Il Duce and His Women

by Roberto Olla, Stephen Parkin (Translator)

The first biography to offer insights into Mussolini's private life, with a particular focus on his attitude toward women and his relationships with many mistresses, enriched by first-hand documents and previously unpublished photographs

The figure of Benito Mussolini looms large as one of the most influential during the first half of the 20th century. Most have tried to erase the memory and the actions of the once powerful dictator, while others have made an attempt to reassess his life and works, despite the indelible legacy of death, violence, and destruction he left behind. But who is the real Benito Mussolini? Now that more than 60 years of scholarship and an abundance of first-hand documents by his closest relations and his many lovers are available to the researcher, the elusive, contradictory, and often misunderstood traits of his character are beginning to take shape into a more meaningful and better defined portrait of the man, the politician, and the leader. This book charts the main events in Mussolini's private and public life, from his humble beginnings in Romagna as the son of a blacksmith to his years as the director of a leading Socialist newspaper and his irresistible rise to power, with a particular focus on his renowned appetite for women, and the lesser-known influence they had on his decision-making. The result is a riveting account that will shock and haunt the readers for a long time.

Genres: History, Biography Memoir

486 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Domenico Francesco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Il corpo è politico, attivamente e passivamente, soprattutto quando si parla di dittatori e così era anche quello di Mussolini, spesso (auto)riportato come macchina forzuta, inarrestabile, dotato di fascino magnetico e soprattutto esagerata potenza sessuale. Questa biografia di Mussolini narra la vita del Duce attraverso la sua vita sessuale, le sue conquiste, i tradimenti, i rapporti occasionali, le amanti, le violenze, un'ossessione per il sesso ai limiti del patologico, senza scadere nel gossip ma analizzando come l'immagine dell'animale sessuale avesse dato alla stessa anche lo stesso Mussolini per tener patto all'immagine propagandistica del folklore mussoliniano. Già nelle primissime pagine si parla di uno stupro e la lettura proseguirà attraverso le numerose conquiste (quasi tutte occasionali, ma anche il caso di Ida Dalser finita in manicomio, Margherita Sarfatti, ebrea (!!!) e artefice in un primo momento del mito della propaganda mussoliniana fino all'inevitabile Petacci) e rappresentazioni di come questa immagine ultravirile sia stata essenziale per lo status fascista quanto per l'influenza dell'immagine popolare di Mussolini la quale però era estremamente più fragile di come apparisse (come ogni forma di mascolinità esasperata).

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting

Rife with interesting facts about the women who influenced Mussolini to a surprising degree. For instance, one of the most influential architects of the Fascist myth was no other than a Jewish woman. The narrative attempts to give order to what is otherwise a messy life of a man whose political ideology shifted with his moods, since his only true principle was to acquire power by any means necessary, but it doesn't succeed, jumping back and forth in time and dropping one thread to pick up another. It was interesting to learn that Fascism wasn't a political principle at all, just a movement based on nothing more than the Duce's allure and oratorical skills. The translation is fine but not great, preserving the prevalent passive sentence style that Italians use in prose but that renders English prose slow and plodding. Worth reading for those who have an interest in this subject.

[Michael Schmidt · Rating 4 out of 5]

What journalist Roberto Olla has achieved is a remarkable new way of viewing Mussolini and the rise of Fascism: through the lens of his rough-and-ready and numerous sexual liaisons with women. Although Mussolini clearly used women in a cruelly disposable fashion as simple sexual vessels - to build the personal myth of virility that was so crucial to Fascism's claims to youth, dynamism and a break with the stuffy bourgeois mores of the past - he also had long-term liaisons with paramours who were more than mere fantasy fodder.

There were the Italian princesses who helped him secure a foothold in snobbish royalist society (a crucial part of his balancing act in the three-powered Fascist era between Catholic Church, Italian Monarchy, and Fascist State). There were the salon queens who ensured his currency (both fiscal and cultural) as the leading actor in the national drama. There was his long-suffering proletarian wife, the deranged mother of his illegitimate offspring, and the gold-digging final lover who wound up on the meat-hooks alongside him.

But far from incidentally, there was Margherita Sarfatti (1880-1961), the Jewess who, it is forgotten, actually codified Fascism into a coherency-of-sorts that Mussolini himself had never bothered with in the heat of his ascendancy. From her came the unique corporatist vision that was an attempt to defuse class struggle that had saw Italy on the brink of civil war in 1914 and again in 1921 by combining the Italian people into supposedly compatible interest blocs. The cultural aspects of Fascism are usually attributed to Marinetti and the Futurists, but it was Sarfatti who gave them official impetus. Crucially, Sarfatti was Mussolini's Goebbels, burnishing his myth in her official biography, Dux (1925/6).

So it makes sense that it was the 1938 imposition of anti-Semitic laws in Italy under the sway of Hitler, which lead to Sarfatti fleeing to Argentina then Uruguay, that marked Mussolini's political apogee and the point at which his long decline began.

Olla grounds the bedroom antics with the developments of Fascism from a socialist war veteran's amalgam, into a minority government, and finally a dictatorship, so we never entirely lose the grand plot within which Mussolini's women play their parts. An engaging read.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Il Duce and His Women, i picked this book up honestly because i knew absolubtly nothing about mussolini and thought this would be as good a place as any to start. this is a book that sheds some light onto the mind set and intimate life of one of histories most famous womanizers and dictators, from his early upbring and his political career, right the way through to his death. this is not just a study of his conquests or attitudes towards women and sex, it is also a look at itlalin life through communism, facism and war. i found this book slightly heavy going at times and a bit hit and miss, some chapters flew by and others were a real effort, if you have an interest in mussolini, communist views and italian politics then this book is worth a read although i would imagine there are better books about mussolini out there.

[This is V! · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book , it's a biography of mussolinis but told through his lovers and affairs rather than how he got into power , the author focus the book on something that we did not know previously , about how much sex did the once dictator had , something that nowadays would be considered even too much .