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Diaries written by the mistress of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini have revealed how he thought Adolf Hitler 'an old sentimentalist at heart'. The previously unpublished diaries of Claretta Petacci also note Mussolini's fervent anti-Semitism, his disgust at mixed-race marriages between Italians and locals in African colonies, and his anger at the pre-war Pope, Pius XI.
Her father was the Pope's personal doctor. She was just 20 in 1932 when she met Mussolini, who was then 49. She was his lover for nine years before at the end of the war she, like him was shot and hanged upside down from a garage forecourt by partisans. Now her diaries, which are held by her nephew who lives in the US, are to be published as a book, Mussolini Segreto (Secret Mussolini).
In them Petacci recalls how Mussolini described to her the infamous conference at Munich in October 1938 where he met Hitler and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to discuss the carve-up of Czechoslovakia. Petacci wrote of how Mussolini had described the meeting in an entry dated October 1, 1938: 'The welcome at Munich was fantastic and the Fuhrer was very pleasant. Hitler is an old sentimentalist at heart.
'When he saw me he had tears in his eyes. He really does like me a lot. But he does have angry outbursts which only I can control. 'There were sparks and he was quivering, he struggled to control himself. I on the other hand was unperturbed.'
In another entry from January 5, 1938, written after they met at his residence in Rome, she describes how married father of five Mussolini had told of his erotic fantasies with her. She wrote of how Mussolini had told her: 'Do you know, love, last evening at theatre I undressed you at least three times?
'I had a mad desire to have you. Your small body, your flesh which drives me mad, tomorrow will be mine. 'Your delicious body will be mine, all mine. I will take it and it will be one with mine.'
Petacci also wrote in her diary of how Mussolini had other lovers. She describes his apology in one entry from February 19, 1938. It reads: 'Yes my love, I do wrong and all the more I love you and I feel that you are necessary more than ever. I adore you, I am a madman. 'I should not make you suffer because this suffering of yours reverses itself onto me because I suffer when you suffer.'
Petacci then writes of how Mussolini had described his racist views to her from an entry dated 4th August 1938 when the two lovers are on a boat.
It reads: 'I have been a racist since 1921. I don't know why people think I am imitating Hitler, he wasn't even born. It makes me laugh... I need to teach these Italians about race, that they don't create half castes and that they don't ruin what is beautiful in us.'
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