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Jeremy Collins

Welcome to World War II On Topic. I'm Jeremy Collins, the director of conferences and symposia at The National World War II Museum in New Orleans. This episode is brought to you by the museum's Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. Today, we are traveling back to a 2020 meet the author webinar between our own research historian, Jason Dawsey and Dr. Victoria de Grazia, the Moore Collegiate Professor of History at Columbia University and author of The Perfect Fascist: A Story of Love, Power, and Morality in Mussolini's Italy. Dr. De Grazia discussed her book, which tells the story of fascist Attilio Teruzzi, a war hero turned commander of Mussolini's black shirts and how the personal became political in the fascist quest for manhood and power.

Dr. Jason Dawsey 

I want to welcome all of our viewers out there for joining us for today's webinar. We are so fortunate to have as our guest today, Professor Victoria de Grazia, she is Moore Collegiate Professor of History at Columbia University, where she's been since 1994. She has published on a wide array of topics, including empire and consumption, but she's certainly one of the foremost authorities on fascist Italy. And I thought I would note a few of her publications before we move to the subject of today's webinar. Some of these include The Culture of Consent: Mass Organization of Leisure in Fascist Italy, 1981. How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy 1922 - 1945, which appeared in 1992. A hugely influential volume, The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective, that she edited in 1996. And Irresistible Empire: America's Advance through Twentieth Century Europe from 2005.

We're so fortunate to have her today, talking with us about a brand new book. It's coming out with Harvard University Press with a very provocative title, The Perfect Fascist: A Story of Love, Power, and Morality in Mussolini's Italy. She is joining us today from Italy. Victoria, we're all so envious of you being able to enjoy autumn in Tuscany. And thank you so much for joining us. I thought I would just very briefly mention something about the subject of this book, The Perfect Fascist. And I know you would like to give a brief overview before we get into our conversation proper. This is a book about one of Benito Mussolini's chief subordinates. Attilio Teruzzi. His dates are 1882 to 1950. And I know you wanted to give us some perspective before we really get into the details of his story.

Dr. Victoria de Grazia

To start. I first came across him in a photograph from a woman's archive, a wedding. Didn't turn out well, the wedding. But right smack in the middle, the best man, Benito Mussolini. The New York Times in 1926, June wedding, called it "A Fascist Wedding in Rome." And there we have the bride nice looking calmly American Jewish girl from New York City. And just to the left, we had the groom, Attilio Teruzzi, whom I didn't recognize at first. So it wasn't so much the problem of finding out the bride, I have her pictures will go on, but I had to end up, where is the man who is the man? She was easy to see, to find her photographs, a nice Jewish girl who then became a young opera diva in Italy. Where she met her soon to be husband. She was out to make a coup, very intelligent, talented, young diva.

And to go on further, the coup in her mind was to meet up with her fiance, Attilio Teruzzi, who at that point had become a statesman, and undersecretary of the minister. And here we have the happy power couple in 1926. So the question for me was who was this man that he married this young American woman, Jewish, and what happened that the marriage broke up? But that took me then on a long search, often using photographs to figure out who he was. He was first and foremost, a colonial soldier. Background in Milan. Here we have, he wanted to be an officer gentleman, but he was in the colonial army. That's like a foreign Legion in France, a very rough kind of group. Now, 1913, he had been the army his first 20 years. He was a very good soldier. Here we have him after a battle at Maharuga in which he's wounded, for which he gets Silver Medal in the Italian war to conquer Libya, which began in 1911.

Here he is with his arm, which had been shot, a big beard. This is a man who is always at war, which also shows that Italy was always at war, at least from 1911 on, except very rare times. So, okay. We can see first the wars fought in Libya. We'll see him in the Italian front, in World War I. He's going to win two Silver Medals there. We're going to see him back in Libya, on the Libyan front in World War I. Nobody knows about that particular front. Then we're going to see him going up to fight the Reds in Italy. That was, they regarded as a war, the fascist against the subversives. And then we're going to see him as governor in the second Italy Senussi war against the Senussi warriors in Libya. We're going to then see him moving on to the Ethiopian war, where he's going to be a militia general.

And then we're going to see him in the Spanish Civil War in a secret so-called expeditionary force, which was very important to Franco and the Nationalists to winning the war. And that will be for the moment that will entitle him to say he was fought all the Italian fascist wars up until then. And finally, at the very end, we're going to see him in 1945 for several days, called up as a general to fight on the side of the Germans against the Allies and the partisans. But let's move on very quickly. So you can see his physique, because this was what was regarded as a very handsome soldier. Here we see him in World War I on the Italian front, terrible war. He's with his general a fine, a very good general Bacardi and another aide de camp. He's a captain, but he's become an aide de camp.

