Clara Petacci has etched herself in people’s memories with a single photograph. It was taken on 29 April 1945 and shows her body hanging by her feet from a hook in Piazzale Loreto in Milan. Her skirt is shyly pinned together between her legs and her chest is bared, bloodied and riddled with bullets. Her petite figure sways next to her lover Benito Mussolini in the company of the fascist leaders who shared her fate, while a vengeful crowd jeers at this cruel scene. Later, when the body was exhumed, a diamond ring, a gold locket with 17 small diamonds and a small note with the inscription Clara, I am you and you are me were found sewn into the shoulder pads of her dress. Ben. 24 April 1932 – 24 April 1941.
Such details were of interest only to the Italians, while the rest of the world showed little interest in her fate. Only a few voices could be heard condemning the “barbaric” scene in Piazzale Loreto, saying that the dictator’s mistress did not deserve the Duce’s fate after all. But if the world has forgotten Clara, the Italians have not. Hardly a week goes by without something about her appearing on the internet. In 2015, fans learned that the Alfa Romeo sport Berlinetta she was last seen driving had been sold for €2.1 million at a Paris auction. Numerous biographies have also appeared, some romantic, few scientific. Clara is known to have kept diaries and the correspondence between her and Mussolini was very extensive. This gives a rather detailed and realistic view of her life and, of course, of that of the Petacci family.
It is not known exactly how many women Mussolini made happy, as the figures are contradictory. He constantly boasted that he could not live without women. In May 1938, he said to Clara Petacci, who looked at him in disbelief, her eyes wide: “I was with one at eight in the morning, another at nine and a third at ten, and after the last one, a Brazilian whose name I no longer remember, I went to lunch.”
Gabriele D’Annunzio, a poet with political ambitions, challenged him on his role as a great lover and announced that he himself was undoubtedly more successful in this field than he. Having a bunch of mistresses was apparently a common practice among the leaders of the fascist party, and it was fascism that placed the man most extremely at the top of an ideally conceived society. Mussolini often emphasised his contempt for the fair sex. Thus, in 1932, in an interview with Emile Ludwig, he said that a woman could not influence a strong man, referring of course to himself.
Duče liked to tell the story that he had his first erotic experiences as a minor in a local brothel, and that even during his army service he used to go there. “I often went to the brothel, even though the women were dirty.” His first serious relationship came when he met Angelica Balabanoff, a Russian Marxist five years his senior, in Switzerland.
His life took a different path when he met Rachele Guidi in 1909. He took her away from home and lived with her in Forlì, where he was the editor-in-chief and sole journalist of the local socialist newspaper. “One day I threw her into an armchair and took her virginity with appropriate force …,” he confessed to Clari. Their daughter Edda was born and they married. Some later claimed that Rachel’s mother was the mistress of Mussolini’s father and that Mussolini had actually married his half-sister.
In 1912, Mussolini’s revolutionary faction triumphed at the Socialist Party Congress in Reggio Emilia and he became editor-in-chief of the party’s newspaper in Milan. From there his political career only went upwards. At a time when the clouds were gathering over Europe, heralding the First World War, he met in Milan the already married Margherita Grassini Sarfatti, from a wealthy Venetian Jewish family. Rich, independent and self-confident, she was quite an important figure in Milanese artistic life.
She was a few steps higher on the social ladder than Benito and Rachele, who were living in a small apartment and wondering how they were going to pay the bills. Margherita was certainly an important woman in Mussolini’s life and for a time an intellectual force in the dictatorship, but it was only in Ida that Dalser found the woman who was right for him. Ida was originally from Trento and had opened a massage parlour in Milan with her inheritance. By 1914, she and Mussolini were more than friends, but he married Rachele anyway.
Nevertheless, when he contracted typhoid fever in the army, the doctors first informed Ida, not Rachel. In April 1916, the two women met at his sickbed, Rachele proving to be physically stronger and, amidst tears and shouting, she fought off her rival. Mussolini later tried to get rid of Ida by paying her 200 lire a month in alimony, but she refused and dragged him through the courts for several years. “Coward, swine, murderer, traitor!” she shouted outside the windows of his flat, telling anyone who would listen how he had seduced and abandoned her when she gave birth to his son.
When the Duce ascended to power, he had her imprisoned in a mental asylum in Pergin, where she remained for many years. Her son, who was then educated in a school in Piedmont, later claimed to be the son of Benito Mussolini. He was found to be mentally unstable and sent to a mental hospital in Lombardy, where he died in 1942. Mussolini refused to reimburse the costs of his funeral.
In 1918, when Rachele contracted influenza, which took many lives, Mussolini had another affair. He was already editor of Il Popolo d’Italia, he employed the young Bianca Ceccato and from this union a son was born. Bianca was also from the Trento area. Mussolini quickly employed her as his secretary. She resisted him for a long time, refusing his letters, bouquets of flowers and other signs of affection, but eventually she too gave in. They only stopped seeing each other when Mussolini moved to Rome as Prime Minister and provided her with a monthly allowance of 2000 lire.
