LOT-P8. For your consideration is a rare and important royal manuscript document hand-signed by King Umberto II of Italy / Savoy, c.1954. Manuscript measures approximately 15.5 cm x 11.5 cm. Embossed royal imperial Italian eagle at top center. Signed in blue ink by the King himself. Original and authentic.
Original period greeting card with autograph of Umberto II of Italy / Savoy, signed and dated: Cascais, January 1954.
Umberto II of Savoy (Umberto Nicola Tommaso Giovanni Maria di Savoia; Racconigi, September 15, 1904 - Geneva, March 18, 1983) was lieutenant general of the Kingdom of Italy from 1944 to 1946 and last king of Italy, from May 9, 1946 to 18 June of the same year, the date on which the result of the institutional referendum of June 2 was made official, although as early as June 13 the Council of Ministers had transferred to Alcide De Gasperi, with a gesture that Umberto II defined revolutionary, the ancillary functions of the Provisional Chief of the State. As a result of his short reign, just lasting merely over one month, King Umberto II is often referred to as the "King of May".
Umberto II (Italian: Umberto Nicola Tommaso Giovanni Maria di Savoia; 15 September 1904 – 18 March 1983) was the last King of Italy. He reigned for 34 days, from 9 May 1946 to 12 June 1946, although he had been de facto head of state since 1944, and was nicknamed the May King (Italian: Re di Maggio).
Umberto was the only son among the five children of King Victor Emmanuel III and Queen Elena. In an effort to repair the monarchy's image after the fall of Benito Mussolini's regime, Victor Emmanuel transferred his powers to Umberto in 1944 while retaining the title of king. As a referendum on the abolition of the monarchy was in preparation, Victor Emmanuel abdicated his throne in favor of Umberto in the hope that his exit might bolster the monarchy. However, the referendum passed, Italy was declared a republic, and Umberto lived out the rest of his life in exile in Cascais, on the Portuguese Riviera.
Umberto was born at the Castle of Racconigi in Piedmont. He was the third child, and the only son, of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and his wife, Elena of Montenegro. As such, he became heir apparent upon his birth, since the Italian throne was limited to male descendants. Umberto was given the standard military education of a Savoyard prince. During the crisis of May 1915, when Victor Emmanuel III decided to break the terms of the Triple Alliance by declaring war on the Austrian empire, he found himself in a quandary as the Italian Parliament was against declaring war; several times, the king discussed abdication with the throne to pass to the Duke of Aosta instead of Umberto. The British historian Denis Mack Smith wrote that it is not entirely clear why Victor Emmanuel was prepared to sacrifice his 10-year-old son's right to succeed to the throne in favor of the Duke of Aosta.
Umberto was brought up in an authoritarian and militaristic household and expected to "show an exaggerated deference to his father"; both in private and public Umberto always had to get down on his knees and kiss his father's hand before being allowed to speak, even as an adult, and he was expected to stand to attention and salute whenever his father entered a room. Like the other Savoyard princes before him, Umberto received a military education that was notably short on politics; Savoyard monarchs customarily excluded politics from their heirs' education with the expectation that they would learn about the art of politics when they inherited the throne.
Umberto was the first cousin of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia. He was accorded the title Prince of Piedmont, which was formalized by Royal Decree on 29 September. In a 1959 interview, Umberto told the Italian newspaper La Settimana Incom Illustrata that in 1922 his father had felt that appointing Benito Mussolini prime minister was a "justifiable risk".
As Prince of Piedmont, Umberto visited South America, between July and September 1924. With his preceptor, Bonaldi, he went to Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile. This trip was part of the political plan of Fascism to link the Italian people living outside of Italy with their mother country and the interests of the regime.
As a young man, the epicene Umberto was mostly noted for his pursuit of handsome young officers. One of his lovers, Enrico Montanari, remembered as a lieutenant in 1927 Turin that the prince gave him a silver cigarette lighter with the inscription reading "Dimmi di si!" ("Say yes to me!"). Montanari recalled that he was "seduced" by the lavish gifts Umberto gave him. In a break with the traditions of the House of Savoy, Umberto was an intense Catholic, described by his biographer Domenico Bartoli as "almost to the point of fanaticism", but he was unable to resist what he called his "satanic" homosexual urges. Umberto was described as a "sensuous" man who constantly craved sex, but he always felt very guilty and tormented afterward for violating the Catholic teaching that homosexuality and unchastity are sins. To make up for what he called the "devastating burden" of his life, Umberto spent much time praying for divine forgiveness for his homosexuality. One biographer wrote of Umberto that he was "forever rushing between chapel and brothel, confessional and steam bath. "He had a fondness for officers from well-off families. According to the film director and aristocrat Luchino Visconti's autobiography, he and Umberto had a homosexual relationship during their youth in the 1920s.
