Junio Valerio Borghese
| “ | Borghese had a gift for inflammatory rhetoric, but deep down you could tell that the man was full of himself. | „ |
| ~ Anonymous Italian government official who met with Borghese in the 1960s |
Don Junio Valerio Borghese (June 6, 1906 - August 26, 1974) was an Italian sailor and fascist politician best known for his role in leading a coup which
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would have made him Duce, had it gone ahead and succeeded. Born into the noble Borghese family(which included Pope Paul V), he joined the navy and became commander of the 10th MAS (Italian initials: Motoscafi armati siluranti, "Torpedo-armed motorboats") Flotilla during World War II. After the war ended, Borghese continued on in the MSI fascist party. Considering it too moderate, he founded the Fronte Nazionale in 1967 which, together with Avanguardia Nazionale, would be the primary organization behind the coup.
Background edit
Junio Valerio Borghese was born in the Rome suburb of Artena. His family held the title of Prince of Sulmona, having been granted this title in 1610 by Philip III of Spain (at the time, Naples was a realm of the Spanish Habsburg family). As the second son of Livio Borghese, he would not inherit this title and instead was Patrician of Rome, Naples and Venice.
Since his father was a diplomant, Junio Valerio spent time studying abroad in the UK and Portugal. In 1923, Borghese entered the Royal Naval Academy in Livorno, graduating in 1928 with a submarine specialization and an underwater diving certificate. He married Russian countess Daria Vasilyevna Olsufeeva in 1931, with whom he would have four children: Elena, Paolo, Livio and Andrea.
Military career edit
By 1933, Borghese had become commander of the submarine Iride. In 1937, he fired torpedoes at the British destroyer HMS Havelock. He missed and the Havelock pursued, but Borghese and his crew made it to Naples in September of that year.
In World War II, he commanded the submarine Scire, part of an underwater sabotage unit called the 10th MAS Flotilla. It comprised submarines that carried manned torpedoes known as Maiali (Italian: "pigs") because of their pig-like grunting. Each was crewed by two frogmen who used it to enter enemy harbors and plant mines on ships. The unit also had boat bombs known as tourism motorboats (Motoscafi di turismo) or simply boatlets (barchini) which had one pilot who would eject before impact with the target.
As commanding officer of the Scire, Borghese carried out a number of raids on British targets around the Mediterranean. His most notable success was the disabling of the battleships HMS Valiant and HMS Queen Elizabeth in Alexandria, Egypt on December 18, 1941. Borghese was promoted to ship-of-the-line captain (equivalent to captain in English-speaking navies) and commander of the 10th MAS in May 1943.
Although it was officially dissolved following Italy's armistice, the 10th MAS continued to fight for the Italian Social Republic although some members defected to the Kingdom of Italy with Borghese's permission, where they were organized into a similar unit called the Mariassalto. On September 14th, Borghese transferred the 10th MAS to German control under Schutzstaffel general Karl Wolff, who tasked them with counter-insurgency operations in RSI territory. It vastly expanded to about 18,000 members, making it a corps rather than a flotilla.
The 10th MAS gained a reputation for brutality, executing partisans without trial, burning villages and killing civilians. However, it never engaged any Italian royalist units in combat. In 1945 Borghese moved the unit to Veneto to defend against the Yugoslavian invasion. Wolff negotiated a separate truce with the Allies, and Borghese was taken to Rome disguised as an American officer.
After the war and political career edit
Borghese was captured by the Italian authorities on March 30, 1945 just five days after the fall of the RSI. Three years later in February 1949 he was sentenced to 12 years in prison for war crimes. However, the Office of Strategic Services (now the CIA) convinced Italy to commute his sentence to three years. Since Borghese had already served three years awaiting trial, he was released. After being released, Borghese became involved in the Italian Social Movement (MSI).
As a result of the Soviets overrunning Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia being a communist country, many feared that Italy could also become a communist country. Borghese and others argued that radical, violent action might be necessary to stop this. Due to the MSI being unwilling to endorse such a course of action, in 1967 Borghese left the party and founded the National Front (FN). He became a leader of Italy's growing extra-parliamentary fascist movement, which in addition to FN, comprised organizations such as Avanguardia Nazionale (AN) and the Ordine Nuovo study group (ON).
Coup attempt edit
After founding FN, Borghese aligned the organization with Avanguardia Nazionale. He began constructing a grand plan to overthrow Italy's democratically-elected government. In addition to his own militants led by Stefano Delle Chiaie, Borghese recruited 187 forest rangers, 1,000 military personnel and a number of P2 Freemasons. Allegedly, Mafia families were also supposed to have assisted.
On December 7, 1970 the coup proceeded. Borghese claimed that AN members had assembled to protest Josip Broz Tito visiting Rome, but in reality they seized weapons from the Ministry of the Interior. With the assistance of the military personnel they were to seize the Quirinale and Parliament, while the forest rangers seized Rai public television. Once this was accomplished, Borghese would announce the coup and proclaim the establishment of a new government.
However, the coup did not proceed as planned. Borghese received a telephone call from an unknown person early on December 8, telling him to cancel the coup. He did so, and as a result no one knew what had happened for three months.
Because of Borghese's connections with the CIA through its predecessor the OSS, it is commonly theorized that the person on the phone was a CIA agent. It was also later revealed that the military attaché at the US embassy in Rome was connected to Borghese and his co-conspirators, and that CIA agents had informed Richard Nixon about the coup during its preparation stages.
Escape and death edit
After the cancelled coup, Borghese was taken to Spain, where other fascist militants and terrorists were fugitives. A warrant was put out for his arrest but he was not found. He died in 1974 under mysterious circumstances at 68 years before he could even be tried in absentia. While the cause of death was ruled as pancreatitis, his doctor had found him in good health a few days before. Many symptoms found in his autopsy suggest that the cause of Borghese's death may have been arsenic poisoning.
Had Borghese lived, he would likely have been acquitted of the coup, as all other conspirators were.