On 19 October 1922, in the run-up to the fascist march on Rome, Mussolini became the father of another illegitimate child, Elena Curti. Elena wrote her memoirs in 2003, after returning to Italy from voluntary exile in Spain. In it, she describes the love between Mussolini and her mother, Angela Cucciati, which would officially end in 1922, although they never stopped being friends and her mother visited him several times in Rome.
In December 1925, Duce decided to satisfy the Vatican’s wishes and married Rachel in the Church. His three children (Edda, Vittorio and Bruno) had already been baptised two years earlier. He and Rachel then had two more children (Romana and Anna Maria).
I must welcome him
Clara Petacci was born on 28 February 1912 into a respectable, ambitious and deeply religious family with close ties to the Vatican. Her father, Francesco Saverio, was a doctor with a lucrative practice in a well-known Roman hospital. Her brother Marcello, born two years before her, and her sister Myriam, born in 1923, formed a very close-knit family with their parents, and not even Clara’s bond with her father could break this bond.
Violet Gibson was another important woman in Mussolini’s life. She did not sleep with him, but this Irish woman with aristocratic roots shot at him on 7 April 1926 as he was returning from an official meeting in Campidoglio. The bullet grazed him where his nose and forehead meet. Among the many who reacted to this event was 14-year-old Clara Petacci. She wrote a letter to him, ending with the words: “…my super great grandfather, our life, our hope, our glory. Oh, my soul, why wasn’t I with you.”
Although she was not very successful at school and did not attend any of the lycées attended by the Italian elite, she clearly had a vivid imagination. Her brother Marcello was equally bright, having joined the Italian nationalist ANI as early as 1920 and later the fascist movement. But Clara was being groomed for a respectable marriage.
When Mussolini became Prime Minister, he did not automatically bring his family to Rome. Rachel and the children did not join him in Rome until November 1929, when the Villa Torlonio was completed and became his official residence. Until then, the Duce had lived the life of a bachelor in the centre of Rome, cared for by a housekeeper.
The story of an unlikely love actually began on 24 April 1932, when the Petacci family – mother Giuseppina, nine-year-old daughter Myriam, twenty-year-old Clara and her fiancé Lieutenant Ricardo Federici – decided to take the new highway to the beach at Ostia on the Tyrrhenian Sea. Mussolini wanted to indulge in a similar pleasure, dismissing his chauffeur and getting behind the wheel of his Alfa Romeo himself. He was in a good mood, because the economic crisis had hit Italy less hard than Germany. That is why he readily agreed to an interview with Emile Ludwig a few days ago and bragged about his successes.
Only a few things were spoiling his mood. His favourite daughter Edda married Galeazzo Ciano and went with him to Shanghai, where the young upstart became consul. He missed her terribly as they rarely saw each other. He pressed the accelerator and his car skidded past the Petacci family’s lancia. Clara recognised him and when the two cars stopped in Ostia, she ran to Mussolini. “I must say hello to him. I have waited so long for this moment,” she cried.
Mussolini carefully responded to her outpourings of admiration, politely asked how she spelled her name, as the Petacci family car had Vatican plates, pretended to have read her letters and the poems she had sent him, and then said goodbye.
Three days later, the phone rang at the Petaccis’, Mussolini introduced himself and said he wanted to speak to Clara. He suggested that she visit him and read him her poems. The family could not refuse such an invitation, even though they all knew how he felt about the fairer sex. After that, the phone calls came and went. When he did not call, Clara wrote letters to him.
If at the first meetings they still talked about poetry and philosophy, other topics came up later. Miss Petacci was not only his admirer, but also asked him for certain favours, privileges, promotions or just to overcome the obstacles of the bureaucratic system, whether it was for the benefit of her father, a famous doctor, her brother or her fiancé. She was extremely persistent in this and did not mind Mussolini’s wriggling.
Mussolini was already in his fifties, and he liked to present himself in public as a sturdy man, making sure his body was not too fat. He consistently shaved his head, as his hair was beginning to grey. He was aware that at his age it was not a good idea to get involved with a lady of Clara’s age, but he felt that it would have been different if Clara had been married. “Of course,” Clara commented, “it would be best for us if she married Ricardo Federici. But I don’t want to live in poverty. Why don’t you appoint him as your personal air adjutant and promote him first to captain and then to major?”
So on 27 June, the Cardinal married them in the small church of San Marco. The wedding journey began in Venice and continued with a 14-day cruise around the eastern Mediterranean, visiting Istanbul, Athens and Jerusalem. Ricardo was terribly bored on the cruise and the wedding night was already off to a bad start. Soon after returning to Italy, Clara had already begged Mussolini to send her husband to the Italian colonies in East Africa, “where he will suffer, because he hit me so hard that I fell on the ground”.
