Читать книгу Children of Monsters - Jay Nordlinger - Страница 11
ОглавлениеMussolini had five children, officially. How many unofficial children he had, no one can know: Mussolini was not the conjugal or monogamous type. He had a great many lovers or mistresses, including the one he died with, Claretta Petacci. They were shot, then hung upside down at the gas station in Milan.
There was definitely one unofficial child—a son named after him, Benito Albino Mussolini. His mother was Ida Dalser, with whom Mussolini began an affair in 1909 or so. Both were in their twenties. At some point, they may have married, but this is unclear. What is clear is that Benito was born in 1915. About a month later, Mussolini married someone else, Rachele Guidi.
The two women met once, stormily. It was in 1917, when Mussolini was in the hospital, recovering from a war injury. Many years later, Rachele told a son of hers, Romano, what happened: “She [Ida] threw herself at me in your father’s room, insulting me and screaming, ‘I am Mussolini’s wife! Only I have the right to be at his side!’ The soldiers there started to laugh. Wild with anger, I lunged at her and grabbed her by the neck. From his bed, looking like a mummy with bandages restraining his movement, Benito attempted to intervene. He got up from his bed to stop us while a doctor and two nurses also tried their best to separate us. Dalser fell back, and I burst into tears.”
For a while, Mussolini accepted Benito Jr. as his son and made payments for his support. But when he rose to power in 1922, Ida and Benito became a nuisance to him. Ida kept showing up, demanding her rights, and especially those of her son. Mussolini had her confined to an insane asylum; he had Benito confined to a separate asylum. They were not crazy when they went in, but they were certainly tormented as “patients,” or victims. Both died horribly: mother in 1937, when she was in her late fifties, and son in 1942, when he was in his mid-twenties.
These events came to light in the decade of the 2000s, when there were books and films. Mussolini did many cruel things in his life; almost never was he crueler than in his treatment of Ida Dalser and their son, Benito.
It was the presence of Ida that spurred Rachele to marry Mussolini. Ida, with her newborn, was calling herself “Signora Mussolini”; Rachele thought there could be only one of those, and it wasn’t Ida. So, Rachele married Mussolini in a civil ceremony in December 1915. The groom himself was not present. He was laid up in bed—as he would be later, when Ida and Rachele met and fought. He sent a proxy. Also in attendance was a little girl, Edda. She was the five-year-old daughter of Mussolini and Rachele.
Edda had come along in September 1910. For many years, there was some question of her maternity—not paternity, but maternity, the questioning of which is rare. It was whispered that Edda was really the daughter of Angelica Balabanoff, a “Russian Jewess” with whom Mussolini had an affair. They were comrades in revolutionary circles. But the ultimate answer to this rumor is that Rachele Guidi Mussolini would never have accepted or raised Edda if she had not been her own. The Mussolinis’ eldest son, Vittorio, put it this way in a memoir: “It is enough to have met my mother once to realize that some other woman’s daughter would never have come into her house.” Edda says much the same, in a memoir of her own.
Rachele and Mussolini were not the marrying kind, given their political and social beliefs. They were “good Socialist revolutionaries,” as Edda writes, believing only in what was called a “free union.” According to Vittorio, Rachele would say, “You don’t hold a man with a stamped certificate.” Besides, she wanted to be free to leave Mussolini quickly and easily, if he displeased her. But Ida Dalser, in a way, forced her into marriage. Ten years after the civil ceremony, in 1925, Rachele and Mussolini had a religious ceremony, for appearances’ sake.
Mussolini, to say it once more, had a great many affairs. Vittorio relates that, when he learned of them as a boy, “it shook me terribly.” It also “doubled my affection for my mother, whom I felt I must defend at all costs.” But he came to accept his father’s ways, and writes that he was “a good husband.” (He also says, “I know only men will understand me.”) It is sometimes said that Rachele accepted her husband’s affairs nonchalantly or stoically, the good Italian wife, or dictator’s wife. This is not necessarily true: When she learned of Claretta Petacci, she swallowed bleach. A maid found her, forced her to vomit, and sent for help. Romano writes that the maid saved his mother’s life.
The couple had their five children: Edda, Vittorio, Bruno, Romano, and Anna Maria, born over a span of 19 years—1910 to 1929. In Fascist propaganda, Mussolini had a happy, full family life (unlike his weird partner in the Axis, Hitler). Biographers describe him as a distant father, rarely seeing his children, or wife, for that matter. But his children adored him. Perhaps they treasured their moments with him all the more, for the relative fewness of them. What everyone agrees on—certainly the children—is that Rachele was “the real dictator in the family.” She had a rural simplicity, firmness, and savvy.
