italia as a messenger, taught Mussolini how to drive. When he decided to learn how to fly a plane, Mussolini could have chosen the best air force ace. Instead, he picked Cesare Redaelli,9 an undistinguished pilot of dubious quality.
Mussolini hated playing the role of student of any subject. He refused to make what would have been an implicit admission of inferiority to a skilled professional teacher. He could only tolerate instructors who could teach him the rudiments but still retained the status of servants. Mussolini wanted slaves who would show him servile admiration. They had to be powerless to disobey him; totally devoid of enough intelligence to express any form of criticism. It was only toward such people that he would act kindly and even friendly but with an unspoken contempt.
As he would often tell me: “We can’t expect everyone to be clever.” I would reply a bit seriously and a bit facetiously: “Yes, by being patient with them you are paying twice for the pleasure they give you. You pay them a wage for their lesson and also reward them with your condescension. That way you get what you enjoy the most: to humiliate people and show them you are the superman you think you really are!” He acted the same way with his ministers. As soon as one of them seemed to be a bit too capable, Mussolini would immediately fire him. Thereby he perpetuated the myth of his superiority among those he considered a only a herd of mediocrities.
It was strictly forbidden for Italian publications to mention his age. He invariably celebrated his birthday with his family in the countryside. Before every July 29, he would disappear, without notifying the newspapers as he usually would with his daily program. An inextricable mass of absurd, often contradictory, orders flooded the desks of newspaper editors daily. These stated what could or could not be published, what should be given more space or what not to mention at all. Among these, there was one invariable rule: it was strictly forbidden to mention that Mussolini was a grandfather. The children of Countess Edda Mussolini Ciano and those of Bruno10 and Vittorio Mussolini were to be unmentioned. In none of his numberless photographs do they appear near him.
On the other hand, instructions were clearly imparted to provide ample coverage about his smaller children: the age of baby Romano11 seemed as a kind of certificate of recaptured youth; the same happened with the little daughter Anna Maria12 up to the day when she contracted polio and was isolated from the others. From that moment on he stopped bragging about his young daughter. Her photograph and her name were taken off the propaganda publications encouraging demographic expansion. Mussolini and his family were to appear unblemished by ordinary human misery. Mussolini’s family, as well as his other belongings, must not appear subject to the calamities to which mortal flesh is heir.
But he did greatly enjoy those curious photographs which he had published everywhere of himself: on the beach posing as an almost naked, aged and rather fat, bald Adonis13 or stripped to the waist and in shorts for fencing, riding and harvesting. No doubt, the reclamation of the Pontine Marshes near Rome was a great and good work. The more the pity it got spoiled, as the Fascist regime did to so many other things, by exaggeration and lies. The contrast between the first section of reclamation, made to give land and work to thrifty peasant families, with the second and third areas, provides exemplary evidence. Poor people were taken to see picture-pretty houses and grand public buildings. But they lay surrounded by still malaria-infected marsh land which contained imperfect, although highly expensive, drainage and sanitation arrangements. It was there that Mussolini used to join in the wheat harvest from the recently redeemed soil, amongst numberless photographers clicking away with their cameras.
But the police were primarily concerned with the Duce’s safety. During such appearances at harvest time, they surrounded Mussolini with trusted security agents and young women hired from a Roman house of ill repute. They were disguised as peasants. Many were the silent smiles of those who recognized those women in newspaper photographs. Mussolini himself, sweating and happy in a good mood, asked one of the rugged make-believe peasants: “What can I do for you my good man? Do you have any complaint or any wish about which I can help?” The opportunity proved too much for the poor policeman to resist. He answered plainly: “Your Excellency, could you get me transferred from this suburban precinct to the central police station in Rome? I’ll have far more chance of promotion there!!”14
This was such childish make-believe, so characteristic of his policy of ignoring unpleasant facts. More and more, he became convinced that what is not spoken or written about simply does not exist. To some extent, this can be a clever way to handle diplomatic questions or to manipulate public opinion. But when it comes to hard facts, concealing them behind the screen of official silence only leads to an increasing incapacity to face reality. The dread of truth begets a façade of false glory and the staged adulation of crowds. It encourages systematic falsehood with tyranny as its result.
