Prince Junio Borghese, 68, Dies; Italian War Hero and Neofascist (original) (raw)
Advertisement
Aug. 28, 1974
Credit...The New York Times Archives
See the article in its original context from
August 28, 1974
,
Page
TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.
About the Archive
This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.
Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.
ROME, Aug. 27—Prince Junio Valerio Borghese, a World War II hero who later became the leader of an extreme rightwing movement and was known as the “Black Prince,” died in Cadiz, Spain, yesterday, ANSA, the Italian national news agency, reported tonight. He was 68 years old.
Prince Borghese had been living abroad, mostly in Spain, ever since disappearing from Italy in March, 1971, after being linked to an alleged plot to organize a neofascist coup d'etat. The coup never came off.
He was a member of a princely family that had originated in Sienna, Tuscany, and Thad given a Pope—Pope Paul V, who reigned from 1605 to 1621 and various high prelates to the Roman Catholic Church.
A Navy officer during World War II, he commanded a special unit of small assault vessels that penetrated Allied naval bases to attack warships. After action against the British battleships Queen Elizabeth and Valiant at Alexandria, Egypt, he was decorated with Italy's highest award for gallantry.
After Italy's armistice with the Allies in September, 1943, Prince Borghese joined Mussopni's pro‐Nazi “social republic” in northern Italy and organized a corps of marines that specialized in fighting anti‐Fascist and anti‐Nazi partisans operating behind the front lines.
At the end of World War II, the Prince was detained as a pro‐Nazi collaborator, but regained his liberty under an amnesty in 1949. In 1952, he joined the neofascist Italian Social Movement, and briefly served as president of that party. He soon fell out with other neofascist leaders, and in 1967 founded an ultrarightist organization of his own, the semiclandestine National Front, mow dissolved.
Prince Borghese's nickname was an allusion to the black shirt uniform of the Italian Fascists. Until his disappearance from Italy, the Prince lived in an old castle at Artena, southeast of Rome, and would describe himself as a “farmer.”
He wrote a book about his wartime exploits that was translated into English under. the name “Sea Devils.” In 1931, he married a Russian countess, Dania Vassilievna Olsoufieff, who died some years ago.
He is survived by three sons and two daughters.
Advertisement