Benito Amilcare Andrea
Mussolini, KSMOM
GCTE (29
July 1883 - 28 April 1945) was an Italian
politician who led the National Fascist Party and is
credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of
Fascism. He became the
Prime Minister of Italy in 1922 and
began using the title
Il Duce by 1925.
After 1936, his official title was "
His Excellency Benito
Mussolini, Head of Government, Duce of Fascism, and Founder of the
Empire". Mussolini also created and held the supreme military
rank of
First Marshal of the
Empire along with King
Victor Emmanuel III of Italy,
which gave him and the King joint supreme control over the military
of Italy. Mussolini remained in power until he was replaced in
1943; for a short period after this until his death he was the
leader of the
Italian Social
Republic.
Mussolini was among the founders of
Italian Fascism, which included elements of
nationalism,
corporatism,
national syndicalism,
expansionism,
social
progress and
anti-communism in
combination with
censorship of
subversives and state
propaganda. In the years following his creation
of the fascist ideology, Mussolini influenced, or achieved
admiration from, a wide variety of political figures.
Among the domestic achievements of Mussolini from the years
1924–1939 were: his
public works
programmes such as the taming of the
Pontine Marshes, the improvement of job
opportunities, and
public
transport. Mussolini also solved the
Roman Question by concluding the
Lateran Treaty between the
Kingdom of Italy and
the
Holy See. He is also credited with
securing economic success in
Italy's
colonies and commercial dependencies. Although he
initially favoured siding
with France against Germany in the early 1930s, Mussolini
became one of the main figures of the
Axis
powers and, on 10 June 1940, Mussolini led Italy into
World War II on the side of Axis. Three years
later, Mussolini was deposed at the
Grand Council of Fascism, prompted
by the
Allied invasion.
Soon after
his incarceration began, Mussolini was rescued from prison in the
daring Gran Sasso
raid
by German special forces.
Following his rescue, Mussolini headed the
Italian Social Republic in parts of
Italy that were not occupied by Allied forces.
In late April 1945,
with total defeat looming, Mussolini attempted to escape to
Switzerland
, only to be quickly captured and summarily executed near Lake Como
by Italian
partisans. His body was then taken to Milan
where it was
hung upside down at a petrol station for public viewing and to
provide confirmation of his demise.
Early life
Birthplace of Benito Mussolini, today
used as a museum.
Mussolini
was born in Dovia di
Predappio
, a small town in the province of Forlì
in Emilia-Romagna in
1883. In the Fascist era, Predappio was dubbed "Duce's
town", and Forlì was "Duce's city". Pilgrims went to Predappio and
Forlì, to see the birthplace of Mussolini. His father
Alessandro Mussolini was a
blacksmith and an Anarchist activist, while his
mother Rosa Mussolini (
née Maltoni) was a
school teacher and a devout Catholic.
Owing to
his father's political leanings, Mussolini was named
Benito after Mexican
reformist
President Benito Juárez, while
his middle names Andrea and Amilcare were from
Italian socialists Andrea Costa and Amilcare Cipriani. Benito was the
eldest of his parents' three children. His siblings Arnaldo and
Edvige followed.
As a young boy, Mussolini would spend time helping his father in
his blacksmithing. It was likely here that he was exposed to his
father's significant political beliefs. Alessandro was a socialist
and a
republican, but also held some
nationalistic views, especially in
regards to some of the Italians who were living under the rule of
the
Austro-Hungarian Empire,
which were not consistent with the internationalist socialism of
the time. The conflict between his parents about religion meant
that, unlike most Italians, Mussolini was not baptised at birth and
would not be until much later in life. However, as a compromise
with his mother, Mussolini was sent to a
boarding school run by
Salesian monks. Mussolini was rebellious and was
soon
expelled after a series of
behaviour related incidents, including throwing stones at the
congregation after
Mass, stabbing a
fellow student in the hand and throwing an
inkpot at a teacher. After joining a new school,
Mussolini achieved good grades, and qualified as an elementary
schoolmaster in 1901.
Mussolini as an Italian soldier,
1917
Political journalist and soldier
In 1902,
Mussolini emigrated to Switzerland, partly to avoid military service.
He worked
briefly in Geneva
as a stone
mason, however, he was unable to find a permanent professional job
in Switzerland, and was at one point arrested for vagrancy, and jailed for one night.
While in Switzerland he picked up a working knowledge of French and
a smattering of German.
During this time he studied the ideas of the
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the
sociologist Vilfredo
Pareto, and the
syndicalist Georges Sorel. Mussolini also later credited
as one of his influences the
Marxist
Charles Péguy, and the
syndicalist
Hubert Lagardelle.
Sorel's emphasis on the need for overthrowing decadent liberal
Democracy and
Capitalism by the use of violence,
direct action, the
general strike, and the use of
neo-Machiavellian appeals to emotion,
impressed Mussolini deeply. While in Switzerland, he also met some
of the Russian political exiles living there, including the Marxist
Angelica Balabanoff, and the
Marxist
Vladimir Lenin. During this
time he joined the Marxist Socialist movement.
In 1904 he was
deported to Italy. The
Italian government granted him leniency for his previous
misconduct, and he subsequently volunteered for military service in
the Italian Army. After serving for two years in the military (from
January 1905 until September 1906), he returned to teaching.
Political journalist and Socialist
In
February of 1908 Mussolini once again left Italy, this time to take
the job as the secretary of the labor party in the Italian-speaking
city of Trento
, which at
the time was under control of Austria-Hungary. He also did office
work for the local Socialist Party, and edited its newspaper
L'Avvenire del Lavoratore (
The Future of the
Worker).
Returning to Italy, he spent a brief time in
the Italian city of Milan, and then in
1910 he returned to his hometown of Forli, where he edited the
weekly Lotta di classe (The Class
Struggle).
During this time, he published
Il Trentino veduto da un
Socialista (
Trento as seen by a Socialist) in the
radical periodical
La Voce. He also wrote several essays
about German literature, some stories, and one novel:
L'amante
del Cardinale: Claudia Particella, romanzo storico (
The
Cardinal's Mistress). This novel he co-wrote with Santi
Corvaja, and was published as a serial book in the Trento newspaper
Il Popolo. It was released in installments from Jan. 20 to
May 11, 1910 The novel was bitterly anticlerical, and years later
was withdrawn from circulation after Mussolini made a truce with
the Vatican.
By now he was considered to be one of Italy's most prominent
Socialists.
In September of 1911 Mussolini participated
in a riot, led by Socialists, against the Italian war in Libya
.
He
bitterly denounced Italy's "imperialist war" to capture the Libyan
capital city of Tripoli
, an action which earned him a five-month jail
term. After his release he helped expel from the ranks of
the Socialist party two 'revisionists' who had supported the war,
Ivanoe Bonomi, and
Leonida Bissolati. As a result of this, he
was rewarded the editorship of the Socialist Party newspaper
Avanti! Under his leadersip, its circulation soon rose
from 20,000 to 100,000.
In 1913 he published
Giovanni Hus, il veridico (
Jan
Hus, true prophet), an historical and political biography
about the life and mission of the
Czech
ecclesiastic reformer
Jan Hus, and his
militant followers, the
Hussites. During
this socialist period of his life Mussolini sometimes used the pen
name „Vero Eretico“ (sincere misbeliever).
