Churchill's Connections

Benito Mussolini

Home » Adversaries » Benito Mussolini

1883-1945
Italian politician

  1. Introduction
  2. Stories
  3. Biographical summary
  4. See also
  5. Further reading
  6. References

1. Introduction

Il Duce (‘the Leader’) was Italy’s prime minister from 1922 to 1943, the first of Europe’s fascist state leaders. He was a socialist in his early career but became strongly nationalist during World War I. He founded the National Fascist Party in 1921 which gained popularity for improving social and economic order. Churchill was initially impressed but became increasingly concerned about Mussolini’s intentions. Mussolini’s domestic support declined rapidly during World War II after he aligned Italy with Germany and suffered military defeats. He was ousted and imprisoned in 1943 but was rescued by German troops and installed as the leader of a puppet state in northern Italy. He was shot by communist partisans in 1945.

2. Stories

  • Mussolini was a British agent early in his career, paid to help keep Italy in World War I.
  • Churchill’s early impressions of Mussolini were positive, with reservations, but he became increasingly concerned about Mussolini’s association with Germany.
  • Mussolini’s ‘Blackshirts’ popularised the use of coloured shirts for political movements.
  • Mussolini cultivated an image of himself as ‘first sportsman of Italy’.
  • Mussolini was a vegetarian, played the violin, loved hats and kept pet lions.
  • Mussolini tried to seduce Churchill’s cousin during a sculpture sitting in 1922.
  • Mussolini’s body was stolen after burial, but was recovered, with a leg missing.

Mussolini was a British agent early in his career, paid to help keep Italy in World War I.

Mussolini was born to a blacksmith father (a radical socialist) and a schoolteacher mother (a devout Catholic). He was expelled from school, aged 10, for stabbing a fellow student with a penknife and suspended from another school at the age of 14 for the same reason. Moving to Switzerland to avoid Italian military service, he was a teacher, stonemason, then trade union activist, spending two weeks in jail for promoting a violent strike. He spent five months in an Italian jail for rioting in protest against the Italo-Turkish war of 1911-12.

He became magazine editor for the anti-war Socialist Party in Italy but was dismissed in 1914 when he supported Italy’s entry into World War I, believing that this would lead to major social change. He began to denounce orthodox socialism, arguing that national identity supersedes class differences. He served with the Bersaglieri: ‘sharpshooter’ shock troops who broke through enemy lines, running instead of marching, with capercaillie feathers in their headgear. His service ended in 1917 after he was injured by over forty fragments from a mortar bomb.

He was paid £100 per week (equivalent to £5800 today) by MI1(c), a forerunner of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), to publish propaganda encouraging continued Italian involvement in the war and to dissuade anti-war protestors. The payments were authorised by Samuel Hoare, a British intelligence officer in Rome. Hoare later became UK foreign secretary and a sponsor of the notorious British-French Hoare-Laval pact of 1935 that endorsed Mussolini’s partial occupation of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia), costing Hoare his job.

In 1919, Mussolini formed fasci di combattimento (‘fighting bands’) of armed war veterans who confronted left-wing organisations, often violently. The government turned a blind eye because the fascisti (‘fascists’) helped to reduce the threat of a Bolshevist revolution (see Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky).

Mussolini founded the National Fascist Party in 1921, gaining support amongst military and business leaders. In 1922, about 30,000 fascisti marched on Rome to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Luigi Facta. When King Emmanuel III refused permission for Facta to declare martial law, Facta resigned and the King asked Mussolini to form a government. He was given sweeping powers for a year to counter the country’s instability, which he used to enable his party to secure long-term control.

Churchill’s early impressions of Mussolini were positive, with reservations, but he became increasingly concerned about Mussolini’s association with Germany.