We will take a look at the children, one by one, starting with the eldest and proceeding to the youngest. We will also look at some of their children, i.e., Mussolini and Rachele’s grandchildren. The first of the Mussolinis’ children, Edda, had the most complicated and interesting relationship with her father. This must be expected, in view of the fact that he executed, or allowed the execution of, or failed to stop the execution of, her husband.
Mussolini absolutely adored Edda. Is there anything like a father’s love for his daughter, especially a firstborn daughter? Edda was the apple of her daddy’s eye, as everyone said. Romano put it nicely in his memoirs: “My father had a weakness for her, which he made no attempt to conceal.” Mussolini insisted on being present at Edda’s birth, and fainted. He would be daunted by her on later occasions as well. They were a lot alike. As Romano writes, “She had his temperament (energetic to the point of recklessness)” and other things. “She resembled him physically too, with that withering look she inherited from him.”
Edda Mussolini Ciano
Mussolini’s adoration was returned, most of the time. Edda would write, “The degree of osmosis between my father and me was such that to please him and obey him I learned how to do everything: I was the first Italian woman to drive a car and to wear trousers,” etc. She was maybe the only person who could talk back to him. Mussolini once remarked, “I have managed to bend Italy, but I doubt I will ever be able to bend Edda’s will.” Romano writes, “Even Hitler himself held her in high regard.” (Those words “even Hitler himself” are characteristic of the Mussolini family. They held him in high regard, to borrow Romano’s language.)
Fascinating, willful, and, let’s face it, the daughter of the absolute ruler, Edda had more than her share of boyfriends and suitors. When she was 19, however, she was introduced to the man she would marry, Galeazzo Ciano, son of Costanzo Ciano. This elder Ciano was an admiral, war hero, and count. He was also a Fascist minister and close ally of Mussolini. Indeed, he was Mussolini’s designated successor. Galeazzo, like his father, was called “Count Ciano,” and Edda would be known for the rest of her life as “the countess.”
When the pair met, Ciano was working in the diplomatic corps. He was a bon vivant, a swell, a playboy. Donna Rachele, the matriarch, had little use for him, as she had little use for anyone whom she thought had airs. Yet Ciano was more than a spoiled, pleasure-seeking child: He was bright and capable, as his famous diary proves. The marriage between this prince and princess of Fascism, Galeazzo and Edda, took place on April 24, 1930. It was one of the great social occasions of the age. So reluctant was Mussolini to let Edda go, he followed her in his car as the newlyweds drove to their honeymoon on the Isle of Capri. About 15 miles outside of Rome, Edda had had enough. She confronted her father, demanding that he turn back. He pleaded, “I just wanted to accompany you some of the way.” But turn back he did, with tears in his eyes.
The Cianos’ marriage is sometimes described as an “open” one, or perhaps we could say a “free union,” to use the earlier term. It is assumed that the count had a lot of women and the countess a lot of men. Amid this, they had three children together. Ciano was an aviator, and led a bomber squadron in the Ethiopian war (1935–36). When he returned home, he was named foreign minister by his father-in-law. He was young for the position, age 33. Before long, people thought of him as the heir to the throne. As the elder Count Ciano was once the designated successor, now the younger count was in waiting, or so it was assumed. Galeazzo certainly wanted the job. His wife would confirm it matter-of-factly in her memoirs: “Who does not dream of succeeding in life?”
People also noticed that Ciano looked and sounded a lot like Mussolini. As Time magazine put it, the foreign minister was “aping the postures, speech, and manners of his father-in-law.” Here again, Edda is matter-of-fact: “My husband seemed to mimic my father simply because he met with him several times a day for years and so unconsciously adopted certain of his characteristics. There are families, the Agnellis, for example, in which all the brothers and their friends speak in exactly the same way.” (The Agnellis are the industrialists who have forged and led Fiat, the automaker.)
That Time article appeared in the issue of July 24, 1939. Edda was on the cover, which advised, “She wears the diplomatic trousers.” The story inside was titled “Lady of the Axis.” It began, “Most noteworthy Italian exponent of the Fascist dictum that a woman’s place is in the home is none other than Donna Rachele Mussolini.” But “Italy’s outstanding exception” to this dictum was the Mussolinis’ eldest child. The article was entertaining, scalding, and sensational, depicting Ciano as a lightweight and mediocrity, and his wife as a conniving floozy—of dubious maternity.
