Lady of the Axis

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Most noteworthy Italian exponent of the Fascist dictum that woman's place is in the home is none other than Donna Rachele Mussolini. For more than two decades this 49-year-old onetime waitress has been a strict homebody, has been seldom seen and never heard in public, has mean while presented her lord, Benito Mussolini, with no less than four strapping bambinos.

By contrast Italy's outstanding exception to such Fascist mores can also be found in Il Duce's family. Although Signor Mussolini's favorite and eldest child, Edda, has done her duty to the State by giving birth to two future soldiers and one future housewife, she has not toiled unduly in the kitchen and has not hesitated to enter the male province of international politics.

The power of the famed Soong sisters of China has long been an open book. The influence of Magda Lupescu, mistress of Carol II of Rumania, is openly acknow edged in Rumania. But the role that Edda Ciano, nee Mussolini, has played in the momentous recent realignments of European nations, has been half concealed by a regime which refuses to admit women in politics. The Official Life of Benito Mussolini, by Giorgio Pini, a translation of which was recently published in London, allots only three short sentences to Daughter Edda: 1) to report her birth; 2) to tell about her marriage; 3) to describe how happy Donna Rachele was at her marriage. When a complete, unexpurgated account of Mussolini's life is finally written, Daughter Edda may, as one of Europe's most successful intriguers and string-pullers, well de serve chapters instead of sentences.

Last week Edda Ciano's husband, Count Galeazzo Ciano, Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs, paid an official visit to Generalissimo Francisco Franco in Spain. The Countess for once did not go along. The Countess' father, Il Duce, was summering in central Italy at Rocca delle Caminate, still keeping the vow of silence he publicly took at Cuneo, in northern Italy, last May. Edda herself was at the island of Capri, across from the Bay of Naples, supervising the building of a villa at her (and the late Emperor Tiberius') favorite recreation spot.

One report had it that an old lung ailment had returned and that inactivity had been prescribed for her. Another report (published in Paris by the weekly Aux Ecoutes) had it that the ambitious Edda had recently overreached herself in a quarrel with Crown Prince Umberto and his wife, the Princess Maria Jose: usually indulgent, Papa Benito, unwilling to have dynastic troubles on his hands, had set his foot down for once--so ran the story--and had commanded his strong-headed daughter temporarily to take up homely pursuits.

No secret has it been that the gaunt, pale-faced Edda is hopeful that her somewhat mediocre young husband may some day become Il Duce II. A possible obstacle is Prince Umberto, who is accepted, rightly or wrongly, as the spearhead of opposition to Axis policies which Count and Countess Ciano champion.

Of the Mussolini children* Edda is easily the most outstanding in ability, personality, intelligence. This fact tends to support the long-current story that she is not the daughter of Donna Rachele but rather the product of a grande passion of Benito Mussolini with a Russian woman Socialist in the days when he was a powerless, ranting radical.

Like a good deal else in the Mussolini family life, there is no specific date for Edda's birth. She was said to be 19 at the time of her marriage; that would make her 28 or 29 now. It is virtually certain that Edda, whoever her mother was, was born out of wedlock. Socialist Mussolini, an extreme anticlerical, would scarcely have permitted himself a church wedding, and civil weddings were practically unheard of. Besides, it was common knowledge, until at least 1920, that Benito and Rachele had never bothered to go through a marriage ceremony. A romantic story has it that Edda's trips to London, made in the late 1920s ostensibly for pleasure, were to see her real mother, who, it is said, died of tuberculosis about 1930. With this story is linked the conclusion that Edda's tendency toward weak lungs, which have not appeared in the Mussolini boys, was inherited from her mother.

At about the time of Edda's birth Mussolini's journalistic fortunes were changing. Having made a success in Forli with his own paper La Lotta di Classe (The Class Fight), he became editor of Avanti!, Italy's leading Socialist journal. Edda was scarcely able to walk when Papa Benito, loudly opposing the "imperialist" Italian-Turkish War over Libya, spent six months in jail for "resisting" public authorities, and general anti-war violence. Soon afterward he founded Il Popolo d'ltalia, at Milan, still the Mussolini family paper, and changed his anti-war tune to an aggressive demand that Italy join the Allies against Germany and Austria-Hungary. He went to the front in 1916 and was soon severely wounded.