Umberto was educated for a military career and in time became the commander-in-chief of the Northern Armies, and then the Southern ones. This role was merely formal, the de facto command belonging to his father, King Victor Emmanuel III, who jealously guarded his power of supreme command from Il Duce, Benito Mussolini. By mutual agreement, Umberto and Mussolini always kept a distance. In 1926, Mussolini passed a law allowing the Fascist Grand Council to decide the succession, though in practice he admitted the prince would succeed his father.
An attempted assassination took place in Brussels on 24 October 1929, the day of the announcement of his betrothal to Princess Marie José. Umberto was about to lay a wreath on the Tomb of the Belgian Unknown Soldier at the foot of the Colonne du Congrès when, with a cry of 'Down with Mussolini!', Fernando de Rosa fired a single shot that missed him.
De Rosa was arrested and, under interrogation, claimed to be a member of the Second International who had fled Italy to avoid arrest for his political views. His trial was a major political event, and although he was found guilty of attempted murder, he was given a light sentence of five years in prison. This sentence caused a political uproar in Italy and a brief rift in Belgian-Italian relations, but in March 1932 Umberto asked for a pardon for de Rosa, who was released after having served slightly less than half his sentence and eventually killed in the Spanish Civil War.
Umberto was married in Rome on 8 January 1930 to Princess Marie José of Belgium (1906–2001), daughter of King Albert I of the Belgians and his wife, Queen Elisabeth, née Duchess Elisabeth in Bavaria. Umberto, who considered himself a great fashionista, personally designed his bride's wedding dress and according to a popular rumor liked to wear his bride's wedding dress in the company of his gay friends. Umberto did not spend his wedding night with his bride, instead enjoying the company of a group of young men whom he gave U-shaped diamond rings.
They had four children:
* Princess Maria Pia (born 1934).
* Prince Vittorio Emanuele (born 1937).
* Princess Maria Gabriella (born 1940).
* Princess Maria Beatrice (born 1943).
In the high society of Rome, there were frequent rumors that either the royal children were the products of artificial insemination or that the real father of at least the first three was Marshal Italo Balbo, a Fascist gerarca and famous aviator who was viewed as a sex symbol in Italy owing to his good looks and charm. The rumors were so widespread that Balbo had to visit the Quirinal Palace to meet King Victor Emmanuel III to deny them. Balbo, who opposed Mussolini's policy of allying Italy with Nazi Germany, warned the king that the Fascist secret police, the OVRA, had collected a file on Umberto's "pederasty" in order to blackmail him when he succeeded to the throne. Count Galeazzo Ciano, the Italian Foreign Minister, wrote in his diary after Marie José announced her second pregnancy: "I was left to understand the child will be his [Umberto's] without the intervention of doctors or syringes". It is not clear how factual these rumors were, but the couple's unorthodox living arrangements—Umberto and Marie José lived apart and Umberto always announced in advance visits to his wife and was accompanied by a male friend—certainly inspired gossip. Furthermore, it was widely noted in Italian elite circles that when Umberto and Marie José went on trips they always stayed in separate bedrooms. The rumors did have at least some basis in fact as Marie Jose's doctor later confirmed that three out of the four royal children were conceived via artificial insemination as Umberto did not like to make love to his wife.
The contrast between Umberto, who was stiff and punctilious, and the more carefree and spontaneous Marie José was also much commented upon. Umberto spent much of his time with the bisexual French actor Jean Marais and the boxer Primo Carnera. In 1933, when Carnera was asked what he and Umberto were doing together, he replied that "the prince had received him wearing a swimming costume and asked him to go for a swim with him in the pool. They then spent the afternoon together". The Italian historian Giovanni Dall'Oroto wrote that Umberto liked Carnera without a shirt as he had a "physique fit for a king".
