Junio Valerio Borghese

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Prince Junio Valerio Scipione Borghese (6 June 1906 – 26 August 1974) was an Italian naval commander during Fascism and a hard-line fascist politician in post-war Italy.

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[edit] Early career

Junio Valerio Borghese was born in Rome into the wealthy Borghese noble family, and educated in London and from 1923 at the Royal Italian Navy Academy (Accademia Navale) in Livorno.

In 1929 his naval career began, and by 1933 he was a submarine commander. He took part in the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, and during the Spanish Civil War was in command of the Iride.

[edit] World War II

At the start of the Second World War he took command of submarine Vettor Pisani, and in August 1940 was in command of submarine Sciré, which was modified to carry the new secret Italian weapon, the human torpedo. Known as SLC (siluri a lenta corsa—slow-speed torpedoes), and nicknamed maiali ("pigs") for their poor maneuverability, these were small underwater assault vehicles with a crew of two. In September 1941, Borghese managed to enter Gibraltar harbour to launch the human torpedoes on a raid which damaged three ships. On December 18, 1941, he reached Alexandria and launched three SLCs that damaged the Royal Navy battleships HMS Valiant and HMS Queen Elizabeth, and the tanker Sagona.

In 1942, Borghese took command of the elite naval sabotage unit of the Italian Navy, which included surface assault craft, human torpedoes, midget submarines and SCUBA assault swimmers. This unit, known as the Decima Flottiglia MAS ("10th Assault Vehicle Flotilla"), or Xª MAS with roman numerals, saw active service in the Mediterranean and pioneered new techniques of commando assault warfare.

[edit] September 8 1943: the Armistice

Following the armistice of Italy on September 8, 1943, the Xª MAS was disbanded, and some of its sailors joined the Allied cause to fight against Germany and what remained of the Axis. Borghese chose to defect to the fascist Italian Social Republic, Nazi Germany's allied state in northern Italy, and to continue fighting alongside the German armed forces.

On September 12, 1943 he signed a treaty of alliance with the German Navy. Many of his colleagues volunteered to serve with him, and the Decima Flottiglia was revived, headquartered in the Palazzo Fantoni in Salò. By the end of the war, it had over 18,000 members, and although Borghese conceived it as a purely military unit, it gained a reputation as a savage pro-fascist, anti-communist, anti-resistance force in land campaigns alongside the German Army, under the command of SS General Karl Wolff.

At the end of the war Borghese was arrested by partisans, but rescued by OSS officer James Angleton, who dressed him up in an American uniform and drove him to Rome for interrogation by the Allies. Borghese was tried and convicted of war crimes, sentenced to 12 years imprisonment, but released from jail by the Italian Supreme Court in 1949.

[edit] Political activism after the war

With his record as a war hero and his support of fascism, he became a figurehead for pro-fascist, anti-communist groups in the immediate post-war period, acquiring the nickname Black Prince. He was associated with the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), the neo-Fascist party formed in the post-World War II period by former supporters of the dictator Benito Mussolini, and later, advocating a harder line which the MSI was not able or willing to uphold, he broke from it to form an even stauncher neofascist formation, known as the Fronte Nazionale.

[edit] Attempted coup

Following an aborted coup d'état plot which fizzled out in the night of 8 December 1970 (a religious festivity in Italy, known as the Feast of the Immaculate Conception), referred to as the Golpe Borghese, he was forced to cross the border to avoid arrest and interrogation. Shortly afterwards, the leftist university student movement produced semi-humorous posters that read:

WANTED—Junio Valerio Borghese, for bankruptcy and coup d'état. It is unknown whether he bankrupted to finance the coup or made the coup to avoid bankruptcy.

Latterly regarded as a political outcast, Junio Valerio Borghese died in Cadiz in 1974.

He wrote a popular memoir of his wartime exploits, published as "Sea Devils" in 1954.

[edit] Further reading

  • Jack Greene; Alessandro Massignani (2004). The Black Prince and the Sea Devils: The Story of Prince Valerio Borghese and the Elite Units of the Decima MAS. Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-81311-4. 
  • Junio Valerio Borghese (1954). Sea Devils. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company.