How realistic were Mussolini’s hopes for an offensive? And with what implications for understanding this and the remaining sections of the war diary? The military negotiations which took place between 15 and 16 November 1916 in Chantilly suggest that the period was one of regroupment on the part of the Entente powers as they sought to agree on the best way forward. But this was for 1917, not December 1916. The offensive accompanying Mussolini’s weather observations in December 1916 was, therefore, of his own making. The Italian artillery fire that he so punctiliously monitored in December was obviously routine and defensive. Mussolini was in consequence deprived of the opportunity to engage in heroic acts even though he was now positioned in the crucial area of Cadorna’s strategy. Situations in which his personal courage could be placed on public view had to be of his own making, and the inherent danger had to be made clear to what would otherwise have remained an unimpressed reader. In the 6 December entry, for example, Mussolini decided to observe the great artillery spectacle going on overhead: ‘I, all alone, outside my den - at my own risk and danger - enjoy the aural and visual spectacle.’ Apart from this, representations of himself are limited to responding to the accusation of shirking which reared its head again in the catholic weekly II Popolo di Siena on 16 December. The latter anonymous article was particularly sharp in its satire and suggested that after eighteen months at the front Mussolini should have had at least a scratch, whereas so far he remained untouched. The article concluded that without any serious injuries Mussolini left himself open to the accusations of the catholic press, which in themselves ‘do not leave glorious scars’. Mussolini became aware of this polemic in a postcard received from Bersagliere Silvio Filippi which he then transcribed into his war diary on 18 December. The fact that Filippi knew what to write suggests that behind the construction and defence of Mussolini’s heroic persona lay elements of ‘spontaneous’ back-up: ‘“Finding myself on leave I do not forget to send you my most sincere greetings, together with those of my friends who were very surprised to hear that even you are in the trenches like any humble soldier.”’
Even before this Mussolini was using the war diary to challenge suspicions as to his previous and present whereabouts. On 12 December he wrote of a meeting with another corporal who informed him that ‘I have always believed that you were at the front’. The same day three soldiers stopped in front of his dugout. He described them as ‘a bit hesitant’, a perplexity which probably reflected their embarrassment over revealing their suspicions. One of them broke the ice: ‘“Excuse the curiosity. Are you . . .?”’ And before he could finish the question Mussolini replied ‘“Yes, I am.”’ On 13 December another soldier exclaimed: ‘“I am so happy to see you again . . . I can now say that you too have been in this hell and that you haven’t turned your back on your old comrades of [the class of] ’84.”’
On 23 December Mussolini was visited by Amilcare De Ambris, a syndicalist friend, accompanied by Benedetto Fasciolo of the editorial team of IL Popolo d’ltalia and at that stage a captain in the artillery. Mussolini described their arrival as a ‘gesture of lively friendship’. But it was decidedly more than this. On leaving, Fasciolo declared: ‘“Here is where the war is.”’ He then wrote an article for IL Popolo d’ltalia in which he depicted Mussolini as being much loved by all the soldiers, who in fact called him ‘Benito’. Soldiers reportedly interviewed by Fasciolo reminded him that Mussolini ‘“without dodging, could have had a less uncomfortable life by going to write in the orderly room or in the major’s office.”’ During the meeting with Mussolini, Fasciolo raised the question of Mussolini’s alleged evasion of duty, and the other soldiers all began to laugh. When mess time arrived, Mussolini received his meat, broth and bread, and in a self-sacrificial gesture gave the meat to another soldier. When the fruit arrived, he made sure that everyone got an equal share. As they prepared to go, Fasciolo and De Ambris felt ‘a pull at our hearts; a painful apprehension for [Mussolini] who is always in danger’ (Fasciolo, 31 December 1916).
