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Italian and Italian American Studies
Series Editor
Stanislao G. Pugliese
Hofstra University
Hempstead, NY, USA
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Mauro Canali
The Matteotti Murder
and Mussolini
The Anatomy of a Fascist Crime
Translated by Ann T. Pichey
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CHAPTER 1
New Interpretation of a State Crime
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. The 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. The other less radical fascists, to the
contrary, felt the revolutionary period of fascism had come to an end with
the formation of the Mussolini government and 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.” That strategy
3
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4
M. CANALI
consisted of displaying purely formal respect to the political procedures
and the 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.”1
Despite Mussolini’s repeated formal assurances that he respected the
rule of 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 have steadfastly maintained that Mussolini
was extraneous to the murder of Giacomo Matteotti. There are those who
affirm that he merely gave the order to administer a strong lesson to the
socialist deputy, which however ended tragically due to botched execution. Others are convinced that the crime was carried out without his
knowledge, for obscure reasons, by some of his unfaithful collaborators.
There are also those who 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, there are those who 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.
As for his moral responsibilities, it is difficult to deny them. In a speech
of January 3, 1925, the fascist leader himself claimed that if “all the violence was the result of a certain historical, political and moral climate, well,
I am responsible for it.”2 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 a broader
biography of Mussolini.3 The other, from 1968, is Giuseppe Rossini’s Il
delitto Matteotti tra il Viminale e l’Aventino.4 Both are silent when facing
the most difficult obstacle presented by the Matteotti affair. They suspend
judgement regarding Mussolini’s direct responsibility. They do not answer
the question, “Did he give the order?”
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1
NEW INTERPRETATION OF A STATE CRIME
5
Given the documentation that was available to the two historians, they
could not have made significant headway in that direction. Both serious
scholars pointed out the moral responsibility of the fascist dictator but
remained reticent when faced with determining the actual role Mussolini
played in the organization of the crime.
Research remained stalled for many decades. The reason for this delay
in the production of new work aimed at establishing Mussolini’s responsibility derives in part, and indirectly, from a law governing records.
Although the law was conceived to protect privacy, its narrow interpretation until just a few years ago prevented scholars from consulting the documents of the preliminary investigations of the two Matteotti murder
trials, the first held in Chieti in 1926 and the second 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. They had been donated to those archives sometime between
the end of 1926 and the beginning of 1927 by Gaetano Salvemini, who at
the time was writing The Fascist Dictatorship in Italy. Salvemini had persuaded Giuseppe Emanuele Modigliani—who, as the lawyer for the Matteotti
family as civil plaintiffs, had access to the documents of the preliminary
investigation—to secretly send him a set from Italy. 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 would have to leave 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 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 had until that point been largely based on the use
of secondary sources such as newspapers, memoirs, and so forth.
Another invaluable source for a new understanding of the “Matteotti
case” are the documents held in the National Archives and Records
Administration (NARA) in Washington, DC, and specifically the Records
of the Department of State Relating to Internal Affairs of Italy. They contain reports that the commercial attaché at the American embassy in Rome
sent to the American Secretary of State concerning the negotiations
underway between the fascist government and the officers of Sinclair Oil;
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6
M. CANALI
these reports provide interesting details on the meetings between those
officers and Mussolini.5 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 made clear the role that Mussolini personally played in the complex
negotiations carried out with the executives of Sinclair Oil. The decision
to murder Matteotti was linked to what was called the “oil trail” and specifically to the corrupt operations by which the Sinclair Oil Company
made large payments 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.
This book was able to incorporate 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 because it proves that his death was no accident—it was a crime that was carefully premeditated, planned, and carried
out in cold blood. Mussolini’s personal responsibility 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 served it.
The Documents in the Van
I found another body of particularly important documentation whose
existence was unknown in the Central State Archive (ACS), where it had
been since 1969, forgotten and devoid even of an inventory. 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 clearly meant to take
with him in his escape. In the feverish phases of his flight northward, the
documents wound up in the hands of the rebel partisans who handed
them over to their leaders in Milan. In 1946, the documents were sent to
Rome. In 1969, the Ministry of the Interior finally handed delivered to
the ACS, where they lay forgotten and uncatalogued6 and where I discovered them.
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1
NEW INTERPRETATION OF A STATE CRIME
7
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, his confidential archives were at Palazzo Venezia.
From an inventory reproduced by Emilio Re, who was the
Superintendent of Archives for Lazio, Umbria and Marche when the fascist regime fell, and who in the summer of 1945 was given the responsibility by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers to coordinate the return
to Rome of all the archives of the ministries transferred to the north during the RSI, 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.”7 Colonel Renato Nani, who was Mussolini’s
secretary until the time of his fall, handed over the inventory of Mussolini’s
private archives 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.8
He provided Re with the inventory of the archives of the Duce’s confidential secretariat. It should be noted that Nani’s list does not include the
correspondence relating to the Matteotti affair, which, on the contrary,
appears in Re’s list, but there are categories that could have included this
material. But since his list is similar to Nani’s, and in some places more
detailed, Re evidently expanded upon the information that Nani had
given him.
