The 'secret' Mussolini

ROME - Benito Mussolini was a fierce anti-Semite, who proudly said his hatred for Jews preceded Adolf Hitler's and vowed to "destroy them all," according to previously unpublished diaries by the Fascist dictator's longtime mistress.

According to the diaries, Mussolini also talked about the warm reception he received from Hitler at the 1938 Munich conference - he called the German leader a "softy" - and attacked Pope Pius XI for his criticism of Nazism and Fascism.

On a more intimate note, he was explicit about his sexual appetites for his mistress and said he regretted having affairs with other women.

The diaries kept by Claretta Petacci, Mussolini's mistress, between 1932 and 1938 are the subject of a book coming out this week, Secret Mussolini. Excerpts were published yesterday by Italy's leading daily, Corriere della Sera.

Historians said the diaries appeared to be convincing and reinforced the image that Mussolini was strongly anti-Semitic, even though early on there was some Jewish support for his Fascist movement. But they cautioned that these are the diaries of the dictator's lover, not Mussolini, and must be taken with an extra grain of salt.

Many of the excerpts date to 1938, a crucial year in which Mussolini's Fascist regime passed racial laws and Europe sealed its appeasement toward Nazi Germany at the Munich conference.

"I have been a racist since 1921," Mussolini is quoted as boasting in August 1938. "I don't know how they can think I'm imitating Hitler. We must give Italians a sense of race."

In 1943, German troops occupied northern and central Italy, and thousands of Jews were deported. According to some researchers, there were 32,000 Jews in 1943 in Italy, of whom more than 8,000 were deported to Nazi camps. "These disgusting Jews, I must destroy them all," Mussolini was quoted as saying by his lover in October 1938.

Mussolini also denounced Pius XI, who saw the rise of anti-Semitism in the last years of his 1922-39 papacy, as harming the Catholic Church. Pius commissioned an encyclical to denounce racism and German nationalism but died before releasing it.

Mussolini said that "there never was a pope as harmful to religion" as Pius XI and accused him of doing "undignified things, such as saying we are similar to the Semites."

Mussolini had kind words for Hitler, whom he said was "very nice" and had tears in his eyes when he met the Italian dictator in Munich. "Hitler is a big softy, deep down," Mussolini is quoted as telling Petacci on Oct. 1, 1938. Mussolini also wrote to Petacci about his "mad desire" for her "little body" and his regret over having had relations with other women. "I adore you and I'm a fool."

Mussolini and Petacci were shot by partisans April 28, 1945, and their bodies were displayed, hanging upside-down from a gas station in a Milan square, to a jeering crowd.