His fear of growing old and of potential successors did have rather serious consequences. Like any unwelcome facts, he thought he could overcome these worries with silence. He chose collaborators whom he allowed to fool him by flattery. On the other hand, he became increasingly intolerant when faced with any kind of superiority, independent thinking and even honesty. He came to consider opposition as blatant crime.
Among his lieutenants, Mussolini always feared Dino Grandi the most. Why? Because of Grandi’s brilliant intellect, his mental flexibility and his deep-seated liberalism. Mussolini also feared Italo Balbo. In his case because of his physical courage and his surprising popularity. He hated both men because they were ten years younger and therefore extremely eligible successors.
Mussolini despised Roberto Farinacci as much as he hated him. Mussolini correctly viewed Farinacci as cruel, cowardly and vulgar. But Mussolini did not think Farinacci was intelligent, despite his superficial cleverness as an unscrupulous profiteer. As a result, Mussolini did not fear him as much as Grandi and Balbo, both of whom clearly had far greater potential.
The foolhardy Balbo would pay for his popularity—greater than that of Galeazzo Ciano15 and even of Mussolini—with his life. The plane Balbo was piloting, with his nephew Lino16 and seven of his closest supporters on board, was shot down over Tobruk by Italian anti-aircraft fire on June 28, 1940. Whether or not Mussolini helped, fate rid him of his youngest and most renowned mate, whom Ciano also hated. No more of the sunny child of fraud and courage, no more of laughing, gallant Balbo, the buccaneer of the golden beard and the golden heart, of the open mind and the open bank account, ever ready to take and give graft freely. The London Times at that moment roguishly advised Marshal Badoglio17 to avoid official planes.
I had to smile as I read that suggestion because I knew that Mussolini didn’t trust Badoglio either. Years earlier, when the Duce learned that French marshal Ferdinand Foch18 had died he was pleased. A wise old Frenchman of experience like Foch could have offered his opponents some very dangerous advice. However, even though he was also suspicious of older men, they did not awaken the same feelings of terror and fear as younger men did. Neither Marshal Pietro Badoglio, the Duke of Addis Ababa or Ivanoe Bonomi qualified as the feared unavoidable phantom of a potential successor that Machiavelli had described.
Dino Grandi showed intelligence in not opposing Ciano openly. On the contrary, as Italy’s fortunes declined in World War II, Grandi began influencing Ciano to remove Mussolini. He enlisted Ciano’s help, as well as that of the older Luigi Federzoni,19 and of Giuseppe Bottai, another of the potential successors to Mussolini. Thus Grandi succeeded with his agenda during the historical meeting of the fascist Grand Council on July 25, 1943: an effective vote of no confidence in the Duce. That led to the fall of Mussolini. But Grandi proved unable to replace the Duce. King Vittorio Emanuele III had other plans.
Fate and fortune did too. By a heavily ironic practical joke, the king, appointed Badoglio as prime minister. Mussolini, so mortally afraid of younger potential successors, was replaced by a man twelve years older. Alas, for the greater misfortune of poor Italy, the old marshal proved unable to prevent Hitler from rescuing Mussolini from his imprisonment. When Rome became free at last in June 1944, Badoglio’s successor was another old man: Ivanoe Bonomi, the former elder comrade of Mussolini’s Socialist days, when the young revolutionary leader fiercely opposed the more moderate Bonomi.