After Mussolini’s arrest, Badoglio had his confidential archive moved
from Palazzo Venezia to the Viminale and recombined 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.9
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
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8
M. CANALI
of his archive to the Lombard capital where it was stored in a suitcase and
a large chest.
On April 25, 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.10 The rest of the documents was in two zinc
boxes. One of the boxes remained on the premises of the prefecture of
Milan.11 The other zinc box was placed on board 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. The area was by then swarming with partisans, and it was therefore very 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 collaborators were
ordered to attempt to recover it, but they soon realized that the mission
was impossible. Besides, the van had already fallen into the hands of some
partisan groups in the area commanded by the brothers 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 regular
receipt for the material delivered to him.
The receipt contains a list of documents divided into 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.”12 Meda gave the documents to Count Pier Maria Annoni of
Gussola, head of the National Liberation Committee for Lombardy, who
deposited them in the prefecture of 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,13 De Gasperi, then Prime Minister, requested
the documents.
The documents were transferred by hand from Count Annoni, for the
CLN, to the Prime Minister. Annoni was given a receipt with an inventory
of the material, and from examination of the receipt 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.” Evidently the files on the Matteotti trial had in the
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1
NEW INTERPRETATION OF A STATE CRIME
9
meantime been combined into a single group.14 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 Matteotti trial 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 returned 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.15 They realized that the whereabouts of the documents was
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 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.”16
In fact, 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 archive storehouse, and were still in the boxes in
which they had been returned from the north in 1946.17
In July 1969, they 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 discontinuous numbering in the upper left corner, which shows that there
were originally other folders together with the 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
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10
M. CANALI
other two files are labeled “Matteotti Trial-Expenses” and “Matteotti
Trial-Correspondence A. Dumini.” At least two files are clearly missing.
The documents in the van proved to be incredibly important in that
they provide evidence of Mussolini’s guilt. They included in particular
secret correspondence between 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.
Notes
1. From the memoir that Cesare Rossi sent to magistrates on February 11,
1925 from Rome’s Regina Coeli prison. AS Roma, Interrogatori, Cesare
Rossi, 174–175. The complete memoir is on pp. 124–193. It can be consulted in the State Archives in Rome (AS Roma), which will be cited from
here on. [Rossi Memoir]
2. Opera Omnia di Benito Mussolini. Dal delitto Matteotti all’attentato
Zaniboni, vol. XXI, in D. Susmel ed., (Florence: La Fenice, 1956), 236.
3. Renzo De Felice, Mussolini il fascista, vol. I, La conquista del potere
1921–1925 (Turin: Einaudi, 1966).
4. Giuseppe Rossini, Il delitto Matteotti tra il Viminale e l’Aventino (Bologna:
Il Mulino, 1966).
5. NARA, Records of the Department of State Relating to Internal Affairs of
Italy, 1910–1929, M527, Roll 52, Folder 865.6363Si6, and Ibid, Roll 11,
Folder 865.00/1272.
6. Can now be consulted in ACS, Polizia politica, Serie B, b. 28.
7. E. Re, Storia di un archivio. Le carte di Mussolini (Milan: Edizioni del
Milione, without a date but certainly from November 1946), 17.
8. See ACS, UCAS, 1949–1952, b. 109bis.
9. Ibidem. See report by R. Nani of June 1944.
10. Regarding the vicissitudes of this bag and questions regarding its contents
see G. Contini, La valigia di Mussolini. I documenti segreti dell’ultima fuga
del duce (Milan: Rizzoli, 1996).
11. The documents in this box were subsequently deposited in the Central
State Archives where they were known as the documents “from the
zinc box.”
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1
NEW INTERPRETATION OF A STATE CRIME
11
12. Gianfranco Bianchi, “L’odissea del camioncino fantasma,” in Tempo
Illustrato, 16 June 1962.
13. For the operation of recovery see E. Gencarelli, Gli archivi italiani durante
la Seconda guerra mondiale (Roma: Panetto & Petrelli, 1979).
14. Gianfranco Bianchi, cit.; the article includes a photocopy of the two
receipts.
15. F. Lanfranchi, “L’elenco dei documenti trovati nella cassetta di zinco di
Mussolini,” in newspaper Corriere della Sera, 6 March 1947.
16. De Felice, Mussolini il fascista. La conquista del potere 1921–1925, 600–601.
17. This is in the letter that accompanied the inventory compiled by the
Ministry of the Interior when the documents were deposited in the Central
State Archives.
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