Though Benito Mussolini regarded Adolf Hitler as a “kind man”, he was “jealous” of his power and fame, declassified diaries of the Italian dictator’s mistress have revealed.

Claretta Petacci’s journals, which will be published this week, describe a meeting he had with the German leader in 1938, The Daily Telegraph reported. “The Fuhrer was very kind. At heart, Hitler is an old sentimentalist. When he saw me he had tears in his eyes,” Mussolini was quoted as telling his lover.

The diaries also show Mussolini was irritated by being regarded as a junior partner to Hitler. “I’ve been racist since 1921,” he proudly told his mistress on August 4, 1938. “I don’t know how they can think that I’m imitating Hitler, he wasn’t even born then (in a political sense).”

In another entry, Mussolini rails against Italians in Italy’s African colonies having relationships with locals. “Every time I get a report from Africa, it makes me upset. Just today, another five arrested for living with blacks. Ah! These dirty Italians, they are destroying in less than seven years an empire,” he said. The book, Secret Mussolini, contains extracts from Petacci’s diaries written between 1932 and 1938.