Jealousy
Clara was unhappy in her marriage, but Mussolini triumphed when his troops marched into Addis Ababa on 5 May 1936 and declared victory. From a balcony overlooking the Piazza Venezia, he spoke excitedly to the assembled crowd about the fascist empire, the empire of civilisation and humanity. In the early spring of 1936, he and Clara became lovers. From then on, she always teased him in her letters and never stopped warning him to do something for her father, who was being sued by someone and was not doing very well.
But Mussolini had other things on his mind. His youngest daughter, six-year-old Anna Maria, was suffering from polio and narrowly escaped death. Almost at the same time, he appointed his son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano, as foreign minister, and he immediately involved Italy in a costly and damaging intervention in the Spanish Civil War.
To Clara’s disappointment, her husband was returning home from the Italian conquests in Africa and she wrote again to Mussolini to help him. The couple were formally divorced in July 1936 and the Duke quickly sent Ricardo to the embassy in Japan as an air attaché. But Federici was lucky. In 1943, he chose Marshal Badoglio over the Duce. In 1945, after internment, he returned to Italy, remarried, became a general and finally Italy’s representative to NATO.
Clara was convinced that by saving Federici, her union with the duke had become real. From 1937 she came to him through a side entrance of the Venezia Palace. This was the servants’ entrance, and she was driven there by her father or mother in a car. The parents were resigned to this unusual relationship, as it brought them many benefits. On more than one occasion, Clara had to wait for hours in the Venezia Palace for Mussolini to come out of his office, and then they went together to the Sala dello Zodiaco. There was a bed, a small bar and a toilet with a sink, but no shower.
But their relationship was not without sparks. Clara had been keeping a detailed diary of everything that happened between her and the duke for quite some time. On 13 July 1937 she wrote: “Terrible. My world has fallen apart. I am dying.” The Duce accused her of infidelity, even though she swore to him that she had only met her brother Marcello’s friend a few times. Luciano Antonetti had been pursued by the secret police for some time and had reported to Mussolini about his meetings with Clara.
Clara also did not know that Mussolini had called her mother Giuseppina to him and asked her, “Is your daughter clean?” When her mother assured him that she was, he added: “Keep an eye on her, keep a constant watch on her. I trust you.” When Giuseppina returned home, she called her rebellious daughter to her and spoke to her. Clara insisted that she could not leave Luciano alone because he was very ill. He had been suffering from jaundice for a long time and had died in 1938. Her mother was horrified and warned her of the consequences that could befall the whole family.
The next morning, they went to see Mussolini together. Her mother tried to talk them out of it, she tried for two whole hours, and Clara did not say a word during that time. Only her mother spoke, proving that her daughter and Luciano were just friends. At these words, Mussolini went mad and cried out: ‘He who has the privilege of being close to Mussolini can have neither male nor female friends!’ Then he said that he did not want to see Clare again.
The women burst into nervous tears and protested. They were also crying when they got home, so Father Francesco Saverio decided to intervene. He forbade Clara to see Luciano and threatened to lock her up in an insane asylum if she did not listen to him. To back up his threat, he told her that he would beat her so that she would remember him for all eternity. Clara resigned herself to her fate, the police no longer reported her meetings with Luciano to the Duce and the dispute between the lovers was settled.
The autumn of 1937 was eventful. The Duke returned from his visit to Hitler in September and told Clara that the Germans were hard to keep as friends, but that as enemies they were terrible. In Spain, the civil war raged on, but the humiliating defeat of the Italians at Guadalajara in March of that year was not followed by further defeats. When a cautious businessman warned him that his plans exceeded the country’s economic strength, Mussolini replied: ‘You are wrong. Italy is rich and there is plenty of money. It just needs to be tapped. In any case, economic difficulties have never stopped the flow of history.”
In October, he told Clara to join him on the beach in Castelporziano. At that time, his slim daughter Edda had brought a two-piece swimsuit to Italy and Clara naturally had to try it on. Unlike Edda, she felt clumsy in them, and seemed uncomfortable putting her well-developed breasts and hips and bold body on display. She thought of herself more as the ideal mother, who was supposed to be a role model for all Italians.
As he often did on similar occasions, Mussolini brought family matters into the conversation. On this day, he talked about his son Vittorio, who was visiting America to bring Italian cinema to Holywood. “He wasn’t seduced by the mystique of American film stars. He says that they are all actually ugly and that their attractiveness is only the result of clever make-up. They add something to the nose, lift the cheeks, fix the teeth and that’s it.”
When Mussolini talked about his family, it was hard to stop him. Anna Maria, the youngest daughter, still had problems due to polio. She struggled to walk but often landed on the floor. He was also worried about Edda, Cian’s wife, who had hired a German nanny to bring up the children in the Prussian way. It was not only this that bothered him, but he was also convinced that all foreigners were just plain spies.