Then after he is demobilized, he comes back. He's only a major, he would like perhaps to go further, but basically there's exuberant numbers of officers. And he's one of those who decides to go into the reserve corps because he's not going to advance in the army. And in any case, he sees the idea now is that the army now doesn't work. He will join the fascists and make them work like an army. And for the next 25 years, basically 20 to 1945, he's an unwavering fascist. Now you see him on the March on Rome. There he is right in the center, posing, handsome beard. Again, very photogenic. Camera often focuses on him standing behind Mussolini as an aide de camp. He's not one of the four quadrant leaders. He has led up a very vicious band of Legionnaires coming out of the Emilia-Romagna area, 1926.

Here he's commander in the field in another Italian Senussi war. You could see him on his white horse with the Sheikhs being forced to submit to the Italians. Here we see him, he's become the head of the fascist militia, 350,000 men, which is a huge force we'll come back to, with Mussolini and with his own general, who has now become the general in charge of the presidium of Rome. So you can see now he's transferred his allegiance from a long time past to Mussolini. You can see him here now, he's been promoted Brigadier general in the army. Flip back. Here he has become the minister of Italian Africa in 1939. And he's retired at that point as army corps general.

He becomes appointed that in 1938. And then he retires then because of age in 1939, he is the head of Italian Africa. He's with the Nazi colonial plenipotentiary. And he's in Berlin here. He's reviewing the Grossdeutschland regiment, which is has just come back from France and is about to head toward Eastern Europe. This is not a war he's actually involved in physically on the field. This is the war that's going down to take Italy way out of its immediate colonial ambitions, which are basically toward the Western Mediterranean in Spain, through the Mediterranean, and then down through the horn of Africa. Euro-Africa is what the Italians imagined that they were going to have on the way of empire. But they joined now as of 1940, entering the war against France to join their fortunes to conquer all of Europe and join in with voluntary and regular military troops with the Germans in the onslaught in 1941 against the Soviet Union. That will, of course, by then have proved the undoing of Italy and of the fascist regime in 1943.

He is being denounced very visible as a notorious Libertine, which he was, but more and more, he's going to be in public as the regime crumbles. He will be indicted as one of the most notorious collaborators of fascism. He is a purged hierarch, he's been tried and the first big fascist to be tried. He has also one of the longest sentences and he becomes basically the assistant librarian to the prison chaplain until he's released in 1950. Whereupon he dies soon after. So just to have these in the back of your mind, we'll now turn the conversation over to Jason and who's going to ask more about this book, The Perfect Fascist.

Dr. Jason Dawsey

Victoria, thank you for that. That certainly has, I think, stoked our curiosity about Teruzzi and about his long career as a military man, and then as a fascist. I thought I would ask very briefly though, that this is quite a story. And you actually said several times in your overview about these are things that are unknown either just him personally, or those aspects of his life where he was a major figure in fascist politics. What drew you to the story about Teruzzi?

Dr. Victoria de Grazia

Well, it was finding this archive, but before that I'd been very interested in nailing a fascist, driving the stick through the heart. Revealing behind the facade, how they operated amongst each other, what kind of relations they had with women and with their children. Did they think this is going to go on? Did they buy houses? How do they imagine the future? Not just politically or in terms of poor Italy's destiny, but in terms of their own. And so the archive gave me the insight to try to now go and pry into every nook and cranny to bring him out. And to sometimes to out him, because he had been very much concealed for all kinds of reasons, partly his character. He would hide things. He wasn't a big writer. He was regarded as a reserved person. He shifted bureaucracies. And maybe too, as a military man, he wanted to keep a low profile in terms of diaries and such like that. That was part of his training, not to leave stuff around that could be found by prying eyes.

Dr. Jason Dawsey

Well, you certainly do drag him into the light with this book, and you point out, I think here about we should not lose sight of the fact when we're looking at the leaders, the Mussolinis or the Hitlers, et cetera, of fascist movements that those leaders always depend on lieutenants, on subordinates to make sure things run, that things are done. And Teruzzi is a key player in the Mussolini dictatorship, as you show. But I thought we would just move through his career and kind flesh out what you presented to us initially in those slides. So, Victoria, could you tell us a bit about Teruzzi's background before he became a professional soldier?

Dr. Victoria de Grazia

Yeah, the Italian army around 1900 was an army that had relied very much on aristocracy, but as militarization heated up in the nineties and Italy's wiggling. It's joined with Austria, Hungary, and Germany and then there's France and there's development of this alternate Alliance. It needs more capabilities. And so this guy comes from a small background, petty bourgeois background, who wouldn't have had either the education or the family monies to go to military academy. And was probably in trouble because he had a very impetuous character and there were all kinds of left wing, anarchist rebellions, mainly among young people in the 1890s in Milan. He was pretty sophisticated, that is, comes from a popular neighborhood, what they call the Novelli.