Making a visit to Berlin, Edda “liked the heavy masculine atmosphere,” said Time. “Handsome young Nordic men were always at hand to keep her in a proper Germanic frame of mind.” In Budapest, “the Countess was said to have made eyes at one of the sons of old Regent Horthy. This could easily have been excused, but when the Count and Countess showed up for a hunting expedition arranged by the Regent four hours late with only the excuse they had overslept, there were strained feelings.” Edda was also depicted as a raging, hard-line Fascist, which was quite true.
Whether she ever knew the contents of the article is unclear. In her memoirs, she writes, “Time even devoted its cover to me one week. What a boon to the ego!”
There were actually towns named for Edda, or at least one of them. After Mussolini invaded Albania in April 1939, he renamed Saranda, or “Santi Quaranta,” as the Italians had called it, “Porto Edda.” The name stuck until Italian fortunes were reversed later in the war.
Edda Mussolini Ciano loved Fascism, loved Nazism, and loved Hitler. In her memoirs—penned well after the war, in the mid-1970s—she is entirely open about this. In May 1940, she argued with her husband, expressing her disgust, indeed “shame,” that Italy had yet to enter the war on Germany’s side. Her father no doubt knew how she felt as well. And she did not have to endure her “shame” for much longer. “A month later,” she writes, “Italy entered the war, but I must emphasize that, though I was delighted by my father’s decision, I had absolutely nothing to do with it.”
She nonetheless had a role to play in Axis relations. I will let her explain: “Given my Germanophile sympathies, I was, without being aware of it, the link between the Führer and my father. I found it normal that two dictators should be allies. And this all the more so since, as soon as he took power in 1933, I had begun to consider Hitler a veritable hero.”
Edda writes fondly and tenderly about Hitler, recalling the time she joined him and the family of Joseph Goebbels, his propaganda minister, on the shores of Lake Wannsee. Hitler played with the Goebbels children, “giving all signs of pleasure at doing so and at hearing them call him ‘uncle.’” She met with Hitler on several occasions, and “was always struck by his extraordinary kindness and affection toward me as well as by his patience.” She had standing to argue with him—because “he knew that he could have confidence in my honesty, in my fidelity and in my friendly feelings toward his regime.”
The countess gives us a clue about Hitler and women, a theme with which we started this book: “During the receptions at the Chancellery, I was often struck by the number of very beautiful women surrounding Hitler.” At a particular reception, “a Nazi dignitary pointed out one of these women to me. She was a marvelously beautiful blonde with the body of a goddess, and he whispered in my ear that for the moment she had captured the Führer’s heart.” It was not Eva Braun. Whoever the blonde was, she “confirmed my impression that Hitler’s misogyny and his ‘marriage with Germany’ were only a legend.”
After the war, Edda was not entirely insensitive to the question of the Holocaust. In those memoirs, she writes that she is being “objective and sincere when I deplore the extermination of the Jews by the Germans.” She continues, “It is true that I believed that the Jews, although charming personally and in small numbers, represented a danger since they were eager for power and because at a certain period (and even today) they controlled the levers of command almost everywhere in the world. I was equally convinced, because the propaganda confirmed it and there was nothing to prove the contrary, that the Jews had neither pride nor a sense of humor, and I was delighted to be an Aryan.”
There is a “but” coming: “But I shivered in horror when I learned what the Germans had done to them, for such extermination cannot be justified, and my father would have opposed it with all his force if he had known of it.”
What can we say about a woman who writes the above passages? That she is repulsive, certainly, but also that she is frank (leaving aside the question of Mussolini’s awareness of the Holocaust). Edda herself says that, after the war, an expression arose in Germany: “Hitler? Don’t know him.” But she was different. “I myself prefer to say, ‘Hitler, Goering, Goebbels? I knew them.’ It is more honest.”
We will now return to the war, and to February 1943, specifically: Mussolini dismissed his entire cabinet, including the foreign minister. Ciano had been advocating a separate peace with the Allies; he knew the war was lost. He was being demoted to the position of ambassador to the Holy See; Mussolini had decided to be his own foreign minister. The boss said to his son-in-law, “Now you must consider that you are going to have a period of rest. Then your turn will come again. Your future is in my hands, and therefore you need not worry.”
Ciano recorded those words in his diary, on February 8. At the end of the relevant entry, he wrote, “Our leave-taking was cordial, for which I am very glad, because I like Mussolini, like him very much, and what I shall miss most will be my contact with him.”
The Allies breached Sicily on July 9. On July 24, the Fascist Grand Council, of which Ciano was a member, had a historic and fateful meeting. A motion was proposed restoring powers to the king. This would have the effect of dismissing Mussolini. The motion passed by a large margin, 19 to 7. Voting with the majority was Ciano. The next day, Mussolini woke up and went to work as though nothing had happened. The king (Victor Emmanuel III) had him arrested and imprisoned. One of Edda’s sons said to her, “What are we going to do? Are we going to be killed like the czar and his children?” Edda replied that it was possible.
