Caroline Moorehead - Mussolinis Daughter: the Most Dangerous Woman in Europe

PRAISE FORMUSSOLINIS DAUGHTER

Caroline Moorehead writes with her characteristic elegance, eye for detail, and authoritative knowledge about a monster and a survivor. The story of Mussolinis glamorous daughter is certainly a fascinating one.

Miranda Seymour, author of Mary Shelley

Painstakingly researched and vividly told, this engrossing history turns the spotlight on the deeply conflicted Edda Mussolini, brilliantly balancing the big picture with a wealth of telling detail.

Clare Mulley, author of The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville

PRAISE FOR CAROLINE MOOREHEAD

A necessary book. Compelling and moving. The literature of wartime France and the Holocaust is by now so vast as to confound the imagination, but when a book as good as this comes along, we are reminded that there is always room for something new.

The Washington Post, on A Train in Winter

An intimate family portrait. Moorehead has done us a great service in restoring the humanity of the Rosselli family. Its the most complete portrait we have in English of this extraordinary family fighting each in his or her own way the most pernicious ideology of the last century.

The New York Times Book Review, on A Bold and Dangerous Family

Important, meticulously researched. A House in the Mountains tells the untold story of the women of the Italian resistance. Dramatic, heartbreaking, and sweeping in scope, Mooreheads book charts the experiences of these women in the wider context of the war in Italy.

The Wall Street Journal, on A House in the Mountains

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

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Bertrand Russell: A Life

The Lost Treasures of Troy

Dunants Dream: War, Switzerland and the History of the Red Cross

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Martha Gellhorn: A Life

Human Cargo: A Journey among Refugees

The Letters of Martha Gellhorn (ed.)

Dancing to the Precipice: Lucie de la Tour du Pin and the French Revolution

A Train in Winter: A Story of Resistance, Friendship and Survival

Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France

A Bold and Dangerous Family: The Rossellis and the Fight Against Mussolini

A House in the Mountains: The Women who Liberated Italy from Fascism

PUBLISHED BY RANDOM HOUSE CANADA

Copyright 2022 Caroline Moorehead

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2022 by Random House Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto, and simultaneously in the United Kingdom by Chatto & Windus, an imprint of Vintage, part of Penguin Random House UK, and Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, New York, London. Distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

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Random House Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Mussolinis daughter : the most dangerous woman in Europe / Caroline Moorehead.

Names: Moorehead, Caroline, author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20220238057 | Canadiana (ebook) 20220238391 | ISBN 9780735279742 (softcover) | ISBN 9780735279759 (EPUB)

Subjects: LCSH: Ciano, Edda Mussolini, Contessa. | LCSH: Ciano, Edda Mussolini, ContessaFamily. |

LCSH: Ciano, Edda Mussolini, ContessaMarriage. | LCSH: Statesmens spousesItalyBiography. |

LCSH: ItalyPolitics and government1922-1945. | LCGFT: Biographies.

Classification: LCC DG575.C516 M66 2022 | DDC 945.091092dc23

Cover design: Andrea Guinn

Image credits: Fototeca Storica Nazionale/Getty Images

Author photograph: Daisy Heath

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For Wolf and Basil

The Gods move very fast when they bring ruin on misguided men.

Sophocles, Antigone

Principal Characters

The Mussolini family

Benito Mussolini, dictator 28 October 192225 July 1943 head of the Sal republic October 194325 April 1945

Alessandro and Rosa, his parents

Rachele, his wife

Arnaldo, his brother

Edvige, his sister

Edda, his daughter, married to Galeazzo Ciano

Vittorio, Bruno, Romano, his sons

Anna Maria, his daughter

Claretta Petacci, his last lover

The Ciano family

Costanzo Ciano, patriarch and supporter of Mussolini

Carolina, his wife

Galeazzo, his only son

Maria, his daughter

Fabrizio, Raimonda and Marzio, Edda and Galeazzos children

The gerarchi

Roberto Farinacci, vulgar, corrupt and cynical ras of Cremona

Augusto Turati, suave party leader

Achille Starace, devoted Mussolini acolyte and enforcer of Fascist behaviour

Giuseppe Bottai, the most cultured of the gerarchi

Dino Grandi, ambassador to London

Other Characters

Eugen Dollmann, SS officer and interpreter

Curzio Malaparte, author, and friend of Galeazzos

Emilio Pucci, devoted companion to Edda

Leonida Buongiorno, Eddas lover on Lipari

Isabella Colonna, doyenne of Roman society

Foreword

The Villa Carpena was the Mussolini family home. An ochre stuccoed square house, it stands behind iron gates, with two immense bronze eagles, their wings outstretched, outside Forl in Emilia Romagna, in northern Italy, not far from the hamlet of Predappio where Mussolini was born and grew up. Rachele, the Duces wife, lived in the villa until her death in 1979. It is now a museum, with something of a used-car lot about its surroundings, since over the years the family possessions have been discovered and brought back: rusty cars and bicycles, the tractor which Mussolini took pride in driving during his occasional holidays from Rome, even a small aeroplane he once piloted.

The neglected garden is laid out with paths, marked by lines of small white stones, each bearing the name of one of Mussolinis senior Fascists, and in-between stand life-sized statues in the classical style. There is a stone cottage, built on a miniature scale, in which his children played; the benches on which Mussolini and Rachele sat; the gravestones of the many dogs and cats owned by the family. The gift shop sells Mussolini memorabilia: mugs, plates, aprons, knives and even teapots engraved with Fascist insignia; busts of the Duce in a hundred different heroic poses; replicas of the caps and hats worn by him; books and framed pictures; knives. In the niche by the front door stands the statue of a Roman matron, clutching to herself a sheaf of corn, but otherwise naked. A pair of peacocks was introduced some years ago and their many descendants, some of them pure white, utter their raucous and eerie cries from somewhere behind the trees.