Following the Savoyards' tradition ("Only one Savoy reigns at a time"), Umberto kept apart from active politics until he was named Lieutenant General of the Realm. He made an exception when Adolf Hitler asked for a meeting. This was not considered proper, given the international situation; thereafter Umberto was more rigorously excluded from political events. In 1935, Umberto supported the war against Ethiopia, which he called a "legitimate war" that even Giovanni Giolitti would have supported had he still been alive. Umberto wanted to serve in the Ethiopian war, but was prevented from doing so by his father, who did however allow four royal dukes to serve in East Africa. Umberto conformed to his father's expectations to behave like his father was an officer and he a soldier, obediently getting down on his knees to kiss his father's hand before speaking, but privately resented what he regarded as a deeply humiliating relationship with his cold and emotionally distant father. Umberto's attitude toward the Fascist regime varied: at times he mocked the more pompous aspects of Fascism and his father for supporting such a regime, while at other times he praised Mussolini as a great leader.
Umberto shared his father's fears that Mussolini's policy of alliance with Germany was reckless and dangerous, but he made no serious move to oppose Italy becoming an Axis power. When Mussolini decided to enter the war in June 1940, Umberto hinted to his father that he should use the royal veto to block the Italian declarations of war on Britain and France, but was ignored. After the war, Umberto criticized the decision to enter the war, saying that Victor Emmanuel was too much under "Mussolini's spell" in June 1940 to oppose it. At the beginning of the war, Umberto commanded Army Group West, made up of the First, Fourth and the Seventh Army (kept in reserve), which attacked French forces during the Italian invasion of France. Umberto was appointed to this position by his father, who wanted the expected Italian victory to also be a victory for the House of Savoy, as the king feared Mussolini's ambitions. A few hours after France signed an armistice with Germany on 21 June 1940, the Italians invaded France. The Italian offensive was a complete fiasco, and only the fact that the already defeated French signed an armistice with Italy on 24 June 1940 saved Umberto's reputation as a general.[20] Instead he was able to present the offensive as a victory. The Italian plans called for the Regio Esercito to reach the Rhone river valley, which the Italians came nowhere close to reaching, having penetrated only a few miles into France.
After the capitulation of France, Mussolini kept Umberto inactive as Army commander. In the summer of 1940, Umberto was to command a planned invasion of Yugoslavia, but Mussolini subsequently cancelled the invasion of Yugoslavia in favor of invading Greece. In June 1941, supported by his father, Umberto strongly lobbied to be given command of the Italian expeditionary force sent to the Soviet Union, saying that as a Catholic he fully supported Operation Barbarossa and wanted to do battle with the "godless communists". Mussolini refused the request, and instead gave Umberto the responsibility of training the Italian forces scheduled to participate in Operation Hercules, the planned Axis invasion of Malta. On 29 October 1942, he was awarded the rank of Marshal of Italy (Maresciallo d'Italia). In October–November 1942, in the Battle of El Alamein, the Italo-German force was defeated by the British 8th Army, marking the end of Axis hopes of conquering Egypt. The Axis retreated back into Libya. In November 1942, as part of the Battle of Stalingrad, the Red Army launched Operation Uranus, which saw the Soviets annihilate much of the Italian expeditionary force in Russia and encircle the German 6th Army. The disastrous Italian defeats at Stalingrad and El Alamein turned Umberto against the war and led him to conclude that Italy must sign an armistice before it was too late. In late 1942, Umberto had his cousin Prince Aimone visit Switzerland to contact the British consulate in Geneva, where he passed on a message to London that the king was willing to sign an armistice with the Allies in exchange for a promise that he be allowed to keep his throne.
In 1943, the Crown Princess Marie José involved herself in vain attempts to arrange a separate peace treaty between Italy and the United States. Her interlocutor from the Vatican was Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, a senior diplomat who later became Pope Paul VI. Her attempts were not sponsored by the king and Umberto was not (directly, at least) involved in them. Victor Emmanuel III was anti-clerical, distrusting the Catholic Church, and wanted nothing to do with a peace attempt made through papal intermediaries. More importantly, Victor Emmanuel was proudly misogynistic, holding women in complete contempt as the king believed it to be a scientific fact that the brains of women were significantly more underdeveloped than the brains of men. Victor Emmanuel simply did not believe that Marie José was competent to serve as a diplomat. For all these reasons, the king vetoed Marie José's peace attempt. After her failure – she never met the American agents – she was sent with her children to Sarre, in Aosta Valley, and isolated from the political life of the Royal House.