During this time he had become important enough for the Italian
police to take notice; the following excerpts are from a police
report prepared by the Inspector-General of Public Security in
Milan, G. Gasti.
Break with Socialists
The Inspector General wrote:
Regarding MussoliniProfessor Benito
Mussolini,...38, revolutionary socialist, has a police record;
elementary school teacher qualified to teach in secondary schools;
former first secretary of the Chambers in in Cesena, Forli, and
Ravenna; after 1912 editor of the newspaper Avanti! to
which he gave a violent suggestive and intransigent orientation. In
October 1914, finding himself in opposition to the directorate of
the Italian Socialist party because he advocated a kind of active
neutrality on the part of Italy in the War of the Nations against
the party's tendency of absolute neutrality, he withdrew on the
twentieth of that month from the directorate of
Avanti!
Then on the fifteenth of November [1914], thereafter, he initiated
publication of the newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia in which
he supported -- in sharp contrast to Avanti! and amid
bitter polemics against that newspaper and its chief backers -- the
thesis of Italian intervention in the war against the militarism of
the Central Empires.
For this reason he was accused of moral and political unworthiness
and the party thereupon decided to expel him.
Thereafter he....undertook a very active campaign in behalf of
Italian intervention, participating in demonstrations in the
piazzas and writing quite violent articles in Popolo
d'Italia....
In his summary the Inspector also notes:
"He was the ideal editor of Avanti! for the
Socialists. In that line of work he was greatly esteemed and
beloved. Some of his former comrades and admirers still confess
that there was no one who understood better how to interpret the
spirit of the proletariate and there was no one who did not observe
his apostacy with sorrow.This came about not for reasons of
self-interest or money. He was a sincere and passionate advocate,
first of vigilant and armed neutrality, and later of war; and he
did not believe that he was compromising with his personal and
political honesty by making use of every means -- no matter where
they came from or wherever he might obtain them -- to pay for his
newspaper, his program and his line of action.
This was his initial line. It is difficult to say to what extent
his socialist convictions (which never did he either openly or
privately abjure) may have been sacrificed in the course of the
indispensable financial deals which were necessary for the
continuation of the struggle in which he was engaged... But
assuming these modifications did take place... he always wanted to
give the appearance of still being a socialist, and he fooled
himself into thinking that this was the case."
Service in World War I
He became an ally with the irredentist
politician and journalist Cesare
Battisti, and like him he entered the Army and served in the
war. "He was sent to the zone of operations where he was seriously
injured by the explosion of a grenade."
The inspector continues:
"He was promoted to the rank of corporal "for merit in
war." The promotion was recommended because of his exemplary
conduct and fighting quality, his mental calmness and lack of
concern for discomfort, his zeal and regularity in carrying out his
assignments, where he was always first in every task involving
labor and fortitude."
Mussolini's military experience is told in his work Diario Di
Guerra. Overall he totalled about nine months of active,
front-line trench warfare. During this time he contracted paratyphoid fever. His military exploits
ended in 1917 when he was wounded accidentally by the explosion of
a mortar bomb in his trench. He was left with at least 40 shards of
metal in his body He was discharged from the hospital in August
1917 and resumed his editor-in-chief position at his new paper,
Il Popolo d'Italia. He wrote there positive articles about
Czechoslovak Legions in
Italy.
On 25 December 1915, in Trevalglio, he contracted a marriage with
his fellow countrywoman Rachele Guidi, who had already born him a
daughter, Edda, at Forli in 1910. In 1915, he had a son with
Ida Dalser, a woman born in Sopramonte, a
village near Trento. He legally recognized this son on 11 January
1916.
Creation of Fascism
By the time Mussolini returned from Allied service in World War I, he had decided that socialism as a
doctrine had largely been a failure. In 1917, Mussolini
got his start in politics with the help of a £100 weekly wage from
MI5
, the British Security Service; this help was
authorised by Sir Samuel Hoare.
In early 1918, Mussolini called for the emergence of a man
"ruthless and energetic enough to make a clean sweep" to revive the
Italian nation. Much later in life Mussolini said he felt by 1919
"Socialism as a doctrine was already dead; it continued to exist
only as a grudge". On 23 March 1919, Mussolini reformed the Milan
fascio as the Fasci Italiani di
Combattimento (Italian Combat Squad), consisting of 200
members.
An important factor in fascism gaining support in its earliest
stages was the fact that claimed to oppose discrimination based on
social class and was strongly opposed
to all forms of class war. Fascism
instead supported nationalist sentiments
such as a strong unity, regardless of class, in the hopes of
raising Italy up to the levels of its great Roman past. The ideological basis for fascism
came from a number of sources. Mussolini utilized works of Plato,
Georges Sorel, Nietzsche, and the socialist and economic ideas of
Vilfredo Pareto, to create fascism.
Mussolini held great admiration for Plato's
work, The Republic
which he kept a copy and often read to gain inspiration. The
Republic held a number of ideas that fascism promoted such as
rule by an elite promoting the state as the ultimate end,
opposition to democracy, protecting the class system and promoting
class collaboration, rejection of egalitarianism, promoting the
militarization of a nation by creating a class of warriors,
demanding that citizens perform civic duties in the interest of the
state, and utilizing state intervention in education to promote the
creation of warriors and future rulers of the state. The
Republic differed from fascism in that it did not promote
aggressive war but only defensive war, unlike fascism it promoted
very communist-like views on property, and Plato was an idealist
focused on achieving justice and morality while Mussolini and
fascism were realist, focused on achieving political goals.
Mussolini and the fascists managed to be simultaneously revolutionary and traditionalist; because this was
vastly different to anything else in the political climate of the
time, it is sometimes described as "The Third Way". The Fascisti,
led by one of Mussolini's close confidants, Dino Grandi, formed armed squads of war veterans
called Blackshirts (or
squadristi) with the goal of restoring order to the
streets of Italy with a strong hand. The blackshirts clashed with
communists, socialists and anarchists at parades and demonstrations; all of
these factions were also involved in clashes against each other.
The government rarely interfered with the blackshirts' actions,
owing in part to a looming threat and widespread fear of a
communist revolution. The Fascisti grew so rapidly that within two
years, it transformed itself into the National Fascist Party at a congress
in Rome
. Also
in 1921, Mussolini was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the
first time. In the meantime, from about 1911 until 1938, Mussolini
had various affairs with the Jewish author and academic Margherita Sarfatti, called the "Jewish
Mother of Fascism" at the time.
March on Rome and early years in power
The March on Rome was a coup d'état
by which Mussolini's National
Fascist Party came to power in Italy and ousted Prime Minister Luigi
Facta. The "march" took place in 1922 between 27-29 October. On
28 October King Victor
Emmanuel III refused his support to Facta and handed over power
to Mussolini. Mussolini was supported by the military, the business
class, and the liberal right-wing.
As Prime Minister, the first years of
Mussolini's rule were characterized by a right-wing coalition
government composed of Fascists, nationalists, liberals and even
two Catholic ministers from the Popular Party. The
Fascists made up a small minority in his original governments.