Yet in challenging the innuendoes of the catholic press about the authenticity of his war service, Mussolini was concerned to retain his links with popular catholic piety as a vital ingredient of front line experience. Reconciliation with the Church had already begun to form part of Mussolini’s war diary on 15 November 1915, when he, an atheist, attended a service at Caporetto. On that occasion he transcribed a hymn’s patriotic chorus: ‘“Oh mother, bless Italian virtue; Let our squads triumph in the holy name of Jesus.”’ On 20 February he rather kindly referred to an Alpini chaplain as ‘a fine cut of a man with a rather meek way about him’. By 1 March he was on speaking terms with Father Michele and on 6 May the latter appeared once again in Mussolini’s tent leaving some ‘excellent Brazilian cigarettes’ and a copy of a religious treatise on the moral reasons for Italy’s war. This distinguished Mussolini from the orthodox anti-clericalism of his closest collaborators at IL Popolo d’ltalia. De Falco accused L’Avvenire of ‘doing favours for highly catholic Austria by informing her of our military movements’. He explained that the clergy attacked Mussolini because ‘he is the man they fear because one day he will want to settle accounts with them too’. In fact, for De Falco, ‘the priests and those who live off their salaries are natural fertilizer swarming with worms’ (De Falco, 22 November 1916). Mussolini was more circumspect. He simply remarked, in an undated letter published in IL Popolo d’Italia on 27 December, that the fact that he was at the front ‘isn’t pleasing for the priests who - while knowing well that I have done thirteen and more months in the trenches - have nevertheless tried to label me a shirker’ (OO, VIII: 309). In the 26 December war diary entry Mussolini was once again in the company of Father Michele: ‘I hinted at the polemics raised by my winter leave and asked him if he would be prepared to testify on my behalf. “Very much so”, he replied. “I would tell the truth, and that is that from the first day till now I have always seen you in the front line.” Other officers were present.’ Indeed, far from veering towards head-on collision with the Catholic Church, the December 1916 section of the war diary witnesses a major pro-clergy shift on Mussolini’s part. We shall come back to this presently. First, we need to examine the more general context in which that shift occurred, namely Mussolini’s response to the proposals to open up peace negotiations made public by German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg in the Reichstag on 12 December.
The German proposals were doomed from the outset. On 7 November the American electorate had given Woodrow Wilson a second term in office. Twelve days later Wilson issued a note to the warring powers suggesting that peace should be sought. Britain responded by installing Lloyd George as Prime Minister, chosen by both main political parties as the one man who could pursue the war with new vigour. On 30 December the Entente turned down Germany’s proposals, since peace on the basis of the status quo would have made Germany the effective victor. Whatever the scepticism of politicians, news of a possible peace had significant repercussions in the Italian trenches. In a 2 January 1917 letter to army corps commanders and to the Information Services of the High Command, Minister for War Morrone affirmed that:
From the military Censorship Department of Como it has been noted that a high quantity of the soldiers’ correspondence from that city reflects the repercussions of the well- known German peace proposal. Some speak of it as a certainty deriving from the recent military successes obtained by the Central Powers; others, latching onto rumours spread by systematic adversaries of our war, write of strikes and agitations which are supposed to have occurred in various cities of the Kingdom, and they interpret the possible deployment of armed garrisons as preventive measures against possible tumults or threats of revolt.
Morrone ordered commanders ‘not to hesitate, where necessary, in using appropriate measures to energetically repress any single inopportune manifestation whenever it happens to occur’ (ACS, PCM, b. 19, fasc. 4, s.fasc. 8, ins. 50).
Mussolini’s war diary gives an interesting insight into the effects of the peace proposals on the Carso and how, in his view, they were to be dealt with. The news was brought to the soldiers by a mule driver on 15 December, but Mussolini already knew: ‘I thought it must have to do with B. Hollweg’s communications.’ This means that, once again, he had been keeping his broader knowledge of the war to himself. This secrecy contradicts the flippancy with which he then dismissed the reaction among the soldiers: ‘While knowing that I read the newspapers nobody has asked me anything. This indifference is symptomatic. Peace has been spoken about too often for such scepticism not to exist in the spirit of the men. “I’ll believe nothing”, said one of them, “until I see white flags on the trenches.”’ But something was definitely amiss. The following day, 16 December, Mussolini noted: ‘This morning, in the dugouts, peace is being discussed. However, the predominant note is scepticism, as with the initial reception of the news.’ So, peace was being discussed. Moreover, soldiers already looked for concrete signs of its realization: ‘Someone has noted that this morning the artillery is silent.’ Mussolini quickly scotched this: ‘On our front, yes, but below, towards the sea, guns moan sullenly.’ The following day again: ‘In the dugouts the German peace is spoken about little’ (Mussolini’s emphasis). On 18 December: ‘Some discussion of the German peace. The presumed condition that Italy should give the liberated lands back to Austria provokes general indignation. I bet that if there was a referendum you would not find ten soldiers ready to accept this condition. “After so much blood and so many sacrifices.”’
