Burn Baby, Burn!

On the 20th we posted about monuments which can only be seen from above or from afar, including geoglyphs such as hill figures, effigy mounds and the Nazca lines.  What started it all were a few examples of monuments made of living trees.  One was a benign Celtic cross, a few were celebrations of Lenin's birthday centennial, and then there were the swastikas.  Three of them!  (See Forest for the Trees, Stones for the Mountain)

But we neglected to include another fascist monument.  In this case it's a monument to Hitler's pal Benito Mussolini, aka "Il Duce".  The tree memorial in questions spell out "DVX" ("leader"). But we'll get back to that in a moment.

Mussolini was officially the Prime Minister of Italy from 1922 until he was formally dismissed by King Victor Emmanuel in July, 1943, then promptly arrested.  Ensuing events are too complex to summarize here, but as the Allies began to advance into Italy in April, Mussolini and his girlfriend Clara Petacci decided it was time to flee.  As they were heading to Switzerland to catch a plane to Fascist Spain, he and Petacci, along with some of his closest cohorts, were captured by Communist partisans on April, 27th.  A day later, the couple and most of their cohorts were shot in the village of Giulino di Mezzegra -- only two days before Hitler and his mistress killed themselves just outside their bunker as the Russians advanced upon Berlin.  The bodies were then brought to Milan.  The long-suffering Italians were none too happy with their former leader, to whit:

After being kicked and spat upon, the bodies were hung upside down from the roof of an Esso gas station. The bodies were then stoned from below by civilians. This was done both to discourage any Fascists from continuing the fight, and as an act of revenge for the hanging of many partisans in the same place by Axis authorities. The corpse of the deposed leader was subject to ridicule and abuse. (Wikipedia)

His corpse had an active afterlife.  It was buried in an unmarked grave, then dug up a year later by Fascists.  It was found months later after being constantly moved around in order to avoid being discovered.  The body was then stuffed into a trunk and hidden in a town near Milan.  There it was kept for another decade before the authorities agreed to allow Mussolini's body to be re-interred in the town of his birth.  Here he was accorded the courtesy of a crypt, flanked by marble fasces and topped with a marble bust.  

Hitler's remains also had a curious afterlife, but the Russians weren't taking any chances and the exact fate of his remains, erm, remains unknown.  Like the US did when they hid the corpses of Che Guevara and Bin Laden, the Russians kept the location of their burial unknown from preventing it from becoming a pilgrimage site (See No Body Home)

Il Duce derives from the Latin word dux (leader), and gives us the word "duke" in English.  The title had been used outside the traditional noble usage to refer to Garibaldi in 1860, although he never used it himself.  King Victor Emmanuel III was called "Duce Supremo" during WWI, and Gabriele d'Annunzio used the title as dictator of the Italian Regency of Carnaro in 1920.  Incidentally, D'Annunzio was an untranationalist who, though he never self-identified as a fascist, is often "credited" with partially inventing Italian fascism and was an influence on the ideas and Fascist aesthetics (the Black Shirts, balcony speeches, etc.) of Mussolini.  D'Annunzio was critical of Mussolini, and the latter saw him as a rival and a threat to his leadership, especially his alliance with Hitler.  It is said Mussolini supported D'Annunzio financially as a kind of "bribe" to keep him out of politics.

Of course, Mussolini is who we usually think of when we hear the title Il Duce, just as we think of Hitler when we hear the title Der Führer, which, incidentally, also means "leader".  Indeed:

This position was the model which other fascist leaders adopted, such as the position of Führer by Adolf Hitler and Caudillo by Francisco Franco.

Mussolini actually was first called by the title as early as 1912, after he was appointed editor of Avanti!  This paper, founded in 1896 "as the official voice of the Italian Socialist Party," still exists, although in 1976 its political alignment shifted to social democracy  (a socialist tradition, it promotes a gradual and democratic, as opposed to revolutionary, move towards socialism within a capitalist "mixed" economic system.  I'm sure that's a bit simplistic but you get the idea).