Mussolini's domestic goal, however, was the eventual establishment
of a totalitarian state with himself
as supreme leader (Il Duce) a
message that was articulated by the Fascist newspaper Il
Popolo, which was now edited by Mussolini's brother, Arnaldo.
To that end, Mussolini obtained from the legislature dictatorial
powers for one year (legal under the Italian constitution of the
time). He favored the complete restoration of state authority, with
the integration of the Fasci di Combattimento into the
armed forces (the foundation in January 1923 of the Milizia
Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale) and the progressive
identification of the party with the state. In political and social
economy, he passed legislation that favored the wealthy industrial
and agrarian classes (privatisations, liberalisations of rent laws
and dismantlement of the unions).
In 1923,
Mussolini sent Italian forces to invade Corfu
during the
"Corfu Incident." In the end, the
League of Nations proved powerless
and Greece
was forced
to comply with Italian demands.
Acerbo Law
In June 1923, the government passed the Acerbo Law, which transformed Italy into a single
national constituency. It also granted a two-thirds majority of the
seats in Parliament to the party or group of parties which had
obtained at least 25% of the votes. This law was applied in the
elections of 6 April 1924. The "national alliance", consisting of
Fascists, most of the old Liberals and others, won 64% of the vote
largely by means of violence and voter intimidation. These tactics
were especially prevalent in the south.
Squadristi violence
The assassination of the socialist
deputy Giacomo Matteotti, who had
requested the annulment of the elections
because of the irregularities committed, provoked a momentary
crisis of the Mussolini government. The murderer, a squadrista
named Amerigo Dumini, reported to
Mussolini soon after the murder. Mussolini ordered a cover-up, but
witnesses saw the car used to transport Matteotti's body parked
outside Matteotti's residence, which linked Dumini to the murder.
The Matteotti crisis provoked cries for justice against the murder
of an outspoken critic of Fascist violence. The government was
shocked into paralysis for a few days, and Mussolini later
confessed that a few resolute men could have alerted public opinion
and started a coup that would have swept
fascism away. Dumini was imprisoned for two years. On release he
told others that Mussolini was responsible, for which he served
further prison time. For the next 15 years, Dumini received an
income from Mussolini, the Fascist Party, and other sources.
A young Mussolini in his early years
in power
The opposition parties responded weakly or were generally
unresponsive. Many of the socialists, liberals and moderates
boycotted Parliament in the Aventine Secession, hoping
to force Victor Emmanuel to dismiss Mussolini. Despite the
leadership of communists such as Antonio
Gramsci, socialists such as Pietro
Nenni and liberals such as Piero
Gobetti and Giovanni Amendola,
a mass antifascist movement never caught
fire. The king, fearful of violence from the Fascist squadristi,
kept Mussolini in office. Because of the boycott of Parliament,
Mussolini could pass any legislation unopposed. The political
violence of the squadristi had worked, for there was no popular
demonstration against the murder of Matteotti.
Within his own party, Mussolini faced doubts and dissension during
these critical weeks.
On 31 December 1924 MVSN consuls met
with Mussolini and gave him an ultimatum—crush the opposition or
they would do so without him. Fearing a revolt by his own
militants, Mussolini decided to drop all trappings of democracy. On
3 January 1925, Mussolini made a truculent speech before the
Chamber in which he took responsibility for squadristi violence
(though he did not mention the assassination of Matteotti). He also
promised a crackdown on dissenters. Before his speech, MVSN
detachments beat up the opposition and prevented opposition
newspapers from publishing. Mussolini correctly predicted that as
soon as public opinion saw him firmly in control the
"fence-sitters", the silent majority and the "place-hunters" would
all place themselves behind him. This is considered the onset of
Mussolini's dictatorship.
While failing to outline a coherent program, Fascism evolved into a
new political and economic system that combined totalitarianism, nationalism, anti-communism, anti-capitalism and anti-liberalism into a
state designed to bind all classes together under a corporatist system (the "Third Way"). This was a
new system in which the state seized control of the organisation of
vital industries. Under the banners of nationalism and state power,
Fascism seemed to synthesize the glorious Roman past with a futuristic utopia.
Building a dictatorship
After taking power, Mussolini was
often seen in military uniform
Assassination attempts
Mussolini's influence in propaganda was such that he had
surprisingly little opposition to suppress. Nonetheless, he was
"slightly wounded in the nose" when he was shot on 7 April 1926 by
Violet Gibson, an Irish woman and daughter of Baron Ashbourne. On 31 October 1926,
15-year-old Anteo Zamboni attempted to
shoot Mussolini in Bologna. Zamboni was lynched on the spot. Mussolini also
survived a failed assassination attempt in Rome by anarchist Gino
Lucetti, and a planned attempt by American
anarchist Michael
Schirru, which ended with Schirru's capture and
execution. Members of TIGR, a
Slovene anti-fascist group, plotted to kill Mussolini in Caporetto
in 1938, but their attempt was
unsuccessful.
Police state
At various times after 1922, Mussolini personally took over the
ministries of the interior, foreign affairs, colonies,
corporations, defense, and public works. Sometimes he held as many
as seven departments simultaneously, as well as the premiership. He
was also head of the all-powerful Fascist Party and the armed local
fascist militia, the MVSN or
"Blackshirts," who terrorised incipient resistances in the cities
and provinces. He would later form the OVRA, an
institutionalised secret police that
carried official state support. In this way he succeeded in keeping
power in his own hands and preventing the emergence of any
rival.
Between 1925 and 1927, Mussolini progressively dismantled virtually
all constitutional and conventional restraints on his power,
thereby building a police state. A law
passed on Christmas Eve 1925 changed
Mussolini's formal title from "president of the Council of
Ministers" to "head of the government." He was no longer
responsible to Parliament and could only be removed by the king.
While the Italian constitution
stated that ministers were only responsible to the sovereign, in
practice it had become all but impossible to govern against the
express will of Parliament. The Christmas Eve law ended this
practice, and also made Mussolini the only person competent to
determine the body's agenda. Local autonomy was abolished, and
podestàs appointed by the Italian Senate replaced elected mayors and
councils.
All other parties were outlawed in 1928, though in practice Italy
had been a one-party state since Mussolini's 1925 speech. In the
same year, an electoral law abolished parliamentary elections.
Instead, the Grand Council of
Fascism selected a single list of candidates to be approved by
plebiscite. The Grand Council had been
created five years earlier as a party body but was
"constitutionalised" and became the highest constitutional
authority in the state. On paper, the Grand Council had the power
to recommend Mussolini's removal from office, and was thus
theoretically the only check on his power. However, only Mussolini
could summon the Grand Council and determine its agenda. In order
to gain control of the South, especially Sicily, he appointed Cesare
Mori as a Prefect of the city of Palermo, with the charge of
eradicating the Mafia at any price. In the
telegram, Mussolini wrote to Mori:
"Your Excellency has carte
blanche, the authority of the State must absolutely, I repeat
absolutely, be re-established in Sicily. If the laws still
in force hinder you, this will be no problem, as we will draw up
new laws."