In the first half of 1943, as the war continued to go badly for Italy, a number of Fascist officials upon learning that the Allies would never sign an armistice with Mussolini began to plot his overthrow with the support of the king. Adding to their worries were a number of strikes in Milan starting in 5 March 1943 with the workers openly criticizing both the war and the Fascist regime which had led Italy into the war, leading to fears in Rome that Italy was on the brink of revolution. The strike wave in Milan quickly spread to the industrial city of Turin, where the working class likewise denounced the war and Fascism. The fact that during the strikes in Milan and Turin, Italian soldiers fraternized with the striking workers, who used slogans associated with the banned Socialist and Communist parties deeply worried Italy's conservative establishment. By this point, the successive Italian defeats had so psychologically shattered Mussolini that he become close to being catatonic, staring into space for hours on end and saying the war would soon turn around for the Axis because it had to, leading even his closest admirers to become disillusioned and to begin looking for a new leader.[25] Umberto was seen as supportive of these efforts to depose Mussolini, but as Ciano (who had turned against Mussolini by this point) complained in his diary the prince was far too passive, refusing to make a move or even state his views unless his father expressed his approval first.
On 10 July 1943, in Operation Husky, the Allies invaded Sicily. Just before the invasion of Sicily, Umberto had gone on inspection tour of the Italian forces in Sicily and reported to his father that the Italians had no hope of holding Sicily. Mussolini had assured the king that the Regio Esercito could hold Sicily, and the poor performance of the Italian forces defending Sicily helped to persuade the king to finally dismiss Mussolini as Umberto informed his father that Il Duce had lied to him. On 16 July 1943, the visiting papal assistant secretary of state told the American diplomats in Madrid that King Victor Emmanuel III and Prince Umberto were now hated by the Italian people even more than Mussolini. By this time, many Fascist gerarchi had become convinced that it was necessary to depose Mussolini to save the Fascist system, and on the night of 24–25 July 1943, at a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council a motion introduced by the gerarchi Dino Grandi to take away Mussolini's powers was approved by a vote of 19 to 8. The fact that the majority of the Fascist Grand Council voted for the motion showed just how disillusioned the Fascist gerarchi had become with Mussolini by the summer of 1943. The intransigent and radical group of Fascists led by the gerarchi Roberto Farinacci who wanted to continue the war were only a minority while the majority of the gerarchi supported Grandi's call to jettison Mussolini as the best way of saving Fascism.
On 25 July 1943, Victor Emmanuel III finally dismissed Mussolini and appointed Marshal Pietro Badoglio Prime Minister with secret orders to negotiate an armistice with the Allies. Baron Raffaele Guariglia, the Italian ambassador to Spain, contacted British diplomats to begin the negotiations. Badoglio went about the negotiations in a halfhearted way while allowing a massive number of German forces to enter Italy. The American historian Gerhard Weinberg wrote that Badoglio as prime minister "...did almost everything as stupidly and slowly as possible", as he dragged out the secret peace talks going on in Lisbon and Tangier, being unwilling to accept the Allied demand for unconditional surrender. During the secret armistice talks, Badoglio told Count Pietro Acquarone that he thought he might get better terms if Victor Emmanuel abdicated in favor of Umberto, complaining that the armistice terms that the king wanted were unacceptable to the Allies. Acquarone told Badoglio to keep his views to himself as the king was completely unwilling to abdicate, all the more so as he believed that Umberto was unfit to be king.
On 17 August 1943, Sicily was liberated with the last Axis forces crossing over to the Italian mainland. On 3 September 1943, the British 8th Army landed on the Italian mainland at Reggio Calabria while the U.S. 5th Army landed at Salerno on 9 September 1943 a few hours after it was announced that Italy had signed an armistice. Adolf Hitler had other plans for Italy, and in response to the Italian armistice ordered Operation Achse on 8 September 1943 as the Germans turned against their Italian allies and occupied all of the parts of Italy not taken by the Allies. In response to the German occupation of Italy, neither Victor Emmanuel nor Marshal Badoglio made any effort at organized resistance, instead issued vague instructions to the Italian military and civil servants to do their best, and fled Rome during the night of 8–9 September 1943. Not trusting his son, Victor Emmanuel had told Umberto nothing about his attempts to negotiate an armistice nor about his plans to flee Rome if the Germans should occupy it.
For the first time in his life, Umberto criticized his father, saying the King of Italy should not be fleeing Rome and only reluctantly obeyed his father's orders to go south with him towards the Allied lines. The king and the rest of the royal family fled Rome via a car to Ortona, to board a corvette, the Baionetta, that took them south. A small riot took place at the Ortona dock as about 200 Italian generals and colonels, who had abandoned their commands and unexpectedly showed up, begged the king to take them with him. Almost all of them were refused permission to board, making the struggle to get to the head of the line pointless. With the exceptions of Marshal Enrico Caviglia, General Calvi di Bergolo and General Antonio Sorice, the Italian generals simply abandoned their posts on the night of 8-9 September to try to flee south, which greatly facilitated the German take-over, as the Regio Esercito was left without leadership. On the morning of 9 September 1943, Umberto arrived with Victor Emmanuel and Badoglio in Brindisi.