He joined, he volunteers, the idea that, hey, become a low level officer, he'll spend his 12 years in the army and then get some sort of senicure. They put them in the railroads management or so on. And so that's what happens. He joins the foreign Legion. That would probably be more interesting, more career possibilities. And he's a cunning guy as well as impetuous. And he gets along with people. So he's helped to go to the Italian West Point, the Academy of Modena, he's a regular guy who manages to get in and that's the beginning of his career. That enables him to get a commission, he goes back. And so he's making his way slowly, let's say. He's got good accounting abilities. He's the kind of guy you'll trust with the company monies and with the company diaries, but he's not going to become a general that's for sure.

There's no sign of that, he's in the infantry. And he's brave. There's no question he's brave. He throws his body onto the line and he gets medals. And that's what enables him to get involved with this very fine general. To get up so close to him, and to have him really count on getting those men to go over the top, which was the main problem which you had in world war, in the Italian front, in these terrible Alpine circumstances, men being killed all over the place, your junior officers dying like flies. So Teruzzi is already in the period of he's a military man. He's going to get up to be a major. And he's a very good soldier. That seems to be the case, from the records.

Dr. Jason Dawsey

And that takes us into a couple of conflicts that are just not that well known to many Americans, which is Italy's colonial war in Libya against the Ottoman empire. And then within that new colony itself, that there's a kind of internal conflict that he gets involved with. And then of course he will then move to Italy proper during World War I, and a lot of us just don't know, Victoria, that much about Italy's participation in World War I. We are much more familiar typically with France and Britain and that Western front. But that front there between Italy and Austria, Hungary, later Germany is involved, is an incredibly bloody one that you described quite powerfully in the books. You tell us a bit about his service in these conflicts?

Dr. Victoria de Grazia

Libya, poor Libya, in the crossfire between the Ottomans, the Italians, the French, and the British then pressing in from Egypt. It's a targety area, with this rich coastline in these cute little cities of Tripoli and Benghazi. Of course, we think of it with horror. We hear the name Benghazi and it inspires this revulsion. We know about Gaddafi. But it was the last colony snatched from the Ottomans, very late 1911, when Italy said, hey, we need a piece of this cake. The French have it, the British have it. Now us. We're big. We want to be big there. So the Italians are using always Ascardi troops, troops from Eritrea, and that's where he comes in. He's the head of a very handsome battalion of native troops, the Italian native, so-called indigenous troops, the Italians have never seen such things. They're also fighting alongside of Italians.

So it's a very exciting moment. This is the great, exciting war, which the Italians used to call the Great War. That was their big entrance onto the scene of military life. They were going to start there, gradually conquer the rest, what they call the Fourth Shore, conquer the rest of the Mediterranean. Maybe get the French to give some stuff. Maybe the British would recognize them and then gradually expand, they hoped, along the Northern coast of Africa. So that's already part of the start of World War I, is those of you who war buffs, the wars in which then weakens all the Ottomans. So you get the first Balkan wars, the second Balkan wars. It's a very part of that trajectory. Teruzzi then is brought in, like all the colonial people that shifted over to this Northern front, along the Austrian, and they hope they're going to win the war right away.

They're going to do knockout blow, zoom, get to Vienna. And that will be it. They're going to get back those lands that are some Italian speaking, some German. And instead this becomes trench warfare, except that it's trench warfare 2000 meters up in the air. 6,000, 7,000 feet. And this is especially so, when in the second year of the war, actually, it's a little like the Battle of the Marne. And then the Somme, when the Germans launch this huge expedition over the mountains and they catch the Italians unawares. And so then the Italians have to push back, which means just this terrible bloody warfare, both in the north on the Alpine, and then on this river, except the car. So, which is a flat plane. So it's as bloody as any front and it's immobile as any front. And they had as many decimations as probably now it's being argued as even, maybe as the Russians.

Though I'm not quite sure if that's true or exaggerated, but it was a hugely sad war that was fought. And then the Italians saw that the Libyans were reconquered Libya. And so they had to start thinking, oh my gosh, it's going to be the peace treaties. And we've lost now this colony, we're out on the edge. We've been driven back to the little towns on the water. So they began to send back officers there to try to mobilize so that when Italy went to their side to the peace treaty, they could say, hey, we have conquered Libya, now recognize this is ours. And so he's a small figure in that, because as a major... He's made a battalion major in this little town and then serves in until he comes home in 1920. So they're there. The Italians are very militarized, militaristic starting in 1911, and then continuing to 1920. And then wanting more when the peace treaties say, hey, you can't, you can't have this. You can't have that.