In January 1927, while chancellor of the exchequer, Churchill visited Rome and had two meetings with Mussolini. By this time, Mussolini had established a dictatorial regime but was highly popular domestically for re-establishing economic and social order. In a written statement afterwards, Churchill began a little defensively, saying that personal encounters between public people are ‘one of the ways in which international suspicion may be diminished’. He said that he had been charmed by Mussolini’s demeanour and that ‘Had I been an Italian I am sure that I should have been wholeheartedly with you from the start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism’. He wrote that Mussolini’s movement had rendered a service to the whole world and that Italy had provided ‘the necessary antidote to the Russian poison’. He gave a caveat: ‘But in England we have not had to fight this danger in the same deadly form. We have our way of doing things.’1

Other leaders were also impressed, with misgivings. Gandhi, for example, visited Italy four years after Churchill and wrote that ‘Mussolini is a riddle to me. Many of his reforms attract me. He seems to have done much for the peasant class. I admit an iron hand is there.’2

Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia in 1935 caused consternation at the League of Nations, but its sanctions were largely ineffective. The UK and France dropped the Hoare-Laval pact, but Germany endorsed the occupation. The 1936 Rome-Berlin Axis agreement and the 1939 Italy-Germany Pact of Steel (a military and political alliance) gave an increasingly clear indication of Mussolini’s loyalties.

Despite this, Churchill hoped to persuade Mussolini not to side with Nazi Germany in war. On becoming prime minister, he wrote to him in May 1940, saying, ‘I look back to our meetings in Rome and feel a desire to speak words of good-will to you […] Is it too late to stop a river of blood from flowing between the British and Italian peoples?’3 Mussolini wrote back two days later, rejecting the approach, and within four weeks he had declared war on Britain and France.

Mussolini’s ‘Blackshirts’ popularised the use of coloured shirts for political movements.

The ‘Blackshirts’ were members of fascisti squads that derived their shirt colour from World War I Italian special forces called Arditi (‘the daring ones’). Mussolini’s squads became a national militia, the MVSN, in 1923, and the black shirts soon became associated with the wider national fascist movement.

The German equivalent was the SA (Sturmabteilung, ‘Storm Detachment’). Its ‘storm troopers’ began wearing brown shirts in 1924, initially using World War I surplus stocks intended for German colonies. The SA ‘Brownshirts’ were effectively superseded by the SS (Schutzstaffel, ‘Protection Squadron’) in 1934, which initially used black uniforms (manufactured by the Hugo Boss company) and white shirts, soon replaced by a more practical grey-green uniform, with shirts rarely visible.

In the UK, Oswald Mosley formed the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in 1932 with a ‘Blackshirts’ paramilitary wing (see UK Fascist Groups). In the same year, the paramilitary Army Comrades Association (‘Blueshirts’) was founded in the Irish Free State and was soon merged into the new Fine Gael party. A split in 1935 created the National Corporate Party with a military wing called the ‘Greenshirts’.

General Francisco Franco, Spain’s Caudillo (‘Dictator’ or ‘Strong Man’) from 1939 to 1975, was assisted to power by the Falange (English ‘phalanx’, a close formation of troops), a movement that wore blue shirts to identify with manual workers.*

An accompanying feature for some groups was the ‘Roman salute’, often straight-armed but with variations, implemented in particular by Hitler and Mussolini. Its supposed connections with ancient Rome are tenuous. In modern times, it began in 1892 in American schools with Francis Bellamy’s Pledge of Allegiance and straight-arm salute towards the USA flag. It was replaced with the hand-on-heart salute in 1942, due to a growing association of a straight-arm salute with fascism.

Goose-stepping began in Germany in the mid-1700s as a marching discipline. It was adopted by Russia in around 1800 and became associated with various totalitarian regimes during the Cold War. It has been discontinued in Germany and some other countries but is still practised by a few, such as China and Chile.

An emblem used by various fascist organisations is the fasces (Latin for ‘bundles’): a batch of wooden rods tied around an axe, an ancient Roman symbol of authority. It has also been used by some non-fascist organisations, particularly federal entities in the USA.

* The term ‘blue collar’ emerged in the 1920s with reference to the use of blue denim shirts and overalls as working clothes. Denim was originally from Nîmes, France (de Nîmes, hence ‘denim’).

Mussolini cultivated an image of himself as ‘first sportsman of Italy’.

Mussolini was proud to be portrayed as a horseman, aviator, swimmer, tennis player and general sports enthusiast. He was frequently photographed either playing sport or attending sporting events. He was not shy about taking his shirt off for the cameras.

Horse riding was particularly useful as it could combine the notions of both sporting and military prowess. However, Mussolini was only average in ability and his riding instructor once had to intercept Mussolini’s bolting horse just before he crashed into a tree. The instructor gave the excuse that Mussolini’s thighs were the wrong shape for horse riding. Nevertheless, Mussolini constructed a jumping ground and invited journalists to observe his manoeuvres.

