Chasing Mussolini - a play

So Much for Donald Mussolini

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Himself - Italian Leader. Clips from newsreels uncredited. Edit Personal Details Other Works: He refused and vowed he would never surrender but instead would lead a Fascist last stand in the Valtellina region, on the far side of Lake Como. When the betrayed Duce heard of German plans for a secret surrender of all Axis forces in northern Italy on April 25, he left Milan in a huff for the town of Como, 25 miles distant, trailed by his SS bodyguard chief, Lieutenant Fritz Birzer and Secret Police Lieutenant Otto Kisnatt, each ordered not to let him out of.

He was now a man on the run, but why? Although informed that neutral Switzerland would not accept him, his family, or any other Fascists, Mussolini nevertheless seemed to be headed there rather than, as he asserted, to a final battle that drew only 12 faithful soldiers. It has also been suggested that Mussolini meant instead to cross the frontier into the Nazi-held South Tyrolean region of Austria and there stand until death with still-resisting German troops, but even now no one really knows for sure.

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Yet another theory has lingered since — that Il Duce was trying to rendezvous with British secret agents to trade his life and those of the members of his sizable entourage in return for secret prewar letters between him and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, as well as for others penned during the final stages of the war. There was also the hoard of loot that the fleeing Fascists took with them in a convoy of 28 vehicles, an estimated millions in cash, checks, jewels, gold bullion and other riches taken from slain Jews, all later stolen by the partisans and used to launch the postwar Italian Communist Party as the largest in Western Europe.

All of this has been endlessly discussed since in a veritable phalanx of articles and books in both English and Italian, the most recent being an excellent trio of works brought forth for the 60th anniversary of the end of the Italian campaign and the Duce-Petacci-Fascist slayings of April 28, The first two books, written by Ray Moseley and Luciano Garibaldi, respectively, appeared in and were titled Mussolini: Bluffing as to the size of their actual force, the Red negotiators told the Germans that they could proceed unharmed, but only on the condition that no Italians were in the enemy column.

The latter hastened to the hidden Duce, who was inside an armored car and armed with a submachine gun and wearing his standard gray-green forage cap and uniform of the Fascist Militia.

As Italian election nears, new film imagines Mussolini's comeback | The Times of Israel

Mussolini argued that all of his entourage should be allowed to continue, but the Nazi lieutenant was firm, insisting that only the Duce himself could go and that even Claretta had to be left behind. Urged by her to accept the terms, an embarrassed Duce reluctantly agreed.

Birzer got his own overcoat and steel helmet from a Luftwaffe sergeant and gave them to Mussolini to wear, but the mortified Duce protested that he would be ashamed to be found dressed as a German and hidden in a German vehicle. However, he finally relented. The disguised Duce slipped out of the armored car and into a truck of Luftwaffe men, wearing the German steel helmet backward until Lieutenant Birzer righted it. Tearing off his own Fascist Militia jacket, the crestfallen Mussolini replaced it with the field gray overcoat that was discovered in Rome in , to further hide the rest of his own uniform, complete with the traditional black shirt of the Fascisti.

Sitting quietly at the far end in the left corner of the fourth truck in line, Mussolini pretended to be drunk. It is not fair that he should get away!

As Italian election nears, new film imagines Mussolini’s comeback

A former sailor in the Italian Navy, a clog-maker from Dongo named Giuseppe Negri who had joined the Partisans, searched the truck and was startled to see the profile of the man he had formerly served. Incredulous, Lazzaro climbed into the truck himself and approached the mysterious figure pointed out to him obligingly by the real Luftwaffe men who knew the truth. He addressed the silent figure yet a third time: I take off his sunglasses and lower the collar of his coat.

It is he, Mussolini. I shall not make any trouble. Arrested by Lazzaro, the now meek Duce told the Germans not to defend him; he was taken from the truck and marched to the town hall, his captors following respectfully behind. He wore boots, but had no jacket. At Milan, the slain Duce still had on the trousers and the boots, but the shirt had disappeared while he swung from the girders of the filling station and was also absent from the coffin in the morgue, as photographs clearly show.

A fourth set of papers detailed the alleged homosexual activities of Italian Crown Prince Umberto, then the designated lieutenant general of the realm. Lazzaro gave all of this to his superior, Luigi Canali alias Captain Neri , who wanted to honor the terms of the armistice with the Allies that required the Duce to be turned over to them for trial. The top Communists in Milan ignored this legal clause. Neri also opposed the seizure of the Dongo Treasure by his Communist bosses, and some have accused him of having shot Mussolini himself.

According to some sources, Neri was assassinated by the Communists in May , not because of having done that, but for bringing the British secret service into the affair. Ironically, Neri had been drafted into the Italian Army in as a lieutenant of engineers in East Africa, later took part in the retreat of the Expeditionary Corps in Russia, became a Communist, and helped found the 52nd Garibaldi Partisan Brigade that captured his former Duce.

Giuseppina Tuissi aka Gianna , who was shot by their Communist colleagues on June 23, Her body was dumped into Lake Como. As a precaution, however, Mussolini had made a three copies: Mussolini gave the third and final set to his Fascist Education Minister, Carlo Alberto Biggini, who died supposedly of cancer in the hospital in the autumn of , one of the few top Fascists not to have been shot.

There were, too, the now infamous Duce Diaries, 10 notebooks in his own handwriting that were given to Baron Hikada as well. Most of these vanished. Some historians speculate that on September 15, , at a secret meeting held between British agents and Como Communist leader Dante Gorreri, the latter turned over 62 Duce-Churchill letters for an estimated 2. Supposedly, during this exchange, the partisans agreed to accept the blame for the killing of Claretta, who had allegedly been shot by the British because she knew of the secret correspondence.

The name of a second British agent, Malcolm Smith, aka Johnson, also surfaced. All this was part of a fantastic yarn known as the so-called British Thread.

Taken away, Mussolini was rejoined at the De Maria farmhouse at Bonzanigo by Petacci, who begged her captors to shoot her as well if that was to be the ultimate fate of the apprehended Mussolini. They spent the night together in a peasant bed. Meanwhile, a Communist murderer codenamed Colonel Valerio was sent from Milan to execute them both. Valerio has been identified over the decades as several different Communists. Later, year-old Dorina Mazzola claimed to have seen both victims gunned down just outside the De Maria farmhouse, and it was then that the long-accepted version of their having been shot by the gate of the Villa Belmonte was first challenged by historians.

Exactly who actually shot first Claretta and then Mussolini has been debated. It was even asserted that a second shooting of the already dead bodies was held at the Villa Belmonte. Some others said that the doomed pair committed suicide inside the De Maria farmhouse instead. At a Communist rally in Rome in March , a former partisan named Audisio was officially proclaimed before an audience of 40, as the killer of Mussolini and Petacci.

This occurred during a campaign for the Italian Parliament, and he was elected. Captured from the Fascists, the weapon reportedly fired five French-made bullets into Mussolini while the mysterious 9mm rounds fired into Petacci came from an unknown weapon. No mention has been made of where the weapons are today. In all, Audisio is said to have given as many as 22 different published accounts of these events before his death in

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