Literary trilogy recounts the rise and fall of Mussolini

The Pact of Steel 

Despite everything, many still hoped that the delusions of these two dictators would come to an end.

These individuals included Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, an archeologist who was tasked with accompanying Hitler on a tour of Rome's archeological sites.

On his part, Renzo Ravenna, a decorated WWI veteran, fascism enthusiast, and mayor of Ferrara where he represented thousands of Italian Jews, was concerned that he would get sidelined from politics because of the new measures.

Margherita Sarfatti, a Jewish writer who converted to Catholicism in 1928 and was Mussolini's mistress, remained hopeful until the end that Italy would shift more toward the Anglo-France alliance.

However, she had to finally concede to Mussolini's new mistress, Clara Petacci, before fleeing Italy when the racial laws were issued. 

Even Galeazzo Ciano himself, who had been till then preoccupied with romance and silly political affairs, found himself in May 1939 forced to sign the Pact of Steel (formally known as the Pact of Friendship and Alliance between Germany and Italy) with Joachim von Ribbentrop.

Through this pact, Italy and Germany pledged to confront what they viewed as the instability and degeneracy of the world and complete their mission of 'preserving the foundations of European civilisation'. 

The disasters of war soon followed. Ciano was removed from his ministerial post in February 1943. In July 1943, he was among the members of the Grand Council of Fascism to vote against Mussolini and force his ousting.

Ciano was sentenced to death and executed in Verona in January 1944 despite the desperate attempts of his wife Edda, Mussolini's eldest daughter, to convince her father to pardon him. When the war ended, Edda fled to Switzerland before she was exiled to the island of Lipari, where she stayed until she and her family members were pardoned. She died in Rome in 1995. 

Romano Mussolini, Il Duce's fourth son born in 1927 to Rachele Mussolini, was passionate about jazz from an early age — an interest that was looked down upon in fascist Italy. He became a respected pianist after the war and married Anna Maria Scicolone, actress Sophia Loren's sister, in 1962.

The couple had two daughters, one of whom, Alessandra Mussolini, became an actress, television personality, and politician. Alessandra was elected to the Italian Parliament numerous times in right-wing parties with fascist leanings. She is currently a representative at the European Parliament as part of the European People's Party.

Romano Mussolini avoided talking about his father for the longest time. It was only in 2004, two years before he died, that he published his memoirs describing fond memories of his father under the title Il Duce, Mio Padre (The Leader, My Father).

Frightening delusion

Throughout 848 pages, Scurati details Mussolini's frightening delusion that he could influence Hitler's decisions. Even though he was well aware that Italy was unprepared for war, he remained hesitant until June 1940 when he declared from the balcony of his palace in Venice: "The hour of irrevocable decision has come."

It was against the backdrop of this imaginary social and cultural project that Scurati recounts the fatal events that took place between 1938 and 1940 as Mussolini succumbed to Hitler's demands to issue racial laws and ally with Nazi Germany.

The author then takes us through the last days of Europe as it sustained atrocious Nazi attacks and found itself helpless in the face of this totalitarian wave.

The description the novel provides of Mussolini applies to many present-day political figures. Scurati writes: "He is like a monster who can smell time and sense its arrival. What he could sense was a tired Italy. An Italy exhausted by its political class, by its dying democracy, by foolish and collaborationist moderates. He placed himself as the leader of criminals and murderers.'

In true dictator fashion, Mussolini set out to eliminate his opponents by all possible means. One of his most cruel practices included locking them up in mental asylums.

In Psychiatric Hospitals and Political Oppression in Fascist Italy, Matteo Petracci, a politics and modern Euro-Mediterranean history professor at the University of Macerata, describes how most police or medical records at the time showed political dissidents locked up in psychiatric wards.

The diagnoses varied from political obsession to schizophrenia, delusions of grandeur, hysteria, mental disorders, and depression. These diagnoses were enough to keep a person in the hospital for several years or even life.  

Timely publication

Scurati's third book is not an easy read like the first two. However, the Bompiani publishing house in Milan chose the right time to publish this novel — which helps readers contextualise Italy's past and present — ahead of the September 2022 elections which showed history repeating itself.

Many were surprised to see that Italian politicians had not moved far from Mussolini's fascist ideology.

Scurati describes decisive historical moments as moments when dictators alone decide the fate of millions of people.

This novel is a massive undertaking by Scurati who reconstructs events from history in the form of fiction.

His dialogues are creative but also based on newspaper articles published at the time, archives, and personal letters and memoirs such as those written by the Foreign Minister Gian Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini's son-in-law, and Clara Petacci.

Fascist Italy went to war alongside its German ally almost unwillingly — a decision that was not in its best interest. The ruling class entertained Mussolini's delusions of power despite the opposition voiced by many Italians. The Italian army was not ready for war and lacked raw materials and food supplies.

Few dared to stand up to Mussolini and he, himself, was aware of the country's vulnerabilities. But he was certain that the war would be short and that victory would be his. He gambled and lost, and Italy lost with him. Perhaps this loss was inevitable.

An ugly end

"You will end up [hanging] in Loreto square!" In the fall of 1944, when Italy was divided in two, Rachele Guidi Mussolini uttered these words a few months after she discovered her husband's new mistress, predicting Mussolini's grim fate which was to come in six months.

These words may have been made up, but they perfectly summarise one of Italy's bleakest moments. 

Rachele Mussolini started publishing her memoirs in 1946 in four volumes. Her famous statement was revealed in the third volume titled 'Benito, My Husband'. Whether or not it was a prediction, the fact remains that it did come true. 

Il Duce — who ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943 — was responsible for the death of thousands of Italians, and issued racial laws inspired by those in Germany — was executed by gunfire in the town of Giulino di Mezzegra near Lake Como on 28 April 1945.

His body and those of his companions were flung on a truck and driven to Piazzale Loreto in the capital of Lombardy on 29 April. In the square, his body was stoned, shot, stepped on, and even urinated on. His face was completely disfigured.

The bodies of Mussolini, his mistress Clara Petacci, and other fascists were suspended upside down by their heels in front of a gas station by men from the Italian resistance movement, or the partisans, as revenge for the execution of 15 partisans in the same place on 10 August 1944.