The murder of Giacomo Matteotti was the kidnapping and killing of Italian socialist politician Giacomo Matteotti by a group of Fascists led by Amerigo Dumini on 10 June 1924. Matteotti, secretary of the Unitary Socialist Party (PSU) and one of the most prominent parliamentary opponents of Benito Mussolini's government, was abducted in Rome ten days after delivering a speech in the Chamber of Deputies denouncing violence and intimidation during the 1924 Italian general election. His body was discovered on 16 August at the Quartarella, near Riano, north of Rome.
The investigation rapidly identified members of the group responsible for the abduction. Magistrates Mauro Del Giudice and Umberto Tancredi subsequently investigated their relationship with a clandestine Fascist organization commonly known as the Ceka. The inquiry traced connections from Dumini's group to senior Fascist officials including Giovanni Marinelli and Cesare Rossi and investigated the organization's relationship with the Presidency of the Council.
The first trial, held at Chieti in March 1926, convicted Dumini, Albino Volpi and Amleto Poveromo of omicidio preterintenzionale, finding them responsible for Matteotti's death without finding an intent to kill. After the fall of Fascism the case was reopened. A second trial in Rome in 1947 convicted Dumini, Poveromo and Giuseppe Viola of Matteotti's premeditated kidnapping and murder.
The extent of Mussolini's personal responsibility has remained a subject of historical debate. Allegations that responsibility for the operation extended to Mussolini arose during the original investigation, while later historians have differed over the degree to which the surviving evidence establishes his personal role and the intended outcome of the operation. Historian Denis Mack Smith argued for Mussolini's direct responsibility while distinguishing that question from uncertainty over the precise instructions transmitted to the perpetrators. Mauro Canali has argued that the murder was premeditated and that Mussolini bore personal responsibility from the beginning.
The murder produced the political confrontation known as the Matteotti Crisis. Most parliamentary opposition groups subsequently withdrew from the Chamber in the Aventine Secession.
Background
Matteotti and Fascist violence
Matteotti had been one of the most persistent parliamentary opponents of Fascist violence before Mussolini became prime minister in October 1922. He systematically collected and publicized evidence of assaults, intimidation and interference with political activity by Fascist squads. After the split within Italian socialism, he became secretary of the Unitary Socialist Party.
Fascist violence against political opponents continued after Mussolini entered government. Alongside violence carried out by local Fascist organizations, a smaller group of militants operating in Rome became involved in clandestine attacks against political opponents and Fascist dissidents.
1924 general election and Matteotti's speech
The 1924 Italian general election was held under the Acerbo Law, which awarded two-thirds of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies to the list receiving the largest share of the vote, provided it obtained at least 25 per cent. The National List headed by Mussolini won the election amid violence and intimidation by Fascist squads.
On 30 May 1924, during debate over the validation of the newly elected Chamber, Matteotti delivered a speech challenging the conduct of the election. He described cases of violence, coercion and interference with opposition candidates and voters and called for the election results to be invalidated.
On 24 June, Senator Luigi Albertini, speaking in the Senate, summarized some aspects of Matteotti's speech.
As several later testimonies would recount, there was more than that affirmative nod. Benito Mussolini had let slip ominous words of threat: “It is high time this man was no longer allowed to walk free... Fascism is cowardly if it still allows this enemy of ours to speak.”Alceste De Ambris, Matteotti: fatti e documenti, Exoria, Toulouse, 1927, p. 11. Mussolini's words were heard by Emilio Lussu in the Palazzo Montecitorio immediately after Matteotti's speech.Outside the chamber at Montecitorio, Mussolini told the Fascist deputies: “If you were not cowards, no one would ever have dared to deliver such a speech” (E. Lussu, Marcia su Roma e dintorni, Turin, Einaudi, 1965, pp. 154–155). According to Ezio Riboldi as well, referring to Giacomo Matteotti, Benito Mussolini told those around him, “get him out of my way”; Riboldi wrote that the remark “spread through all the corridors of Montecitorio”.E. Riboldi, Vicende socialiste, Azione comune ed., 1964, p. 119.
It was ultimately one of Mussolini's closest collaborators, who had fallen from favor in the aftermath of the murder, who confirmed that the order for the crime had come from the Fascist leader. In 1944, Cesare Rossi explicitly stated that Mussolini had told him:
Fascist Ceka
The men who abducted Matteotti belonged to a pre-existing group of Fascist militants involved in clandestine political violence. The organization became commonly known as the Fascist Ceka, after the Soviet Cheka. It was not a formally constituted government police organization. Mussolini entrusted Cesare Rossi with organizing the group, whose operational nucleus included Amerigo Dumini and Albino Volpi.Giuseppe Mayda, Il pugnale di Mussolini, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2004. This group performed acts of violence against political opponents and Fascist dissidents.
