"A woman a day for 20 years’

Press, 8 March 1989, Page 8

"A woman a day for 20 years’

NZPA-AFP Rome “Caro Duce... I’m a flower just waiting to be plucked by you. Don’t let me wilt,” a female admirer wrote to Benito Mussolini in the dictator’s heyday. The Italian fascist leader received hundreds of thousands of similar letters from women of all social condition, extracts of which have just been published in Italy under the title “Caro Duce.” The admirers, who included artists, nuns, prostitutes and aristocrats as well as peasants and factory workers, would request an appointment with Mussolini, sometimes to criticise him, sometimes to offer their advice, but mostly to praise him. In 1936, the Duce (leader) was getting up to 42,000 letters from women each month. According to a former attendant, he would chose the prettiest from enclosed photographs or those he judged to be interesting, and would invite them to spend an afternoon at the Venice Palace in Rome.

Mussolini had “a woman a day for 20 years,” according to the usher responsible for letting the women in. These brief encounters were in addition to his legitimate wife and his mistress, Clara Petacci, 29 years his junior. The Duce rarely devoted more than 10 minutes to his “groupies” between affairs of State, former aides said. “Every day Mussolini was swamped in a flood of letters and telephone calls from women. The phone calls were from women he knew to whom he had given his personal number,” said the Duce’s former manservant. The Duce was unable to read everything, but he was a maniac for filing and threw nothing away. A team of “experts” in his personal secretariat were responsible for classifying his love letters with separate files for “acquaintances” and “new women.” Mussolini was executed, aged 62, by Italian Resistance fighters on April 28, 1945, at Dongo on Lake Como. His mistress, Clara Petacci died with him.