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