In September, Mussolini was snatched, i.e., rescued, by German commandos. Hitler soon set him up as the head of a rump and puppet government at Salò, on the shores of Lake Garda in northern Italy. This was the “Italian Social Republic.” Ciano and several other Fascists who were part of the Grand Council majority were tried and sentenced to death.
Edda was in an agonizing position (to put it far too mildly). She had “always loved and admired my father more than anyone else in the world,” as she would write; she also loved her husband, whatever his failings. She fought tooth and nail for him, doing everything she could to spare him. She begged her father to stay the execution, and did so as persistently and passionately as she could. She writes, “I even believe that if he had been informed, toward the end, that I had been killed, he would have heaved a sigh of relief, despite his affection for me.” In a desperate gambit, she tried to use Ciano’s diary as blackmail against the Fascists and Nazis. That volume included some damning facts and observations.
The hard-core, bitter-end Fascists and the Nazis very much wanted to see the “traitor” Ciano dead. How much leeway did Mussolini have? Was he simply a puppet on Hitler’s hand? This has long been a matter of dispute. Vittorio Mussolini—the next of the children we will consider—gives one interpretation, in a memoir: If the dictator had “used his authority to impede the course of justice,” Italy’s “newly resurgent Fascism” would have been dealt “a mortal blow,” and the Nazis would have taken the opportunity to “tighten their grip, already terribly heavy, on our benighted country.” In this telling, Mussolini’s refusal to spare Galeazzo Ciano was a patriotic act.
Ciano and the others were killed on January 11, 1944. The method of execution was distinctive and meaningful: They were made to sit down in chairs, and then tied to those chairs; then they would be shot in the back. This was supposed to be a humiliating way to die, fit for traitors. Before the bullets flew, Ciano swiveled in his chair to face the shooters. This was a fairly brave death. And Edda was very brave, in her efforts to save her husband, herself, and their children. Indeed, she showed physical courage, on the road and on the run. Eventually, she escaped into Switzerland (where the children had already been spirited).
For a time, she hated her father, and her family more generally. She wrote to Mussolini, “You are no longer my father for me. I renounce the name Mussolini.” It must be said, the dictator took it hard, too. Some people contend that he never recovered from the drama of Galeazzo and Edda. Vittorio writes that Mussolini was “the truest and most tormented victim of the whole tragedy.” This is the Mussolini-family style—operatic, hyperbolic, and self-pitying—but there must be some truth in the statement.
After the war, Edda served a detention on the island of Lipari, off Sicily. In 2009, a book came out detailing an affair she had in those days: Edda Ciano and the Communist: The Unspeakable Passion of the Duce’s Daughter. It was made into a movie.
Edda lived out her life in Rome. In a sense, she was a woman without a country, at least for some years. The anti-Fascists hated her, of course, because she had been a true-believing and spectacular Fascist. But some of the Fascists hated her, too, because she was the wife of a “traitor,” and a collaborator with him. Eventually, she reconciled with her family. You can see photos where she has her hand tenderly on her mother’s shoulder. But there was always some ambivalence in her thinking.
Not until 1974 did she write her memoirs, or speak them to a chronicler. They came out in English under a classically relativistic title: “My Truth.” One of the reasons she did not speak out earlier, she says, is that such speaking “would only have served to trample even more on the memory of Mussolini.” Addressing the key question of whether she blamed her father for her husband’s death, she says this: “Although he was not directly involved at the beginning, he did follow a policy of noninterference, either because of a lack of courage or that sort of fatalistic attitude that makes us say, when faced with a given situation, ‘Very well, so be it! The wheels have begun to turn, we shall see what comes of it all.’ Therefore, he was partially responsible for what happened.” Mainly, however, she makes excuse after excuse for her adored father.
As for Galeazzo Ciano, she says he did not betray Mussolini. No, in voting as he did on the Grand Council, he had been “misled into making an error of judgment.” The widow insists not only that Ciano was no traitor, but that “my father knew it too.” She calls her father and her husband “the only beings whom I loved and admired with all my heart, and whom I still love today.” Edda died in 1995, age 84.
Before moving on to Mussolini and Rachele’s second child, Vittorio, I will relate something light. Call it gallows humor. The story is told that Winston Churchill was talking to his son-in-law Vic Oliver—an entertainer who had married the Churchills’ daughter Sarah. The prime minister didn’t like him in the least. Trying to make innocent conversation, Oliver asked him what figure in the war he admired most. Churchill answered, “Mussolini.” Astonished, Oliver asked why. Said Churchill (again, according to legend), “Because he had the courage to have his son-in-law shot.” (In reality, Ciano was almost certainly a better man than Mussolini, although that is not much to brag about.)