Enter the "fascist forest".  On Monte Giano, about 100k from Rome, cadets at the Scuola Allievi Guardie Forestali (a forestry academy) in the aptly-named town of Cittaducale ("ducal city") planted about 20,000 fir trees in 1938-39 to honor Il Duce by spelling out "DUX." 

 

A first attempt to eradicate the forest took place in the 1950's, and in 1998, after years of neglect, the center-left regional government allocated over 100,000 USD to both revitalize the forest and obscure the letters.  But in 2004, the neo-Fascist leader of a by then far-right regional government started to restore them.  Then in 2017, a motorist passing through the area was cooking tomato sauce (can't make this stuff up) accidentally (?) started a forest fire which did what earlier, human-led attempts failed to do.  

"Accidentally?"  According to The Local, -- "Italy's News in English":

...forestry police....found paper balls and inflammable liquid on the mountain believed to have been used to spread the fire deliberately, according to Rome-based daily Il Messaggero.

That report was on August 29th.  I like the way Italian newspaper Il Messaggero put it on the 25th, a few days before police discovered the evidence of arson:

No revisionism, no carelessness, no chainsaw:  in the end tomato sauce was enough, a pummarola (tomato sauce) that was stronger than the delusions of grandeur of the Regime.

According to the same article by The Local:

In clear weather, the letters – which are 630 feet tall and 1,360 feet across – could even be seen from Rome, some 50 miles away, but due to fire damage, only the 'D' has been left intact.

It also states that:

....Alessandra Mussolini – the granddaughter of Benito and an MEP with Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party – said she would visit the forest.

 She said that she would talk to local authorities about the possibility of repairing the homage.

The far-right group CasaPound has already launched a fundraising effort to restore the   forest as well as a call to farmers to help with the restoration, under the slogan 'You can't erase history'.

So, I'm not sure of the exact state of the letters today, but Italian Wikipedia, citing Corriere Della Sera, says:

In February 2018, a group of CasaPound volunteers planted 1000 pine trees on Mount Giano in order to restore the writing.  The operation was deemed unnecessary by members of the local community, due to incorrect timing.

The original article quotes the VP of CasaPound as writing that up to 200 people from CasaPound, the Salamandra civil protection group, and the ecological association La Foresta che Avanza planted "a thousand Austrian pines, similar to the old ones destroyed, purchased thanks to the fundraising in which many Italians participated."

Not quite sure why the Wikipedia article mentions "bad timing" because the original article doesn't mention this at all.  And anyway, what a weird objection.  When would any time be "good" timing? 

So, those final days of Mussolini, and Italy's turnaround vis-a-vis Germany, is fascinating stuff.  As is the story of D'Annunzio.  Makes me think I should do a bit on ultra-nationalist poets and artists with political pretensions.  One example being Japan's then-most famous novelist Yukio Mishima, a right-wing nationalist who wanted to restore Japan to its former imperial glory, even forming his own private militia reminiscent of the Black Shirts and Brown Shirts of the Fascists and the Nazis.

Mishima formed the Tatenokai for the avowed purpose of restoring sacredness and dignity to the Emperor of Japan [something Hitler and Mussolini evoked endlessly].  On 25 November 1970, Mishima and four members of his militia entered a military base in central Tokyo, took its commandant hostage, and tried to inspire the Japan Self-Defense Forces to rise up and overthrow Japan's 1947 Constitution, which he called "a constitution of defeat".  After his speech and screaming of "Long live the Emperor!", he committed seppuku [ritual suicide].

I looked briefly at Mishima's Wiki page and was struck immediately by a photo of that speech, from a balcony; you may recall that speeches given from balconies was one of the influences D'Annunzio had on Mussolini's Fascist aesthetic.  (Follow links for images of the rival "Duci" doing just that.)

There's a great photo of Mishima's balcony speech here.

Anyway, here's a cool collection of (non-political) 8 Extraordinary Pieces of Architecture Grown From Living Trees.