How to Be a Dictator Read online

  Dictators who survived often relied on two instruments of power: the cult and terror. Yet all too often the cult has been treated as a mere aberration, a repellent but marginal phenomenon. This book places the cult of personality where it belongs, at the very heart of tyranny.

  1

  Mussolini

  Located on the edge of the historic centre, EUR is one of Rome’s most austere districts, criss-crossed by wide, linear avenues and imposing buildings covered in gleaming white travertine marble – the same material used to build the Colosseum. EUR stands for Esposizione Universale Roma, a gigantic world fair designed by Benito Mussolini to mark the twentieth anniversary of the March on Rome in 1942. As its master architect Marcello Piacentini put it, the project would showcase a new, eternal civilisation, a ‘Fascist civilisation’. Although the exposition never took place, interrupted by the Second World War, many of the buildings were completed in the 1950s. One of the most iconic structures of the EUR, built on an elevated podium like an ancient Roman temple, surrounded by majestic umbrella pines, contains the state archives.1

  In a majestic reading room with towering columns one can read through the dusty and yellowing correspondence addressed to the Duce. At the height of his glory he received up to 1,500 letters a day. All of these went through a personal secretariat employing some fifty people, who selected several hundred items for his personal attention. By the time Mussolini fell from power in the summer of 1943, the archive contained half a million files.2

  On 28 October 1940, celebrated as Day One of the fascist calendar, telegrams came from all corners of the realm. There were odes to ‘His Supreme and Glorious Excellence’, with Salustri Giobbe exalting ‘the supreme genius who has prevailed over all the storms of the world’. The prefect from Trieste, to take another example, sent word that the entire population praised his genius, while the city of Alessandria formally hailed him as the Creator of Greatness.3

  Most of all, however, admirers of the Duce wanted signed photographs. They were requested by people from every walk of life, from schoolchildren who wrote to offer Christmas greetings to mothers mourning the deaths of their soldier sons. Mussolini often obliged. When Francesca Corner, a ninety-five-year-old pensioner from Venice, received a reply, she was overcome by the ‘greatest outpouring of emotion’, according to the local prefect who dutifully witnessed and reported the occasion.4

  Like most dictators, Mussolini fostered the idea that he was a man of the people, accessible to all. In March 1929, in front of the assembled leadership, he boasted that he had responded to 1,887,112 individual cases brought to his attention by his personal secretariat. ‘Every time that individual citizens, even from the most remote villages, have applied to me, they have received a reply’.5 It was a bold claim, but, as the archives testify, one not entirely without merit. By one account, Mussolini spent more than half of his time curating his own image.6 He was the ultimate master of propaganda, at once actor, stage manager, orator and brilliant self-publicist.

  Few could have predicted his rise to power. The young Mussolini tried his luck at journalism for the Italian Socialist Party, but fell out of favour with his comrades for advocating Italy’s entry into the First World War. He was drafted into the army and wounded when a mortar bomb accidentally exploded in 1917.

  As elsewhere in Europe, the end of the war brought a period of industrial unrest. After years of slaughter on the battlefield and regimentation on the factory floor, workers began taking part in strikes that paralysed the economy. Inspired by Lenin’s seizure of power in Russia in 1917, entire municipalities became socialist and started flying the red flag, declaring themselves in favour of a dictatorship of the proletariat. These were the Red Years, as Socialist Party membership grew to more than 200,000 by 1920, while the General Confederation of Labour boasted over two million adherents.7

  In 1919 Mussolini launched a movement that would become the Fascist Party. Its programme was vaguely libertarian, patriotic and anti-clerical, and was stridently promoted in the pages of Mussolini’s Popolo d’Italia. But fascism failed to win over enough voters in the general elections to secure even a single seat in parliament. Party members left in droves, with fewer than 4,000 committed followers remaining nationwide. Derided by his political opponents, Mussolini bitterly pronounced that ‘fascism has come to a dead end’, openly speculating that he might leave politics altogether for a career in the theatre.8