Dr. Jason Dawsey

Yeah, that's a really fascinating point about this militarization of Italian politics, of Italian society, that happens in that decade of conflict, 1911 to 1920, that you just mentioned, Victoria. And I think it's important that you note in the book that 689,000 Italians perished in World War I. That's a staggeringly high number. It's obviously one and a half times the number of all Americans killed during World War II. And Italy doesn't even join until the spring of 1915 and how bloody this was. And you draw our attention to that in those sections of the book about Teruzzi's involvement. And then he, as you mentioned, he comes home in 1920. And of course the country itself is convulsed by political unrest. And I thought we would say something about that here. Can you describe the situation in Milan at that time that he comes back and how he becomes involved with Benito Mussolini?

Dr. Victoria de Grazia

Yeah. So you got to imagine this guy, who's been very happy in Libya. Beautiful little town, he had a girlfriend, battalion major. He was the head of everything and comes back in Milan. And this big strike waves, workers are trying to get higher wages. Unionized. The peasants out in the countryside are occupying the land said, hey, we fought this army for three years. We've made so many sacrifices. Give us some dignity at home. So there's this huge amount of social unrest. And then there's a lot of antipathy up against the war. Most Italians did not support the war. They wanted Italy to remain neutral during the war. They didn't see why they should be involved in this conflict. And so the country had split between those who supported the war and those who were against it. And that was particularly visible in Milan, which in the first elections, after the war got a renewal of a good socialist administration, social reform administration.

So he comes home, workers on strike, a socialist administration, which basically had been neutralist if not anti-war. And the streets are filled with people who are insulting the officers saying it was their fault, insulting, if not them personally, their uniform. And it was a discovery for me, this idea that an insult, when officers insult the for kings uniform and they were just furious at this illegality, at this notion. They represented the constitution and the nation and the king and sacrifices for the war, should be so insulted and treated so badly. They said also by the army, which was now demobilizing them, by the government that wasn't providing them with good pensions, by the people who didn't recognize their service, didn't even set up a veterans day for them to honor their involvement in the war.

So there was a huge amount of animosity, especially at that level, at the officer level. And he, being impetuous, being Republican in the Italian sense, that is, anti-monarchical. Being at that point also anti-clerical, this guy was really angry and very visible. He would act it out, stand around his arms crossed and would rage in the center of the town. The piazza, the galleria. He was very visible because he also had beautiful blue uniform of the colonial army, not the khakis of the normal officers and a lot of medals and so on. So he really does become a kind of embodiment of that particular kind of anger. Why, however, big question, he should shift his loyalties from the army and this gorgeous general he had, who was so honest and so righteous and so on, to Mussolini? That's the question I had to really keep asking. Why that shift over? It's not, as we know from our military, it's not self-evident that they're going to shift from being in the ranks to politics. It's a big, different world.

Dr. Jason Dawsey 

You do sort of talk about military and paramilitary in the book, these kind of militias, really, that the fascists create and mobilize. And Teruzzi had such a role to play in those, that we'll get to. You describe him, Victoria, you describe Teruzzi as one of the most visible and vigorous new men of the fascist revolution. Could you explain for the audience of what you mean by this and say a little bit about the different hats he wore in the early fascist movement?

Dr. Victoria de Grazia 

Yeah. Yeah. Well, fascists had gathered in an amazing elite. We can't underestimate that Mussolini in the first period surrounds himself by fascists like and we'll come back to him. Because he's very important here, but he also gets the best and the brightest, the old nationalists, I can't quite think of a comparable person. It's like some of the first George Bush's counselors, like Baker, people who were constitutionalists, but let's say nationalists. And he gets very smart economists around him, gets brilliant philosophers to become the ministers of education. So it's an interesting grouping that he gets together when he starts out. But among the fascists, Teruzzi plays a particular kind of role because he looks good in uniform. A lot of generals don't look good. I mean, they're bent over, loose uniforms. And there he is, boom.

When I say vigorous, he had a lot of girlfriends and he was real fisticuffs. This is a guy who threw punches and kicked people in the rear if they were socialists. He's physical, he's physical. That was a surprise. Because you said, guys, he's 38 years old. Is he running around beating people up and doing this and that? Yeah, he's physical. Like the way these colonial officers treated their colored troops and kick them around. And they were supposed to beat them. And they were supposed to show their physical command over them. And so he had that. That physicality to throw himself around. So that's why I said vigorous, new. These were coming from the lower middle classes. There was no respect for them in the political life of Italy. They had not been involved in politics.