He did not hesitate laying siege to towns, using torture, and
getting women and children as hostages to oblige suspects to give
themselves up. These harsh methods earned him the nickname of "Iron
Prefect". However, in 1927 Mori's inquiries brought evidence of
collusion between the Mafia and the Fascist
establishment, and he was dismissed for length of service in 1929.
Mussolini nominated Mori as a senator, and fascist propaganda claimed that the Mafia had been defeated.
Economic policy
Mussolini launched several public construction programs and
government initiatives throughout Italy to combat economic setbacks
or unemployment levels. His earliest,
and one of the best known, was Italy's equivalent of the Green Revolution, known as the "Battle for
Grain", in which 5,000 new farms were established and five new
agricultural towns on land reclaimed by draining the Pontine Marshes. In Sardinia, a model agricultural town was founded and
named Mussolinia, but has long since been renamed Arborea
. This town was the first of what Mussolini
hoped would have been thousands of new agricultural settlements
across the country. This plan diverted valuable resources to grain
production, away from other less economically viable crops. The
huge tariffs associated with the project
promoted widespread inefficiencies, and the government subsidies given to farmers pushed the country
further into debt. Mussolini also initiated the "Battle for Land",
a policy based on land reclamation
outlined in 1928. The initiative had a mixed success; while
projects such as the draining of the Pontine Marsh in 1935 for
agriculture were good for propaganda
purposes, provided work for the unemployed and allowed for great land owners to
control subsidies, other areas in the Battle for Land were not very
successful. This program was inconsistent with the Battle for Grain
(small plots of land were inappropriately allocated for large-scale
wheat production), and the Pontine Marsh was lost during World War II. Fewer than 10,000 peasants resettled on the redistributed land, and
peasant poverty remained high. The Battle for Land initiative was
abandoned in 1940.
He also combated an economic
recession by introducing the "Gold for the Fatherland"
initiative, by encouraging the public to voluntarily donate
gold jewellery such as
necklaces and wedding rings to government officials in
exchange for steel wristbands bearing the words "Gold for the
Fatherland". Even Rachele
Mussolini donated her own wedding ring. The collected gold was
then melted down and turned into gold bars, which were then
distributed to the national
banks.
Mussolini pushed for government control of business: by 1935,
Mussolini claimed that three quarters of Italian businesses were
under state control. That same year, he issued several edicts to
further control the economy, including forcing all banks,
businesses, and private citizens to give up all their
foreign-issued stocks and bonds to the Bank of Italy. In 1938, he
also instituted wage and price
controls. He also attempted to turn Italy into a
self-sufficient autarky, instituting high
barriers on trade with most countries except Germany
.
In 1943 he proposed the theory of economic socialization.
Government
As dictator of Italy, Mussolini's foremost priority was the
subjugation of the minds of the Italian people and the use of
propaganda to do so; whether at home or
abroad, and here his training as a journalist was invaluable.
Press, radio, education, films—all were carefully supervised to
create the illusion that fascism was the doctrine of the
twentieth century, replacing liberalism and democracy.
The principles of this doctrine were laid down in the article on
fascism, written by Giovanni
Gentile and signed by Mussolini that appeared in 1932 in the
Enciclopedia
Italiana. In 1929, a concordat with the Vatican was signed, the Lateran treaties, by which the Italian
state was at last recognised by the Roman Catholic Church, and the
independence of Vatican
City
was recognised by the Italian state; the 1929
treaty also included a legal provision whereby the Italian
government would protect the honor and dignity of the Pope by
prosecuting offenders. In 1927, Mussolini was baptised by a Roman Catholic priest in order to take away certain Catholic
opposition, who were still very critical of a regime which had
taken away papal property and virtually blackmailed the Vatican. Since 1927, and more even
after 1929, Mussolini, with his anti-Communist doctrines, convinced
many Catholics to actively support him. In the encyclical Non
abbiamo bisogno, Pope Pius XI
attacked the Fascist regime for its policy against the Catholic Action and certain tendencies to
overrule Catholic education morals.
The law codes of the parliamentary
system were rewritten under Mussolini. All teachers in schools
and universities had to swear an oath to defend the fascist regime.
Newspaper editors were all personally chosen by Mussolini and no
one who did not possess a certificate of approval from the fascist
party could practice journalism. These certificates were issued in
secret; Mussolini thus skillfully created the illusion of a "free
press". The trade unions were also deprived of any independence and
were integrated into what was called the "corporative" system. The aim (never
completely achieved), inspired by medieval guilds, was to place all
Italians in various professional organizations or "corporations",
all of which were under clandestine governmental control.
Large
sums of money were spent on highly visible public works, and on
international prestige projects such as the SS Rex
Blue Riband ocean liner and aeronautical
achievements such as the world's fastest seaplane the Macchi
M.C.72 and the transatlantic flying boat cruise of Italo Balbo, who was greeted with much fanfare
in the United
States when he landed in Chicago
.
Role of education and youth organizations
Nationalists in the years after the war
thought of themselves as combating the both liberal and domineering institutions created by
cabinets such as those of
Giovanni Giolitti, including
traditional schooling. Futurism, a
revolutionary cultural movement
which would serve as a catalyst for Fascism, argued for "a
school for physical courage and patriotism", as expressed by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1919.
Marinetti expressed his disdain for "the by now prehistoric and
troglodyte Ancient Greek and Latin
courses", arguing for their replacement with exercise modelled
on those of the Arditi soldiers
("[learning] to advance on hands and knees in front of razing
machine gun fire; to wait open-eyed for
a crossbeam to move sideways over their heads etc."). It was
in those years that the first Fascist youth wings were formed
Avanguardie Giovanili
Fasciste (Fascist Youth Vanguards) in 1919, and Gruppi Universitari Fascisti
(Fascist University Groups), in 1922).
After the March on Rome that brought
Benito Mussolini to power, the Fascists started considering ways to
ideologize the Italian society, with an accent on schools.
Mussolini assigned former ardito and
deputy-secretary for Education Renato
Ricci the task of "reorganizing the youth from a moral and
physical point of view". Ricci sought inspiration with Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of
Scouting, meeting with him in England
, as well as with Bauhaus
artists in Germany.The Opera
Nazionale Balilla was created through Mussolini's decree of 3
April 1926, and was led by Ricci for the following eleven
years. It included children between the ages of 8 and 18,
grouped as the Balilla and the
Avanguardisti.
According to Mussolini: "Fascist education is moral, physical,
social, and military: it aims to create a complete and harmoniously
developed human, a fascist one according to our views".
Mussolini structured this process taking in view the emotional side
of childhood: "Childhood and adolescence alike (...) cannot be
fed solely by concerts, theories, and abstract teaching.
The truth we aim to teach them should appeal foremost to their
fantasy, to their hearts, and only then to their minds".
The "educational value set through action and example" was
to replace the established approaches. Fascism opposed its version
of idealism to prevalent rationalism, and used the Opera Nazionale
Balilla to circumvent educational tradition by imposing the
collective and hierarchy, as well as Mussolini's own personality cult.
