We often forget the toll war takes on families. The father, the son, the brother and the husband who fight for the nation leave behind an emptiness among their loved ones, sometimes never returning to fill that emptiness again. The situation is even more complex when it comes to the children of the leaders of belligerent nations. Inevitably finding themselves in the limelight, there is tremendous pressure on them to join the military and serve in the war which their fathers either started or are trying to end. Conversely, their statesman fathers have an understandable desire to keep their sons safe, but actually being seen ensuring that would erode public trust in their leadership. This article is about the children of American President F. D. Roosevelt and Italian Duce Benito Mussolini; other articles about the actions of other leaders’ children will follow in the future.
 
The Roosevelt family
Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself had never been in the military, but he was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy during World War I. He requested to be allowed to serve, but was rejected. Of the five children he had who lived to adulthood, all became involved in the war effort during World War II.
 
Anna Roosevelt
F. D. Roosevelt’s eldest child and only daughter, Anna, was an editor and journalist before the war, and her husband volunteered for Army service in 1942. In 1944, Anna and her five-year-old son moved into the White House at her father’s request, as the president’s ailing health forced him to rely on more help. She often acted as hostess in lieu of her mother Eleanor, and also worked as her father’s unofficial secretary. She kept close tabs on her father’s declining health, and was the only family member informed about his freshly discovered heart congestion.
 

While Anna was never in the military, she did accompany her father to the Yalta Conference (Planning World War II – Part 2) as an aide-de-camp to ensure the president received the prescribed diet and rest. There she met Sarah Churchill and Kathy Harriman, the daughters of Winston Churchill and U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Averell Harriman – both women were there in similar functions, assisting and reining in their temperamental fathers.
 
James Roosevelt II
After an early career as a businessman and with experience in aiding his father’s political ambitions, James Roosevelt unofficially assumed the responsibilities of the presidential secretary after the previous one died in early 1936. After his father’s re-election later that year, he was given a direct commission as lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps, an act that caused public controversy due to its obvious political overtones. Later that year, he was his father’s military aide at the Inter-American Conference, which established reciprocal assistance and solidarity between American nations in the looming war. James became one of his father’s most important counselors, and was coordinator for 18 government agencies by late 1937. He resigned from his White House position in 1938 after charges that he used his political influence to drive business to his insurance firm.

In October 1939, one month after World War II broke out in Europe (and two years before the U.S. entered the war), James resigned his commission as a Marine lieutenant colonel and later accepted a much lower commission as captain in the Marine Corps Reserve, which allowed him to enter active duty. In 1941, he was sent on a secret diplomatic mission by his father: travelling around the world, he was to discreetly contact various heads of state and assure them that the U.S. would soon be in the war. Among others, he met with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek of China, King Farouk of Egypt and King George of Greece (“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” – Part II).  He came under German air attack twice, in Iraq and Crete, and travelled with Britain’s Lord Mountbatten (Lord Mountbatten) for a while and reported on the possibilities of trans-African air ferries, and important strategic issue at the time.
 
James Roosevelt was seated next to his father during the latter’s famous Day of Infamy speech after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and he requested assignment to combat duty the next month. He was transferred as a battalion’s second-in-command to the Marine Raiders, a new force influenced by British Commandos. He fought in the Battle of Midway and the Makin Island Raid despite having occasionally debilitating health problems, and was transferred to a staff position in 1943. He received the Navy Cross for his actions at Makin Island, where he exposed himself to enemy fire at his command post, and later rescued three men drowning in the surf. He was also awarded the Silver Star. He advanced to the rank of colonel by the end of the war, and was given a “tombstone promotion” to brigadier general in 1949. (“Tombstone promotions” are awarded at retirement and often do not include a pay raise, but are carved onto the officer’s headstone upon death.)
 
Elliott Roosevelt
Elliott Roosevelt had always been interested in airplanes, and that interest brought him a share of trouble. In 1934, he was implicated in not one but two scandals. The first, the Air Mail scandal, revolved around the government revoking air mail contracts to private firms and assigning them to the U.S. Army Air Corps; the second was about him trying to sell bombers disguised as civilian aircraft to the Soviet Union. After a stint in broadcasting and farming, he received a captain’s commission in the Army Air Corps in 1940 – causing much political furore, as it happened in the middle of his father’s reelection campaign. Elliott took an intelligence course and found a position in aerial reconnaissance. He also got qualified as a pilot despite being officially unfit due to bad eyesight, and reportedly flew 89 missions before the war’s end.

