In The Perfect Fascist Victoria De Grazia tells the story, both public and private, of the prominent Fascist hierarch Attilio Teruzzi. His life and career are used as a prism through which to view many aspects of the regime, including its rise to power, the development of the Militia, and foreign and colonial policy. The social mores of the period are explored through the history of his intimate relationships, particularly his short-lived marriage to the opera singer Lilliana Weinman. The book follows his life chronologically, tracing his 20-year career in the military, his role in early Fascism, his subsequent rapid rise to a succession of powerful positions, his continuing loyalty to Mussolini after 1943, his arrest in 1945 and, finally, his purge trial and imprisonment on the island of Procida. Based on extensive scholarly research, this book is written in a very accessible, confident style, and the story it tells is a fascinating, engrossing one, with plenty of dramatic twists and turns.

Attilio Teruzzi (1882–1950) rose to great heights under Fascism. Particularly trusted and favoured by Mussolini, he quickly became an extremely powerful hierarch. One of the most photographed men of the regime, he seemed to epitomise Fascist militaristic virility with his ramrod-straight posture and his trademark beard. From a very modest background (son of a shopkeeper in Milan) he had entered the army at a young age as an ordinary enlisted private and thereafter rose up through the ranks to become a decorated officer (a major) with a service record in Eritrea, Libya, and the Great War. In the immediate postwar period he left the army and, drawn by a mixture of patriotism and self-interest, became involved in the nascent Fascist movement. Unlike many of the most prominent early hierarchs – particularly those who, like him, were on the ‘intransigent’ wing of Fascism – Teruzzi was never a ras. Instead, during the early 1920s, when he was soon appointed as vice-secretary of the new Fascist party, his main role was to mediate in disputes between warring groups of Fascists on behalf of Mussolini. As a former career soldier, he was able to bring an element of military discipline to the unruly squads. However, he was personally involved in squad raids and violence, and he acted as the commander for Emilia-Romagna during the March on Rome. He reaped the rewards for this loyalty, becoming a parliamentary deputy in 1924, and an undersecretary at the Interior Ministry the following year. In 1926, he was appointed as plenipotentiary of the Italian colony of Cyrenaica (Libya) where he endeavoured to modernise and develop the capital Benghazi and, unlike some of the other Fascists there, proved relatively open to dialogue in dealing with Libyan notables. His meteoric rise continued after that and only two years later he was given an even more powerful post, as commander-in-chief of the Militia. Later he went on to play key roles in the invasion of Ethiopia and the Italian intervention in the Spanish Civil War. He was eventually appointed an undersecretary, and then Minister, for Italian Africa.

This was an impressive career for someone who, although undoubtedly very loyal to the Duce, was not particularly well qualified and, indeed, considered mediocre by many of his peers. But this was Fascism, a regime that promoted many nonentities and, in many respects, the unprincipled and pleasure-seeking Teruzzi fitted in well. Like many ‘fascists of the first hour’, Teruzzi was a complex and rough character. He was a great womaniser (dubbed by one historian the ‘rutting bull of the empire’) before, throughout, and after his marriage in 1926 to Lilliana Weinman, a young, wealthy Jewish-American opera singer.

The story of this ill-fated and improbable union lies at the heart of De Grazia's book. It began with a lavish, high-profile ‘Fascist wedding,’ with hundreds of guests, including many of the regime's elite, but lasted for considerably less time than the protracted legal battle that followed. In 1929, what seems to have initially been a love match soured (for Teruzzi at least) and he tried to get the marriage annulled on various grounds, including the claim that his bride had not been a virgin when they wed. Lilliana refused to comply. For reasons that are ultimately incomprehensible to both the author and the reader, she doggedly fought, over many years, to remain married to this corrupt, philandering man. Teruzzi was equally persistent in his quest for an annulment, his desire to rid himself of his inconvenient spouse becoming increasingly urgent when his mistress (similarly a foreign Jewish woman much younger than himself) gave birth to their beloved daughter in 1938. It was, however, all to no avail and he remained married to Lilliana until his death in 1950. De Grazia uses the sorry tale of this disastrous marriage and its lengthy aftermath as a way of exploring many aspects of the regime, including its public and private morality and its gender relations.

De Grazia is able to tell us much about the inside workings of the Weinman-Teruzzi marriage, and attempted annulment, thanks to an unusually rich seam of documentation in the form of the private papers of Lilliana Weinman's family. She has also been able to draw on a good deal of other archival and press source material, as well as many diaries and memoirs, for both of her protagonists were prominent people about whom much was said and written. Due to the nature of the sources, in some ways it feels as if we get to know Lilliana slightly better than Attilio Teruzzi himself, although we do learn a great deal about the activities and political and military career of this ‘perfect fascist’ and, indeed, about what it meant to be a man, particularly a powerful man, in Fascist Italy.