In 1919 when Edda was barely nine, her father formed his first Fascia di Combattimento, and by the time of the famed March on Rome in 1922 (when Benito took a sleeper to Rome, however) she had grown into an impetuous, violent tempered, but intelligent and alert girl of twelve. So undisciplined was the child at one time that Il Duce gave her a strict English governess by the name of Gibson --the same name as that of an Irishwoman who had tried to pot Il Duce with a revolver in 1926. Sent from one school to another, Edda finally acquired a social and cultural veneer, an expertness on piano and violin, a fluency in French and a smattering of English. At 18 (or thereabouts) she took her first serious plunge into the outside world by going, with 125 members of the Italian Navy League, on a semi-official junket to India and Ceylon.

The reception she received opened Signorina Mussolini's eyes to herself. A plainly dressed, not very pretty young girl, she was nevertheless feted everywhere she went. In Travancore, she motored 200 miles through the jungle, escorted part way by elephantcade. She was entertained by the Maharaja of Gwalior, received at New Delhi by Lord Irwin, the Viceroy of India (now British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax). One Prince gave her two live tigers for her father. Her cabin on the return voyage was loaded with rare laces, a miniature temple carved in ivory, rugs, tapestries, gold & silver trinkets.

Some said that old Costanzo Ciano, who was made an Admiral and a Count after the World War during which he stole into an enemy harbor and sank six Austrian cruisers, arranged the Edda Mussolini-Galeazzo Ciano marriage in 1930. At least, before the marriage the Ciano family fortune was small but when the old man died three weeks ago it was estimated one of the greatest in Italy. Before his marriage Galeazzo was another of those golden lads who liked to hang around the Excelsior and Grand Hotels in Rome, where rich U. S. heiresses generally stayed. He had been a cub reporter and a society journalist who did bits of drama and literary criticism for an obscure Roman sheet. After that his father managed to get him minor posts in the consular and diplomatic service. Few people thought he displayed great ability except that languages came easy to him.

Soon after their marriage Count Ciano & wife were packed off to China, where he was first Consul General at Shanghai, then Minister to China. Recalled to Italy in 1933, he became Under Secretary of State, then Minister for Press & Propaganda, and it began to appear that Edda, the apple of Il Duce's eye, could get for Husband Galeazzo just about any job she wished.

In 1935 came the Ethiopian War and with it came Galeazzo Ciano's chance to become a hero. He went to Italian East Africa to fly. There he organized the most publicized nights in the East African campaign. His instructors rated him as a very mediocre pilot but he started the war by dropping the first bombs over Aduwa. His plane was the first to be hit by an enemy bullet. He was the first Italian flier to land in Addis Ababa at the war's end. For all this Galeazzo was promoted to the rank of major and was awarded two silver medals. Il Duce began to be convinced he had the makings of a leader; the Count reciprocated by aping the postures, speech, manners of his father-in-law. When he returned home the portfolio of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs awaited him, although he was only 33.

High-spirited, witty, gay, Edda Ciano has little respect for the conventions. In Shanghai she picked up much U. S. slang from Navy officers' wives and subsequently shocked many a diplomatic dowager with her indiscriminate use of "boloney." Once she surprised Sir Eric Drummond (now Lord Perth) by saying "Oakie doak, Sir Eric!" Her first-born child, Fabrizio, she nicknamed the "Little Chink." She caused an uproar at a full-dress diplomatic dinner in Peking by showing up in a tailored suit while her husband wore a dinner coat.

Back in Rome she took up with a flock of smart but unimportant young people outside the best cliques of Roman society. She was fond of dancing and nightclubbing. She played bridge, generally at 1/4-c- a point. The Count and Countess went their separate ways more frequently. One of her more intimate friends was Dino Alfieri (Under Secretary for Press & Propaganda), a great lady's man who boasts that he personally selects all the stenographers in his office. When Count Ciano was appointed Foreign Minister, Alfieri got Ciano's old job as the Press & Propaganda Minister.

As the Foreign Minister's wife Edda became dashing, chic, smart. At times she was a brunette, at other times as is fashionable in Rome, a blonde. She wore heavy, fashionable make up--except when she went to see her father. The circular rolled hairdo she adopted means a daily visit to famed Hairdresser Attilio on the Piazzo di Spagna. All one winter she wore a sable coat everywhere. During her junket to Vienna and Budapest in 1936 she was seen in ermine, morning, noon and night. In Poland last winter she wore mink. While she patriotically orders Roman, rather than Parisian, clothes, she prefers French perfumes and creams but was only slightly disturbed when Italy stopped importing these items. Her comment: "The Ala Littoria (Italian civil air service) boys will bring them to me."

As Countess Ciano became sleek she also became a cagier diplomat. On her trips to London Britons made little social fuss over her, and it was even reported that the British once turned down the appointment of Count Ciano as Ambassador to the Court of St. James's. True or not, Countess Edda developed an antipathy for the western democracies, became Italy's most ardent proponent of the Axis.