  His loss of nerve was momentary. In September 1919 the poet Gabriele d’Annunzio led 186 mutineers in a raid on Fiume, a city to which Italy had made a claim in the wake of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy a year earlier. Mussolini realised that the power he had failed to obtain through free elections could be seized through brute force. But d’Annunzio also inspired Mussolini in other ways. In Fiume the flamboyant poet pronounced himself Duce, a term derived from the Latin word dux, meaning leader. For fifteen months, until he was dislodged by the army, d’Annunzio held the Istrian port city in thrall, appearing regularly on a balcony to address his followers, who were dressed in black shirts and greeted their leader with a straight-armed salute. There were daily parades, fanfares, distributions of medals and endless sloganeering. As one historian has put it, fascism took from d’Annunzio not so much a political creed as a way of doing politics. Mussolini realised that pomp and pageantry appealed far more to the crowd than incendiary editorials.9

  Fascism as an ideology remained vague, but Mussolini now realised the shape it would take: he would be the leader, the one sent by destiny to revive the fortunes of his nation. He started taking flying lessons in 1920, posing as the new man with the vision and drive to carry through a revolution. He was already an accomplished journalist who knew how to use a terse, direct, unadorned style to convey sincerity and resolution; now he practised as an actor, using staccato sentences and sparse but imperious gestures to present himself as an indomitable leader: head tilted back, chin pushed forward, hands on hips.10

  In 1921 the government began to court the fascists openly, hoping to use them to weaken opposition parties on the left. The army, too, was sympathetic. Fascist squads, in some cases protected by the local authorities, roamed the streets beating up their opponents and assaulting hundreds of trade union headquarters and socialist party centres. As the country moved towards civil war, Mussolini conjured up a Bolshevik peril, turning fascism into a party devoted to the destruction of socialism. Italy, he wrote, needed a dictator to save it from a communist uprising. In the autumn of 1922, by which time fascist squads had grown powerful enough to control large parts of the country, Mussolini threatened to send some 300,000 armed fascists to the capital, even though in reality fewer than 30,000 blackshirts were ready, most of them so poorly equipped that they were no match for the garrison troops in Rome. But the bluff worked. As fascists began occupying government offices in Milan and elsewhere during the night of 27/28 October, King Victor Emmanuel, mindful of the fate of the Romanovs after 1917, summoned Mussolini to Rome and appointed him prime minister.11

  A royal appointment was one thing, a popular image another. Mussolini, still in Milan, wanted to develop the myth of a March on Rome, one in which he entered the capital on horseback, leading his legions across the Rubicon to impose his will on a feeble parliament. But even after he had been asked to form a government, there were only a few thousand fascists in the capital. A counterfeit march was hurriedly organised. Blackshirts made their way to the capital, their first order of business being the destruction of the printing machines of opposition newspapers to make sure that the fascist version of events prevailed. Mussolini arrived by train in the morning of 30 October. His victorious troops were reviewed by the king and sent back home the following day. Seven years later, to celebrate the anniversary of the march on Rome, an equestrian statue was inaugurated in Bologna, standing five metres tall, the Duce peering into the future, holding the reins in one hand, a banner in the other.12

  Mussolini was only thirty-nine. He was small in statur
e, but created an impression of greater height by maintaining a straight back and stiff torso. ‘His face was sallow, his black hair was fast receding from a lofty brow, the mouth was large, his features mobile, the jaw massive and in the centre of his head two large, very black piercing eyes which seemed almost to protrude from his face.’ Most of all, his manner of speech and his theatrical gestures – head leaning halfway back, chin jutting sharply forward, rolling eyes – were calculated to give an impression of power and vitality. In private he could be courteous and perfectly charming. The English journalist George Slocombe, who met him in 1922, observed that his public persona changed dramatically in one-to-one encounters, as his muscles lost their tension, his tense jaw softened and his voice became cordial. Slocombe noted that Mussolini had been on the defensive his entire life. ‘Now that he had assumed the role of aggressor, he could not shake off his instinctive distrust of strangers lightly.’13