Mussolini had been involved in socialist politics, had been the director of their socialist party newspaper. Teruzzi, he had been in the army. He couldn't be in politics. I still couldn't even find if they voted because they're supposed to stay out of politics in any case. Most people didn't vote until the 1920 elections. The electorate was very, very small. So these are the new men on the scene. They create a lot of disorder, but they're supposed to restore order. They keep saying, we're going to be efficient government. We're going to get rid of the Reds who are enemies of the country. We're going to make Italy great, very clear. We're going to make it as strong and beautiful as it was under Roman times. That's the refrain, we're going to make it a major power. We're going to build a fleet to compete with the French and the British and the Mediterranean.

So this is the kind of man that, he's not regarded as educated because he doesn't have a college degree. And also because he's an organizer and this prejudice against organizers. Much is made about the thinkers of fascism and very little attention is paid to those who are actually organizing the squads, which is not simple. It's very hard to take ruffians and shape them up into militia. It's takes a certain, a military capacity. So that's why he's very important and peculiar in the early fascist movement, because he is a military man. And he knows how to organize.

Dr. Jason Dawsey

Yeah, you have this priceless quote, Victoria... I'm sorry?

Dr. Victoria de Grazia

No, please. I was not a-

Dr. Jason Dawsey

Oh, no. I just said that you have this priceless quote from Mussolini where they're trying to organize these militias, these squads to intimidate opponents and Mussolini says... I'm paraphrasing, but I, for the life of me, I can't figure out how Trotsky actually created a Red army in Russia. And obviously Teruzzi, as you detail, plays a big role in holding these elements together. His own personal charisma and his own background as a soldier really does help with that. And that actually leads to this next point about speaking of intimidating and worse political opponents is that you draw our attention to the murder in June, 1924 of the Italian socialist Giacomo Matteotti. And this was a real turning point for the Mussolini regime. Could you tell our audience a bit about this murder about Matteotti's murder? Teruzzi's complicity or not in it, and why this was such a decisive moment for the Mussolini regime?

Dr. Victoria de Grazia 

Yeah. So you all have to think for a moment that Mussolini is appointed prime minister in October, 1922, by the king, to head up a new cabinet. Because they had not big government as a parliamentary system, and no other man could form up a cabinet that would last, they kept turning over. So Mussolini gets there by playing a double role. He's going through the piazza, beating people up, the March on Rome as a kind of blackmail. But at the same time, all of these dealings are made, say, okay, now you try to be the prime minister. And he comes there and he plays it. So then the problem becomes, how is he going to rule? It's one thing to be the prime minister, but how are you going to keep the things going when you're there in a legitimate, semi legitimate way?

So postpones elections for three years, until... Two years, really. And finally there are the elections. And he manages with a lot of violence to win, but at the same time, there's a lot of opposition that's developed in the country as well. And they've kept dealing with it, the fascists, by beating people up, by killing key people, mayors of important towns, deputies that are beaten up. And the one moment is in 1924, when they have to ratify the vote, which is an important part. With all the illegalities of the vote, the election law, which loaded it in favor of the fascists and in parliament who speaks? This Matteotti, who's the prince of the opposition. You say prince, he's a handsome man. He speaks English. He speaks French. He's looking into scandals, corruption scandals, American oil companies trying to buy favors.

And he speaks. And it said that mostly, he says, get rid of this guy. And few days later, he is kidnapped and he resists and he's killed. So it's as if all hell would break loose. American newspapers, all the newspapers of the west are denouncing Mussolini for this murder. It's just one of those flagrant kinds of deeds. And the big question then is, will he survive? And it seems like he won't, except that ultimately there's quite a cover up. And the judges don't know how to get behind the cover up. They keep being moved around, the magistrates investigate and Mussolini himself doesn't know what to do. He falls sick, but in the end, it's this militia that rallies and they come to him and say, you keep going. They basically come to Washington and they come to Rome, they enter his chamber and says, stop hanging around malingering, act. Act.

And at that point, then he says, okay, tomorrow when I enter parliament, I'm going to say the dictatorship has arrived. Suck it up folks. Which is what he does. And in that point, Teruzzi's behind the scenes. He's not a major actor, but he certainly wants to let Mussolini know that the men are behind you. And if you act, okay, we'll support you. And you have to act otherwise we're going to do it ourselves. We're going to start the revolution up again. So it's a very key moment where Mussolini will act. And the army says, eh, okay, we'll give you weapons because we're afraid the Reds will start up again. The king says, but you know, Jesus, if I move, take out Mussolini, who am I going to put in? The church says, well, we're neutral. We're not going to do anything. Even though we condemn the murder. And so all the industry says, oh my God, the lira is going to not collapse, but certainly do very, very poorly. So the forces of order are willing to say, we'll go with you. And that begins the next stage.

