Mauro Canali, The Matteotti Murder and Mussolini: The Anatomy of a Fascist Crime, Palgrave 2024
On June 10, 1924, Giacomo Matteotti, a young member of the Italian Parliament and Secretary of the Socialist Unitary Party (PSU), was kidnapped outside his home by agents of the Fascist Ceka, Mussolini’s secret police. Two months later, Matteotti’s body was found a few kilometers outside Rome. This barbaric murder marked the end of the so-called “legalitarian” period (1922-1924) of the Mussolini government. Prior to that date, Mussolini had been successful in skillfully navigating between conflicting pressures within the Fascist movement, represented by intransigent currents on one side and moderate sectors on the other. The hardliners were guided by a totalitarian view of the political struggle that envisioned the establishment of a single-party regime. They saw the “moderate” outcome of the March on Rome as a betrayal of the Fascist revolution resulting in the formation of a coalition government that included men and political parties they firmly opposed. To the contrary, the other, less radical, Fascists, felt the revolutionary period of fascism had come to an end with the formation of the Mussolini government, and they supported the “normalization” of Italian political life.
Liberal political groups were aligned with the moderate Fascists. They were allies of the Mussolini government and demanded more vigorous action against political violence, as well as the return to political debate between the majority and opposition parties. Mussolini had made concessions to both sides and pursued a strategy of “duplicity.” This strategy consisted of displaying a purely formal respect for the political procedures and institutions of the liberal state, along with a certain degree of tolerance towards criticism leveled by the opposition forces. At the same time, Mussolini encouraged the use of violence. He considered the Ceka necessary because, as he had confided to his close advisors, “all governments in a state of transition need illegal organizations to keep their opponents in their place.” Despite Mussolini’s repeated formal assurances that he respected the law, the political atmosphere during the “legalitarian” period was marked by numerous acts of violence against the opposition, carried out under his orders.
Many supporters of the Duce steadfastly maintained that Mussolini was extraneous to the murder of Giacomo Matteotti. Some affirm that he merely gave the order to administer a strong lesson to the socialist deputy which, however, ended tragically due to a botched execution. Others are convinced that the crime was carried out without his knowledge, for obscure reasons, by some of his unfaithful collaborators. Some are still convinced that the crime was the result of a tragic misinterpretation by some collaborators of Mussolini’s verbal outbursts against Matteotti, which they understood as an actual order to kill him. Finally, some limit Mussolini’s responsibility to the moral sphere only. They contend that Mussolini did not order the crime, but they are willing to admit that it took place within a climate of violence that he was instrumental in creating. It is difficult to deny his moral responsibility: in a speech on January 3, 1925, the Fascist leader claimed that if “all the violence was the result of a certain historical, political and moral climate, well, I am responsible for it.” He also assumed responsibility for “everything that happened” including, consequently, Matteotti’s death.
Historical work on the murder of Giacomo Matteotti has remained largely dormant for many years, consisting substantially of two now-classic books on the subject. One is by Renzo De Felice: Mussolini il fascista, published in 1966, which presents the Matteotti story in the context of Mussolini’s biography. The other, from 1968, is Giuseppe Rossini’s Il delitto Matteotti tra il Viminale e l’Aventino. However, both are silent when facing the most difficult obstacle presented by the Matteotti affair: they suspend judgment regarding Mussolini’s direct responsibility. In other words, they do not answer the question, “Did he give the order?” However, given the documentation that was available to the two historians, they could not have made significant headway in that direction. Both scholars pointed out the dictator’s moral responsibility but remained reticent when faced with determining the actual role Mussolini played in the organization of the crime.
Other research remained stalled for many decades. The reason for this delay is derived in part, and indirectly, from a law governing archival records. Though conceived to protect privacy, the authorities’ narrow interpretation of its content prevented scholars from consulting the documents of the preliminary investigations of the two Matteotti murder trials until a few years ago The first trial was held in Chieti in 1926 and the second was in Rome in 1947; both sets of documents are in the State Archive of Rome (ASR).
In the middle 1990s, however, I was able to track down a copy of the preliminary investigative documents from 1924. Through a series of fortuitous circumstances, they wound up in the archives of the London School of Economics, having been donated, sometime between the end of 1926 and the beginning of 1927, by the socialist exile Gaetano Salvemini, who at the time was writing The Fascist Dictatorship in Italy. Giuseppe Emanuele Modigliani, the lawyer for the Matteotti family as civil plaintiffs, had access to the documents of the preliminary investigation and gave them to Salvemini. We have no idea how Modigliani overcame the practical hurdles involved, but we do know that a copy of the proceedings finally made its way into Salvemini’s hands and that Salvemini (who shortly thereafter left for the United States) donated it to the London School of Economics. As a result, in London I was able to examine a vast quantity of documents and court exhibits from the preliminary investigation that had never been seen by a historian other than Salvemini. These documents proved fundamental to the revival of studies on the Matteotti case, which until that point had largely been based on the use of secondary sources like newspapers, memoirs, and so on.