On 10 June 1940, Italy entered the war on Germany’s side, and Mussolini marked the occasion with a bombastic speech from the balcony of the Venezia Palace. He was convinced that the war would soon be over. In his diary, Foreign Minister Ciano said: ‘The great adventure has begun. God help Italy.” Italy’s promise to wage its war independently, of course, proved to be empty talk.
Family matters
Then one day Clara found out she was pregnant. She did not tell Mussolini. On 19 August, they met again at the Venezia Palace, Clara looked tired and Mussolini was furious. She returned home and felt worse and worse. The doctor quickly diagnosed an ectopic pregnancy. Over the next few days, her condition only worsened. Mussolini called her several times on the phone, but with caution, fearing that Rachele would eavesdrop on the conversation. Finally, he could stand it no longer and went to the Villa Camilluccia, where the Petacci family lived, and learned that Clara had to undergo an operation. She was operated on 27 August, after which she recovered for a long time, convinced all the time that she would never be able to have children.
Mussolini rarely spoke to her about political issues, still less about his opponents. But the closer the war got, the more eloquent he became: ‘The English are a ruined people and refuse to admit that others are better than they are. Their institutions are riddled with Jews. They are cretins, just like their allies the French. The French will fail even faster. Their President, Leon Blum, is a Jew, and their women are gypsies who love black men. The Czechs and Slovaks are the descendants of Roman legionaries who have had sex with Slav whores and will never achieve anything intelligent. The Germans, by contrast, are powerful and dangerous. If their masses advance, they go as one man.”
He did not have a good opinion of Hitler: “When we are together, he is like a little boy next to me. When he said goodbye to me, he was in tears.” He thought it would be best if he did what he suggested, as he was said to be hallucinating.
At the Munich Conference in 1938, when Czechoslovakia was dismembered, Hitler was said to have been soft as wax in the presence of Mussolini, and so the British and French presidents did what Mussolini told them to do. “Fighting — he knows this well as an old soldier from the First World War — is a time when a man becomes an animal, enjoys killing and does not care if other lives are at stake.
Among the Italians – noted Mussolini, who was to study them for twenty years – there are at least four million who are descended from slaves of antiquity. “Each one of them has his Jew to defend him.” According to him, only Hitler had the right ideas, and he himself would use a heavy hand when necessary. “I will be like a train, and when I move, there will be no stopping me.” He went on to compare himself to Napoleon.
But the Italians’ desire to fight an independent “parallel” war alongside Germany soon dissipated like a soap bubble. Defeats on all fronts came and went. The new empire, proudly called Africa Orientale Italiana, was only a mirage, as a large part of the Italian army in Africa quickly surrendered to the less well armed and few British troops. The Italians would have been wiped out of North Africa had not German General Erwin Rommel come to their aid.
The same happened to the Italians in Greece. The war became more global and ideological with each passing month, leaving no room for compromise and ambiguity, and finally the Allies landed in Sicily on 9 July 1943. Italian losses soon reached 200,000 men. But things did not go as planned on the home front either. One Fascist Party secretary had to give way to another; Achille Starace had to leave already in 1939, succeeded by Ettore Muti, who quickly had to give the post to Adelchi Serena, who lasted only a good year. Aldo Vidussoni then took over the leadership of the party, followed by Carlo Sforza in 1943.
The father also mourned the death of his second son Bruno, who was a test pilot in August 1941. Although he did not outwardly show much interest in his two sons, he always helped Bruno. When he ran an elderly woman to death during a wild ride, the investigation quickly established that the victim was herself to blame. When the maid became pregnant by him, he claimed paternity, saying that this was what a father does.
Italy’s successive military defeats have now also focused public attention on Mussolini’s affair with Clara Petacci. His son-in-law, Ciano, in a conversation with a fascist leader, made pessimistic remarks about the internal situation in the leadership. According to him, two strands were gaining more and more power; the first with Mussolini’s wife Rachele and her friends, and the second, the Petacci family with its satellites. Like all non-elites, these people were to hatch conspiracies against the holders of legal power.
According to the OVRA political police, Clara’s brother Marcello is said to have done more damage to the Duce than the fifteen battles he lost. In addition, the Villa Camilluccia, where the Petacci family moved, cost a staggering 1.7 million lire. It was a considerable distance from the Villa Torlonia, where Mussolini was staying, and when he wanted to visit Clara he had to drive all over the city and be in full view of everyone. For many, this was proof of the dictator’s physical and mental disintegration.
There were also increasing rumours of impropriety on the part of Clara’s 18-year-old sister Myriam, who had already entered Roman high society and the film industry in 1941. Even then, the film industry and its studios were already renowned as a world of champagne, sex and cocaine. Myriam’s family connections enabled her to land the lead role in Le vie del cuore, which officially opened the Venice Biennale in 1942. The director of the film told a closed circle of friends that her only assets were her ample breasts and seductively flickering hips. Despite the cautious reviews, her film career skyrocketed and she made three more historical films in the following year.