Vittorio Mussolini was born in 1916, six years after Edda, a year after their parents’ civil ceremony. Before World War II, when he was still a very young man, he made a name in the movies. Before that, he was a pilot—like Galeazzo, and like the second Mussolini son, Bruno. Vittorio flew in the Ethiopian war, and in the Spanish Civil War (for Franco and the Nationalists, of course), and in the world war.
He actually appeared on the cover of Time magazine, in October 1935, four years before Edda. But he and Bruno were merely adornments, flanking their dictator father, who had just invaded Ethiopia. They are wearing their military finest, looking stern and imperial. Vittorio looks maybe a little less stern and imperial than his father and younger brother—he looks pudgier (historians and chroniclers always nag him about his weight) and slightly awkward.
In 1936, he wrote a book about his Ethiopian experience, Voli sulle Ambe, which is to say, “Flights over the Ethiopian Highlands.” The book begins excitedly, with Mussolini’s Blackshirts darkening—blackening—the bridges of a ship. They are about to sail away to war, and a crowd is hailing them. The air is festive, already triumphal. The Blackshirts sing a chorus, full-throated: “Sing, sing, don’t get weary, to Abyssinia we want to go!” The book is replete with happy photos of African children, obviously delighted to be under Italian rule, and heroic Italian pilots, posing in front of their propellers.
It was the film world that Vittorio most relished. The third Mussolini son, Romano, writes, “My father was interested in the Italian cinema and considered it an extraordinary means for spreading propaganda. My brother Vittorio, who was a great fan and connoisseur of movies, had many long conversations with my father about directors and actors and kept him abreast of all the important developments.” In a paper on Italian attitudes toward America, Umberto Eco, the novelist and scholar, writes, “Vittorio belonged to a group of young Turks fascinated by cinema as an art, an industry, a way of life. Vittorio was not content with being the son of the Boss, though this would have been enough to guarantee him the favors of many actresses: He wanted to be the pioneer of the Americanization of Italian cinema.”
Vittorio did a good deal of writing about film, and edited a journal called Cinema. As Eco says, he “criticized the European cinematographic tradition and asserted that the Italian public identified emotionally only with the archetypes of American cinema. . . . He genuinely loved and admired Mary Pickford and Tom Mix, just as his father admired Julius Caesar and Trajan. For him American films were the people’s literature.”
In 1937, Vittorio’s father sent him to Hollywood, where he struck a deal with Hal Roach, the famed producer. Roach was probably most famous for Laurel & Hardy, the comedy team, and “Our Gang,” a.k.a. “the Little Rascals.” He and Vittorio formed a company called “R.A.M.,” which stood for “Roach and Mussolini.” They were to make movies out of grand operas, beginning with Rigoletto. Today, you can go on the Internet and find a film of Vittorio being introduced to the Little Rascals. Darla sits in his lap. Buckwheat shakes his hand. Alfalfa and Spanky express their enthusiastic interest in making movies with him. This all seems rather surreal, with the world war just around the corner.
Immediately, Roach took some heat for collaborating with Vittorio Mussolini, and, by extension, the dictator. He defiantly told a reporter, “Benito Mussolini is the only square politician I’ve ever seen” (“square” meaning honest, straightforward). But the pressure mounted, and Roach quickly went back on the deal, buying Vittorio out.
In the next few years, Vittorio wrote some movie treatments and did some producing. He used a pseudonym, Tito Silvio Mursino, an anagram of his actual name. Among his collaborators was Roberto Rossellini, who would go on to great fame as a director. During the war, they made war movies, including Un pilota ritorna, or “A Pilot Returns” (1942).
Vittorio had a role in the war, in addition to his flying and movie-making: He served as a liaison between Italy and Germany, rather as Edda did, before her husband’s downfall. Vittorio writes of shuttling between the two countries. And he says, “It was known that Hitler and the other German leaders liked me and held me in some regard.” In the end, he was on the run, like other Mussolinis. He writes, “In the war it had been possible to do one’s duty because of the thought that one was fighting for one’s country” and might die with honor. Now, however, “there was only fear left, that boundless, cold, useless fear of dying without much hope of resisting with arms or words.” And if he died, it would not be “at the hands of a foreigner, but at the hands of men born in my own country, men who would insult me in my own language and—which was worse—would think of me as a real enemy.”
