Benito Albino Dalser

Early life

Ida Dalser was born in Sopramonte, a village near Trento (Trient), which was then within the borders of the County of Tyrol in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The daughter of the town mayor, she was sent to Paris to study cosmetic medicine. When she returned, she moved to Milan, where she opened a French-style beauty salon.

Marriage and motherhood

It is unclear whether Ida Dalser first met young Benito Mussolini in Trento, where he had found his first job as a journalist in 1909, or in Milan, where he had moved soon afterwards. The two started a relationship, and when Mussolini was refused work on the basis of his fervent socialist political activity, she financed him with the revenues of her beautician job. According to some sources, they married in 1914, and in 1915 she had a son, Benito Albino Mussolini. Though Fascist agents sought to erase all traces of the relationship, an edict from the city of Milan ordering Mussolini to make maintenance payments to "his wife Ida Dalser" and their child was overlooked.

Persecution and death

In 1917, Mussolini came back from the war. His political career accelerated, and in 1919, he went on to found the Fasci italiani di combattimento. In 1921, it became the National Fascist Party, and in the same year, he was also elected to the Chamber of Deputies.

With the 1922 March on Rome, Mussolini seized power and became a dictator who was officially recognised by the reigning House of Savoy.

Once Mussolini was in power, Ida Dalser and her son were placed under surveillance by the police, and paper evidence of their relationship was tracked down to be destroyed by government agents. She persisted in continuing to claim her role as the dictator's wife and even publicly denounced Mussolini as a traitor. She said that during his years in Milan, he had accepted a bribe from the French government, in exchange for political campaigning in support of the involvement of neutral Italy in the war on the side of France.

Eventually, she was transferred to the island of San Clemente in Venice, where she died in 1937. The cause of her death was officially given as a "brain hemorrhage".

Fate of Benito Albino

Benito Albino Mussolini was abducted by government agents and was told that his mother was dead. In 1931, he was adopted as an orphan at 15 by the fascist ex-police chief of Sopramonte. Initially educated at a Barnabite college in Moncalieri, he enrolled in the Italian Royal Navy and always remained under close surveillance by the fascist government. Nevertheless, he persisted in stating that Benito Mussolini was his father and eventually, he was forcibly interned in an asylum in Mombello, Province of Milan, where he died on 26 August 1942 after he was repeatedly given coma-inducing injections, at the age of 26. Ida and Benito were officially described as “a danger to themselves and others” but hospital records show that both of them were lucid.

In films

The story of Benito Mussolini's first marriage was suppressed during the fascist era and generally, it remained unknown for years afterward. In 2005, it was resurrected by the Italian journalist Marco Zeni and it was made public in a documentary which was broadcast on RAI state television as well as in two books (L'ultimo filò and La moglie di Mussolini).

Vincere, a biopic about Dalser's life that was directed by Marco Bellocchio and starring Giovanna Mezzogiorno, was screened at the 2009 American Film Institute Festival and it was in competition at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.