Junio Valerio Borghese

Junio Valerio Borghese
Born	Junio Valerio Scipione Borghese 6 June 1906 Artena, Lazio, Italy
Died	26 August 1974 Cadiz, Andalusia, Spain
Nationality	Italian
Occupation	Officer, politician, innovator
Party	National Fascist Party Italian Social Movement Fronte Nazionale

Junio Valerio Scipione Ghezzo Marcantonio Maria Borghese (6 June 1906 – 26 August 1974) was an Italian prince, naval commander, military innovator and politician, best known for his association with the National Fascist Party in Italy.

Life

A member of the aristocratic House of Borghese—noted for their roles as Princes of Sulmona—Borghese was nicknamed Il Principe Nero (The Black Prince). He is also refered to as Il Comandante (The Commander) in reference to his naval career.

His father, Prince Livio Borghese, was a diplomat and therefore young Junio grew up and studied first in Great Britain, then Portugal and finally back to Rome. As a second-born son he knew he was not going to inherit neither his family wealth nor the small castle in Artena, so he had to find his own place in the world. Tradition dictated that non-first born sons in the aristocracy made their fortune either in the clergy or in the military. Junio chose the latter, enrolling in the Livorno Naval Academy. In 1928, he graduated with the rank of midshipman, with a specialization in submarine warfare and an underwater diving certificate under his belt. In 1931, he married Russian Countess Daria Wassilewria Olsonfieff. The couple would go on to have four children Elena, Paolo, Livio and Andrea Sciré [Shee-ray]. As a military man, he had grown very close to Mussolini’s ideology and regime, especially with the fear and hatred of communism, which was actually one of the few traits shared by hardline Fascists and Italian aristocracy. But most of all, he was inspired by the extreme nationalism of the Duce’s policies,which sought to establish an Italian sphere of influence from the Adriatic to the Southern Mediterranean. [...] During the Spanish Civil War, Prince Borghese was able to build up experience in stealth submarine warfare: he led several illegal actions, bordering on piracy, intended to damage neutral navies supplying the legitimate Republican Spanish government. On the night of the 30th of August 1937, aboard the submarine ‘Iride’, Borghese went one step too far: he ordered a torpedo attack against what appeared to be a Republican ship. It wasn’t. It was the British destroyer HMS Havock. The torpedo missed its mark and Havock gave chase, joined by three more destroyers and a light cruiser. Despite the first ever use of the sonar in wartime and deployment of depth charges the sneaky Prince evaded his pursuers and landed safely in Naples on September the 5th. But the ensuing scandal put an end to all submarine activities off the Spanish coast, meaning Borghese had to wait for at least two years before going back into action … On June the 10th 1940, Mussolini declared war on France and the United Kingdom. On the 12th of June, the British light cruiser Calypso was sunk off the coast of Crete by an Italian submarine. The Battle of the Mediterranean had begun. Prince Borghese had progressed in the ranks and was now a corvette captain in charge of submarine ‘Sciré’ [Shee-ray]. His unit was part of the Tenth Light Flotilla, the special forces of the Italian Navy, known also at the “Decima” MAS – where MAS stands for their motto in Latin ‘Memento AudereSemper’ – ‘Remember to dare always’. The Sciré’s modus operandi was to sneak as close as possible to enemy ports in the Mediterranean to launch two or three human torpedoes and sink Allied vessels. And this is how they scored a strategically significant victory, Borghese’s greatest military success. On the 19th of December 1941, three of his ‘pigs’ launched off the Sciré and entered the port of Alexandria, Egypt, undetected. The frogmen made contact with their targets, the battleships HMS Valiant and HMS Queen Elizabeth, and placed their explosive charges. [...] On the 1st of May 1943, Borghese was promoted to the rank of Ship-of-the-line Captain and Commander in chief of the Tenth MAS. Shortly afterwards, on the 25th of July, Benito Mussolini was deposed and arrested in a military coup backed by King Victor Emmanuel III. For a short period, the Italian Army continued its fight alongside Germany. Until on the 8th of September Mussolini’s successor, Field Marshall Badoglio announced completely unexpectedly that Italy had signed an armistice with the Allies. [...] Prince Borghese decided to continue fighting on the German side, although he gave his men freedom of choice and awarded to everybody an unrestricted order of leave, in case some of them wanted to join the King in the South. His behavior so far was quite honorable, although what followed may be open to a different interpretation. On the 14th of September he signed an agreement with Nazi Germany, which effectively made him autonomous from Mussolini’s newly founded Republic, yet placed the Tenth MAS in direct control of the German military. [...] In the spring of 1945, when it was clear that the war with the Allies was lost, General Karl Wolff met in Switzerland with representative of the OSS, CIA’s predecessor, to negotiate a separate truce. One of Wolff’s requests was for Borghese to receive a “honorable treatment”. In other words: spare him reprisals from the resistance. The OSS kept their word. On the 25th of April 1945, the War in Italy was formally over and Borghese – ever the sneaky Prince – made it unscathed to Rome disguised as an American officer.

Black Prince

The nickname of “Black Prince” was given to Borghese only after the war (because of the black shirt used as a basic uniform by members of the Fascist party and Militia. During the war he was known as “The Frog Prince” because his tactics relied heavily on the use of frogmen.

WWII

During the Second World War he served in the Royal Italian Navy for the Kingdom of Italy, perhaps most notably at the Raid on Alexandria where he commanded the Scirè submarine, carrying manned torpedos. He also commanded the Decima Flottiglia MAS elite unit, which pioneered new techniques of commando assault warfare. After the king surrendered, Borghese served the Italian Social Republic with a reformed Decima Flottiglia under the command of the German Kriegsmarine.

"What madness the Western Allies are committing by supporting Stalin! If Germany ever loses, Europe's heart will be struck! Churchill, Roosevelt, the British, and the Americans will one day bitterly regret having allied themselves with militant communism. We will fight with you to the end because we are Italian patriots and conscious Europeans." — Prince Borghese in conversation with Otto Skorzeny in October 1943

Post-WWII

Following the war and the imposition of a communist inspired "constitution" in Italy, Borghese involved himself in politics again with the Italian Social Movement, becoming somewhat of a figurehead of the post-war patriotic movement in Italy. After founding the more radical Fronte Nazionale and coming into conflict with the occupied government, he fled to Spain. He also authored a diary of his war time activities in the books Decima Flottiglia MAS and Sea Devils, as well as sympathetic introduction to Julius Evola's Men Among the Ruins.

Awards and decorations (excerpt)

• Medal for the volunteers of the campaign in Spain (Italy)
• Military Order of Savoy, Knight's Cross
• Italian Medal of Military Valor in Bronze, Silver and Gold

German

• Iron Cross (1939), 2nd and 1st Class
• Wound Badge (1939) in Black