As a matter of fact no such proposals had been made or would be made by Austria-Hungary. This was made clear by Sonnino in his speech to the chamber of deputies on 18 December, published in the papers the following day. Also, on 27 December 1916 the press published the text of Austria-Hungary’s reply to Wilson, which called for negotiations but made no statement about territory. Back in Mussolini’s war diary, news brought by two sappers on 19 December pointed to an unidentified and unexplained French victory which caused ‘great joy among everybody’. For this very reason, ‘peace is spoken about less than yesterday’. The ‘victory’ in question was undoubtedly the one issuing from the French offensive at Verdun which by 18 December had brought the line back to where it had been before Falkenhayn’s offensive in February. Below, in the same war diary entry, Mussolini linked the peace rumours to his misinformation about Austro- Hungarian territorial demands and then linked both to Italy’s fallen: ‘Dialogue caught in the darkness: “Give back the lands we have conquered? This will never be!” “Our dead would cry vendetta!” “And not only the dead; also the living!” Tomorrow is the anniversary of the hanging of Oberdan.’ Despite Mussolini’s attempt to downplay the event, the seriousness of the crisis generated by the German peace proposals is clear from the way it clarified the role of the dead in the war diary: they marked the ‘legitimacy’ of territorial acquisition.
The German peace proposals also disturbed Mussolini personally. On 20 December: ‘Talk of peace is still the order of the day’, though he specified that ‘“nobody”, I repeat nobody, wants to know of a “German” peace.’ This sentence is highly contradictory, not only because it overturns previous assertions concerning the decline in talk of peace, but because the first ‘nobody’ is in inverted commas and hence suggests that at least somebody was prepared to accept peace on any terms, while the second nobody is in italics, hinting that absolutely nobody was talking of the ‘German’ peace (note the inverted commas around the word ‘German’). This resort to emphases and inverted commas suggests a lack of comfort with the argument. It is only in an entry of 24 December that Mussolini becomes more credible in downplaying the effects of the peace proposals: ‘Talk of “peace” is on the wane. Everyone understands and intuits that that time has not yet come.’ In fact, we hear no more about it, except, that is, for the reappearance of the nationalistic clergy in the entries of 30 and 31 December.
The weight lent to the Church in these two entries suggests that it is the key to offsetting the effects of talk of peace without having to resort to repressive measures, such as those called for by Morrone. Again, Mussolini was not all of a sudden becoming a religious convert. He specified on 30 December: ‘I do not comment, I transcribe’ and ‘I copy . . . I document.’ But he documented in detail. Father Michele had been distributing Italian tricolour badges and a sheet of paper. Mussolini accepted both and transcribed the consecration contained on the latter. It argued that the French victory on the Marne occurred when General Castelnau invoked the Sacred Heart of Jesus and that by doing the same Italy could likewise achieve victory, ‘“a double victory: one over our political enemies, the other over ourselves for self-purification and self-elevation.”’ During the end-of-year mass held the following day, an unknown priest received the highest of praise from Mussolini:
A simple-speaking orator, with a shrill voice and, most important of all, an Italian in the most ardent sense of the term. I liked his reference to the German peace which would be ‘the peace of the victor who then places his foot on the chest of the vanquished’, while our peace must ‘consecrate the justice and liberty of peoples’ and he finished with these words: ‘Italy first of all and above all.’... I want here to register the first truly burning patriotic speech which I’ve heard in 16 months of war.
But Mussolini did not just rely on the Church or on the soldiers’ own intuition to offset the effects of the German peace proposals. He was also prepared to pinpoint other real causes of low morale among the men. On 6 December he wrote: ‘Mess arrives in the evening. It’s our only distribution of food in 24 hours. The ration is reduced. But the appetite is the same.’ This was not the end of it. On 13 December he expressed his discontent about flea treatment: ‘I feel the first treading of fleas. There are anti-flea kits. Yeah. But you’d need one every fifteen days. The “kit’s” efficiency is limited. After fifteen days the fleas walk tranquilly on the very “kit” that should have exterminated them . . . One flea more, one flea less . . .’. The following day he was complaining about the badly organized reliefs: ‘The changeovers are too frequent. This explains the negligence of the soldiers when it comes to improving trenches. Since one is not staying long, there is no need to overtire oneself.’ An examination of the official regiment diary shows that changeovers occurred every three days (AUSSME, entries for December 1916). On 18 December the colonel was doing the rounds: ‘“How are things?” “Fine”, we reply. “Are you cold?” “Not really. But a flask of wine every now and then wouldn’t go astray . . .” The colonel moves away.’ On Christmas Day: ‘Lean Christmas. Of the gifts sent by the Committee, my company got a half a dozen sponge cakes (panettone) and the same amount of bottles.’ This was hardly going to be a feast for anything up to 250 men. Mussolini finished on a sarcastic note: ‘Mess was extremely special: stewed salted cod with potatoes. Special indeed!’