He hid out for months, then sneaked out of the country. He went to South America, as more than a few Axis figures did. Wearing a disguise, and carrying a false passport, he sailed to Argentina. When he got there, he told the press, “I never had any interest in politics. I have less now, and you can be sure I have no intention of mixing in Argentine politics. I am just another Italian immigrant.”
For a decade or so, he traveled back and forth between his adoptive country and his native country, and eventually resettled in Italy. He became a great defender of his father’s legacy, a keeper of the flame. He did this by means of several books, including the one from which I have been quoting—written in 1961 and published in English as Mussolini: The Tragic Women in His Life. Those tragic women were Rachele, Edda, and the final mistress, Claretta Petacci. (Ida Dalser was arguably more tragic than all of them.) Whatever else can be said of Vittorio, he wrote well and interestingly, as his remarks about dying may suggest. He died in bed in 1997, at 80.
Bruno was born two years after Vittorio, in 1918. Like his older brother and his brother-in-law, Ciano, he flew. But more than they, he was a very serious and gifted pilot, something of an ace. He began in the Ethiopian war when he was 17. Then he flew for Franco in Spain. The newsreels show him looking the part: dashing, tough, carefree. An American announcer said, “In the wake of squadrons of Fascist planes lie crumbling skeletons of former homes. Destruction rains from the skies on houses that cave like eggshells. Terror rules the land. And the peace of the world hangs in the balance as the red shadow of war lengthens over Madrid.” Outside the sphere of war, Bruno set speed records. In January 1938, he and two other Italian pilots made a historic flight from Italy to Brazil. Before he left, his mother said to him, “Please, go slowly.” He answered, “Of course, mamma, you know I will. I have snails in my engines.”
Later in 1938, he married Gina Ruberti. “The bride,” reported the Associated Press, “comes from a family of ardent Fascists.” A year and a half later, the couple had a daughter, Marina.
In the course of the war—August 1941—Bruno was test-piloting a plane (a P.108 bomber). It crashed, killing Bruno and others. He was 23. His mother later told Romano about the mourning that resulted—her own and others’: “What hit me hardest was il Duce’s excruciating silence. It was as if he had turned to stone.”
Mussolini, in fact, took time to write a little book, Parlo con Bruno, or “I Speak with Bruno.” As the title indicates, he addressed his dead son personally. He starts by telling him about the funeral procession: There were so many people who wept for him. “Countless people.” Young and old, known and unknown. Thousands of arms rose to salute him. Little country girls knelt down. There was “profound grief, general, spontaneous. Why? Not because you were called Mussolini. They called you, and call you still, Bruno.”
The dictator quotes his older son, Vittorio, on the subject of Bruno’s love for music. Bruno enjoyed discussing the merits of this or that soprano, or this or that tenor, says Vittorio. Most people loved the tenor Beniamino Gigli, and Bruno did, too; but, in a departure from the consensus, he preferred Giacomo Lauri-Volpi. During the recent opera season in Pisa, says Vittorio, Bruno never missed a night. A few days before he died, he bought a recording of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which he listened to “with joy.”
Mussolini declares that his son was a “fascista nato e vissuto.” That is, he was born a Fascist and lived the life of a Fascist. “All that I have done or will do,” says Mussolini, “is nothing compared with what you have done.” He says that he will one day meet Bruno in the family crypt, to sleep beside him the sleep without end. But first, victory—victory in the war. So that sacrifices of people like him will not be in vain.
This is a highly sentimental, indeed mawkish book—operatic, hyperbolic. Whatever our judgment or taste, however, perhaps a father, even a dictator, can be forgiven his reaction to a child’s death, whatever that reaction is. The book is dedicated to little Marina. She was one and a half when her father died. At six, she would be orphaned. Gina Mussolini drowned in a boating accident on Lake Como. This was in May 1946. She was in the company of British officers—apparently friends of hers—which led to gossip. In any event, Marina was taken in and raised by the countess, Edda Ciano. Romano cites this as proof that his elder sister was not estranged from the Mussolinis. It may well be that Edda had a particular appreciation of Marina’s tragic situation.
Romano is the next child, born in 1927—nine years after his predecessor. He was 17 when his father died. The last time he saw him, he (Romano) was playing the piano. He was picking out melodies from The Merry Widow. As it happens, Hitler loved this operetta. It may well have been his favorite work of art, surpassing even Wagner. Hitler saw it countless times. He bestowed awards on the composer, Lehár, personally. At any rate, Mussolini embraced his son and said, “Ciao, Romano. Keep playing.”
He did, becoming a jazz pianist. For a while, he played under a pseudonym, Romano Full. But he soon discovered that his real name was a draw, not a repellent. He formed the Romano Mussolini Trio, and also the Romano Mussolini All Stars. He played with many of the greats of the day, including Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, and Dizzy Gillespie.