Foreign policy
In foreign policy, Mussolini soon
shifted from the pacifist anti-imperialism of his lead-up to power to an
extreme form of aggressive nationalism. He dreamt of making Italy a
nation that was "great, respected and feared" throughout Europe,
and indeed the world. An early example was his bombardment of
Corfu in 1923. Soon after he succeeded in setting up a
puppet regime in Albania
and in ruthlessly consolidating Italian power in
Libya, which had been loosely a colony since 1912.
It was
his dream to make the Mediterranean
mare nostrum ("our sea" in Latin), and he established a large naval base on the
Greek island of Leros
to enforce a
strategic hold on the eastern Mediterranean.However, his first
'baby steps' into foreign policy seemed to portray him as a
'statesman', for he participated in the Locarno
Treaties of 1925 and the attempted Four Power Pact of 1933 was Mussolini's
brainchild. Following the Stresa
Front against Germany in 1935, however, Mussolini's policy took
a dramatic turning point and revealed itself once again to be that
of an aggressive nature. This
domino-effect of war began with the Second Italo-Abyssinian
War.
Conquest of Ethiopia
In an effort to realise an Italian
Empire or the New Roman Empire
as supporters called it, Italy set its sights on Ethiopia with an invasion that was carried
out rapidly. Italy's forces were far superior to the Abyssinian
forces, especially in regards to air power and were soon declared victors. Emperor Haile Selassie was forced to flee the
country, with Italy entering the capital Addis Ababa
to proclaim an Empire by May 1936, making Ethiopia
part of Italian East
Africa.
Although all of the major European powers of the time had also
colonised parts of Africa and committed atrocities in their
colonies, the Scramble for
Africa had finished by the beginning of the twentieth century.
The international mood was now against colonialist expansion and
Italy's actions were condemned. Retroactively, Italy was criticised
for its use of mustard gas and phosgene against its enemies and also for its zero
tolerance approach to enemy guerrillas, allegedly authorised by
Mussolini.
Spanish Republican poster against "the
Italian invader"
When Rodolfo Graziani the viceroy of Ethiopia was nearly assassinated at an
official ceremony, with the guerrilla bomb exploding among the
people there, a very stronghanded reaction followed against the
guerrillas, including those who were prisoners according to the
International Red Cross. The
IRC also alleged that Italy bombed their tents in areas of
guerrillas military encampment; though Italy denied it had intended
to, insisting that the rebels were targeted. It was not until the
East African
Campaign's conclusion in 1941 that Italy lost its East African
territories, after taking on a fourteen nation allied force.
Spanish Civil War
Italian military help to Nationalists against the anti-clerical and
anti-Catholic atrocities committed by the Republican side worked
well in Italian propaganda targeting Catholics. On 27 July 1936 the
first squadron of Italian airplanes sent by Benito Mussolini
arrived in Spain. This active intervention in 1936–1939 on the
side of Franco in the Spanish Civil War ended any possibility of
reconciliation with France
and Britain
. As a result, his relationship with Adolf Hitler became closer, and he chose to
accept the German annexation of Austria
in 1938 and the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia
in 1939. At the Munich Conference in September 1938, he
posed as a moderate working for European peace, helping Nazi Germany seize control of the Sudetenland. His "axis" with Germany was
confirmed when he made the "Pact of
Steel" with Hitler in May 1939, as the previous "Rome-Berlin Axis" of 1936 had been
unofficial. Members of TIGR, a
Slovene anti-fascist group, plotted to kill Mussolini in Kobarid in 1938, but their attempt was
unsuccessful.
Axis power
Rome-Berlin relations
The relationship between Mussolini and Adolf Hitler was a
contentious one early on. While Hitler cited Mussolini as an
influence, Mussolini had little regard for Hitler, especially after
the Nazis had assassinated his friend and ally, Engelbert Dollfuss the Austrofascist dictator of Austria in 1933.
With the assassination of Dollfuss, Mussolini attempted to distance
himself from Hitler by rejecting much of the racialism
(particularly Nordicism and Germanicism)
and anti-Semitism espoused by the German radical. Mussolini during
this period rejected biological racism, at least in the Nazi sense,
and instead emphasized "Italianising"
the parts of the Italian Empire he
had desired to build. He declared that the ideas of Eugenics and the racially-charged concept of an
Aryan nation were not possible.
Mussolini was particularly sensitive to German accusations that the
Italians were a mongrelized race. He retaliated by mockingly
referring to the Germans' own lack of racial purity on several
occasions. When discussing the Nazi decree that the German people
must carry a passport with either Aryan or Jewish racial
affiliation marked on it, in the summer of 1934, Mussolini wondered
how they would designate membership in the "Germanic race":
"But which race?
Does there exist a German race?
Has it ever existed?
Will it ever exist?
Reality, myth, or hoax of the
theorists?
Ah well, we respond, a Germanic race does not exist. Various
movements. Curiosity. Stupor. We repeat. Does not exist. We don't
say so. Scientists say so. Hitler says so."
-- Benito Mussolini, 1934.
When German-Jewish journalist Emil Ludwig asked about his views on
race, Mussolini exclaimed:
"Race!
It is a feeling, not a reality: ninety-five
percent, at least, is a feeling.
Nothing will ever make me believe that biologically
pure races can be shown to exist today.
Amusingly enough, not one of those who have
proclaimed the "nobility" of the Teutonic race was himself a
Teuton.
Gobineau was a Frenchman, Houston Chamberlain, an Englishman;
Woltmann, a Jew; Lapouge, another Frenchman."
--Benito Mussolini, 1933.
However Mussolini's rejection of both racialism and the importance
of race in 1934 during the height of his antagonism towards Hitler
contradicted his own earlier statements about race, such as in 1928
in which he emphasized the importance of race:
Though Italian Fascism variated its official positions on race from
the 1920s to 1934, ideologically Italian fascism did not originally
discriminate against the
Italian Jewish
community: Mussolini recognised that a small contingent had lived
there "since the days of the
Kings of
Rome" and should "remain undisturbed". There were even some
Jews in the
National Fascist
Party, such as
Ettore Ovazza who
in 1935 founded the Jewish Fascist paper
La Nostra
Bandiera ("Our Flag").
By 1938, the enormous influence Hitler now had over Mussolini
became clear with the introduction of the
Manifesto of Race. The Manifesto,
which was closely modeled on the Nazi
Nuremberg laws, stripped Jews of their
Italian citizenship and with it
any position in the government or professions. The German influence
on Italian policy upset the established balance in Fascist Italy
and proved highly unpopular to most Italians, to the extent that
Pope Pius XII sent a letter to
Mussolini protesting against the new laws.
It has
been widely speculated that Mussolini's reasoning to adopt the
Manifesto of Race in 1938 was merely tactical, in order to
strengthen Italy's relations with Germany. In December 1943, Mussolini made a
confession to
Bruno Spampanato that
seems to indicate that he regretted the Manifesto of Race, as
Mussolini put it:
"The Racial Manifesto could have been avoided.
It dealt with the scientific abstruseness of a few teachers and
journalists, a conscientious German essay translated into bad
Italian. It is far from what I have said, written and
signed on the subject. I suggest that you consult the old
issues of Il Popolo d'Italia. For this reason I am far
from accepting (Alfred) Rosenberg's myth"
-- Benito Mussolini, 1943.
