This book received a prize in Lerici, Liguria, on the occasion of 200 years of the death of Lord Byron.

Angelo Paratico, historian and novelist, presents his new book, published by Gingko Edizioni, Verona, and entitled ‘Mussolini in Japan’. It is a short novel that contains numerous historical references. For the first time, it raises the possibility that the man who was killed in Giulino di Mezzegra on 28 April 1945 was not Benito Mussolini, but a double.

This would explain the inconsistency of his behaviour in his last days and all the mysteries that still surround the circumstances of his death. His lack of clarity in his decisions after Como seems inexplicable, as does the fact that his face appeared disfigured as soon as he arrived in Piazzale Loreto. And it is not clear why he was secretly shot and not taken to the lakeside of Dongo, just a few kilometres away, to be executed in public along with the other hierarchs and an unfortunate hitchhiker.

In Milan on 25 April 1945, Mussolini had several opportunities to save himself, but he did not want to take them. Firstly, he could have locked himself in the Castello Sforzesco and wait for the Allies to arrive. The partisans had no heavy weapons and would not have been able to take it. Another escape route, favoured by Vittorio Mussolini, was to flee to Ghedi airport to board an SM79 that would take him to Spain. Contrary to popular belief, Switzerland was out of the question, as Mussolini knew that they would never let him through.

There was another escape route, which was far more complex and for which absolute secrecy was an absolute prerequisite. This involved the use of a submarine. This plan had been drawn up by Enzo Grossi (1908-1960), a highly qualified and highly decorated submariner commander who was responsible for the Betasom base in France. Commander Grossi himself mentioned these preparations in his memoirs entitled ‘Dal Barbarigo a Dongo’. Grossi was a brave man of the sea who died young, consumed by bitterness at being wrongly accused of cheating in exchange for two gold medals, and a silver medal, and two German war crosses by lying about the sinking of two American battleships with the submarine Barbarigo he commanded on 20 May 1942 off the Brazilian coast.

After the war, an admiral’s commission discussed his case and accused him of fraud, but forgot to take into account the different time zones. As Antonino Trizzino showed in his book ‘Ships and Armchairs’, published in 1952, Grossi sank two large enemy ships, but they were not the ones he thought they were. Seen through the periscope of a submarine, in the middle of a risky operation, and in rough seas, all ships are difficult to identify.

A decree by the President of the Republic stripped him of his medals. He protested vehemently and was sentenced to 5 months and 10 days in prison in October 1954 for ‘insulting the head of state ‘ based on a letter he had written to the President. Grossi had been involved in the RSI, although he had never taken out the fascist party card, and was married to a Jewish woman who did not stop practicing her religion. He only just managed to wrest her from the SS, who released her and allowed her to return home to her children.

In Chapter XI of his book, entitled ‘A Submarine for Mussolini’, Grossi recounts that Tullio Tamburini revealed to him that he had agreed with the Japanese allies to prepare a large submarine for rescue, which he would command according to his plans and take to the Pacific. Tamburini told Mussolini of this plan, but he replied that he wanted nothing to do with it. This was confirmed by Mussolini himself when he met Grossi in February 1945 and thanked him for his efforts. He then added: “I am not interested in living like an ordinary person. I see that my star is setting and that my mission is over…’.

The existence of these plans was also confirmed by the deputy secretary of the Republican Fascist Party and former federal minister of Verona, Antonio Bonino, in his memoirs entitled ‘Mussolini told me’, published in Argentina in 1950.

That is apparently all that is known about it, but according to Paratico, the mechanism continued to move independently of the will of the creators and was adapted by entrusting the command of the oceanic submarine Luigi Torelli to a German. Thus, in the early afternoon of 25 April 1945, Mussolini was picked up by a car driven by a Japanese diplomat who took him to Trieste, where he boarded the Torelli submarine, which was waiting for him in the harbor after he had been brought back from Japan. The Americans sank it off Tokyo Bay in September 1945.

Leaving the alternative history aside and turning to the novel, I have to say that this book reads well and reminded me of another book with a similar theme and development that I read a few years ago. The author was the great Belgian writer and sinologist Simon Leys (Pierre Ryckmans), and the title was ‘The Death of Napoleon’. Leys imagined how Napoleon, imprisoned on St Helena, is replaced by a double and returns to France incognito. After various vicissitudes, Napoleon is forced into the life of a ‘common man’, sharing a bed with a Parisian ortolana. In the meantime, among the cabbages and vegetables, he secretly works on his revenge, but then he falls ill and dies. All those who have studied the Napoleonic epic are impressed by this bizarre fantasy by Leys, which adds a new facet, a point to ponder, to this great figure.

The Mussolini the author describes is marked by grief and guilt and has frequent bouts of weeping. When he thinks back to his youth as an anarchist and penniless socialist, he thinks that he should have gone into the mountains as a partisan and then fight against the invading Nazis instead of joining them. His suffering and regrets are only partially alleviated within the walls of an old Buddhist temple in Nikko.

The author’s idea is highly original and has never been explored before. And with this small book, he proves that he not only has a profound knowledge of man but also of the man himself.