He married Maria Scicolone, the sister of Sophia Loren, Italy’s most famous actress, and one of the most famous actresses of the entire century. They had two daughters. Romano writes, “I admit that I have always been a vagabond, even at the cost of being a terrible husband, or, at the least, a husband deserving of criticism.” He left Maria for an actress named Carla Puccini. They had a daughter, who bears the name of her paternal grandmother, Rachele. Later, Romano and Carla married. Maria Scicolone, long after her divorce from Romano, wrote a book called “At the Duce’s Table: Unknown Recipes and Tales from the House of Mussolini.” (As you may have gathered, the Mussolinis are a book-writing crew. For one thing, Mussolini books are big sellers in Italy.) The book is dedicated “To Donna Rachele, with a daughter’s love.”
In the main, Romano contented himself with music, not politics or history, until his last years. Then he wrote two books. One of them is My Father il Duce. It is from this that I have been quoting. The book is affectionate, meandering, and whitewashing. Romano’s father never wanted the world war, you see, and had a secret plan to end it. “At times he seemed to live more for others than for himself,” Romano writes. More than once, he mentions the men of the Fascist Grand Council who voted against his father on that pivotal day in July 1943. Why, a Hitler or Stalin would have had them killed forthwith. See how benign Mussolini was in simply going to the king’s palace and allowing himself to be arrested?
Romano has a point there, of course. It may be faint praise to call a man better than Hitler or Stalin. But, in the dictator business, as in other businesses, one sometimes grades on a curve. Furthermore, one can learn things from Romano Mussolini, as we have seen. He died in 2006, age 78.
He had a younger sister, Anna Maria, the last Mussolini child. She was born in 1929. And she led what most people describe as a sad life. Anna Maria was the least “public” of the Mussolinis. As a child, she was stricken by polio, and this ailment recurred. Through treatment, Vittorio tells us, she was able to return to “semi-normality.” After the war, she worked as a radio host, using a pseudonym. When her real identity was discovered, there was a controversy, and she left, or was driven out. In 1960, she married. Her husband was Giuseppe Negri, an actor and television personality. Stage name, Nando Pucci Negri. They had two children, a daughter named Silvia and another daughter named after Anna Maria’s sister, Edda. Anna Maria died in 1968, when she was 38 years old.
Both of her daughters ran for office, and won—not grand offices, but offices all the same. Silvia Negri was elected to the city council of Forlì, where the Mussolini family has roots. Edda Negri was elected mayor of Gemmano, not far away. Later, she ran for parliament, unsuccessfully. She said she was quite proud of her grandfather, and to be his granddaughter. He made some mistakes, she allowed, but did many good things as well. She went so far as to change her name to Mussolini—to Edda Negri Mussolini.
A much older Mussolini grandchild, Fabrizio Ciano, ran for office, too. This was the third Count Ciano, after Costanzo and Galeazzo. He was twelve when his father was executed, thirteen when his grandfather was killed. He did not make it to parliament. In the early 1990s, he wrote a book with a hard-to-beat title: “Quando il nonno fece fucilare papà,” or, “When Grandpa Had Dad Shot.” The jacket copy explained that Fabrizio had always lived with a “heavy burden”—a statement pretty much impossible to deny.
When it comes to politics or ideology, all of the Mussolini grandchildren have been “neo-Fascists,” evidently. And it’s sometimes hard to tell the “neo” from the old-fashioned variety.
Vittorio’s son, Guido, ran for office: He ran for parliament, and for mayor of Rome. He got very few votes in both endeavors. Running for mayor, he said, “We draw inspiration from Mussolini’s principles, but we look to the future.” In his view, “Mussolini’s ideas were 99 percent good, and 1 percent maybe questionable.” After his defeat, he made it clear that his name was not to blame. On the contrary, the Mussolini name “worked in my favor. The Fascists love you, while the others, who aren’t Fascist, have to respect you. It has been a beautiful experience.”
He led a bid to have Mussolini’s body exhumed and his death “definitively” investigated. (That was Guido’s word, “definitively.”) He did not succeed in this bid. He said, “I’m not looking for anything—not for revenge, not for money, not for anything else. I just want someone to tell me the first name and last name of the person who killed him in such an ignoble way, when they were supposed to hand him over alive to the Americans. Before I die, I want to know whom I must curse.”