His irony is understandable. From December 1916 onwards stewed salted cod with potatoes had come to represent scarcity. Salted cod now replaced meat twice a week. Meat, in turn, had been reduced from 375 to 250 grams and bread from 750 to 600 grams. In fact, while the ration remained at 3,000 calories daily (not necessarily an inadequate quantity, especially if men were not involved in strenuous physical activity) it was nevertheless reduced from 4,000 calories (Melograni, 1969: 291), a not insignificant decline (especially in the meat ration) which will no doubt have been keenly felt. On 29 December Mussolini observed that ‘the appearance of my fellow soldiers after a stretch in the trenches of the Carso begins to be pitiful’. This is not surprising. Besides the decreased calorific intake there was also insufficient clothing during what was a bitterly cold winter in Italy and all of Europe in 1916-17. And cholera was spreading in Mussolini’s regiment (AUSSME, entry of 31 December 1916).
Mussolini’s diary had therefore come a long way since the Shangri-La of 1915, though this is not to deny important elements of continuity. One link with the 1915 section is the sacredness of the geographical location. ‘There is the Isonzo’, he wrote on 1 December. ‘Wide, deep blue, profoundly clear.’ Not just the water, but the soil. On 14 December he wrote: ‘My hands now have the mark of the highest nobility: they are dirty with the reddish earth of the Carso.’ Another element of continuity is Mussolini’s identification in December 1916 with officers. For example: ‘The lieutenant who commands my company invites me to share the evening mess with the officers. With him are several junior lieutenants, one of whom has the command of my platoon’ (5 December); ‘The captain has given me the task of bringing a greeting to the colonel. The colonel has gone to the advanced trenches and I await his return. To the captain’s good wishes I add my own’ (24 December).
Mussolini also continued to portray his own charismatic persona as something projected onto politically passive soldiers. In a 27 December letter-article published in IL Popolo d’ltalia he claimed that ‘despite discomforts and dangers, I have the privilege of assisting in the formation of a trenchocracy, a new and better elite which will govern the Italy of tomorrow’ (OO, VIII: 270-72; Mussolini’s italics). From the evidence in this section it is clear, as in previous sections, that this new trenchocracy was to be identified solely with the middle-class officers. In December 1916 there are no examples of his charisma at work, and worker and peasants appear only fleetingly and are not the subject of any elaborate discourses. The only reference to workers is the 18 December entry in which one such soldier was said to have rejected the German peace proposal. On 1 December Mussolini wrote of how, on his return to the trenches in late November, he had been greeted by a peasant soldier: ‘I remember how he wanted to carry my rucksack from Quel Taront to Minigos. I will never forget this act of affectionate kindness on the part of this humble . . . peasant.’ This comment reveals a continuity with all parts of the war diary in that it represents profound paternalism towards the labouring classes. Indeed, on 12 December Mussolini wrote of a visit of the brigadier general who ‘comes often among us and speaks man to man with the Bersaglieri’. For Mussolini, it was good to speak to ‘these humble people’ and ‘to try often to come down towards these simple and primitive souls, who, despite everything, still make up a splendid human material’. Apart from the adjectives (humble, simple, primitive) the phrasal verb ‘come down’ is all revealing: workers and peasants were not part of the ‘trenchocracy’.