During the war, Franklin Jr. first served on a destroyer that escorted Lend-Lease convoys to the Soviet Union through Arctic waters. He then became executive officer of the USS Mayrant, a destroyer that was bombed during the invasion of Sicily and narrowly avoided being sunk; he received the Silver Star for exposing himself to danger while saving critically wounded men. Later, as a lieutenant commander, he commanded the destroyer escort USS Ulvert M. Moore in the Pacific, which was present at Tokyo Bay for the signing of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender. (The End of World War II)
 
John Aspinwall Roosevelt
F. D. R.’s youngest son almost became the black sheep of the family in terms of military service. Shortly before the war, he announced he intended to seek conscientious objector status. The family talked him out of the decision, and he ended up serving in the Navy as an ensign. His brother James once wrote: “John was the only one of us who had no opportunity to lead a fighting unit, yet he, too, served under fire. Assigned as a lieutenant in the Navy Supply Corps, he persuaded father to get him transferred from shore to sea duty. He served aboard the aircraft carrier USS Wasp in the war zone, winning the Bronze Star and promotion to lieutenant commander for his actions while his ship was being gunned.”

The Mussolini family
Benito Mussolini had a complex relationship with military service. As a young man, he emigrated to Switzerland to avoid compulsory military service, and was convicted for it in absentia. He returned a few years later to take advantage of an amnesty and served in a “Bersaglieri” sharpshooter unit for two years. He returned to his unit in World War I and was promoted to corporal after a glowing review by the Inspector General. It is, perhaps, little surprise that several of his six children ended up serving in World War II (and the ones that didn’t abstained because they were too young).
 
Benito Albino Mussolini
Young Mussolini married Ida Dalser, a beautician born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1914, and the couple had a son, Benito Albino, in 1915. In the same year, he married is longtime mistress Rachele Guidi. This was practically bigamy, even though it might have been borderline legal in that one of the marriages was a state marriage, while the other was only recognized by the church. At any rate, this state of affairs became a major political liability to Mussolini once his career as a Fascist politician took off, and the Fascist authorities suppressed the knowledge of his first wife and son. Dalser was transferred to an asylum where she died in 1937, official due to “brain hemorrhage.”

Young Benito Albino was abducted by government agents, told his mother had died, and was adopted by a Fascist ex-police chief in 1931. He briefly served in the Italian Royal Navy, but his insistence on claiming to be Mussolini’s son cut his career short. He landed in an asylum where he died at the age of 26, after either receiving several “coma-inducing injections” or electric shots.
 
Edda Mussolini
Mussolini’s eldest daughter volunteered with the Italian Red Cross and served aboard a hospital ship in the Greco-Italian War. (The Greco-Italian War) In March 1941, the ship was bombed, with some loss of life, in a British air raid. It should be noted that the ship was moored among other vessels and had its lights turned off, which made it a legitimate target as it could not be identified for what it was. Edda fell or jumped into the water and was fished out by the crew of another ship. According to her biography, when her father learned what happened, he replied "Edda must immediately resume her duties so as to set a good example." She continued to work for the Red Cross until 1943. It is rumored that Heinrich Himmler awarded her the rank of “Honorary SS Leader.”

Vittorio and Bruno Mussolini
Mussolini’s two recognized sons who were old enough to serve in the war both flew as pilots, reaching the ranks of Lieutenant and Captain, respectively. Vittorio was never considered a good flyer, but Bruno was much more talented and became Italy’s youngest pilot at the age of 17. He also set a flight airspeed record to Brazil in 1938.

Both men crewed bombers in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Bruno once wrote that once his plane’s bomb racks were empty, he continued dropping small bombs by hand, describing the experience as “most amusing.” One of the two brothers (sources conflict on which) that Ethiopians hit by their bombs were “bursting open like a rose.”