Fascism establishes the real equality of individuals before the nation… the object of the regime in the economic field is to ensure higher social justice for the whole of the Italian people…
No one understands him,’ wrote Fernando Mezzasoma of Mussolini during the last week of both their lives. ‘By turns shrewd and innocent, brutal and gentle, vindictive and forgiving, great and petty, he is the most complicated and contradictory man I have ever known. He cannot be explained.’
During the eighteen years between the March on Rome in 1922 and the outbreak of war in 1940, numerous books were written in an attempt to explain this extraordinary man; most of them were by Fascists or by expatriate Italians who had cause to hate Fascism. But not since his death has a fulllength biography, taking advantage of the great mass of documentation which has come to light in the last sixteen years, been written in English.
Acting ability is a huge advantage to aspiring politicians, but the selfdramatizing ‘histrionic personality’ is a wellknown type in the psychology textbooks. The urge always to be the center of attention and the constant need to win the approval of others indicate deep-seated insecurity. In children, it is sometimes explained as the result of intermittent and/or conditional parental affection, forcing the child to win approval by his own efforts. As adults, such people are introverted, self-absorbed, and very ambitious. Restless and doubt-ridden, they need always to prove themselves. They choose careers politics, the stage, the media where they can soon become widely known and admired, and they are often obsessed by their own physical appearance. They are very active sexually but need to dominate their partners, and they do not commit themselves in relationships. They have few friends and even fewer fixed beliefs. They court innovation, danger, and adventure of all kinds, not an ideal trait in a political leader. They pose, constantly. This ‘histrionic personality’ is, of course, an archetype and there are obvious dangers in psychological stereotyping, especially when done by amateurs in the field.Furthermore, much depends on the observer’s perspective (‘I am a born leader; you have ideas above your station; he is a megalomaniac’). Even so, this stereotype may be a useful way of understanding Mussolini’s contradictory personality. Note that I am not suggesting for one moment that Mussolini was mentally disturbed, nor that he was not fully responsible for his actions. In most ways, he was remarkably sane for a politician, but he was a driven, insecure loner, and as dictator he became more lonely still.
But the ‘histrionic personality’ has its darker side too. Mussolini was often quarrelsome and violent. He was erratic and liable to betray any cause or colleague. In his early years as a Romagna hothead he was often called e matto (‘the madman’). Later on, some including a Milan police inspector in June 1919 supposed he suffered from the effects of syphilis, wrongly: Mussolini never had that, although he did have gonorrhea as a young man. A more plausible medical guess, looking at his famously bulging eyes and his volatile behavior, is to suspect hyperthyroidism, as Enrico Ferri apparently did. Mussolini’s real problem was insecurity. It made him very susceptible to flattery but unable to abide criticism, let alone disparagement. He distrusted virtually everybody, perhaps a necessary condition for political success but also a handicap once in office. He was willing to listen to technical experts, but he treated his ‘generalist’ colleagues contemptuously and allowed very little discussion of political issues: he decided, they implemented. And he was impatient. Like most born journalists, he oversimplified complex issues rather than analyzing them fully or reflecting seriously upon them. His published works run to 44 volumes but consist almost entirely of short articles or speeches; only youthful studies of Jan Hus and of the Trentino go deeper, and even they are partisan. This mindset helped him win power and impress others, but it was a big handicap when it came to running a country. Mussolini’s decisionmaking typically consisted of sudden individual initiatives, ‘battles’ to achieve loudly proclaimed goals.
Mussolini’s most obvious fault was his pride. He despised most institutions, most countries and most people, especially his own followers – whom he termed disparagingly ‘the Fascists’as if he were not one of them. Moreover, he did not mellow with age. He remained a natural bully but lost his streetwise sharpness of the 1920s, and forgot the need for caution. Indeed, he grew out of his job, to a spectacular degree. Power corrupted, in the original sense of the word: it rotted his mind. By the late 1930s, secure in his tenure and flattered by all, he had become an irascible old bore, convinced of his own infallibility and unwilling to take advice or heed information. He had no longterm perspective, knowing little history and having no religious beliefs. He also knew virtually nothing about economics, science, military power or naval strategy, and could no longer be bothered to learn. Instead, he began ranting against his own countrymen, unworthy to be ruled by a genius like himself, and he determined to change their daily habits and their peaceable character. Moreover, he knew even less about foreign countries than he did about Italy.As German defenses in Italy collapsed and the Allies advanced rapidly northward, the Italian Communists of the partisan leadership decided to execute Mussolini. Rejecting the advice of various advisers, including the elder of his two surviving sons—his second son had been killed in the war—Mussolini refused to consider flying out of the country, and he made for the Valtellina, intending perhaps to make a final stand in the mountains; but only a handful of men could be found to follow him. He tried to cross the frontier disguised as a German soldier in a convoy of trucks retreating toward Innsbruck, in Austria. But he was recognized and, together with his mistress, Claretta Petacci, who had insisted on remaining with him to the end, he was shot and killed on April 28, 1945. Their bodies were hung, head downward, in the Piazza Loreto in Milan. Huge jubilant crowds celebrated the fall of the dictator and the end of the war.
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