So long history, but dictatorships go in phases. And you keep saying, my God, that could be the moment that it would fall. Oh no, the depression, another bad moment. Maybe he will fall and so on and so forth. And pretty soon, 22 years of power.

Dr. Jason Dawsey

Yeah. It's quite a story you tell there, Victoria, about how Mussolini, with support and the pushing of people like Teruzzi and some of the more radical figures in the fascist movement and emerges from this scandal, from this debacle, more powerful than ever. And it's a more visibly authoritarian regime that you show comes out of this crisis in 1924. And that actually then leads into this big moment in Teruzzi's personal life. In the mid 1920s, you've already shown us a few slides of that. And that's the central part of your story is Teruzzi's courtship of and marriage to the American Liliana Weinmann. What do you think their relationship reveals about the personal and the political, that kind of rich phrase, the personal and the political in fascist Italy? What does it tell us?

Dr. Victoria de Grazia

Well, Mussolini wanted those guys to settle down. Teruzzi was very visible. He had girlfriends, one got pregnant. He was running around and he was at wits end. He didn't have any capital. He was getting now free apartments. He was filling out some of the small corruption and spending his nights out on the town with ruffians, including a major radical fascist, a guy named Farinacci who had a lot of sway over him. So Mussolini was basically telling these guys, settle down, settle down. How do you settle down? Create a family. The guys been the army. And so then who is he going to settle down with? And he sees this divine creature walking from Milan. He apparently followed her for several years, but now he has the courage because he's become a big shot, invited to become undersecretary of state, which means he manages the police all over Italy.

And so he feels now empowered to court this woman. And what does she bring? Well, big size. He likes big women like his mother. Balance to keep him in order. He wants that. He wants to be a moral man instead of messing around. Money. Her father is supposed to be, and is, a capitalist American. In that point, everybody's saying, oh, Wall Street, anybody who's an American capitalist is as rich as Croesus. And then she's very moral, idealist. She thinks fascism is great. And she thinks he will be great if he's not so manipulated. So it's a marriage of like-minded people, of somebody who wants to veneer himself, but also cultural capital and real capital. So this becomes a marriage in which two people who say they love each other, hey, we can't doubt that. Who seem to who seem to be mismatched, but in fact are well-matched. She's young, 26. He's almost 40, but Italy, that was kind of possible marriage.

Especially if the woman was bringing in a big dowry as she did. So perfect marriage seemed, which he needed to present himself to the world. Have children, act like a normal person. Otherwise he would be considered a rogue or, who knows, something worse. There's a lot of homoerotic relations amongst these fascists. And he wants to make clear that he's a married man with a big wife full of virtues, like Mussolini's major lover and mentor, Jewish, Margherita Sarfatti, who performs the same function for Mussolini.

Telling him what to wear, writing speeches for him, advising him during the Matteoti crisis. So it does seem like a marriage, well we would say made in hell, but made in heaven. Heaven, hell, fascist Italy in 1926. And that's where I come into the story. Wow. He needed that. You can't just be a fascist. You need to have a personal life that's solid. Mussolini did, no matter how many lovers he had. He had several children, one wife. Didn't matter that he had a harem. He was still showed to be a father of a big family. There were no scandals. People kept it silent that he had this person and that person, or it all rebounded that he was a real macho guy. Which is what was good in a vigorous fascist leader, youngest prime minister in all of Europe, in the world at that point. So Teruzzi's part of that, but he had to get married. That was key.

Dr. Jason Dawsey

It's such a revealing part of the book, this relationship and about fascism's public face and the kind of morality that is... It is a kind of morality that's cultivated by the regime and how their relationship really discloses a lot about that. Just watching our time here, Victoria. And I know that during the Q and A, we might could come back to talking about Teruzzi's return to Libya and his involvement in the Spanish Civil War. But looking at our time, I know our viewers would be very curious to know about how he looked at fascist Italy's growing ties to the Nazi regime. Starting in the mid 1930s, obviously the most viciously antisemitic regime in the world and how those ties obviously pull Italy into World War II. What was Teruzzi's place in that story?