Years earlier these events were prefigured, although at the time I could not foresee what the future would hold. When the administration of the University of Bologna decided to bestow on Mussolini a doctorate in jurisprudence honoris causa, he accepted. But he did so on condition, as he said, that he would earn his degree “as fairly as any other student.” Mussolini had not yet adopted his later, Hitlerian, “better-than-God” style. He was still parading before the public as a strictly law-abiding citizen. Therefore, he sat down to the task of evaluating Machiavelli’s masterwork, The Prince. He did so from his perspective of a militant politician and as a statesman actually in power. This happened before parliamentary elections of April 6, 1924, when the Black Shirts intimidated the opposition with unrestrained violence and prevented many voters from going to the polls. But several members of the academic senate vigorously protested granting the head of the Fascists a degree and the scheduled solemn ceremony was cancelled. Mussolini’s paper appeared at the end of April in Gerarchia, the political and social economic review I edited in Milan. In some ways, it rather brilliantly analyzed the old writer’s pessimistic view of men, as confirmed by Mussolini’s personal experience in handling them.20
Later he would say: “The people do not need to learn to think. I think for them. They only have to obey.” Such are the thoughts of a tyrant. He who had so warmly advocated education had descended so low as to actually enunciate these words. So what had Mussolini actually learned from Machiavelli? He had fastened on the superficial and the supposedly pragmatic portions, those squalid details of dissembling, conspiracy and will to dominate. But the true essence of Machiavelli’s doctrine identifies justice as the essential foundation of the state and measures the folly of power obtained solely through terror. But this wisdom had totally eluded his eager disciple. It certainly received no mention in Mussolini’s undelivered paper. He remained unaware of the outward signs, the warnings contained in The Prince that could have saved him. He ignored Machiavelli’s dictum about the danger of too close an alignment with a stronger state and entering into a dangerous alliances that could result in enslavement. Mussolini managed only to absorb the worst part of the great thinker’s contribution to political theory.
A flippant phrase of Nietzsche about taking risks also appealed to Mussolini’s intellectual make-up, as I shall relate. So too did the somewhat-related theory of Georges Sorel, the French syndicalist, that violence was justified in bringing down an unjust social order. Of course Sorel was no more than a demure little government bureaucrat, only a bridge and road engineer. But brutality and danger attracted Mussolini, given how his upbringing and environment had molded him. In Romagna, his birth-place, violence stood for manliness and physical courage was a trait to be bragged about.
Shortly after he came to power in late 1922, I joined him on a visit from Milan. He asked me to dinner one night in his Roman apartment on top of the Palazzo Tittoni on Via Rasella.21 That evening he had come back from a meeting of the heads of the Fascist party from all over Italy. He was very enthusiastic about an incident that had taken place.
“A nice young fellow, a former captain of the army, made quite a sensible speech” he told me. (I believe Mussolini referred to Captain Host-Venturi.22) He went on: “I knew him only a little and had never appreciated him much. But tonight he asked me if I could define for them a motto of the Fascist ideal of life. It occurred to me to quote a sentence of Nietzsche, which I had always admired. Our ideal must be: “live dangerously.”
We sat on the terrace, enjoying the cool evening. We shared the view of the starry beauty of the sky. Around us stood tall houses. After sundown, their lighted windows grew transparent. We watched men, women and children in their homes, moving through their everyday lives. I looked through the bright windows where happy folk were relaxing after their busy day. Many were sitting down at their evening meal and enjoying a glass of wine. Then they put their children to bed. Husbands and wives rested at each other’s sides. Finally, the houses shrunk into darkness, as each mother and father crept into their bed.
Mussolini’s “live dangerously” would later bring down on their innocent heads—not on his—the vengeance of the destroying fire from heaven. I somehow sensed what the future would bring with a long shiver running down my spine. I haltingly told Mussolini that I loved Nietzsche as a poet. But I had never thought much of him as a philosopher and even less as a moralist. He struck me not as Human, All too Human but rather inhumane, too inhumane.23
Twenty years later, Hitler would send Mussolini a beautiful set of Nietzsche’s complete works as a present for the Duce’s 60th birthday, July 29, 1943. That would be four days after Mussolini’s overthrow and imprisonment. That should have brought a broad hint to the “live dangerous” man. Nietzsche pointedly summoned his “superman” not to accept failure but to choose death instead.
But Hitler certainly meant it as boschaften schadenfrohen Gelgenhumor, as malicious joy in others’ suffering and black gallows humor. He was celebrating the birthday of his elder colleague, especially under painful such circumstances. Hitler knew—none better—how Mussolini felt on this matter.