Guido Manacorda, professor at the University of Florence, had been promoting the idea of a Rome-Berlin Axis for some time. It began to take form when the Countess made a month's trip to Germany in June 1936. Officially, Countess Ciano traveled with 200 other Italians on a "goodwill" tour, but on her arrival she was met by officials from the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Propaganda. Field Marshal Hermann Goering, Propaganda Minister Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (then Minister Without Portfolio) were all present at a dinner for her at the Italian Embassy. Adolf Hitler gave a brilliant reception for her at the Chancellery and later presented her with his esteemed autographed photograph.

Her father's daughter, she liked the heavy masculine atmosphere of Berlin. Handsome young Nordic men were always at hand to keep her in a proper Germanic frame of mind. Nazi bigwigs flattered her by talking international politics, insinuating projects of future German-Italian cooperation. Herr & Frau Goering became her fast friends (they later named their daughter after her). She made friends of bushy-browed Deputy Fuehrer Rudolf Hess. Born and reared in Alexandria, Egypt, Herr Hess has long had a Mediterranean "outlook" for Germany. The two talked so long and so earnestly, were seen together so much that wits came to call Countess Edda the "mother" and Fuehrer Hess the "father" of the Rome-Berlin Axis.

Edda returned to Rome flushed with pleasant German memories. Whether her urgings were decisive or not, in the following October Count Ciano was created a general and sent to Germany. At Berchtesgaden he signed the Axis Treaty, but Edda already wore the diplomatic trousers. Out of this treaty came Italian-German cooperation in Spain, Italian support for Germany in the Czecho-Slovak crisis, German support in Italy's invasion of Albania last spring, the hidebound military alliance signed between the two countries last May.

After the Berlin trips Count and Countess Ciano went once to Vienna, where they were dined at Schoenbrunn and Dr. Kurt von Schuschnigg, last Chancellor of independent Austria, recognized Italy's Ethiopian conquest. From there they went to Budapest, where they left something less than a good impression. The Countess was said to have made eyes at one of the sons of old Regent Horthy. This could easily have been excused, but when the Count and Countess showed up for a hunting expedition arranged by the Regent four hours late with only the excuse they had overslept, there were strained feelings. Latest trip that the Cianos took together was to Poland. There was some speculation that Axis Diplomat Edda would use her wiles to persuade Poland to join the Axis, but nothing came of the trip, and a few weeks later Poland definitely turned her back on Germany and Italy.

Once Edda went to the cinema in Rome during her eighth month of pregnancy, and was publicly applauded. Doubtful it is if such a demonstration would now occur. The Countess is held by many Italians to be largely responsible for the Nazified laws that Italy has "imported" from Germany. One of these is the unpopular anti-Semitic law. The Cianos are firmly linked with the alliance with Germany, and the alliance is not dear to Italians.

The spectacle of the Nazi Gestapo operating in Italy, of German instructors and troops in Italian military establishments, of German "tourists" arriving in Italy by droves (some of them never returning), is not palatable to patriotic Latins. When the military alliance between Italy and Germany was signed in Berlin last May and the controlled Italian newspapers carried huge headlines describing the "wave of enthusiasm" spreading over Italy, it could not be detected in the streets. Two days later the country celebrated the 24th anniversary of Italy's entry into the World War against Germany and Austria. Work stopped at noon, bands played, parades formed, flags were waved. Never before had Italians so solemnly observed the day.

The summer of 1939 finds Benito Mussolini less liked and more openly criticized than for years past. Little jokes, about the German "invasion" of Italy, are beginning to circulate quietly. Anti-Mussolini posters have appeared (briefly) in Milan and Turin. Viva Hitler legends, painted on all the houses along the railway route taken by the Fuehrer on his trip to Rome last year, have been unanimously painted over. There is a dour expression on Italian faces as they watch the heavy-booted Nazi chiefs who now are seen all over the Italian landscape. Crown Prince Umberto, supposed to be antiFascist, is greeted tumultuously whenever he appears.

This is no good omen for Edda Ciano's hopes that she and her husband may someday succeed to her father's power. But it is a first-rate demonstration of what a woman can do even in a Fascist world.

*Her younger brothers, Vittorio, 22, and Bruno, 21, flew in the Ethiopian War, and Bruno also tried his wings in Spain. Bruno is still in the Italian Air Force; Vittorio in the motion picture business. Mussolini's "second series" of children consists of Romano, now 11, and Anna Maria, 9.

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