Mussolini also reached out to the
Moslems in
his empire and in the new Moslem states in the
Middle East. In 1937, the Moslems of
Libya pronounced him as the "Protector of
Islam."
Munich Conference, war looming
Mussolini
had imperial designs on Tunisia
which had some support
in that country. In April 1939 with world focus on Hitler's
invasion of Czechoslovakia, looking to restore honour from a much older defeat
Italy invaded
Albania. Italy defeated
Albania within just five days forcing king
Zog to flee, setting up a period of
Albania under Italy. Until May
1939, the Axis had not been entirely official, however during that
month the
Pact of Steel treaty was made
outlining the "
friendship and
alliance" between Germany and Italy, signed by each
of its foreign ministers. Italy's king
Victor Emanuel III was also wary of the
pact, favouring the more
traditional Italian allies like
France.
Hitler
was intent on invading Poland
, though
Galeazzo Ciano warned this would
likely lead to war with the Allies. Hitler dismissed
Ciano's comment, predicting that instead that Britain and the other
Western countries would back down, and he suggested that Italy
should invade Yugoslavia
. The offer was tempting to Mussolini, but at
that stage world war would be a disaster for Italy as the
armaments situation from building the
Italian Empire thus far was lean. Most
significantly, Victor Emmanuel had demanded neutrality in the
dispute.
Thus when World War
II in Europe began on September 1, 1939
with the German invasion of
Poland eliciting the response of the United Kingdom and France declaring
war on Germany, Italy did not become involved in the
conflict.
War declared
As World War II began, Ciano and
Viscount Halifax were
holding secret phone conversations. The British wanted Italy on
their side against Germany as it had been in
World War I.
French government opinion was more geared
towards action against Italy; they were itching to attack Italy in
Libya. However, in September 1939, France swung to
the opposite extreme, offering to discuss issues with Italy, but as
the French were unwilling to discuss Corsica
, Nice
and
Savoy, Mussolini did not answer.
Convinced that the war would soon be over, with a German victory
looking likely at that point, Mussolini decided to enter the war on
the Axis side. Accordingly, Italy declared war on Britain and
France on 10 June 1940. Italy joined the Germans in the
Battle of France, fighting the fortified
Alpine Line at the border. Just eleven
days later, France surrendered to the
Axis
powers. Included in
Italian-controlled France was most
of
Nice and other southeastern
counties. Meanwhile in Africa, Mussolini's
Italian East Africa forces attacked the
British in their
Sudan,
Kenya and
British Somaliland colonies, in what
would become known as the
East African Campaign.
British Somaliland was conquered and became part of Italian East
Africa on 3 August 1940, and there were Italian advances in Sudan
and Kenya.
Just over a month later, the
Italian
Tenth Army commanded by General
Rodolfo Graziani crossed from
Italian Libya into
Egypt where
British forces were located; this would become the
Western Desert Campaign.
Advances
were successful, but the Italians stopped at Sidi Barrani
waiting for logistic supplies to catch up.
During 25
October 1940, Mussolini sent the Italian Air Corps to Belgium
, where the air force took part in the Battle of Britain for around two
months. In October, Mussolini also sent Italian forces into
Greece starting the
Greco-Italian War. After initial success,
this backfired as the Greek counterattack proved relentless,
resulting in Italy losing one quarter of Albania. Germany soon
committed forces to the
Balkans to
fight the gathering
Allies.
Events in Africa had changed by early 1941 as
Operation Compass had forced the Italians
back into Libya, causing high losses in the
Italian Army. Also in the
East African
Campaign, an attack was mounted against Italian forces.
Despite
putting up a resistance, they were overwhelmed at the Battle of
Keren
, and the Italian defense started to crumble with a
final defeat in the Battle of
Gondar. However, when addressing the Italian public on
the events, he was completely open about the situation saying "We
call bread bread and wine wine, and when the enemy wins a battle it
is useless and ridiculous to seek, as the English do in their
incomparable hypocrisy, to deny or diminish it." Part of his
comment was in relation to earlier success the Italians had in
Africa, before being defeated by an Allied force later. In danger
of losing the control of all Italian possessions in North Africa,
Germany finally sent the
Afrika Korps
to support Italy. Meanwhile
Operation
Marita took place in
Yugoslavia to
end the
Greco-Italian War,
resulting in an Axis victory and the
Occupation of
Greece by Italy and Germany.
With the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union,
Mussolini declared war on the Soviet Union
in June 1941 and sent an army to fight
there. After the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor
, he declared war on the United States.
Dismissed and arrested
Italy's position became more and more untenable.
After the defeat at
El
Alamein
in 1942 the Axis troops had to retreat to where
they were finally defeated in the Tunisia Campaign. Also at the
Eastern Front were
major setbacks and the war had come to the nation's very doorstep
with the
Allied invasion of
Sicily. The home front was also in bad shape as the Allied
bombings were taking their toll. The factories were ground to a
virtual standstill due to a lack of
raw
materials, coal and oil. Additionally, there was a chronic
shortage of food, and what food was available was being sold at
nearly confiscatory prices.
Mussolini's once-ubiquitous propaganda
machine lost its grip on the people; a large number of Italians
turned to Vatican
Radio
or Radio London
for more accurate news coverage. Discontent came to a head
in March with a wave of strikes in the industrial north—the first
large-scale strikes since 1925.
Also in March, some of the major factories
in Milan and Turin
stopped
production to secure evacuation allowances for workers'
families. The physical German presence in Italy had sharply
turned public opinion against Mussolini; for example, when the
Allies took Sicily, the public welcomed them as liberators.
Earlier, Mussolini had begged Hitler to make a separate peace with
Stalin and send German troops to the west to guard against an
expected Allied invasion of Italy. He feared that with the losses
in Tunisia and North Africa, the next logical step for
Dwight Eisenhower's armies would be to
come across the Mediterranean and attack the peninsula. Within a
few days of the Allied landings on Sicily, it was obvious
Mussolini's army was on the brink of collapse. This led Hitler to
summon Mussolini to a meeting in northern Italy on 19 July. By this
time, Mussolini was so shaken that he could no longer stand
Hitler's boasting. His mood darkened further when that same day,
the Allies bombed Rome—the first time that city had ever been the
target of enemy bombing.
Some prominent members of the
Italian
Fascist government had turned against Mussolini by this point.
Among them were Grandi and Mussolini's son-in-law
Galeazzo Ciano. With several of his
colleagues close to revolt,
il Duce was forced to summon
the
Grand Council of
Fascism on 24 July the first time that body had met since the
start of the war. When he announced that the Germans were thinking
of evacuating the south, Grandi launched a blistering attack on
him. Grandi moved a resolution asking the king to resume his full
constitutional powers, in effect, a
vote of no confidence in Mussolini.
This motion carried by a 19–7 margin. Despite this sharp rebuke,
Mussolini showed up for work the next day as usual. He allegedly
viewed the Grand Council as merely an advisory body and did not
think the vote would have any substantive effect. That afternoon,
he was summoned to the royal palace by King
Victor Emmanuel III, who had
been planning to oust Mussolini earlier. When Mussolini tried to
tell the king about the meeting, Victor Emmanuel cut him off and
told him that he was being replaced by Marshal
Pietro Badoglio. After Mussolini left the
palace, he was arrested on the king's orders.