Comments
Mussolini at the London Conference of December 1922. On the day he left London, Mussolini sent Sarfatti the following telegram:
I LEAVE TOMORROW TUESDAY EXPECTING TO STOP SOME HOURS IN MILAN ONLY FOR THE DAY WEDNESDAY. TOMORROW SEND THE PARIS EMBASSY A DETAILED TELEGRAM WITH THE COMMENTS OF THE MILAN AND TURIN NEWSPAPERS ON THE END OF THE CONFERENCE… THE VERY MILD LONDON CLIMATE HAS COMPLETELY CURED MY COUGH…. ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE TO EXPECT A COMPLETE CURE IF NOT BY MEANS OF DAILY INTELLIGENT HELP THANKS BEST WISHES YOURS SINCERELY.24
No doubt, Mussolini’s expression of appreciation pleased Sarfatti. On the other hand, she would certainly have been displeased to know that the prime minister had spent his free time in London in the company of Alice de Fonseca Pallotelli.25 De Fonseca, accompanied by her six-year-old son, Virgilio, greeted Mussolini when he arrived at Victoria Station on December 9. De Fonseca’s fluent English would have allowed her to serve as Mussolini’s guide in London and they did attend a piano recital together, likely arranged by her understanding husband.26
Sarfatti’s account of what Mussolini told her and Cesare about his proposals at the London conference hardly corresponds to the diplomatic record. Either Mussolini lied or Sarfatti did not have a clear memory of what he said. In fact, Mussolini’s proposal to solve the German reparations problem was obviously one neither the British nor the French would have ever accepted.
Throughout 1922, both the French and German economies experienced severe difficulties. When the Germans asked the French for a lengthy moratorium on reparations deliveries, the latter grew indignant. German finance minister Walter Rathenau advocated moderation on both sides and attempted to work out a settlement. German right-wing anti-Semites judged this treason and two murdered Rathenau in late June. Germany was already experiences high inflation. The murder of Rathenau, an acknowledged master of finance, led to a collapse of faith in the mark and hyperinflation soon began. The Germans begged for a reduction in reparations. The French refused. By the time Mussolini attended the London Conference, the French were threatening to occupy to Ruhr valley, seize control of its industries and use production to meet French payment demands.27
When the French, British, and Italian leaders met in London in early December, Poincaré remained obdurate. If the Germans did not meet their reparations obligations, the French would take over the Ruhr and extract reparations by force. The premier preferred an occupation by all three powers. But he was prepared to go it alone.
What Mussolini proposed in response was aimed more at Britain for Italy’s benefit than at solving the German reparations question for the benefit of France. He argued that the war debts owed by the Italians and the French to the British were too great to be repaid without wrecking their economies and causing a severe political crisis in both countries. Such eventualities would be almost as disastrous for Britain as it would be for France and Italy. Therefore, Mussolini proposed that London forgive the amounts owed by Paris and Rome. In turn, the French and Italian governments would reduce the reparations owed them by Germany by an equivalent amount. The amount of reparations owed by the Germans would be reduced to 50 billion gold marks, equal to $12.5 billion The Italian indebtedness to Britain amounted to about $1.9 billion in the dollars of the time. The Italian share of German reparations amounted to roughly $1.2 billion. Thus Italy would benefit greatly from such an arrangement. France, on the other hand, owed Britain about $2.4 billion but was to receive an amount equal to $6.5 billion in German reparations. In American dollars, the overall German reparations amount would be reduced to $8.2 billion. Finally, Germany would be given a loan (presumably by British banks) of the equivalent of 3-4 billion gold marks and receive a two-year moratorium on reparation deliveries. The loan would be used to stabilize the paper mark and to make reparations payments. Reparations payments in kind would continue all the while.28
Mussolini’s proposals received some polite attention over the next few weeks. In the end, however, both the French and British declared it to be unacceptable. The French considered the terms far more easy than the Germans deserved. The British would not accept the financial obligations nor the loan annulments until the issue of huge Allied debts to the United States was settled. Meanwhile, a British attempt to forestall a French occupation of the Ruhr failed. In early January 1923, Mussolini agreed to participate on a symbolic level in the occupation. He would send two Italian engineers to help run the Ruhr mines and factories. He had been both angered and disappointed by British refusal to forgive the Italian war debt and demanded financial compensation from the French, although at German expense. Mussolini wanted a share of the German coal extracted from the Ruhr. Poincaré agreed. Mussolini had set out for London intending to support the British and oppose the French. Within a month, he had completely reversed positions in return for a good deal of German coal.29
The coal that would be delivered would be the object of one of the greatest thefts in Italian history.