  His wariness of other people, including his own ministers and party leaders, remained with him to the end of his life. As Ivone Kirkpatrick, a sharp observer posted at the British Embassy put it, ‘He was sensitive to the emergence of any possible rival and he viewed all men with a peasant’s suspicion’.14

  There were plenty of rivals to worry about. While he projected an image of iron leadership, fascism was not so much a united movement as a loose amalgamation of local squad leaders. Only a year earlier, Mussolini had faced rebellion within the ranks from some of the most established fascists, including Italo Balbo, Roberto Farinacci and Dino Grandi. They had accused him of being too close to the parliamentarians in Rome. Grandi, a fascist leader in Bologna with a reputation for violence, had tried to bring about Mussolini’s fall. Balbo, a thin young man with dishevelled hair, was an extremely popular figure who would remain a serious rival for decades to come. Mussolini’s response was to form a coalition government that excluded all prominent fascists from office. In his first appearance as prime minister he intimidated the Chamber of Deputies, which was hostile, and flattered the Senate, which was friendly. Most of all, he assured them that he would respect the constitution. Relieved, a majority gave him full powers, a few speakers even begging Mussolini to impose a dictatorship.15

  Mussolini appeared briefly on the international scene, travelling to Lausanne and London to be courted by potential allies. At Victoria Station he and his entourage were given a triumphant welcome, having to move through a ‘screaming mass of humanity, blinded by the flashes of the photographers’ cameras’. Still basking in the glory of his March on Rome, he was acclaimed by the press as the Cromwell of Italy, the Italian Napoleon, the new Garibaldi in a black shirt. While his international image would go from strength to strength, it would be sixteen years before he crossed the Italian border again.16

  At home, few people had ever seen the Duce. Mussolini was keen to bring the population under his spell, with whirlwind tours around the country, endless unannounced visits to villages, mass meetings with workers and inaugurations of public projects. He soon had his own train and demanded that it slow down when there was a large crowd, always making sure to stand by the window: ‘All of them should be able to see me,’ he explained to his valet, who was tasked with finding out on which side of the tracks the masses were gathered. What was at first a political necessity would over time become an obsession.17

  While Mussolini was wary of his rivals, he immediately put one of his most reliable collaborators in charge of the press at the Ministry of the Interior, an institution the Duce ran himself. Cesare Rossi’s task was to promote fascism in the press, using secret funds to finance publications favouring Mussolini and draw independent newspapers into the orbit of the government. Rossi also funded a secret group of fascist militants charged with eliminating enemies of the regime. One of them was Amerigo Dumini, a young adventurer known as ‘the Duce’s hitman’. In June 1924, he and several accomplices kidnapped Giacomo Matteotti, a socialist leader and deputy openly critical of Mussolini, stabbing him repeatedly with a carpenter’s file before burying his body in a ditch outside Rome.18

  The murder caused widespread revulsion. Popular opinion turned against Mussolini, who was now more isolated than ever. He made a placatory speech, which in turn alienated his followers, who were under attack by parliament and the press. Fearing that they might turn against him, he finally took the plunge into dictatorship with a violent speech delivered to the Chamber of Deputies on 3 January 1925. Mussolini defiantly announced that efforts to form a parliamentary coalition were futile and that he would now pursue a path of exclusive fascist rule. He alone, he claimed boldly, was responsible for all that had happened. ‘If fascism has been a criminal association, then I am the chief of that criminal association.’ And he alone would put things right – by force through a personal dictatorship if necessary.19

  What followed was a campaign of intimidation at every level, as civil liberties were crushed. Within days the police, with the help of the fascist militia, searched hundreds of houses and arrested members of the opposition.