Dr. Victoria de Grazia

He went along. It doesn't seem like he ever had any... He was anti British. He was never philo-French, which some fascists were, some were also philo-British. He had taken his honeymoon in Germany. I think that he probably matures from 37, he's like Mussolini. Hmm, these Germans, they're organized. They're rich. They have ambitions like us to overturn Versailles. And by the time he's minister of Africa in 1939, they really are admiring of the Germans. And the Germans are admiring of the Italians. They're creating this cultural access, mutual admiration society. You've got Wagner, we've got Verdi. You don't associate it with fascists, but that's how we've dealt with one another. You have great writers. We have great writers. We have Machiavelli, you have raison d'etat, this real politique, so we're perfectly matched to take over the world, to take over Europe.

First of all, the French are weak and impotent. The British don't even care about Europe. So there was that kind of mentality. The Russians are going to invade us and are barbarians. So the destinies with the Germans and the Italians, again, that's hard for Americans to think about. So I would say this is a man who by 1940, is visiting Germany. He's coming back saying, hey, the Germans are with us. We're going to have a bigger empire than we thought, once we go into the war on the side of the Germans. Colonial lobby saying, oh my God, if we go in on the side of the Germans, we're lost. How can we protect our empire in east Africa? And in north Africa, from the British? They're all over the place, even if their army's smaller than ours, which it was in 1940. Italy didn't have the resources to do that.

So Teruzzi is deeply misbegotten, like many people around Mussolini, and Mussolini himself, to think that this access is going to lead to the results they want. Quite the contrary. It's a totally misbegotten bet that they're making on a quick end to the war. Britain will fall out as a result of Germany's bombardment. US stay out of the war. The Soviets are weak and the Germans will take care of them. Terrible, terrible mistake. But that so called mistake that comes from a dictatorship, which is more and more bellicose and more and more deluded about its place in the world.

Dr. Jason Dawsey

Well, that's so interesting. And it leads me to this final question then Victoria, and then we're going to see what our audience would like to ask you. But how does World War II end for Teruzzi? Obviously as Mussolini is ousted in the summer of 1943, and then the Germans have to prop him up in this sort of puppet regime in Northern Italy while they're occupying the country. And then this left that had been basically crushed in the early twenties is resurgent in much of Northern Italy, right? Late in the war, these partisan groups that form and openly challenge the fascists. What happens to Teruzzi as fascist Italy's war effort crumbles?

Dr. Victoria de Grazia

Well, he's ousted with the rest of Mussolini in July 43, after the Americans and the Allies beat Sicily. And he is forced to leave. First off, he's arrested and the Germans rescue him when they rescue Mussolini with the idea of setting these guys up in the north. Well, the only one who really works out, is Mussolini. Nobody else wants these hierarchs, the younger, much more radical furious pro-Nazi fascists who set up in the north. They don't want this little hierarch around, corrupt, with his personal problems. He has a Jewish companion who doesn't have citizenship and a beautiful blue eyed Aryan looking child. And so he has to hide this woman from the Germans. He doesn't have his military pension. So there he is, and he's still with Mussolini and he's Mussolini to the very end, 1945.

One last hurrah. He mobilizes the militia unit to try to escape to Switzerland and he's caught. And that's the end of the active story. And very lucky that he's not hung up in Piazzale Loreto along with Mussolini and several other hierarchs. And that may be thanks to the fact that he was traveling with his wife and his paramour, his spouse let's call her, and this terrified six year old child who would melt the heart of even the cruelest communist partisan. So they didn't shoot him right on the spot.

Dr. Jason Dawsey

Well, when I was reading your book, Victoria, I kept thinking as this unfolded that he was going to be executed. So there is a bit of a twist there that he does survive as you point out it's incredibly, he was-

Dr. Victoria de Grazia

Spoiler. It's a spoiler. Read the book, forget what I said.

Dr. Jason Dawsey

That's right. And there's five years of his life, obviously, that you detail too after the wars end. But I thought I would now open things up after this great conversation, Victoria, and let our audience pose some questions to you. And we've got several of them already. So I thought I would just start out here. This takes us back to the early twenties. Mike asked if you could elaborate a bit on this anti-subversive war that Teruzzi was involved in.

Dr. Victoria de Grazia 

It's very good question. That's my term to call the anti-subversive war. Sometimes they call it a civil war, but the socialists and economists were not organized. They basically sort of barricaded themselves inside of these buildings, socialist YMCA type buildings to try to keep the fascists, often allied with local police, from bombarding them. But the language that they were enemies of Italy, that they were Reds, they were Bolsheviks, that they had defeated the country during the war. That was a powerful metaphor that made Teruzzi be willing to mobilize squads protected by the police to go out and burn down the left organizations. The weakest left organizations, those that were most reformist or Catholic organizations, which were also targeted. So when I called the anti-subversive war, they're using all the military tactics they can. There was even one idea to bombard the new socialist newspaper with an airplane, bring in bombs.

