THE PERFECT FASCIST

When Attilio Teruzzi, a decorated military officer, married a rising American opera star, his good fortune seemed settled. The wedding was capped with a blessing by Mussolini himself. Yet only three years later, the early convert to the Fascist cause, now commander of the Black Shirts, renounced his wife. Lilliana was Jewish, and fascist Italy would soon introduce its first race laws.

The Perfect Fascist pivots from the intimate story of a tempestuous courtship and inconvenient marriage to the operatic spectacle of Mussolini’s rise and fall. It invites us to see in the vain, unscrupulous, fanatically loyal Attilio Teruzzi an exemplar of fascism’s New Man. Victoria De Grazia’s landmark history shows how the personal is always political in the fascist quest for manhood and power. In his self-serving pieties and intimate betrayals, his violence and opportunism, Teruzzi was a forefather of the illiberal politicians of today.