He took flying lessons and obtained his civilian pilot licence in 1923, adding a military qualification in 1937. He had a crash during early training, with minor injuries. He caused great concern to Hitler when he took over the controls on their return flight after talks in Ukraine in 1941, with German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop and SS leader Himmler also on board.

Mussolini was a good swimmer but not a well-coordinated tennis player. He was an aggressive fencer in his youth and liked walking in the countryside. He enjoyed driving, although somewhat recklessly. He attended football matches and supported Rome-based Lazio, promoting his image of being a man of the people. Italy won both the 1934 and 1938 football World Cups, increasing patriotic pride. In the 1938 quarter final against the French hosts, the Italian team wore black shirts and gave the fascist salute at the beginning of the game, causing outrage. In later years, Mussolini worried about putting on weight, so increased his time playing tennis and swimming. He also took up the lesser-known form of exercise of wood-splitting with an axe.

Although not generally known as a sportsman, Churchill won the public schools fencing championship in his youth and was a good polo player. Like Mussolini, he took flying lessons (also crashing, twice), but did not obtain a licence. He too enjoyed swimming but had little interest in football and left tennis to his wife Clementine.

Mussolini was a vegetarian, played the violin, loved hats and kept pet lions.

Mussolini arose at seven o’clock each morning and continued energetically until midnight. He started the day with a glass of milk, alone, followed by an hour of exercise. His other meals were usually with family or political contacts. His family had to be seated at the table at the appointed times before he would take his place. If eating alone, he would wolf his food down, contributing to his digestion problems.

Like Hitler, he was a vegetarian. He disliked pasta and tried to encourage people to eat rice, which he thought was more virile and would reduce wheat imports. His snacks were mainly chopped raw garlic with oil and lemon juice. The garlic smell and body odour from minimal showering were partly covered by his heavy use of cologne.

He taught himself to play the violin in his youth and continued playing throughout life, enthusiastically but not to a high standard. He discontinued the trombone after school. He was a prolific non-fiction writer, venturing once into fiction. The Cardinal’s Mistress (1910) was a reasonably successful novel but was later withdrawn to avoid its anti-clerical content offending the Pope.

Mussolini had a passion for hats, especially bowlers, partly because of Laurel and Hardy whose films he enjoyed. His style of dress was eccentric, including the frequent use of felt spats (spatter guards) around his ankles, out of fashion by the 1920s. Observing this, Ernest Hemingway wrote that ‘There is something wrong, even histrionically, with a man who wears white spats with a black shirt’.4

Mussolini had a pet lion called Bella Italia who had three cubs named Bebe, Nini and Toto, from the syllables of ‘Benito’. He was given another lion called Ras, an Abyssinian royal title which was also the term used for Fascist militia leaders. Mussolini enjoyed taking a lion cub with him during open-top car rides through city streets.

He also liked dogs and had a particular affection for cats. He had a photo of his fluffy white Angora cat on his desk but no pictures of his six children. He liked to be photographed with the cat, later giving rise to comparisons with Blofeld, James Bond’s nemesis.

Mussolini tried to seduce Churchill’s cousin during a sculpture sitting in 1922.

Churchill’s cousin Clare Sheridan made sculptures of Lenin, Trotsky and other Russian leaders while staying in the Kremlin in 1920. These encounters also led to her becoming a journalist, interviewing high profile figures.

She was granted an interview with Mussolini in Rome in 1922, who greeted her with the words, ‘I know all about you and your connections with the Russians’. She asked what he thought about Russians and the working classes, to which he allegedly replied, ‘The working classes are stupid, dirty, lazy and only need the cinema. They must be taken care of and learn to obey.’5

She was asked to visit him for a sculpture sitting at 10 o’clock the next evening. Ignoring the warning sign of the lateness of the hour, she arrived in his room to find that her equipment had been neatly laid out. She began work, with Mussolini seated opposite, but soon looked up to find him bearing down on her, ‘nostrils flaring – head down like an angry bull’.6

He may have heard rumours that she had had liaisons with one or more of her sitters in Russia. According to Sheridan’s cousin and biographer Anita Leslie, he grabbed her but was not prepared for her strong resistance, which turned into a fight. He blocked the main door, but she managed to reach a side exit and wedge her foot in the gap as Mussolini leaned against the door, bruising her arm.

