Ulisse Igliori

Ulisse Igliori was an infantry lieutenant and decorated Great War veteran whose brief encounter with Benito Mussolini in Fiume placed the question of a march on Rome directly before the visitor and Gabriele D’Annunzio. The episode presents him as a threshold figure: he stopped Mussolini at the command center’s entrance long enough to ask about a political action that Mussolini called Rome the ultimate goal of, but judged premature without a suitable moment.

Identity and War Service

Igliori had lost an arm in the Great War and had spent ten months interned at Mauthausen. He received a gold medal for heroism for an assault on Austrian positions on Mount Maronia on May 16, 1916. The account identifies him through military service and sacrifice, while giving these details as the background to his brief intervention rather than developing a fuller personal history.

The Question at the Command Center

Before Gabriele D’Annunzio announced Mussolini at the command center, Igliori detained him for a few seconds at the threshold. Igliori asked what he thought of the prospect of a march on Rome. Mussolini, still wearing the white outfit of an amateur aviator, replied that Rome was the ultimate goal, but that the initiative depended on choosing the right moment: the country was not yet prepared, and moving too soon could bring immense tragedy. He said he would gauge the nation’s mood after returning.

The exchange took place as Mussolini visited Fiume and preceded his meeting with D’Annunzio, which lasted an hour and a half. Neither that conversation nor the earlier meeting between the two men in Rome on June 26 had witnesses. Igliori’s short question therefore stands as the account’s only recorded prompt about the march: it makes the ambition explicit while revealing Mussolini’s insistence that political timing, rather than the goal alone, would determine whether to act.