Two senior Fascist officials became particularly important to the Matteotti investigation: Giovanni Marinelli, administrative secretary of the National Fascist Party (PNF), and Cesare Rossi, a close associate of Mussolini and head of the press office of the Presidency of the Council. But also the police chief Emilio De Bono had a part in the plot: on 1 June 1924, he ordered Otto Thierschädl (the spotter of the assassination squad) to be released from prison, with a telegram signed "for the Minister of the Interior"; at that time, the Minister of the Interior ad interim was Mussolini.
The investigation conducted by Del Giudice and Tancredi reconstructed connections between the group responsible for the kidnapping, Rossi and Marinelli, and examined the relationship between the clandestine organization and the Presidency of the Council.
Kidnapping and murder
On the afternoon of 10 June 1924, Matteotti left his home in Rome and walked along the Lungotevere Arnaldo da Brescia. He was intercepted by a group travelling in a Lancia automobile and forced into the vehicle after resisting his abductors.
The group included Amerigo Dumini, Albino Volpi, Amleto Poveromo, Giuseppe Viola and Augusto Malacria. Matteotti was killed while in their custody. The participants subsequently gave conflicting accounts of the circumstances of his death, and whether the killing had been planned in advance became one of the central issues in the criminal proceedings.
The kidnappers concealed Matteotti's body in a wooded area at the Quartarella, near Riano. It remained undiscovered for more than two months.
Dumini was arrested at Termini station on 12 June, two days after the kidnapping. Awareness in State and Party organs On the night of 12 June, a four-way meeting took place in De Bono’s office at the Viminale; «it already amounted to an attempt by those who ran the Ceka to establish an alibi in advance. That meeting between De Bono, Rossi, Marinelli and Finzi tells us, notwithstanding the participants’ conflicting accounts, that the highest levels of both the Fascist Party and the state were fully aware of what had happened»G. Buonomo, Sul delitto Matteotti, Biblion, Milan, 2024, p. 60.. Discovery of the body
On 16 August 1924, Matteotti's body was discovered at the Quartarella, near Riano. The discovery confirmed his death but did not resolve questions concerning the planning and organization of the crime.
By then his disappearance had already produced a major political confrontation. Most opposition deputies had withdrawn from parliamentary activity in what became known as the Aventine Secession. Investigation
Identification of the kidnappers
The investigation quickly focused on the automobile used in the abduction. The vehicle had been obtained through Filippo Filippelli, director of the Fascist newspaper Corriere Italiano, and its identification helped investigators trace members of the group responsible for the kidnapping.
The rapid identification of the operational group shifted the investigation toward the organization behind it and the possible involvement of senior Fascist officials. Handing the matter over to the Judiciary «was a risk that Mussolini accepted reluctantly; but as soon as he did so, a feud broke out among the members of the Ceka and immediately spilled over into the media outlets at each of their disposal. Then came the diversions and attempts at misdirection, more or less authorized by Mussolini, aimed at “chloroforming” the country»G. Buonomo, Sul delitto Matteotti, Biblion, Milan, 2024, p. 62..
Filippelli and Rossi
As the investigation closed in on him, Filippelli resigned from Corriere Italiano. Facilitated by the financier Filippo Naldi, Filippelli’s dramatic escape from Rome caused widespread public consternation. He was arrested at Nervi aboard a vessel bound for France.
Before attempting to escape, Filippelli wrote a memorandum in which he sought to exculpate himself and accused Cesare Rossi, Giovanni Marinelli and Mussolini of responsibility for the crime. He also described the existence of the clandestine Fascist organization known as the Ceka. After his arrest, Filippelli initially confirmed his accusations to the investigating magistrates.
Rossi separately prepared a memorandum that circulated during the summer of 1924 and was later published by the opposition newspaper Il Mondo. In it, Rossi attributed responsibility for the crime to Mussolini.
Rossi made additional statements concerning the Matteotti affair in later years. These accounts were produced at different times and under different circumstances and subsequently became part of the evidence considered by historians reconstructing the origin of the operation.
The memoranda also acquired political significance outside the criminal investigation. Opposition politicians attempted to use evidence emerging from the case to obtain the intervention of King Victor Emmanuel III against Mussolini's government. That aspect of the affair is covered in Aventine Secession.
Del Giudice–Tancredi investigation The murder was subjected to three criminal proceedings between 1924–1926 and 1944–1950.
The first formal investigation was conducted by Mauro Del Giudice, president of the indictment section of the Rome Court of Appeal, together with investigating judge Umberto Tancredi. The magistrates proceeded on the hypothesis of intentional homicide and investigated the political and organizational relationships behind the group that had abducted Matteotti.
Their inquiry extended beyond the identification of the material perpetrators to the roles of Rossi, Marinelli and other figures within the Fascist establishment.
Del Giudice encountered increasing obstacles as the investigation continued, above all for the temporary stop to his job due to Senate trial.
Stopping the trial against the murderers, the High Court of the Senate started a trial against general Emilio De Bono, commander of the fascist paramilitary Blackshirts; however, he was discharged. Even after this trial, the investigation records were kept strictly secret, to the point that during the flight from the advancing Allied troops in 1944 the fascist leaders stole its documents and took them to Northern Italy, where they were recovered at the end of the World War II.