The combination of her screams and the phone ringing threw him. A call this late must be important. He went to answer it, telling her not to leave, whereupon she fled. She departed for Switzerland the next day, furious that her beloved Italy had been tarnished.

Many years later in 1942, while doing a bust of Churchill, Sheridan asked him if he had not rather approved of Mussolini. Churchill nodded, saying, ‘It’s true, and I regard him as a very able man. He should never have come in against us; in fact this war need not have happened: it’s entirely due to bungling statesmanship.’7

Mussolini’s body was stolen after burial, but was recovered, with a leg missing.

Mussolini was the victim of his own propaganda when he was recognised trying to flee from Italy to Switzerland in April 1945. Photos of his distinctive features were on display everywhere and he was identified by communist partisans, despite his disguise as a German soldier. He and his mistress Clara Petacci, who was with him, were shot, then hung upside down in a large square in Milan where fourteen dead partisans had been displayed by fascists eight months earlier.

Mussolini was buried covertly in an unmarked grave in a large Milan cemetery but pro-fascist journalist Domenico Leccisi located it nearly a year later. He and two assistants dug up the corpse and took it in a wheelbarrow to a stolen car, transporting it to a house near the Swiss border. The newspapers were told anonymously that it would be returned when a burial on the Capitolium, one of Rome’s seven hills, had been guaranteed.

The body was moved around and ended up with two fascist-sympathising monks in a Franciscan monastery outside Milan, folded into a trunk. Four months after the theft, Leccisi was tracked down by the police and the corpse was recovered, although it was now missing a leg. He confessed to various criminal activities and received a six-year sentence for counterfeiting but escaped a sentence as a grave robber. He was released in a 1946 amnesty; charges against the monks were dropped.

Mussolini’s remains were kept secretly in a cupboard in a monastery near Milan for the next 11 years. In 1957 Prime Minister Adone Zoli needed the support of a right-wing party which was secured by handing over Mussolini’s bones, now in a soap box, to his widow Rachele. They finally came to rest in a sarcophagus in his family crypt in Predappio, eastern Italy.

Numerous conspiracy theories have sprung up about Mussolini’s death, including Churchill ordering his assassination and seeking to retrieve compromising correspondence (some forged letters are sometimes used to support this). Various people other than communist partisans have claimed to have shot Mussolini or to know who did, with conflicting stories. Another proposal is that he committed suicide before being shot. All have foundered on lack of evidence.

3. Biographical summary

OccupationTeacher, journalist, politician
CountryItaly
CareerSchool teacher and political journalist in Italy and Switzerland (1902-1914). Corporal in World War I (1915-17). Fascist activist (1917-22). Founder, National Fascist Party (1921). Prime Minister of Italy (1922-43). Minister of the Interior (1922-24, 1926-43). Minister of Foreign Affairs (1922-29, 1932-36, 1943). Minister of War (1925-29, 1933-43). Minister of the Colonies (1928-29, 1935-36, 1937-39). Duce (‘Leader’) of the Italian Social Republic (1943-45).
Born1883 in Predappio, Kingdom of Italy (nine years younger than Churchill)
FatherAlessandro Mussolini (1854-1910), blacksmith, socialist activist
MotherRosa Maltoni (1858-1905), Catholic schoolteacher; died aged 47 from meningitis
SiblingsEldest of three children:
1. Benito Amilcare Andrea (1883-1945)
2. Arnaldo (1885-1931), journalist and politician; died aged 46; heart attack
3. Edvige (1888-1952) (sister); author of My Brother Benito (1957)
EducationCatholic boarding school, Faenza (expelled age 10); Giosuè Carducci School, Forlimpopoli (suspended age 14); teaching diploma
Spouses1. Ida Dalser (1880-1937), m. 1914; beauty salon owner; interned and died officially from a brain haemorrhage; apparently not divorced before Mussolini’s next marriage
2. Rachele ‘Donna’ Guidi (1890–1979), m. 1915 (civil) and 1925 (religious) until Benito’s death; peasant’s daughter; barmaid; her mother became Benito’s father’s lover after the deaths of their spouses
RelationshipsVarious including Margherita Sarfatti (1880-1961), art critic, socialite; Clara ‘Claretta’ Petacci (1912-1945), executed with Mussolini by communist partisans. Rachele’s relationships included fascist Corrado Varoli.
ChildrenWith Rachele before 1915 marriage:
1. Edda (1910–1995); married Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano who was executed by Mussolini in 1944
With Ida Dalser after 1914 marriage:
2. Benito Albino (1915-42), navy recruit; interned, killed by injections in an asylum, aged 26
With Rachele after 1915 marriage:
3. Vittorio (1916–1997), film critic, producer
4. Bruno (1918-1941), air force pilot; died aged 23 in a flying accident
5. Romano (1927–2006), musician, painter; married actress Sophia Loren’s sister Anna Maria Scicolone; daughter Alessandra Mussolini (b. 1962) is a politician
6. Anna Maria (1929-1968), radio host; died aged 38 from various illnesses
Possibly other children from affairs
Died1945 in Giulino di Mezzegra, near Lake Como, Lombardy, Italy, aged 61 (20 years before Churchill); shot by Italian communists
BuriedUnmarked grave in Musocco cemetery, Milan; dug up by a fascist sympathiser; recovered after four months and hidden for 11 years; remains moved in 1957 to family crypt, San Cassiano cemetery, Predappio, Italy
NicknamesIl Duce (‘the Leader’); Il Testone (‘Big Head’) and Il Vecchio (‘Old Man’) (by son-in-law Ciano); First Sportsman of Italy (propaganda); Sawdust Caesar (by journalist George Seldes)
Height5’6½ ” (1.69 m)
Time magazineFront cover eight times: 1926 (with his lion Bella Italia), 1923, 1935 (with his brothers), 1936, 1940 (twice; once with Chief of Staff Pietro Badoglio), 1941, 1943

