Clara Petacci

Daughter of Giuseppina Persichetti (1888–1962) and the physician Francesco Saverio Petacci (1883–1970), Clara Petacci was born into a privileged and religious family in Rome in 1912.^[1][2] Her father (a physician of the Holy Apostolic Palaces^[3] who for several years also had his own private clinic, "La Clinica del Sole") became a supporter of fascism. A child when Mussolini rose to power in the 1920s, Clara Petacci idolised him from an early age. After Violet Gibson attempted to assassinate the dictator in April 1926, the 14-year-old Petacci wrote to him commenting "O, Duce, why was I not with you? ... Could I not have strangled that murderous woman?"^[4] Clara studied music with mixed results and was a pupil of the violinist Corrado Archibugi, a friend of her parents.^[5]

Petacci had a long-standing relationship with Mussolini while he was married to Rachele Mussolini. Petacci was 28 years younger than Mussolini.^[6] They met for the first time in April 1932 when Mussolini, driving with an aide to Ostia, overtook a car occupied by the twenty-year-old Petacci and family members. She called out, "Duce! Duce!" and when he stopped, told him that she had been writing to him since her early teens.^[7]

In 1934, Petacci married Italian Air Force officer Riccardo Federici, but she parted ways with her husband when he was sent to Tokyo as Air Attaché in 1936.^[8] Petacci then became the mistress of the fifty-three-year-old Mussolini, visiting his large headquarters in the Palazzo Venezia, where a private apartment was reserved for her. Her infatuation with Mussolini appears to have been genuine and permanent. The affair became widely known and members of the Petacci family, notably her brother, Marcello, were able to benefit financially and professionally by influence-selling.^[9]

Clara was passionate about painting. She took on the role of Mussolini's secret companion, sharing his darkest moments and his final fate, apparently without ever demanding that he leave his wife Rachele for her.^[10]

Part of Petacci and Mussolini's correspondence has not been released on the grounds of privacy.^[11]

Clara Petacci was arrested on 25 July 1943, at the fall of the Fascist regime. During this period, she maintained an intense correspondence with Mussolini and, despite the Duce's contrary opinion, kept all the letters.^[14] In one of these she asked that, at the Verona trial, Galeazzo Ciano be sentenced to death as a "traitor, cowardly, filthy, self-interested and false", thus expressing an extremely harsh position (also applicable to Edda Mussolini, "his worthy accomplice"), which was defined by the historian Emilio Gentile as showing "Nazi rigor".^[15]

On 27 April 1945, Mussolini and Petacci were captured at Dongo by a unit of the 52nd Garibaldi Brigade of partisans while travelling with a Luftwaffe convoy retreating to Germany. The German column included Italian Social Republic members.^[16]

On 28 April, she and Mussolini were taken to Mezzegra and executed. One source alleges Petacci's execution was not planned and that she died by throwing herself on Mussolini in a vain attempt to protect him from the bullets.^[17] On the following day, the bodies of Mussolini and Petacci were taken to Piazzale Loreto in Milan and hung upside down by their feet from the canopy of the Esso petrol station in order to protect the bodies from further desecration by the crowd. The location to which they were taken was chosen as a symbolic act of revenge for the massacre of fifteen partisans and antifascists, executed in reprisal at that same site on 10 August 1944. The bodies were photographed as a crowd vented their rage upon them.^[18] On the same day, Clara's brother, Marcello Petacci, was also killed in Dongo by the partisans, along with fifteen other people complicit in Mussolini's escape.

At around 3 p.m., the bodies arrived at the Civic Morgue on Via Giuseppe Ponzio.^[19]

At nightfall the following day, 30 April, by order of the National Liberation Committee (CLN), Claretta Petacci's body was buried (as were Mussolini and others) in a pit in Field 16 of the Cimitero Maggiore di Milano, left anonymous to avoid further desecration. After two days, at night, to make identification more difficult, again by order of the CLN, the body was exhumed and transferred to a pit in Field 10, the perpetual field intended for the fallen of the RSI, under the fictitious name "Rita Colfosco". It remained there until March 1956, when, with authorization from the Minister of the Interior Fernando Tambroni, Petacci's body was exhumed, transported to Rome, and interred in the family tomb at the Campo Verano cemetery on the 16th.^{[19][20][21][22]}

Following the war, Petacci's family began civil and criminal court cases against Walter Audisio for Petacci's unlawful killing. After a lengthy legal process, an investigating judge eventually closed the case in 1967. Audisio was acquitted of murder and embezzlement on the grounds that the actions complained of occurred as an act of war against the Germans and the fascists during a period of enemy occupation.^[23]

Following the deaths of her direct descendants between the 1960s and 1970s and the relocation of the remaining family members to the United States, the tomb was declared a "structure in a state of abandonment" by the cemetery administration in 2015.^[24][25][26] An association proposed restoring the structure, while former mayor of Sant'Abbondio Alberto Botta proposed transferring the body to Mezzegra, the place of Petacci's death.^[27] Subsequently, the tomb was restored in autumn 2017 after a fundraising campaign by the association "Campo della Memoria".^[28]

Only part of the correspondence exchanged over more than fifteen years between Mussolini and Petacci has been published.^[29] It is preserved at the State Archives of Rome and has been the subject of a legal dispute.^[30]

• Il mio diario, Cernusco sul Naviglio, Editori Associati, 1946.
• Mussolini segreto. Diari 1932-1938, edited by Mauro Suttora, Milan, Rizzoli, 2009, ISBN 978-88-17-03737-2.
• Verso il disastro. Mussolini in guerra. Diari 1939-1940, edited by Mimmo Franzinelli, Milan, Rizzoli, 2011, ISBN 978-88-17-04742-5.

• Eva Braun – Adolf Hitler's mistress
• Margherita Sarfatti – one of Mussolini's earlier mistresses
• Grand Hotel Rimini – Petacci's residence in Rimini during Mussolini's summer holidays in Riccione^[31][32]