In September 1943, Italy was partitioned between the south of Italy administered by the Italian government with an Allied Control Commission (ACC) having supervisory powers while northern and central Italy were occupied by Germany with a puppet Italian Social Republic (popularly called the Salò republic) headed by Mussolini holding nominal power. By 16 September 1943, a line had formed across Italy with everything to north held by the Germans and to the south by the Allies. Because of what Weinberg called the "extraordinary incompetence" of Badoglio who like Victor Emmanuel had not anticipated Operation Achse until it was far too late, thousands of Italian soldiers with no leadership were taken prisoner by the Germans without resisting in the Balkans, France and Italy itself, to be taken off to work as slave labor in factories in Germany, an experience that many did not survive. The way in which Victor Emmanuel mishandled the armistice was to become as almost controversial in Italy as his support for Fascism. Under the terms of the armistice, the ACC had the ultimate power with the Italian government in the south being in many an analogous position to the Italian Social Republic under the Germans, but as the British historian James Holland noted the crucial difference was that: "In the south, Italy was now moving closer towards democracy". In the part of Italy under the control of the ACC, which issued orders to the Italian civil servants, a free press was allowed together with freedom of association and expression.
During the years 1943-45, the Italian economy collapsed with much of the infrastructure destroyed, inflation rampant, the black market becoming the dominant form of economic activity, and food shortages reducing much of the population to the brink of starvation in both northern and southern Italy. In 1943-44, the cost of living in southern Italy skyrocketed by 321% while it was estimated that people in Naples needed 2, 000 calories per day to survive while the average Neapolitan was doing well if they consumed 500 calories a day in 1943-44. Naples in 1944 was described as a city without cats or dogs which had all been eaten by the Neapolitans while much of the female population of Naples turned to prostitution in order to survive. As dire as the economic situation was in southern Italy, food shortages and inflation were even worse in northern Italy as the Germans carried out a policy of ruthless economic exploitation. Since the war in which Mussolini had involved Italy in 1940 had become such an utter catastrophe for the Italian people by 1943, it had the effect of discrediting all those associated with the Fascist system.
The statement from Victor Emmanuel in late 1943 that he felt he borne no responsibility for Italy's plight, for appointing Mussolini prime minister in 1922 and for entering the war in 1940 further increased his unpopularity and led to demands that he abdicate at once.
In northern Italy, a guerrilla war began against the fascists, both Italian and German, with most of the guerrilla units fighting under the banner of the National Liberation Committee (Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale-CLN), who were very strongly left-wing and republican. Of the six parties that made up the CLN, the Communists, the Socialists and the Action Party were republican; the Christian Democrats and the Labour Party were ambiguous on the "institutional question", and only the Liberal Party was committed to preserving the monarchy, though many individual Liberals were republicans. Only a minority of the partisan bands fighting for the CLN were monarchists, and none were led by a prince of the House of Savoy. After the war, Umberto claimed that he wanted to join the partisans, and only his wartime duties prevented him from doing so. The Italian court relocated itself to Brindisi in the south of Italy after fleeing Rome. In the fall of 1943, many Italian monarchists, like Benedetto Croce and Count Carlo Sforza, pressed for Victor Emmanuel III to abdicate and for Umberto to renounce his right to the succession in favor of his 6-year-old son, with a regency council to govern Italy as the best hope of saving the monarchy. Sforza, who tried to interest the British members of the ACC in this plan as he called Victor Emmanuel a "despicable weakling" and Umberto "a pathological case", saying neither were qualified to rule Italy. But given the unwillingness of the king to abdicate, nothing came of it.
At a meeting of the leading politicians from the six revived political parties on 13 January 1944 in Bari, the demand was made that the ACC should force Victor Emmanuel to abdicate to "wash away the shame of the past". Beyond removing Victor Emmanuel, which everyone at the Congress of Bari wanted, the Italian politicians differed, with some calling for a republic to be proclaimed at once, some willing to see Umberto succeed to the throne, others wanting Umberto to renounce his claim to the throne in favor of his son, and finally those who were willing to accept Umberto as lieutenant general of the realm to govern in place of his father. Since northern and central Italy were still occupied by Germany, it was finally decided at the Bari conference that the "institutional question" should be settled only once all of Italy was liberated, so all of the Italian people could have their say.