Balbo’s Death. Sarfatti lends credence to a wide-spread rumor that Mussolini arranged for Italian gun crews to destroy the bomber Balbo was flying that day. It has been verified, however, that the aircraft was downed by mistake. Shortly before Balbo arrived over Tobruk, a port in Tripolitania not far from the Egyptian border, Royal Air Force planes had attacked the city’s harbor installations. Nervous, poorly trained and equipped Italian anti-aircraft gunners mistook Balbo’s bomber for an enemy plane. They shot it down in error.30
Schadenfreude. After World War II, Sarfatti’s hatred of Hitler and contempt for Mussolini are understandable. This helps explain her description of the Führer’s delight at Mussolini’s symbolic passage into old age while the Duce sat imprisoned. In fact, the overthrow of a man he regarded as his hero appalled the Führer. He immediately ordered planning for the rescue of the Duce. That was accomplished six weeks later in early September 1943.31
1. Kirkpatrick, Mussolini, pp. 197-200; Steiner, The Lights That Failed, pp. 119-23
2. Raymond Poincaré (1860-1934). A member of the center left and one of the leading statesmen of the French Third Republic. After a year as prime minister, 1912-13, Poincaré was elected president of the republic and served for the next seven years. As head of state during World War I, he successfully pursued victory over the German invaders. During the negotiations for the Versailles Treaty, he advocated forcing the Germans to pay reparations for the enormous damage they had inflicted on France. He gained his goal. Following his presidency, Poincaré was premier again in 1922-24 and 1926-29. In 1923, following German failure to deliver reparations, he ordered French troops to occupy the Ruhr industrial basin and broke German resistance to that move.
3. Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527). Florentine official, political theorist, diplomat and poet. His most famous work is il Principe (The Prince), a treatise on obtaining, employing and retaining supreme state power.
4. Ahmad Fuad (1868-1936). Son of the Khedive Ismail and, from 1917, ruler of Egypt. After the Ottoman sultan deposed Ismail in 1879, the eleven-year-old Fuad accompanied his father into exile in Italy. He first lived in Naples, then attended the Turin military academy. He returned home in his mid-twenties. Fuad became Sultan of Egypt in 1917 and, in 1922, assumed the title of king. Fuad’s happy years in Italy, his fluent Italian, his desire to end British control of Egypt and his attempts to abolish parliamentary government led to Fuad’s de facto alliance with Mussolini. During the Italian-Ethiopian War (1935-36), the British kept Fuad under close watch.
5. George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824). One of the great Romantic poets, notorious for his riotous, licentious, reckless behavior. Scandal and debts drove him from England at age twenty-eight. He spent the last years of his short life in Switzerland and Italy. Byron died of disease and medical malpractice while on his way to join the Greek war of independence.
6. Literally: “Let’s throw the canopy into the air!”
7. Camillo Ridolfi. A professional solider and sports instructor. In 1913-15, Ridolfi taught Mussolini to fence in Milan, although not very well. He accompanied Mussolini to many of his duels. Mussolini arranged for Ridolfi’s commissioning as an officer and made him his military orderly. By the late 1930s, the former sergeant had risen to the rank of full colonel.
8. Cirillo Tambara. He was an army veteran hired as a messenger at Il Popolo d’Italia in August 1919. In 1920, he picked out Mussolini’s first car, a jalopy christened Bianchina. Tambara also served as Mussolini’s valet on his early travels. He frequently drove Mussolini to see Sarfatti in 1920-23. While Tambara was a grumbler and forgetful, Mussolini kept the loyal assistant constantly at his side. Poor health forced Tambara to retire from Mussolini’s service in March 1923 and he returned to Milan. He and Mussolini had an emotional reunion in the Milan prefecture, April 25, 1945.
9. Cesare Redaelli. After service as a fighter pilot in World War I, Redaelli opened a flight school on the outskirts of Milan. He was Mussolini’s first instructor in fourteen flights, 1920-21. Raedelli introduced the future Duce to a number of aircraft manufacturers and designers who would become prominent under the Fascist regime. Mussolini proved a poor student and ended his lessons without obtaining a pilot’s license.
10. Bruno Mussolini (1918-1941). Third child of the Duce. An air force pilot in Ethiopia, Spain and World War II. Died in the crash of his heavy bomber in Pisa in 1941.
