Unbeknown to Pedro, this is the last time he will see Mussolini. He returns to Dongo. A truck arrives in the main piazza, full of soldiers wearing brand-new uniforms, quite different from the torn and shabby dress of his partisans. The soldiers line up in front of the town hall. Their leader presents himself as Colonel Valerio, an officer sent with full authority from the general command of the Volunteer Freedom Corps.
He produces impeccable credentials and states he has been sent to shoot the prisoners, all of them. Pedro tries to argue, requesting that the prisoners be handed over to those who can carry out a proper trial, but Valerio pulls rank, calls for the list of those arrested, and marks a black cross beside each name.
Pedro sees that Claretta Petacci is also to be sentenced to death, and he objects. He says she is only the dictator’s lover, but Valerio replies that his orders come from headquarters in Milan.
“And note this point, which emerges clearly from Pedro’s account, because in other versions Valerio would say that Claretta Petacci clung to her man, that he had told her to move away, that she had refused and was therefore killed by mistake, so to speak, or through excessive zeal. The thing is that she had already been condemned, but this isn’t the point. The truth is, Valerio tells different stories and we can’t rely on him.”
Various confusing incidents follow. Having been told of the alleged presence of the Spanish consul, Valerio wants to see him, talks to him in Spanish, but the man can’t answer, calling into question his Spanish credentials. Valerio gives him a violent slap, identifies him as Vittorio Mussolini, and orders Bill to take him down to the lake and shoot him. But on their way to the lake, someone recognizes him as Marcello Petacci, Claretta’s brother, and Bill retrieves him. To no avail. As Marcello jabbers about the services he has done for the fatherland, about secret arms he had found and hidden from Hitler, Valerio adds his name to the list of those condemned to die.
Valerio and his men go straight to the house of the De Maria family, take Mussolini and Petacci, drive them to a lane in Giulino di Mezzegra, where he orders them out. It seems that Mussolini first imagines Valerio has come to free him, and only then does he realize what awaits him. Valerio pushes him against the railings and reads the sentence, trying (he would later say) to separate Mussolini from Claretta, who remains desperately clinging to her lover. Valerio tries to shoot, the machine gun jams, he asks Lampredi for another, and fires five bursts. He would later say that Petacci suddenly moved into the line of fire and was killed by mistake. It’s the twenty-eighth of April.
“We know all this from Valerio’s account. Mussolini, according to him, ended up as a husk of humanity, though legend would subsequently claim he pulled open his greatcoat shouting, ‘Aim for the heart!’ No one really knows what happened in that lane apart from the executioners, who would later be manipulated by the Communist Party.”
Valerio returns to Dongo and organizes the shooting of all the other Fascist leaders. Barracu asks not to be shot in the back but is shoved into the group. Valerio also puts Marcello Petacci among them, but the other condemned men protest, they regard him as a traitor, and it’s anyone’s guess what that individual had really been up to. It is then decided to shoot him separately. Once the others have been shot, Petacci breaks free and runs off toward the lake.
He’s caught but manages to free himself once again, dives into the water, swimming desperately, and is finished off by machine-gun fire and rifle shots. Later Pedro, who refused to let his men take part in the execution, arranges for the corpse to be fished out and put onto the same truck as the others. The truck is dispatched to Giulino to pick up the bodies of the Duce and Claretta.
Then off to Milan, where on April 29 they are all dumped in Piazzale Loreto, the same place where the corpses of partisans shot almost a year before had been dumped—the Fascist militia had left them out in the sun for a whole day, preventing the families from collecting the remains.
At this point Braggadocio took my arm, grasping it so firmly that I had to pull away. “Sorry,” he said, “but I’m about to reach the core of my problem. Listen carefully. The last time Mussolini was seen in public by people who knew him was the afternoon at the Archbishop’s Palace in Milan. From that point on, he traveled only with his closest followers. And from the moment he was picked up by the Germans, then arrested by the partisans, none of those who had dealings with him had known him personally. They had seen him only in photographs or in propaganda films, and the photographs of the last two years showed him so thin and worn that it was rumored he was no longer himself.
I told you about the last interview with Cabella, on April 20, which Mussolini checked and signed on the twenty-second, you remember? Well, Cabella notes in his memoirs: ‘I immediately observed that Mussolini was in excellent health, contrary to rumors circulating. He was in far better health than the last time I’d seen him. That was in December 1944, on the occasion of his speech at Lirico.
On the previous occasions he had received me—in February, in March, and in August of ’44—he had never appeared as fit. His complexion was healthy and tanned, his eyes alert, swift in their movements. He had also gained some weight. Or at least he no longer had that leanness that had so struck me in February of the previous year and which gave his face a gaunt, almost emaciated look.’
“Let’s admit that Cabella was carrying out a propaganda exercise and wanted to present a Duce in full command of his faculties. Now let’s turn to the written account given by Pedro, who describes his first encounter with the Duce after the arrest: ‘He’s sitting to the right of the door, at a large table. I wouldn’t know it’s him, wouldn’t recognize him, perhaps. He is old, emaciated, scared. He stares, is unable to focus. He jerks his head here and there, looking around as though frightened.’
All right, he’d just been arrested, he was bound to be scared, but not a week had passed since the interview, when he was confident he could get across the border. Do you think one man can lose so much weight in seven days?
So the man who spoke to Cabella and the man who spoke to Pedro were not one and the same person. Note that not even Valerio knew Mussolini personally. Valerio had gone to execute a legend, an image, to execute the man who harvested corn and proclaimed Italy’s entry into the war—”
“You’re telling me there were two Mussolinis—”
“Let’s move on. News spreads around the city that the corpses have arrived, and Piazzale Loreto is invaded by a loud and angry crowd, who trample on the corpses, disfiguring them, insulting them, spitting on them, kicking them. A woman put five gunshots into Mussolini, one for each of her five sons killed in the war, while another pissed on Claretta Petacci. Eventually someone intervened and hung the dead by the feet from the canopy of a gas station to prevent their being torn to pieces. Here are some photographs—I’ve cut these out from newspapers of the time.
This is Piazzale Loreto and the bodies of Mussolini and Claretta right after a squad of partisans had taken the bodies down the next day and transported them to the mortuary in Piazzale Gorini. Look carefully at these photos. They are bodies of people disfigured, first by bullets, then by brutal trampling. Besides, have you ever seen the face of someone photographed upside down, with the eyes where the mouth should be and the mouth where the eyes should be? The face is unrecognizable.”
“So the man in Piazzale Loreto, the man killed by Valerio, was not Mussolini? But Claretta Petacci, when she joined him, she’d have known him perfectly well—”
“We’ll come back to Petacci. For now, let me just fill in my theory. A dictator must have a double, who knows how many times he had used him at official parades, seen always from a distance, to avoid assassination attempts. Now imagine that to enable the Duce to escape unhindered, from the moment he leaves for Como, Mussolini is no longer Mussolini but his double.”
“And where’s Mussolini?”
“Hold on, I’ll get to him in good time. The double has lived a sheltered life for years, well paid and well fed, and is put on show only on certain occasions. He now thinks he is Mussolini, and is persuaded to take his place once more—even if he’s captured before crossing the frontier, he is told no one would dare harm the Duce. He should play the part without overdoing it, until the arrival of