The real politician in the family—after the dictator, of course—is Alessandra: a daughter of Romano and his first wife, Maria Scicolone; a niece of Sophia Loren. Today, she is a member of the European Parliament, and she has been a member of both houses of the Italian parliament: the chamber of deputies and the senate. Mouthy, outrageous, she is one of the most colorful politicians in a country known for colorful politics. Alessandra Mussolini is the Pasionaria of neo-Fascism. And that is the name she uses: not Pasionaria but Mussolini, though she has long been married to a man named Floriani.
Earlier in her career, she was an actress, singer, and model. She appeared on the cover of Playboy (European editions): “The grit of Grandpa Benito, the sex appeal of Aunt Sophia Loren.” Among the movies in which she appeared was The Assisi Underground, about a priest who rescued Jews during the war. At first, she was cast as one of the Jews. But this caused an uproar—so she was recast as a nun, Sister Beata.
It was in 1992 that she was first elected to her national parliament. She was 29. Her mother warned her that politics was serious and hard work. She replied that it would be less difficult than her prior work: In the entertainment world, “they don’t care if you’re a good or talented actress, all they want is to see your legs and your breasts. In politics, at least I can say something important and people will believe me.” During her campaign, she defended her grandfather, in various ways. For instance, he was “very modern, one of the first ecologically minded politicians.” Mussolini did not even want “a real tree at Christmas, because it hurt him so much to chop it down.” When she won, she described the victory as “an act of love for my grandfather.”
While a new parliamentarian, she completed her academic studies, obtaining a degree in medicine. She has an unusual résumé: Playboy model, doctor, leader of neo-Fascism, etc. (This is in addition to being the granddaughter of Mussolini and the niece of Loren.)
Throughout her career, Alessandra has been with several parties and coalitions, in the ever-shifting world of Italian politics. She broke with the National Alliance in 2003, after its leader, Gianfranco Fini, made a visit to Israel. There, he denounced Fascism, referring to “shameful pages in history.” Alessandra said she was a keen supporter of Israel, but could not abide this denunciation. With others, she formed a party called “Freedom of Action,” later called “Social Action,” which then merged into a coalition known as “Social Alternative.” Her father, Romano, composed a party anthem for her: a little, dippy ditty called “The Pride of Being Italian.”
On the floor of parliament, she has worn tight T-shirts, boasting in-your-face slogans. And she is perpetually quotable. In 2006, the dictator of Libya, Qaddafi, made a threat: Unless Italy paid Libya compensation for earlier colonization, Italians would be attacked. Alessandra said, “If it hadn’t been for my grandfather, they would still be riding camels and wearing turbans on their heads. They should be paying us compensation.”
Ever and always, she is proud of her name, fiercely proud. Not only does she bear it herself—she fought a legal battle so that her children could bear it. When the leader of the National Alliance made his speech in Israel, she reacted pointedly: “Fini attacked my name. It’s my family.”
There have been a lot of girls in the Mussolini family. In 1996, Guido’s son Caio Giulio Cesare Mussolini had a baby boy, Carlo. A headline read, “Baby Carlo Ensures Mussolini Lineage.” The new grandfather, Guido, said, “For many years, I have waited for this lovely surprise, without which our family might have gone extinct.” He added, “My father Vittorio is in seventh heaven about this bolt from the blue, which will allow the dynasty started by Benito to last well into the 21st century.”
The Mussolinis are an interesting lot, you might agree. You might also agree that they can be likable, in particular moments or circumstances. What did Countess Edda say about the Jews? “Charming personally and in small numbers.” The Mussolinis have all shown great family loyalty (allowing for the complicated case of Edda and the Ciano children). Family loyalty is a virtue. But I think of something President Kennedy said: “Sometimes party loyalty asks too much.” So it is with family loyalty.
Certainly, we might sympathize with the Mussolinis—who, after all, did not choose the circumstances of their birth. (Who does?) They have been instilled with tremendous love for their patriarch. What’s more, they have been surrounded by people who love and venerate him—not only family members, but the public, or a slice of it. When Alessandra first campaigned in 1992, people came up to her to give her the Fascist salute. In all sincerity. Twenty years later, she was caught on the floor of the chamber of deputies signing photographs of her grandfather—giving that same salute. A colleague of hers had asked for the signatures. There is an appetite for this stuff.
From what I can ascertain, there has not been a political dissenter in the family. (Again, allowing for the complications of the Cianos.) What did Mussolini say about his dead son, Bruno? “Fascista nato e vissuto.” He was born a Fascist and lived his life as a Fascist. All the Mussolinis, at least to a degree, have been fascisti nati e vissuti. It was a mercy that they and their Axis partners lost the war.
In one of his books, Vittorio recounts a serious but teasing exchange he had with his mother, Donna Rachele. At the end of it, she says to him, “You Mussolinis, you’re all the same.”