The Petacci family has always followed the motto of Dumas’ book The Three Musketeers, one for all and all for one. They have always acted as a group and family matters were more important to them than fascism. It was always Clara’s brother Marcello, a doctor and surgeon by profession, who raised the most dust. He was living in Milan, where he met Zitta Ritosso, born in Poreč, and began to live with her. He progressed quickly in his job, as he was a skilled surgeon, but everyone knew that he liked to lie, make things up, proudly beat his chest, saying, “I am so and so”, and regularly provoked fights in the resort towns.
The better educated spoke of the “Petacci Group”, a group of gangsters who exploited the dictator’s senile passion to organise a network of dubious but highly profitable businesses in Italy and the Iberian peninsula. Marcello also had the audacity to write to the Duce and advise him on how to deal with complex international political issues.
Many officially complained to Foreign Minister Ciano that Marcello was an impostor and that he was involved in official politics with the help of Clara, who was called “La Ducessa” (the little duce). Clara allegedly told the duce to call in the “real” Italians instead of listening to the rogue generals and the cowardly monarch. This statement of hers was similar to those of the fanatical fascist wives of the “new age” who were passionate supporters of the Duce’s policy.
This statement by Clara was actually a big change for the Petacci family. Until then, the family’s politics had been linked only to the person of Mussolini and to advancement in the social system, not to a particular ideology of fascism. Mother Giuseppina stuck to her rosary, father Francesco Saverio to his connections with the Vatican, sister Myriam to her film career and her contacts with the elite, and was always protected by Clara with her statements “every friend of Myriam’s is also a friend of mine”. Brother Marcello cultivated contacts with Franco’s Spain and Horthy’s Hungary and was more interested in profit than ideological purity. But from 1942 onwards, the private desires of the Petacci family were increasingly intertwined with the fate of fascism.
Loss of area
Mussolini was almost unaffected by this change in Clara. He had other things to worry about. Italian officers were collectively surrendering to the enemy without a fight, happy that the war was over for them. Beneath the surface of the regime, attempts were secretly multiplying to get Italy out of the disastrous war with as little damage as possible. Former Foreign Minister Ciano, now ambassador to the Vatican, was particularly active in this. But Ciano in the Vatican did not take advantage of this opportunity and the main conspirators in Italy’s withdrawal from the war were the fascists Grandi, Bottai and General Badoglio.
Seeing that his plan was failing, Ciano and his wife Edda turned all their fury against Clara Petacci and her brother Marcello, who were supposed to be the main obstacles to his political goals. The cry “Santa Clara, protettrice degli affari poco chiari” (Saint Clara, protector of shady business dealings) has already been circulating in the public domain. Marcello is also said to have always had access to all the levers of power and to have exploited the country financially. In November 1942, at a luncheon, Edda extracted a promise from her father that he would break off all contact with the Petacci family and that there would be no other woman for him than his wife Rachele.
Clara fiercely defended these attacks and warned Mussolini that the generals were marauding against him. But the Duce no longer had the strength to heed her advice, just as he did not heed the advice of his wife Rachel that “it was time for some heads to roll”. “You are trying to get rid of me in the most brutal way, with a scandal”, cried the humiliated Clara when the police refused to let her into the Venezia Palace. “You are treating me like a thief and a prostitute. I will die from the pain.”
She blamed the humiliation on Cian, who was supposed to take advantage of the moment of weakness and indecisiveness of the Duce. At that time, the Duce had few allies. On 16 July, he overruled the advice of his chief of staff to shoot Ciano, Bagoglio and Marcello Petacci immediately, otherwise he would lose all support among the people. Clara also advised him against attending the meeting of the Grand Fascist Council, which had been set for 24 July 1943.
But the depressed dictator did not listen. That day, at 5 p.m., 28 members of the Grand Fascist Council gathered in the Venezia Palace. It was the first time that Mussolini’s bodyguards were not present. But there were armed black-shirts in the courtyard, the staircase and the entrance hall. Dino Grandi, as one of the main conspirators, thought that he might not be able to leave the palace alive, so he had two grenades hidden in his jacket.
Mussolini spoke to the crowd, describing the last events of the war. He knew that there were three or four people who were against him, but the rest were probably still undecided. Then Grandi spoke, followed by the others. After six hours, Mussolini proposed that, in view of the lateness of the hour, the decision on whether to transfer his powers back to the King should be postponed until the following day. Grandi jumped up from his chair and shouted that no one should leave before they voted and that it was shameful that anyone should want to go to bed while Italian soldiers were dying for their country.
Mussolini looked at him speechless, but relented. He lost the vote. Only eight members of the Council voted for him, nineteen against. Before returning to Villa Torlonia, he called Clara Petacci and told her: “We have reached the epilogue, the greatest watershed in history.” And Clara replied, “It’s all over now.”
