Word: mussolini
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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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...
...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...
...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...
...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 Führer 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...