They were able to get military supply. They used trucks from military material left over. There was a flowing out of military equipment, a little like from our wars, that the police get more and more militarized. And the squads though, in this case were those which were picking up all this military material to use, to attack the left. And they were real army type maneuvers of the paramilitary in the big rich valleys, like around Bologna around Milan, which is where the main battle. So the fascists were in battle everywhere that there were socialist organizations.

You could take a map, where is socialism strong? In the sense of voting locally, nice institutions. And there you'd get these squads, which were, by even the March of Rome had occupied many of the town councils, the administrations. They had actually had coups, many local coups. That was something I discovered that nobody's talked about, they've taken over and literally defenestrated, they would just throw the socialists out the window of the town councils, where they had been legally elected. And scores and scores of those events had happened. So that's what I call the anti-subversive war to try to keep the idea of war here, war there, war there, war there, who do this home front war.

Dr. Jason Dawsey 

Your account definitely raises all kinds of questions too, about how the left failed to really respond to the fascist challenge in an adequate way. And in those chapters of the book or the sections of the book are especially rich there. As you've already mentioned the March on Rome, Victoria, we have a question from Thomas who wanted to know a bit more about Teruzzi's own role in the March on Rome, what exactly he did during the March.

Dr. Victoria de Grazia 

Let's just tease it out. So March on Rome is kind of a really amateur hour military event. They're going to surround Rome, bring in legions from 13 different points. Start over Perugia. Then they'd be Tivoli, Monterotondo, surround the city of Rome. And that, they said, if the army doesn't intervene, will force the king to appoint Mussolini. And it was also to allow the fascists to blow off steam, otherwise, if they disappointed Mussolini and all these fascists are waiting to get power, it would've been pretty complicated. So Teruzzi's role there, he, by that time is the vice president of the fascist party. So he's in charge of liaising with all of the local groups. There are however, four leaders who are appointed to manage the overall strategy and Teruzzi is put in charge of one of the biggest legions, which is Emilia-Romagna. Which, it's hard for me to say how many probably accompany, maybe 4,000 men, which assault Bologna, take over the jails, take over the trains, take over the post office.

I mean, a coup type action, and then continue to march down. And he, meanwhile, is rushing around, doing various oversight kinds of tasks. So it's a paramilitary action. But with the idea that, hey, we are behaving in a military way. The main thing that happened is that the king did not pull out the army to declare a state of siege, which the chief of staff did want to do that. He said, call out the army. These guys will disappear like snowflakes in the sun in the spring, which would probably be true, but it was a double action. It was Piazza and parliament working in this double action. So Teruzzi is convicted on that count, that he helped organize the March on Rome, the coup. That's one of the indictments against him.

Dr. Jason Dawsey

Well, looking at our time, Victoria, I think we have time for one more question. And it's actually been raised by two or three people from your presentation. Which is about, since Teruzzi had a Jewish companion, how did the 1938 anti-Semitic laws that the regime passed, obviously under pressure from the Nazi regime, how did those laws affect him personally when these were implemented?

Dr. Victoria de Grazia

Yeah. So real quick, his wife was trying to get an annulment and the church said they'd annul the marriage. Again, I'm not going to spoil anything here. Because she was Jewish and American and they didn't believe in marriage like the Catholics did. His girlfriend, he tries to get her citizenship and fails. Later on, she would become more and more Jewish as a result of those laws. With many consequences. He himself, like many big fascists, wrote to Mussolini. And he said, oh, I met a poor Jewish widow in Genoa. And she's been crying because she may have to leave Italy as a result of these laws. Can you do something? And Mussolini, he says, oh, of course she can stay, she shouldn't worry. So the way these fascist laws are put into effect, they affect him, on the one hand allowed to be more benevolent. On the other hand, it seems that he's going to be able to annul his marriage to his Jewish wife. And third, he'll try to slip through the laws by getting his girlfriend, the mother of his daughter, citizenship. Life. Humanity.

Dr. Jason Dawsey

Well, there is certainly a lot about human beings that people will think about once they read your book, Victoria, and I strongly encourage them to get a copy of The Perfect Fascist: A Story of Love, Power, and Morality in Mussolini's Italy, out with Harvard University Press. Let me thank you, Victoria, for a fascinating conversation today. Such a rich work, and I think you've helped us understand better the dynamics of fascism as a movement and as a regime. So I hope people follow up and learn more about the story of Teruzzi and of the movement, this notorious violent authoritarian movement that he was a part of. And let me thank our viewers for joining us this morning. With that, thanks very much, ladies and gentlemen, and we hope to have you again with us for one of these great discussions.

Dr. Victoria de Grazia

Thank you. Thank you all.

Jeremy Collins

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