11. Romano Mussolini (1927-2006). Too young to have any involvement in the Fascist regime, he ran a restaurant with his sister, Anna Maria, in the immediate postwar years. He went on to a successful career as a jazz pianist and orchestra leader. His daughter, Alessandra, became a prominent neo-Fascist parliamentary deputy.
12. Anna Maria Mussolini (1929-68) Youngest child of Mussolini. Contracted polio at age seven, which left her with permanent health problems. Her illness caused her father anguish. Under a pseudonym served as the hostess of a popular radio interview program in the 1950s. Revelation of her identity led to her dismissal. Married and had two children. Died of cancer.
13. Adonis, a figure of unsurpassed male beauty in classical mythology. The goddess Venus fell in love with him. But the mere mortal Adonis was killed by a boar while hunting.
14. During the Fascist dictatorship, virtually all photographs of Mussolini with supposedly ordinary Italians were actually staged using police agents in costumes or street clothes.
Quinto Navarra, Memorie del cameriere di Mussolini (Bracigliano SA: Le onde, 2009), p. 65; Olla, Mussolini and His Women, pp. 301-2.
15. Galeazzo Ciano (1903-1944). Son of World War I naval hero Costanzo Ciano. The younger Ciano entered the diplomatic service in 1925. As arranged by their fathers, he and Edda Mussolini wed in 1930. After bomber pilot service in Ethiopia, Mussolini made Ciano foreign minister in 1936. He initially supported alliance with Hitler. But by 1939 he regretted that policy. Dismissed from the foreign ministry in February 1943, Ciano joined the plot against Mussolini. The conspiracy helped the king overthrow the Duce that July. Facing charges of gross corruption, Ciano fled to Germany just before the new Italian government broke with the Third Reich. The Nazis turned him over to Mussolini’s puppet regime. Ciano was convicted of treason and executed in January 1944.
16. Lino Balbo (1909-1940). Joined the army in 1926 and became an Alpini officer. He left active service in 1932. In 1934, he became Fascist Federal Secretary of Ferrara, seat of his uncle’s power. He served in Ethiopia in the spring of 1936. Called to Libya, where his uncle was governor, shortly before Italian entry into World War II. He died a few weeks later.
17. Pietro Badoglio (1871-1956). He enjoyed a meteoric rise from lieutenant colonel to full general in World War I. Postwar service as army chief of staff ended in 1923 due to readiness to stop the March on Rome by gunfire. He was exiled to Brazil as ambassador but brought back by Mussolini to be his chief military adviser. Conservative, unimaginative, greedy but wily, Badoglio gained promotion to the rank of marshal and the largely ceremonial post of chief of the supreme general staff in 1926. He held it until 1940, despite serving as governor of Libya, 1928-33, supreme commander in East Africa, 1935-36 and Marconi’s successor as president of the National Research Council, 1937-40. Badoglio displayed great unease with Mussolini’s alliance with Hitler but only grumbled. In December 1940, Mussolini used Farinacci’s Il Regime Fascista to make Badoglio the scapegoat for the failed invasion of Greece and the marshal resigned. In 1942-43, Badoglio helped the king plot the Duce’s removal and then replaced him as head of government in July 1943. He bungled Italy’s exit from the Axis and switch to the Allied side in September, fleeing Rome ignominiously with the king. He stepped down as prime minister after the liberation fo Rome in June 1944. Badoglio’s role in 1943-44 saved him from postwar retribution for his African war crimes and servile fifteen-year adherence to the Fascist regime
18. Ferdinand Foch (1851-1929). Chief of staff of the French army from May 1917; supreme allied commander from April 1918.
19. Luigi Federzoni (1878-1967). Prominent founder of the Nationalist Association, who had a distinguished military career in World War I. Federzoni agreed to merge his conservative, monarchist party with the Fascists in 1923. He served as minister of colonies from November 1922 to December 1928, broken by holding the interior portfolio from June 1924 to November 1926. During the Matteotti crisis and Mussolini’s subsequent physical collapse, Federzoni provided crucial leadership. Federzoni angered other Fascist leaders for his moderation, and provoked their envy for his administrative abilities. As a result, Mussolini placed him in the largely ceremonial post of President of the Senate from 1929 to 1939. Federzoni voted against Mussolini at the final Grand Council meeting. After postwar sentencing to life imprisonment, Federzoni received amnesty in 1947 and spent the remainder of his life in Portugal.
