Provenance and early years Marcello Soleri was born at
Cuneo, a mid-sized town in the hill country between
Turin and the
sea. He was the younger, by two years, of his parents' two sons. his father, came originally from the little town of
Dronero, and had become the chief engineer of
the province of Cuneo. Modesto Soleri, who had become involved in politics at a municipal level, Marcello Soleri's mother, born Elvira Peano, was a sister to
Camillo Peano: this was a political family. Marcello was only 16 when his father died, however, and the boys' mother was obliged to relocate to
Turin and rely on discrete support from friends and relatives to sustain the family. Having enrolled at
the university to study
Law, Marcello Soleri received his degree in 1903, having concluded his studies with a dissertation on family law, "Vizi del consenso nel matrimonio", which almost immediately he had published. He had only been able to complete his undergraduate studies thanks to the financial generosity of family friends, notably the leading politician
Giovanni Giolitti. The Giolittis, like the Soleris, came from the
Maira valley. In 1907 he married Tisbe Sanguinetti, the daughter of a senior army officer.
Twenty years between wars Between June 1919 and May 1920 Soleri served the
first Nitti government as an
undersecretary of state at the
Navy Ministry. He served the short-lived
second Nitti government as undersecretary of state at the
Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Labour. He was also appointed High Commissioner for Food Procurement and Distribution. In June 1920 a
new government signalled the return to office as
"Prime Minister" of his old mentor
Giovanni Giolitti who confirmed the appointment. Soleri therefore made an important contribution to the
parliamentary process which abolished the "political" (controlled) pricing of bread, In July 1921
Ivanoe Bonomi formed
Italy's first Socialist-led coalition government. Marcello Soleri joined the cabinet as
Finance Minister. His principal task in this capacity involved the reduction or reversal of the radical taxation measures on assets and on the "super-profits of war" which had been imposed by the previous government. As a result of the increase in post-war economic and social-political instability and the concomitant
surge in Fascist violence, Italy was by now being seen as ever more "ungovernable". That was the context in which, in August 1922, Marcello Soleri agreed to join the
new Facta government, this time serving as
Minister of War. (Aged just 40, he was the youngest member of the government.) There are suggestions that the appointment had been recommended by the nationalists.
Giuseppe Bevione was a longstanding friend of Soleri's. The new government was sworn in slightly more than two months before
Mussolini's March on Rome: the political agenda was dominated by the
Fascist threat. Within the government Soleri took a characteristically ambivalent position. He was neither unreserved in his backing of the anti-fascists such as
Taddei,
Amendola and
Alessio, nor supportive of those, such as
the "Prime Minister",
Riccio and
Schanzer, each of whom who favoured attempted collaboration with
the new force. Soleri lined up with the moderate (or undecided) ministers, including
Teofilo Rossi and
Fulci. Nevertheless, when
nemesis struck at the end of October 1922, it was Soleri who attempted to launch a decisive response to the Fascist take-over bid. On 22 October 1922, a few days before the
March on Rome, Marcello Soleri in his capacity as
Minister of War, issued an order to all military commanders to be vigilant, and to stand ready to assume necessary powers for the maintenance of public order. He then initiated disciplinary proceedings against
Marshal Emilio De Bono who had defied his obligations to king and country by agreeing to command a fascist militia, and who was one of those who had organised
The March. Two decades later, looking back on those events, Soleri would stress the firm position initially taken by
the king: "Rome has to be defended at any cost", he had insisted. Soleri, like most of the ministers present, had taken that as an endorsement of all action necessary to defeat a siege or attack on Rome by the
advancing Fascists.
"Prime Minister" Facta, however, who (as it later turned out) had already for several weeks been conducting negotiations with
Mussolini through
Michele Bianchi, seemed most reluctant to take any decisive action. Soleri would always blame
Facta's failure to support the strong line taken by his
sovereign for
the subsequent developments.