Another invaluable source for a new understanding of the Matteotti case is to be found in the documents held in the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington, DC — specifically the Records of the Department of State Relating to Internal Affairs of Italy. These contain reports — sent by the commercial attaché at the American embassy in Rome to the American Secretary of State — concerning the negotiations between the Fascist government and the officers of Sinclair Oil that were then underway. These reports provide interesting details on the meetings between these officers and Mussolini. They shed light on the Sinclair Oil–Fascist Government Case — the agreement that the American oil company stipulated a few months before Matteotti’s murder which gave it a monopoly to drill for and exploit any oil fields it might find on Italian territory. The documents make clear the role that Mussolini personally played in the complex negotiations with the Sinclair Oil executives. The decision to murder Matteotti was linked to what was called the ‘oil trail’ and specifically to the large payments the Sinclair Oil Company made to leading Fascists (all of whom were acting as intermediaries for Mussolini) in return for the exclusive monopoly to drill for oil on Italian soil.
My book incorporates this critical documentation, which was completely unknown to both De Felice and Rossini. It enabled me to provide a new interpretation and analysis of the motives behind, and execution of, the murder. The analysis links together politics and business and sheds light on previously unknown aspects of Mussolini and the Fascist regime. The new documentation clears the field of any ambiguous interpretations of Matteotti’s murder by proving that his death was not an accident, but a crime carefully planned and carried out in cold blood. Mussolini’s responsibility in the matter from the start can now be fully documented. The trial documents reveal that the murder was also closely linked to the system of bribes that served to finance Mussolini’s propaganda machine, and the press that promoted it.
The Documents in the Van
At the Central State Archive (ACS), I found another important set of documents, the existence of which was also unknown. They had been stored at the ACS uncatalogued since 1969. These are the documents that Mussolini had packed into a van on April 25, 1945, in the midst of the final anti-Fascist insurrection, and that he meant to take with him in his escape. In the feverish phases of his flight northward, the documents wound up in the hands of rebel partisans who handed them over to their leaders in Milan. In 1946, the documents were sent back to Rome. In 1969, the Ministry of the Interior finally delivered to the ACS, where they lay forgotten until I discovered them.
To understand the importance of these documents, it is necessary to briefly review the events surrounding Mussolini’s archives during the last turbulent years of his regime. Until the summer of 1941, all the archives of what was commonly called the Segreteria Particolare del Duce (SPD) were located in the Viminale Palace. At that time, they were separated into ordinary documents, which were left at the Viminale, and confidential documents, which were transferred to Palazzo Venezia. When Mussolini was arrested on July 25, 1943, that’s where the confidential records were found. From an inventory reproduced by Emilio Re, who was the Superintendent of Archives for Lazio, Umbria, and Marche when the Fascist regime fell, it was possible to ascertain that in July 1943 there was a file in Mussolini’s private archive labeled “Carteggio relativo al processo Matteotti e ad altri processi” (“Correspondence relating to Matteotti and other trials”).
Colonel Renato Nani, who was Mussolini’s secretary until the time of his fall, handed Mussolini’s private archives over to Emilio Re. He had remained in Rome to direct the transport of the Fascist archives to Gargnano. Nani ended up staying in Rome and, when the Allies arrived, he agreed to collaborate with them; he produced a valuable, albeit brief, description of the Mussolini archives.
After Mussolini’s arrest, Badoglio had his confidential archive moved from Palazzo Venezia to the Viminale and combined it with the ordinary archive that had remained there. When the Germans occupied Rome and the Repubblica Sociale Italiana (RSI) was established, Mussolini had all the files in his confidential archive moved from the Viminale to Gargnano where they were placed in Villa Feltrinelli. He left the ordinary archive in Rome. By the end of October 1943, the transfer was complete.
During the last days of the RSI in April 1945, Mussolini, by then on the verge of moving from Villa Feltrinelli to Milan, transferred a selected part of his archive to the Lombard capital where it was stored in a suitcase and a large chest. On April 25th, Mussolini left Milan followed by a long procession of cars with relatives, high-ranking Fascists, and members of the former regime, in flight towards the Swiss border. Some of the documents he had brought from Gargnano were placed in a leather suitcase that Mussolini carried with him until his arrest. The rest of the documents were in two zinc boxes. One of the boxes remained on the premises of Milan. The other zinc box was loaded on a van which joined the caravan fleeing towards Como.
Before reaching Como, the truck broke down and was abandoned by its occupants together with its precious load. By the beginning of 1945, the area was swarming with partisans, and it was therefore dangerous to delay in an attempt to repair the vehicle. The news that the van had been deserted plunged Mussolini into a state of great agitation. Some of his collaborators were ordered to attempt to recover it, but they soon realized that this would be impossible, as the van had already fallen into the hands of the partisans Carlo and Arturo Allievi from Garbagnate. A few days later, on May 2, the Allievi brothers gave the documents in the case to Luigi Meda, head of the Milanese CLN (National Liberation Committee). The documents were inventoried, and Meda issued a receipt for the material delivered to him.