By this time, discontent with Mussolini was such that when the news
of his ouster was announced on the radio, there was no resistance.
In an
effort to conceal his location from the Germans, Mussolini was
moved around before being sent to Campo Imperatore
, a mountain resort in Abruzzo where he was completely isolated.
Given the large Nazi presence in Italy, Badoglio announced that
"the war continues at the side of our Germanic ally" in the hopes
that chaos and Nazi retaliation against civilians could be avoided.
Even as Badolglio was keeping up the appearance of loyalty to the
Axis, he dissolved the Fascist Party two days after taking over.
Also, his government was negotiating an
armistice with the Allies, which was signed on 3
September 1943. Its announcement five days later threw Italy into
chaos, a
civil war of sorts.
Badoglio and the king
fled Rome, leaving the
Italian Army without orders.
After a
period of anarchy, Italy finally declared war on Nazi Germany on 13 October from Malta
; thousands
of troops were supplied to fight against the Germans, others
refused to switch sides and had joined the Germans. The
Badoglio government held a social truce with the
leftist partisans for the sake
of Italy and to rid the land of the Nazis.
Italian Social Republic
Meanwhile, only two months after Mussolini
had been dismissed and arrested, he was rescued from prison in the
Gran Sasso
raid by a special Fallschirmjäger unit on 12 September
1943; present was Otto
Skorzeny. The rescue saved Mussolini from being turned
over to the Allies, as per the armistice. Hitler had made plans to
arrest the king,
Crown Prince
Umberto, Badoglio, and the rest of the government and restore
Mussolini to power in Rome, but the government's escape south
likely foiled those plans.
Benito Mussolini reviewing adolescent
soldiers, 1944
By this time, Mussolini was in very poor health and wanted to
retire. However, he was immediately taken to Germany for an
audience with Hitler in his
East
Prussia hideaway. There, Hitler told him that unless he agreed
to return to Italy and set up a new fascist state, the Germans
would destroy Milan, Genoa and Turin.
Feeling that he had
to do what he could to blunt the edges of Nazi repression,
Mussolini agreed to set up a new regime, the Italian Social Republic, informally
known as the Salò Republic because of its administration
from the town of Salò
.
Mussolini
lived in Gargnano
on Lake
Garda
in Lombardy during this
period, but he was little more than a puppet ruler under the protection of his German
liberators—for all intents and purposes, the gauleiter of Lombardy. After yielding to pressures from
Hitler and the remaining loyal fascists who formed the government
of the Republic of Salo, Mussolini helped orchestrate a series of
executions of some of the fascist leaders who had betrayed him at
the last meeting of the Fascist Grand Council. One of those
executed included his son-in-law,
Galeazzo Ciano. As Head of State and Minister
of Foreign Affairs for the Italian Social Republic, Mussolini used
much of his time to write his memoirs. Along with his
autobiographical writings of 1928, these writings would be combined
and published by
Da Capo Press as
My Rise and Fall.
Personal life
Mussolini
was first married to Ida Dalser in
Trento in
1914. The couple had a son one year later and named him
Benito Albino Mussolini. In
December 1915, Mussolini married
Rachele
Guidi, his mistress since 1910, and with his following
political ascendency the information about his first marriage was
suppressed and both his first wife and son were later persecuted.
With
Rachele, Mussolini had two daughters, Edda (1910-1995) and Anna Maria (Forlì, Villa Carpena, 3
September 1929 - Rome, 25 April
1968), married in Ravenna
on 11 June 1960 to Nando Pucci Negri, and three
sons Vittorio (1916-1997),
Bruno (1918-1941), and Romano (1927-2006). Mussolini had a
number of mistresses among them
Margherita Sarfatti and his final
companion,
Clara Petacci. Furthermore,
Mussolini had innumerable brief sexual encounters with female
supporters as reported by his biographer Nicholas Farrell.
Religious beliefs
Mussolini was an avowed atheist, however, motivated by a desire to
consolidate his power in Italy, he submitted to baptism. Privately
he remained hostile to the church.
Mussolini's earliest political pamphlet was titled
God does not
exist. He was known to refer to priests as "black germs" , he
had a secular civil wedding , and during speeches before large
crowds he dared God to strike him dead.
He also said:
- "Religion is a species of mental disease. It has always had a
pathological reaction on mankind."
- "The God of the theologians is the creation of their empty
heads."
"The history of the saints is mainly the history of
insane people."
"Science is now in the process of destroying religious
dogma. The dogma of the divine creation is recognized as
absurd."
In his book
Mussolini, British historian
Denis Mack Smith writes that Mussolini;
"forcibly denounced those...who thought religion a
matter for individual conscience or had their children baptised.
[In Mussolini's opinion] Science had proved that God did not exist
and the Jesus of history was an ignorant Jew whose family thought
him mad... Religion, he said, was a disease of the psyche, an
epidemic to be cured by psychiatrists, and Christianity in
particular was vitiated by preaching the senseless virtues of
resignation and cowardice."
Racial views
Though originally denouncing Nazi
Germany's racial ideology as unrealistic and rejecting the
issue of racial purity as relevant to Italian Fascism, recent historical research
indicates Mussolini privately nurtured a strong anti-semitic sentiment. Excerpts from Claretta Petacci's personal diaries were
published in Italy's daily newspaper Corriere della Sera, containing
revelations of the dictator's racial beliefs.
"I have been a racist since 1921. I don't
know how they can think I'm imitating Hitler. We must give
Italians a sense of race."
-- Benito Mussolini, quoted in August 1938.
"These disgusting Jews, I must destroy them
all."
-- Benito Mussolini, quoted in a discussion with his lover.
Death
.ogg/180px-Execution_of_Mussolini_(1945).ogg)
American newsreel coverage of
the death of Mussolini in 1945
Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were stopped by communist
partisans Valerio and Bellini and identified by the Political Commissar of the partisans'
52nd Garibaldi Brigade, Urbano
Lazzaro, on 27 April 1945, near the village of Dongo
(Lake
Como), as they headed for Switzerland to board a plane to escape to Spain
. During
this time Claretta's brother even posed as a Spanish consul
Mussolini had been traveling with retreating German forces and was
apprehended while attempting to escape recognition by wearing a
German military uniform. After several unsuccessful attempts to take
them to Como
they were
brought to Mezzegra
. They spent their last night in the house of
the De Maria family.
The next day, Mussolini and his mistress were both summarily executed,
along with most of the members of their 15-man train, primarily
ministers and officials of the Italian Social Republic.
The
shootings took place in the small village of Giulino di
Mezzegra
. According to the official version of
events, the shootings were conducted by "Colonel Valerio"
(Colonnello Valerio). Valerio's real name was Walter Audisio. Audisio was the communist
partisan commander who was reportedly given the order to kill
Mussolini by the National Liberation Committee. When Audisio
entered the room where Mussolini and the other fascists were being
held, he reportedly announced: "I have come to rescue you!... Do
you have any weapons?" He then had them loaded into transports and
driven a short distance. Audisio ordered "get down"; Petacci hugged
Mussolini and refused to move away from him when they were taken to
an empty space. Shots were fired and Petacci fell down. Just then
Mussolini opened his jacket and screamed "Shoot me in the chest!".