The following afternoon, Mussolini went to the Villa Savoia to see King Emmanuel. He told him the result of the vote and tried to convince him that the vote had no legal validity and that many members of the Council had already changed their minds. The King quickly interrupted him, quietly told him that the country was on its knees and that the situation demanded his resignation and that the new President of the Council of Ministers would be Marshal Pietro Badoglio. What will become of me and my family?” blurted Mussolini.
The King assured him that nothing would happen to him or his family, but when Mussolini then tried to get into his car, he was pushed into an ambulance, not very kindly, just “for his own safety”, and taken to prison, first on the island of Ponza and then to the naval base in Sardinia, where the fallen dictator was celebrating his sixtieth birthday. His last prison was in the hilltop winter resort of Gran Sasso, from where he was rescued on 12 September 1943 by a landing party of German soldiers under the command of the infamous Otto Skorzeny, and flown to Germany, where Rachele and the children had already moved.
On 29 August, Il Messggero published on its front page that Francesco Saverio Petacci’s medical practice had been ransacked, with furniture, appliances, books and gowns being thrown out of the windows into the street, laughing and making remarks. Finally, the newspaper noted that before July 1943, F.S.P. had enjoyed the protection of an important person, but that this person was not so much concerned about the doctor’s practice as about his attractive daughter Clara.
After Mussolini’s fall, the Petacci family quickly left Rome for Milan, from where they soon fled to the castle of Boggiano near Meina, on the border between Piedmont and Lombardy. When Giuseppina’s mother heard of Mussolini’s downfall, she raged at the King and Badoglio, while her younger daughter Myriam wandered around the Villa Camilluccio, screaming that now they would kill everyone and steal everything from them. Clara, her mother, father and sister were arrested on 12 August at Meina and taken to the castle-prison in Novara.
Desperate, Clara started writing a prison diary. On 12 August, she wrote something for the first time: “I have always been afraid of prison, my mental state is not stable, may God help us and save us, we can do nothing on our own.” When they arrived at the prison, they were stripped of everything, examined and three women were locked in a small, stinking dungeon full of cockroaches and filth. My father was given a special cell.
The next day, her mother fell ill and the whole family spent the night together in a shelter, as an air raid was announced. It was then that Clara saw her father cry for the first time. Then the Petacci family’s days as prisoners continued. On 20 August, Marcello was also imprisoned in Rome, after first being threatened with an immediate trial for corruption. On the twelfth of September, he was freed by the Germans, who had occupied most of Italy, and he quickly left Rome for Lake Garda, where his wife Zitta and their sons were already staying.
Meanwhile, the Petacci family’s former residence, Villa Camilluccio, was ransacked even more thoroughly than my father’s medical practice at the Via Nazionale clinic. Within a month, the Ursulines had turned the villa into a shelter for orphans. In fact, the Petacci family fared worse than the Mussolini family, most of whose members had already left for Germany on 28 July. The Ciano family left for Germany a month after them, which later proved to be a fatal mistake. Pietro Badoglio’s new regime lasted only 45 days and there was very little revenge against the leaders of the fascist regime.
Italy surrendered to the Allies on 3 September, followed by the German invasion of Italy. The Germans occupied Italy as far as Naples. Italy then descended into civil war between those who still called themselves fascists and anti-fascists of a broad political spectrum. Meanwhile, Mussolini, with Hitler’s help, proclaimed the puppet fascist republic of Salò in the north of the country on Lake Garda.
On 15 September, the Germans arrived in Novara and freed the imprisoned fascists. The next day, the Petacci family was free and travelled north to Bergamo, where they heard in their hotel that Mussolini would be speaking on the radio from Germany at half past ten in the evening. Clara listened open-mouthed and finally fainted. Mussolini said in his speech that he had been betrayed by those who had always been against him. “The country we are now going to build will be national and social in the highest sense of the word. That is to say, we will return to the roots of fascism.”
Once Clara had recovered, they drove on and finally arrived in Merano. The Petacci family was sure that she was safe here.
The Republic of Saló
On September 27th, Mussolini returned to Italy to take over the leadership of the Salo Republic. He took up residence at the Villa Feltrinelli near Gargnano. Some of the ministries were settled in houses in the town of Saló, others throughout northern Italy. To ensure that the Duce did not do something unforeseen, Hitler himself assigned him a guard of 30 SS men. According to some estimates, at that time there were around 200 people gathered around the Duce who were in one way or another connected with him and who had benefited from him at one time.
On 8 November, Mussolini was joined by his wife Rachele and their two minor children at the Villa Feltrinelli. She asked after his health and cursed all those who had betrayed him, especially her son-in-law Cian. Mussolini knew that Cian’s fate was sealed. Only death would be punishment enough for his betrayal.
Although Mussolini himself did not yet know what to do with the “traitors”, one of the first measures taken by the Salome Republic was to set up a special court in Verona to try the traitorous members of the great fascist council. The Germans flew Cian to Italy and immediately handed him over to the police. Five “traitors”, including Ciano, were brought to trial. Everyone thought that the trial would be a burqa, because Mussolini would not sacrifice Ciano, who was the husband of his favourite daughter Edda. Edda also rushed to Mussolini to save her husband. But he only received her coldly, saying, “Don’t get so upset.”