The Liberal Party were able to hold a national party conference at
Livorno during 4–6 October 1924. Soleri emerged as one of the leading exponents of an anti-fascist position, which put those liberals favouring a collaborationist stance firmly in the minority. In parliament the
manipulated 1924 election had left the party with just 15 of the 535 seats. Mussolini's
"National List" was able to dominate parliamentary proceedings with its 374 seats. Soleri nevertheless made a number of telling contributions. On 20 November 1924 he intervened to highlight the contradictions in the position of the
Giolitti group which had peeled away from the Liberal party to join the "National List", and now found itself backing a starkly illiberal domestic agenda. On 12 December 1924 he intervened to draw attention to the inherently unconstitutional character of the government's
"Volunteer Militia for National Security" (known to posterity, more simply, as the "Blackshirt" / "Camicie Nere" paramilitaries). These events led to a complete final rupture of any residual personal relations with
Mussolini. Nevertheless, after 9 November 1926 and the exclusion from
the chamber of 123 so-called
"Aventine deputies", the liberal group continued as members of the parliament where, now, they provided the only parliamentary opposition till the end of 1928. With the conclusion of his parliamentary mandate Soleri returned to
Cuneo and resumed his professional work as a lawyer. He remained in touch with
the king till the end of
1940, which was facilitated by the king's regular summer vacations in the refreshingly simple surroundings of
Sant'Anna di Valdieri nearby. Early in 1943, with the country in a disastrous situation on many fronts,
the king attempted to make contact with any members of the "legal" political opposition to the
Mussolini government whom he could find. On 8 June 1943 Victor Emmanuel held a meeting with Marcello Soleri in Rome. Soleri advised the king to dismiss
Mussolini and to try and arrange a "non-political" government that could enter urgently into negotiations with representatives of the
Anglo-American alliance. The king let him speak without interrupting or reacting, leaving Soleri with the impression that his advice had not been accepted. On 16 July 1943 Solari was invited back to Rome, this time for a meeting with
Count Pietro d'Acquarone, who as
Minister of the Royal Household, was now assuming an unusually political role appropriate to those exceptional times. D'Acquarone informed him that the monarch was coming round to the idea of a government of soldiers and technical experts, to be headed up by
Marshal Badoglio. However, D'Acquarone also delivered the news that the men who had led the
PLI before the
Fascist nightmare were insisting that, with the
invasion of Italy now clearly imminent, the installation of a "political" government was necessary. Soleri backed the idea of a government to be headed up by
Badoglio, and recommended the appointment as ministers of
Leopoldo Piccardi and
Leonardo Severi. He thereby drew strong opposition from
Liberal Party grandees who were also in town, lobbying for the creation of a replacement government to be jointly headed up by Badoglio and
Ivanoe Bonomi. during the closing months of 1943 the church complex was home to many of the most important members of the political class who shortly afterwards emerged as the political leaders of post-fascist Italy. Others included
Ivanoe Bonomi,
Alcide De Gasperi,
Meuccio Ruini,
Alessandro Casati and
Pietro Nenni. Soleri continued to take part in meetings of the
National Liberation Committee, but these were becoming increasingly fractious. Meanwhile, he used his spare time away from home to work on his memoires. These contain pages of great importance for those keen to reconstruct critical events in Italy's recent history, along with some insightful reflections and assessments concerning the political history of which he had been a part. He left the seminary on 6 February 1944, entrusting his manuscript to the custody of
Rector Roberto Ronca. Ronca released it only after 4 June 1944 when Rome was finally liberated from the German occupation. Meanwhile, between February and June 1944 Soleri found refuge in the homes in the city of a succession of friends and relatives, taking care never to stay in any one house for very long.)
Luigi Einaudi combined political sensitivity and conventionally sound economic instincts with a deep commitment to
Europeanism. The basic fiscal apparatus of the state returned to some form of normality and taxation revenue increased. At the same time there was a substantial fiscal dividend available from the fact that the government was no longer incurring massive amounts of military expenditure. There was no longer a large colonial empire to be administered and defended. Recent price-cost inflation also correlated with currency devaluation and so drove a beneficial reduction in the "real money" value and cost of accumulated public debt. In April 1945 Soleri issued the "prestito della Liberazione" (
loosely, "liberation bonds"), a 5% fixed term investment offered to savers: in the (more prosperous and in some cases only recently liberated) northern regions there was a second issue in July 1945. The response was sufficient to have a measurable effect on the national finances. By the end of the year expectations of future economic growth were to some extent becoming self-fulfilling, and even the inflation was dropping off. By the middle of 1945 it would have appeared that Marcello Soleri was the man most likely to take over a leadership position in the
Italian Liberal Party. However, unbeknown to most he had been seriously ill for some time: for how long remains unclear. He died at
Turin on 22 July 1945. ==Alpini==