# Rachele Mussolini

Rachele Guidi (Italian:; 11 April 1890 – 30 October 1979), also known (particularly in Italy) as Donna Rachele (Italian for "Lady Rachel") and incorrectly as Rachele Mussolini in the English-speaking world, was the second wife of dictator and fascist leader Benito Mussolini.

## Early life

Rachele Guidi was born in Predappio, Romagna, Kingdom of Italy. She was born into a peasant family and was the daughter of Agostino Guidi and wife Anna Lombardi. After the death of Rachele's father, her mother became the lover of the widowed Alessandro Mussolini.

## Relationship, marriage and children

In 1905 Benito's father, Alessandro Mussolini, had become a widower and opened a tavern in Forlì, on Giove Tonante Street, together with Rachele's mother (also a widow), entertaining an affair with her. Benito, meanwhile, having returned from Switzerland, moved after a couple of years to Forlì, to his father's place, and there he met Rachele again; for them it was the classic love at first sight. However, the families disagreed about their relationship, and so in 1909 Benito summoned his father and Rachele's mother and, wielding a revolver, told them that if they did not consent to their marriage, he would kill her and himself.
In 1910, Rachele Guidi moved in with Alessandro's son, Benito Mussolini. In 1914, Mussolini married his first wife, Ida Dalser. Though the records of that marriage were destroyed by Mussolini's government, an edict from the city of Milan ordering Mussolini to make maintenance payments to "his wife Ida Dalser" and their child was overlooked. Shortly before his son, Benito Albino Mussolini, was born to Ida Dalser, Rachele Guidi and Benito Mussolini were married in a civil ceremony in Treviglio, Lombardy on 17 December 1915. In 1925, they renewed their vows in a religious service (after his rise to power).
Many sources agree that Rachel had a stern and authoritarian temperament, sometimes even more so than her husband: she was, for example, opposed to any act of clemency towards her son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano during the Verona trial and worsened, because of this, her relations with her daughter Edda, who called her "the real dictator of the house." Moreover, in the last months of 1943 she would go every night for two hours to talk with Guido Buffarini Guidi, minister of the interior of the Italian Social Republic, asking him for more severity in order to restore internal order.

## Children

Rachele Guidi bore five children by Benito Mussolini. Rachele and Benito Mussolini had two daughters and three sons.
* Edda (1910–1995)
* Vittorio (1916–1997)
* Bruno (1918–1941)
* Romano (1927–2006)
* Anna Maria (1929–1968).

## During her husband's regime

During the reign of Mussolini's Fascist regime, Rachele Guidi was portrayed as the model Fascist housewife and mother. She remained loyal to Mussolini until the end but, on 28 April 1945, was not with him when he and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, were captured and executed by Italian partisans. Although she tried to flee from Italy after World War II, she was arrested in April 1945 in Como, close to Switzerland, by Italian partisans. She was handed to the US Army and kept on Ischia Island but was released after several months.

## Final years

In her later life, Rachele Guidi ran a restaurant in her native village of Predappio.

## Author

With Albert Zarca, she wrote a biography of her husband that was translated into English as Mussolini: An Intimate Biography.