Cian was shot dead in Verona on 11 January 1944. Edda suffered a nervous breakdown and later went into voluntary exile in Switzerland. This created a vacuum around Mussolini, which Clara Petacci was able to fill immediately. They did not manage to see each other, even though the Petacci family lived only 20 kilometres away from Villa Feltrinelli, but they often telephoned each other and wrote long letters to each other.
They met again for the first time under German control on 28 October, but Mussolini advised Clara: “I ask you to live a very reserved and quiet life. Do not see anyone. Let no one see you. Let them forget about you.” He also told her to escape with her family while it was still possible, not to Switzerland, but to Hungary.
Other members of the Petacci family also sent him letters. Giuseppino’s mother complained about the “holocaust” the family had experienced and asked him to find suitable employment for Marcello, preferably in Hungary. Father Francesco Saverio was more realistic and only sent the dictator advice on his weekly diet. Myriam reproached Mussolini for not caring enough for Clara and asked him to find a suitable position for her husband, preferably managing the confiscated Jewish textile factories.
But Mussolini was already in a deep state of depression, physically weakened, and the many sleepless nights had left their effects. He was still able to negotiate with Clara on where to shelter the Petacci family if the situation escalated. Meanwhile, Myriam, who had separated from her husband, had already taken refuge in Spain with her new partner. Before leaving, she wrote to Clara: “The air on Lake Garda is no longer breathable and if you don’t leave this madhouse as soon as possible, everyone will go mad.”
When Myriam arrived in Barcelona, she wrote to Clara asking her to join her. She did not tell her that she and her partner were having some problems with the authorities, as the Franco government had not yet recognised Mussolini’s Saló Republic out of an abundance of caution. They were also short of money and capital and, with the promised financial aid nowhere to be found, they soon returned to Italy.
Relations between Mussolini and Clara have also been strained. On 22 October, the head of the local police, on Mussolini’s orders, raided the Villa Fiordaliso, where the Petacci family lived, to find out whether Clara had been storing the letters he had written to her. He asked her to burn all his letters as soon as she had read them.
Clara came out of the bedroom, all excited, with a revolver in her hand and immediately fainted. Sure enough, the policeman found a pile of letters from the duo and took them with him. Then, at the Villa Feltrinelli, Mussolini’s wife Rachele became furious when she read the letters. She stormed into Mussolini’s secretariat and demanded that someone with an armed escort take her to Villa Fiordaliso. After much cajoling, she and her chauffeur piled into a Fiat Topolino and drove to Villa Fiordaliso. The door was locked, so the chauffeur had to climb over the fence and open it from the inside. Rachela entered the villa, revolver in hand, and found Clara, still dressed in her negligee despite the late hour.
Rachele pelted her with insults, the most common of which was “slut”. Clara burst into tears and, as is her wont, was briefly incapacitated. They quickly telephoned Mussolini and asked him to calm the woman down. Rachele finally shut up and, as she was leaving, murmured to Clara: “You’ll end badly.” Nevertheless, the quarrel between Villa Feltrinelli and Villa Fiordaliso continued. Clara moved to Villa Mirabello, part of the estate of the deceased poet and fascist Gabriel D’Annunzio, while her parents had been living in Merano for several months.
Meanwhile, resistance groups of various kinds have sprung up in the Republic of Saloja; national liberation committees, patriotic action detachments, left and right-wing partisan groups. Myriam decided to return to Spain once more with her partner. When she arrived there, Franco’s police confiscated the plane, which was flying under false Croatian markings, and arrested the crew. Italians were no longer welcome in Spain.
On 18 April 1945, Mussolini left Gargnano for Milan. Why he did so, no one knows, because there was no sensible reason. On the afternoon of 25 April, partisan guns were already bursting in some of the suburbs of Milan. Here the news reached him that the Germans were negotiating a surrender to the Allies. He muttered something about “German betrayal” and that same evening, accompanied by some loyal fascists, set off for Como. He was ready to offer a last armed resistance in the Valtellina valley near the Swiss border.
In Menaggio, Clara, Marcello and Zitta and their two children caught up with him in an Alfa Romeo flying the Spanish flag. At the last minute, Marcello managed to get a passport from the Spanish consul in Milan in the name of Don Juan Munoz y Castillo. In Menaggio, Mussolini heard that the partisans were killing fascists in large numbers in the area and that the road to Switzerland was already closed. The next day, the duo joined a retreating German column with the last small group of his most loyal followers and Clara.