An important element of rupture with previous sections of the diary is the disappearance of the fraternal brotherhood bound together by the deep emotions deriving from the shared danger of death in the liminal phase of the rite of passage. Although Mussolini still identified with officer paternalism towards the working classes, there are no accounts in December 1916 of the valorous episodes which so aestheticized the earlier community. Yet another rupture with the past is the use of the war diary as a means for more inner reflection (while continuing to write for publication). This occurred on Christmas Day 1916. There is no other passage in the war diary of this style and content and it is worth quoting and analyzing it at length:
Today is Christmas Day. Christmas Day. 25 December. The third Christmas at war. The date means nothing to me. I have received some illustrated postcards with the usual children and the inevitable Christmas trees. In order for me to find once more an echo of the poetry of this return, I must re-evoke my distant childhood. Today my heart has become as dry as these rocky dolines [grooves in Karst topography sometimes caused by the collapse of underground wells and caves]. Modern civilization has ‘mechanized’ us. The war has brought the process of ‘mechanization’ of European society to the point of exasperation. Twenty-five years ago I was a pugnacious and violent boy. The heads of some of my peers still bear the marks of my stone-throwing. A nomad by instinct, I went from morning to evening along the river and robbed nests and fruit. I used to go to mass. The Christmas of those days is still alive in my memory. There were very few people who did not go to church. My father and some others. The trees and hawthorn bushes along the road towards San Cassiano were rigid and silvered by the frost. It was cold. The first masses were for the early-rising old women. When we saw their heads peaking over the plain we knew it was our turn. I remember: I would follow my mother. In the church there were many lights and in the middle of the alter—in a small flowered cradle—lay the Baby born during the night. All of that was picturesque and played on my imagination. Only the smell of the incense disturbed me and at times caused me an unbearable nausea. At last a sound of the organ closed the ceremony. The crowd moved out. Along the road, a satisfied chatting. At midday steam rose from the traditional and delicious Romagna ringed ravioli on the tables. How many years or how many centuries have passed since then? A burst of cannon fire calls me back to reality.
It’s Christmas at war.
At the rhetorical level, this passage reveals traits of Mussolini’s general method: earlier we saw that, in his view, soldiers were not interested in peace and were not talking about it, despite his own obsession with the issue and the fact that in reality the soldiers were discussing it. Here, Christmas is said to mean nothing to Mussolini and he then dedicates a whole passage to a detailed reflection on it. But the point is not Mussolini’s distant past, since arguably the passage deals primarily with Christmas present. It is of interest that Mussolini had commented that same day on the scarcity of Italian sponge cakes (panettone) and bottles of wine, while he had not looked favourably on the stewed salted cod and potatoes distributed as Christmas lunch. In his reminiscences on Christmas past, his mind turned to the steam rising from the ring-shaped ravioli (cappelletti) for which his home region is still famous. Mussolini could not express his personal heroic qualities in the present war of position, but he was an effective warrior as a child and his nomadic wanderings were not limited by entrenched stasis. It is also noteworthy that his mother and father briefly entered the picture here, a fact which underlines the absence in the entire war diary of any thoughts concerning his wife and children. His parents appeared in the context of a discourse on church attendance. His father did not go, but we are not told why. Mussolini the child went, but perhaps only to please his mother. Not that the service had no positive effects on his child’s imagination, as it did, though these were ruined by the disturbing perfume of religious incense. It is noteworthy in this regard that the December 1916 war diary as published in IL Popolo d’ltalia in February 1917 contains a phrase or two absent from the 1923 edition. Following the line ‘Italy first of all and above all’ in the abovequoted speech by the nationalistic priest, the 1923 edition continues: ‘I would have liked to shout “Bravo”!’ The 1917 version states, however, ‘I - a heretic - would have liked to shout “Bravo”!’ Moreover, before the 1923 sentence ‘I want here to register the first truly burning patriotic speech which I’ve heard in 16 months of war’ the original version in 1917 has ‘Once the mass began, I moved away, but . . .’ and then continues with ‘I want here to register’ etc. Yet Mussolini had already shown himself to be open to popular religiosity in 1915 and since then his relationship with the clergy had improved beyond all doubt. In 1923, as head of government, he was beginning to resolve the anti-clerical/pro-clerical ambiguities of the war diary in favour of full reconciliation with the Church. In the original version, however, the ambiguities remain and are evidenced in that amazing 1916 journey to an idyllic Christmas past. In that passage Mussolini did not hide this state of mind, since he noted that his heart had dried up and that he, like Europe in general, had become ‘mechanized’. Not only, therefore, had the previously quoted 7 April 1916 apotheosis of morale over machines been contradicted by the emphasis of machines over morale, but the idealism of the warrior community, constructed through the diary on the Isonzo in 1915, had become thorough disenchantment on the Carso by Christmas 1916.