4. See also

Other Axis leaders

  • Hitler, Adolf
  • Tojo, Hideki

Other dictators

  • Hitler, Adolf
  • Mao, Zedong
  • Nasser, Gamal Abdel
  • Stalin, Joseph

Other fascist organisations

  • British Fascist Groups

Other removals of body remains

  • Chaplin, Charlie
  • Goebbels, Joseph
  • Hitler, Adolf
  • Pétain, Philippe
  • Shah, Reza

Other Churchill-related characters

  • Sheridan, Clare

Churchill controversies

  • Anti-appeasement
  • Miscellaneous (Mussolini correspondence cover-up)

5. Further reading

Mussolini

  • Bosworth, Richard J.B., Mussolini (Bloomsbury, 2014)
  • Clark, Martin, Mussolini (Taylor & Francis, 2014)
  • Moseley, Ray, Mussolini: The Last 600 Days of Il Duce (Taylor Trade Publications, 2004)
  • Neville, Peter, Mussolini (Routledge, 2004)

Mussolini and Hitler

  • Goeschel, Christian, Mussolini and Hitler: The Forging of the Fascist Alliance (Yale University Press, 2018)

Italy

  • Bull, Anna Cento, Modern Italy: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2016)

Italian fascism

  • Knight, Patricia, Mussolini and Fascism (Taylor & Francis, 2013)
  • Passmore, Kevin, Fascism: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2014)

Miscellaneous

  • Bailey, Roderick, Target: Italy: The Secret War Against Mussolini 1940–1943 (Faber & Faber, 2014) (missions by Churchill’s Special Operations Executive)
  • Kertzer, David I., The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe (OUP, 2014)
  • Langworth, Richard M., ‘Churchill-Mussolini Non-Letters’, RML, 2015
  • Leslie, Anita, Cousin Clare: The Tempestuous Career of Clare Sheridan (Hutchinson, 1976)

6. References

1. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Volume 5: The Prophet of Truth, 1922-1939 (Houghton Mifflin, 1966), p. 226.

2. Mahatma Gandhi, Collected Works, Volume 48 (Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1971), p. 429.

3. Winston S. Churchill, Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897-1963: Volume 6: 1935-1942, ed. by Robert Rhodes James (Chelsea House Publishers, 1974), p. 6324.

4. Ernest Hemingway, Dateline, Toronto: The Complete Toronto Star Dispatches, 1920-1924, ed. by William White (Scribner’s, 1985), p. 255.

5. Anita Leslie, Cousin Clare: The Tempestuous Career of Clare Sheridan (Hutchinson, 1976), p. 184.

6. Leslie, p. 187.

7. Clare Sheridan, To the Four Winds (A. Deutsch, 1957), p. 330.