End at Piazzale Loreto
So, whether he wanted to or not, Mussolini was back with Clara. But after a few kilometres, the column stopped in front of a small partisan checkpoint. Although there were many more Germans and few partisans, the Germans, fed up with the war, began to negotiate with the partisans for free passage to the Swiss border. The negotiations succeeded and the Germans were allowed to continue their journey, but without the Italians. All the Italians – among them fifteen well-known fascists – had to leave the vehicles, only Mussolini drove on secretly with the Germans. He put on a German army coat and hid in the corner of a lorry.
At 3 pm, the column encountered a new partisan checkpoint at Dong. While checking the vehicles, the Partisans came across a soldier with a helmet on his head, wearing a military coat, pretending to be asleep. They recognised him as Mussolini. His gaze was absent, his face waxen pale and unshaven. They took him to a barracks of the customs station at Germasin, above Dong, because they were afraid that the Americans would take their prisoner.
Marcello Petacci and his family were able to continue their journey. The Spanish flag on the car had an effect. But an examination of his passport quickly showed that it was probably a good fake, and he didn’t know a word of Spanish. The Partisans at first thought they had captured Mussolini’s son Vittorio, but soon realised that it was Clara Petacci’s infamous brother Marcello.
Clara has since been separated from her brother Marcello. The leader of the partisan group thought that Clara was just some adventurer who had taken the opportunity to join the group and wanted to make her way to Switzerland. But Clara soon confessed who she was and asked to be with Mussolini. After midnight, the partisans agreed that it was best for the two lovers to be together, as they shared the same fate. Meanwhile, Mussolini was also transferred to a remote farmhouse on a hill above the village of Giulino di Mezzegra. When Mussolini saw Clara, he just asked her in amazement, “Signora, why are you here?”
Meanwhile, news that Mussolini had been captured spread rapidly and in Milan, on 28 April 1945, the Partisans sent Colonel Walter Audisio to Dongo with the task of liquidating the dictator immediately, before the Americans got their hands on him. Audisio hastily convened a military tribunal which sentenced the Duce and fifteen fascist leaders imprisoned in the Dongo to death.
Colonel Audisio took Mussolini and Clara by car to the village of Giuliano di Mezzegra at 4 pm. The car stopped in front of the iron portal of the Villa Belmonte, the two prisoners had to get out and Audisio read them the death sentence. Clara Petacci still managed to grab the barrel of his machine gun, and then several shots rang out. First Mussolini fell, then Clara. A heavy rain poured down and washed away the pool of blood left behind the bodies.
The executioners returned to Donga, where fifteen fascist leaders were imprisoned. A priest was given three minutes to untie them. A local detachment of partisans then shot the convicts, who were facing the lake and lined up along the fence in the main square in Dongo. Before Marcello Petacci was shot, he was able to say goodbye to Zitta and the children. Marcello was then pushed in front of the bodies of the shot fascists. He took advantage of the moment of inattention of the partisans, broke free and ran towards the hotel where his family was staying. Here the partisans grabbed him, but he broke free again and jumped into the lake. He did not get far, however, as he was mowed down by a hail of bullets. According to some accounts, his family watched all this from the hotel window.
His body was pulled out of the lake and thrown onto a lorry, on top of a pile of shot fascists, including the bodies of Mussolini and Clara. The lorry arrived in Milan at around 3 in the morning. Piazzale Loreto had been chosen because fifteen anti-fascists had been publicly executed by the fascists there in August 1944. Soon a crowd of spectators gathered and some of them kicked the dead dictator. At around 11 a.m., seven bodies were hung by their feet from an iron pole near the Esso petrol station. At 2 p.m., at the request of the US authorities, they were taken down and taken away. The bodies were then buried in an anonymous grave in a Milan cemetery. Before that, American doctors removed part of Mussolini’s brain and sent it to America for examination.
Thus ended part of the Petacci family. The other part continued life in new circumstances. Myriam Petacci stayed with her parents in Spain and continued her film career there, even managing to appear in nine romantic films. She returned to Italy with her parents in 1951 and became embroiled in various legal disputes. Her father Francesco Saverio tried to re-establish contact with the Vatican, but was not very successful. He outlived his wife Giuseppina by a decade and died in the 1980s. Myriam was getting worse financially, but somehow managed to survive and died in 1991.
On 29 April 1945, Mussolini’s wife Rachele was imprisoned for a few days and later sent to the comfortable confinement of Ischia. She died in her villa in 1979. Edda Ciano had already returned from Switzerland at the end of August 1945; she was sentenced to two years’ confine on the island of Lipari. She always remained a supporter of the fascist state. She spent her last years in villas in Capri and Rome and died in 1995.
Vittorio, his wife and children were hidden by a priest near Como after April 1945 and managed to get him to Argentina in 1946, under the safe custody of the dictator Peron. Vittorio later returned to Italy and lived there until 1997.
Mussolini’s two youngest children, Romano and Anna Maria, had different fates. Romano became an internationally renowned jazz musician and died in 2006. His sister, who suffered from the effects of polio, had a shorter life and died in 1968. For the Petacci and Mussolini families, only a faint memory of the old days remains.