  The press was muzzled. Even before Mussolini’s speech of 3 January 1925 a decree in July 1924 had given prefects the power to close down any publication without warning. But the liberal press continued to outsell fascist newspapers by a factor of twelve, churning out four million copies a day. Many were now closed down, their most critical journalists persecuted. Police commissioners were attached to the print shops that were still allowed to operate, ensuring that state propaganda was broadcast to all. Corriere della Sera, one of the most important opposition papers, was turned into a fascist organ. A draconian law on public security in November 1926 spelled out the reasons for immediate seizure by the police, including writings that were ‘damaging to the prestige of the state or its authorities’. A pall of secrecy settled over the country. Telephones lines and the mail were monitored, while blackshirt thugs and undercover police brought the streets under surveillance.20

  The pace of the revolution was accelerated by several attempts on Mussolini’s life. On 7 April 1926 Violet Gibson, an Irish aristocrat, fired a gun at the Duce, grazing his nose. Six months later a fifteen-year-old boy took a shot at him during a parade celebrating the March on Rome. He was lynched on the spot by fascists, fuelling suspicion that the affair had been staged for political ends. From November 1925 to December 1926 all civil associations and political parties came under the purview of the state. Freedom of association was suspended, even for small groups of three or four persons. As Mussolini proclaimed, ‘All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing without the state’.21

  On Christmas Eve 1925 Mussolini was invested with full executive authority without the intervention of parliament under the new title of Head of Government. In the words of a foreign visitor, he was now ‘like a jailer with all the keys hanging at his belt and revolver in hand, pacing unquestioned up and down Italy, as in the quiet and sullen corridors of a vast prison’.22

  Mussolini was also suspicious of the fascists, however. In February 1925 he named Roberto Farinacci secretary of the National Fascist Party, the only legally permitted political organisation in the country. Farinacci set about curbing the power of the fascists and destroying the party machine, opening the way for a system of personal rule dominated by Mussolini. Thousands of the more radical party members were purged. Much as the Duce had refused to appoint fascist leaders to the coalition government in 1922, he now relied on local prefects named directly by the state to police the nation. Mussolini liked to divide and rule, making sure that party officials and the state bureaucracy oversaw each other, leaving the substance of power to himself.23

  As some party members were dismissed, others started adulating their leader. Farinacci, for one, assiduously developed the cult of his master. In 1923, during Mussolini’s visit back home to Predappio, local leaders had proposed to mark his birthplace with a bronze plaque. Two years later, as Farinacci unveiled the memorial, he announced that every party member should go on a religious pilgrimage to Predap
pio and take an ‘oath of loyalty and devotion’ to the Duce.24

  Realising that their own survival now depended on the myth of the great dictator, other party leaders joined the chorus, portraying Mussolini as a saviour, a miracle worker who was ‘almost divine’. Their destinies were tied up with the Duce, the only one capable of holding fascism together. Mussolini was the centre around which leaders as diverse as Grandi and Farinacci could collaborate through common subordination.25

  Roberto Farinacci, having purged the ranks of the party, was in turn dismissed in 1926, replaced by Augusto Turati, a journalist turned squad leader in the early years of the fascist movement. Turati set about consolidating the cult of the Duce, demanding an oath from party members to ensure their absolute obedience to Mussolini. In 1927 he penned the first catechism, entitled A Revolution and a Leader, in which he explained that while there was a Great Council, the Duce was the ‘one leader, the only leader, from whom all power flows’. There was, as he put it, ‘a spirit, a soul, a light, a reality of conscience in which all brothers can find themselves and recognise themselves: the spirit, the goodness, the passion of Benito Mussolini’. A year later, in a preface to a textbook on the origins and development of fascism, he equated the revolution with Mussolini, and Mussolini with the nation: ‘When the entire nation walks on the road of fascism, its face, its spirit, its faith become one with the Duce.’26

  While Mussolini occasionally professed to dislike the cult around his person, he was actually its main architect. He was a master of the art of projecting his own image, carefully studying certain gestures and poses. He rehearsed in Villa Torlonia, a vast, neoclassical villa on a sprawling estate which became his residence in 1925. In the evenings he would sit in a comfortable chair in a projection room to study every detail of his public performance. Mussolini considered himself to be Italy’s greatest actor. Years later, when Greta Garbo visited Rome, his face clouded over: he did not want anyone to overshadow him.27