20. In her manuscript, Sarfatti made two chronological errors. She stated that the date on which Mussolini’s honorary degree was to be bestowed would have taken place during the Matteotti crisis. In fact, that crisis began in June 1924. She also placed the appearance of Mussolini’s Machiavelli article in Gerarchia “some years later.” In fact it was published at the end of April 1924. Pini & Susmel, Mussolini, vol. II, p. 369; De Felice, Mussolini il fascista. I, pp. 465-66; OO, vol. XX, pp. 251-54
21. The Via Rasella runs close to the Piazza Barberini. Despite its imposing name, at the time the Villa Tittoni was in dilapidated condition. Mussolini’s simple apartment lacked a kitchen. If he decided to eat at home, he had his meals sent up from his landlord’s kitchen on a lower floor. See Kirkpatrick, Mussolini, p. 172.
22. Giovanni Host-Venturi (1892-1980). Although born in Fiume, Host-Venturi joined the Alpini in 1915, then served in the Arditi. He led Italian troops into his birthplace in November 1918. The next year, he joined D’Annunzio to seize the city for Italy. Host-Venturi adhered to the Fascist movement in December 1920. After Italy annexed Fiume in March 1924, Host-Venturi served as Fascist Federal Secretary and Militia commander in the area, brutally suppressing Slavic culture in Istria. He served as communications undersecretary, then minister, 1935-43. He rallied to Mussolini’s Fascist republic in 1943, then went into permanent Argentine exile in1948.
23. Sarfatti makes a punning reference to the English-language translation of the title of Nietzsche’s two-volume 1878 work, Menschliches all-zu Menschliches.
24. DDI, 7, I, no. 224, n. 3.
25. Alice De Fonseca Pallotelli (1892-1973). Much about De Fonseca remains uncertain. It is clear that she had a relationship with Mussolini spanning nearly thirty years. She was intelligent, well-educated, sexually alluring, and charming. She was raised in Florence and London and spoke perfect British English. Mussolini met her in Milan in 1916 or 1917, shortly after her marriage to the musical impresario Francesco Pallotelli (1884-1964). In Milan, Alice gave birth to a son, Virgilio (1917-1986), who may have been Mussolini’s child as well. She had another son, Duilio, and a daughter, Adua. Both also claimed the Duce as their father and Mussolini believed they were his offspring. Francesco Pallotelli was well aware of his wife’s relationship. The couple spent most of the Fascist period in Rome, living close to Mussolini. He visited Alice regularly, later causing Claretta Petacci considerable upset. By the late 1930s, the Pallotellis depended on Mussolini for financial support. The Duce eventually found a position for Francesco in Italian East Africa, which he held from 1938 to 1940. Pallotelli returned to Italy shortly before Italy entered World War II and received a minor post in the Fascist Party. He and his wife adhered to Mussolini’s puppet republic in late 1943. Alice saw Mussolini frequently until the spring of 1945. Virgilio Pallotelli, an air force officer since 1935, was taken prisoner by the British in 1943. He escaped under mysterious circumstances, joined his parents in northern Italy and became a trusted member of Mussolini’s personal staff. Virgilio and his mother seemed to have been involved in still-unexplained contacts with British agents on Mussolini’s behalf in 1944-45. The Pallotelli couple and Virgilio returned to Rome in August. In 1946, Francesco Pallotelli was arrested and tried for collaboration with the Germans in 1943-45. He was released unpunished.
26. Rossi, Storia di Alice, pp. 18, 29, 49, 129-30. Virgilio Pallottelli may have been Mussolini’s son.
27. Steiner, The Lights That Failed, pp. 213-19.
28. DDI, 7, vol. I, no. 217; Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939 [hereafter DBFP], vol. XX, no. 133; Steiner, The Lights That Failed, pp. 24-27, 194-99.
29. DDI, 7, vol. I, nos. 224, 256, 283, 303, 323, 331; Alberto Pirelli, Taccuini 1922/1943, Donato Barbone, ed. (Bologna: il Mulino, 1984), pp. 41-43; Steiner, The Lights That Failed, pp. 219-21.
30. Claudio G. Segrè, Italo Balbo: A Fascist Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 392-407.
31. Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (New York: Macmillan, 1970), pp. 367-68.