The receipt contains a list of 19 items. Item 5 reads: “Group of files tied with a tricolor string PROCESSO MATTEOTTI.” Item 9: “File (white folder with blue string) Processo Matteotti,” and item 14: “File (light blue folder) with the label ROSSI CESARE”, a Mussolini loyalist, accused of organizing the murder of Matteotti. Meda then gave the documents to Count Pier Maria Annoni of Gussola, head of the National Liberation Committee for Lombardy, who left them in Milan, where they lay for almost a year. On February 13, 1946, as part of the recovery of the archives transferred to the north during the war, De Gasperi, then Prime Minister, requested the documents.
They were delivered by hand by Count Annoni. Annoni was given a receipt with an inventory of the material, from examination of which it can be seen that among other documents there were “N. ? (illegible but could be 8) files Matteotti trial (Matteotti-Varia and Velia Titta)” and “N. 1 complete file on Cesare Rossi.” The files on the Matteotti trial had been combined into a single group. Unless one wants to believe the highly improbable hypothesis that there was more than one dossier regarding the Matteotti trial which, however, do not appear in the list published by Re, these must be the same Matteotti documents that were in Mussolini’s private archives at the time of his fall. Usually, the documents collected by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers were processed through the Ministry of the Interior, to be reviewed and numbered for consultation in the post-war purge, then deposited in the State Central Archives.
After the war, the press went back to investigating the documents that Mussolini had with him when he fled at the end of April 1945, and details about the van came to light. Meda’s receipt to the Allievi brothers with the list of seized documents was found and published in Corriere della Sera. Ferruccio Lanfranchi, who conducted the investigation for the newspaper, wondered why the files on the Matteotti and Cesare Rossi trials had not been used in the Matteotti trial still in progress at the Court of Assizes in Rome. They realized that the whereabouts of the documents were unknown. Renzo De Felice, after searching in vain for the papers, had concluded that the files on the Matteotti trial and on Cesare Rossi had not, in fact, been transferred to the State Central Archives, as had happened with the other documents that Mussolini had with him when he was arrested. He also stated that “the searches we made at the Ministry of the Interior to find them had also failed.” It would have been impossible for De Felice to find the documents at the Ministry of the Interior, as they had never been inventoried by the ministry’s archivists. Until July 1969, they had been kept in the Ministry of the Interior’s archive storehouse and were still in the boxes they had returned from the north, in 1946.
In July 1969, the documents were transferred to the State Central Archives and inventoried under the heading “Processo Matteotti.” These are the documents of the Matteotti trial taken from the van in Mussolini’s convoy. There are five files. In three of them, the documents are collected in folders labeled “Fascist Party.” The three folders bear a progressive but unsequences numbering in the upper left corner, meaning there must have originally been other folders with these three. Folder No. 1 is labeled “Matteotti Trial,” No. 5 is labeled “Matteotti Trial-Miscellaneous,” and finally No. 7 is labeled “Matteotti Trial-Party Confidential.” The other two files are labeled “Matteotti Trial-Expenses” and “Matteotti Trial-Correspondence A. Dumini.” At least two files are missing, but these documents from the van have proven to be incredibly important in providing evidence of Mussolini’s guilt. They include, among other things, secret correspondence between Matteotti’s killer Amerigo Dumini, and Mussolini (via Dumini’s lawyer), payments made by Mussolini to the assassins and their families when they were imprisoned, and documentation of the financial assistance that Mussolini provided to Matteotti’s widow, Velia, to obtain her acquiescence. When writing this book, I was thus able to consult unpublished sources, unknown to other scholars—investigative documents produced during the first Matteotti trial and confidential papers that Mussolini had with him when he attempted to flee Italy.
Selected references: This text was edited by Marin Diz (New York University). Gianfranco Bianchi, “L’odissea del camioncino fantasma,” in Tempo Illustrato, 16 June 1962. For the operation of recovery see E. Gencarelli, Gli archivi italiani durante la Seconda guerra mondiale (Roma: Panetto & Petrelli, 1979). G. Contini, La valigia di Mussolini. I documenti segreti dell’ultima fuga del duce (Milan: Rizzoli, 1996). Renzo De Felice, Mussolini il fascista, vol. I, La conquista del potere 1921-1925 (Turin: Einaudi, 1966). De Felice, Mussolini il fascista. La conquista del potere 1921-1925, 600-601. F. Lanfranchi, “L’elenco dei documenti trovati nella cassetta di zinco di Mussolini,” in newspaper Corriere della Sera, 6 March 1947. Opera Omnia di Benito Mussolini. Dal delitto Matteotti all’attentato Zaniboni, vol. XXI, in D. Susmel ed., (Florence: La Fenice, 1956), 236. Cesare Rossi, Interrogatori, (AS Roma 1925), 174-175. Giuseppe Rossini, Il delitto Matteotti tra il Viminale e l’Aventino (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1966).