Audisio shot him in the chest. Mussolini fell down but he did not
die; he was breathing heavily. Audisio went near and he shot one
more bullet in his chest. Mussolini's face looked as if he had
significant pain. Audisio said to his driver "Look at his face, the
emotions on his face don't suit him". The other members were also
lined up before a firing squad later the same night.
Mussolini's body
On 29
April 1945, the bodies of Mussolini, Petacci, and the other
executed Fascists were loaded into a moving van and trucked south
to Milan.
There, at 3 a.m., they were dumped on the ground in the old Piazza
Loreto. The piazza had been renamed "Piazza Quindici Martiri" in
honor of 15 anti-Fascists recently executed there.
After being shot, kicked, and spat upon, the bodies were hung
upside down on meathooks from the roof of a gas station. The bodies
were then stoned by civilians from below. This was done both to
discourage any Fascists from continuing the fight and as an act of
revenge for the hanging of many partisans in the same place by Axis
authorities. The corpse of the deposed leader became subject to
ridicule and abuse.
Fascist loyalist Achille Starace was captured and sentenced
to death and then taken to the Piazzale Loreto and shown the body
of Mussolini. Starace, who once said of Mussolini "He is a God",
saluted what was left of his leader just before he was shot. The
body of Starace was subsequently strung up next to the body of
Mussolini.
After his death and the display of his corpse in Milan, Mussolini
was buried in an unmarked grave in Musocco,
the municipal cemetery to the north of the city. On Easter Sunday 1946 his body was located and
dug up by Domenico Leccisi and two
other neo-Fascists. Making off with
their hero, they left a message on the open grave: "Finally, O
Duce, you are with us. We will cover you with roses, but the smell
of your virtue will overpower the smell of those roses."
On the
loose for months—and a cause of great anxiety to the new Italian
democracy—the Duce's body was finally 'recaptured' in August,
hidden in a small trunk at the Certosa di Pavia
, just outside Milan. Two Fransciscan brothers were subsequently
charged with concealing the corpse, though it was discovered on
further investigation that it had been constantly on the move.
Unsure
what to do, the authorities held the remains in a kind of political
limbo for 10 years, before agreeing to allow them to be re-interred
at Predappio in Romagna
, his birth place, after a campaign headed by
Leccisi and the Movimento Sociale Italiano.
Leccisi, a fascist deputy, went on to write his autobiography,
With Mussolini Before and After Piazzale Loreto. Adone Zoli, the Prime Minister of the day,
contacted Donna Rachele, the
former dictator's widow, to tell her he was returning the remains,
as he needed the support of the far-right in parliament, including
Leccisi himself. In Predappio the dictator was buried in a crypt (the only posthumous honour granted to
Mussolini). His tomb is flanked by marble fasces and a large
idealised marble bust of himself
sits above the tomb
.
Legacy
Mussolini was survived by his wife, Donna Rachele Mussolini, two sons,
Vittorio and Romano Mussolini, and his daughter Edda, the widow of Count Ciano and Anna
Maria. A third son, Bruno, was
killed in an air accident while flying a P108 bomber on a test mission, on 7 August
1941. Sophia Loren's sister, Anna Maria
Scicolone, was formerly married to Romano Mussolini, Mussolini's
son.Mussolini's granddaughter Alessandra Mussolini is currently a
member of the European
Parliament
for the extreme right-wing party Alternativa Sociale; other relatives of
Edda (Castrianni) moved to England after World War II.
Mussolini's National Fascist
Party was banned in the postwar Constitution of Italy, but a number of
successor neo-fascist parties emerged to carry on its legacy.
Alessandra Mussolini runs one of the primary neo-fascist parties in
modern Italy, Azione Sociale.
Historically, the strongest neo-fascist party was MSI (Movimento
Sociale Italiano), which was declared dissolved in 1995 and
replaced by the National
Alliance, which in the meanwhile has distanced itself from
Fascism (its leader Gianfranco Fini
once declared that Fascism was "an absolute evil"). These parties
were united under Silvio
Berlusconi's House of Freedoms
coalition and the leader of the National Alliance, Gianfranco Fini, was one of Berlusconi's
most trusted advisors. In 2006, the House of Freedoms coalition was narrowly
defeated by Romano Prodi's coalition,
L'Unione.
In popular culture
Charlie Chaplin's 1940 film
The Great Dictator
satirizes Mussolini as "Benzino Napaloni", portrayed by Jack Oakie. More serious biographical depictions
include a look at the last few days of Mussolini's life in Carlo Lizzani's movie Mussolini: Ultimo atto (Mussolini: The
last act, 1974) and George C.
Scott's portrayal in the 1985
television mini-series Mussolini: The Untold Story.
Another 1985 movie was Mussolini and
I, in which Bob Hoskins plays
the dictator (with Susan Sarandon as
his daughter Edda and Anthony
Hopkins as Count Ciano). Actor Antonio Banderas also played the title role
in Benito -
The Rise and Fall of Mussolini in 1993, which covered his
life from his school teacher days to the beginning of World War I,
before his rise as dictator. Mussolini is also depicted in the
films Tea with Mussolini
and Lion of the
Desert.
Also in The Time Tunnel, in
the episode called "The Ghost of Nero", when the protagonists Doug
and Tony were rescued by some Italian soldiers during the First
World War, the "ghost" of Nero inhabits a soldier, which is
revealed to be Mussolini.
Mussolini has been referenced less seriously in television episodes
of The Simpsons, The X-Files and The Young Ones, as well as
in the song "Cult of
Personality" by the rock band Living
Colour. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's novel Inferno, a 1976 modern take on
Dante's Inferno, has the
protagonist being guided by an analog of Virgil who is ultimately revealed to be Mussolini. In
the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, Ray
described life growing up with his father as "growing up with
Benito Mussolini." In the American version of The Office, Jim gives
Dwight points for his speech based
on a speech made by Mussolini.
See also
References
- Image Description: Propaganda
poster of Benito Mussolini, with caption "His Excellency Benito
Mussolini, Head of Government, Leader of Fascism, and Founder of
the Empire...".
- Mediterranean Fascism 1919-1945 Edited by Charles F. Delzel,
Harper Rowe 1970, page 3
- Living History 2; Chapter 2: Italy under Fascism -
ISBN 1-84536-028-1
- Mediterranean Fascism by Charles F. Delzel page 96
- "The Life of Benito Mussolini" by Margherita G. Sarfatti, p.
156
- taken from WorldCat's entry for this book's title.
- Mediterranean Fascism 1919-1945 Edited by Charles F. Delzel,
Harper Rowe 1970, bottom of page 3
- Mediterranean Fascism 1919-1945 Edited by Charles F. Delzel,
Harper Rowe 1970, page 4
- Mediterranean Fascism 1919-1945 Edited by Charles F. Delzel,
Harper Rowe 1970, page 6
- Mussolini: A Study In Power, Ivone Kirkpatrick, Hawthorne
Books, 1964. ISBN 0-837-18400-2
- Moseley, Ray. Mussolini: The Last 600 Days of Il Duce.
Taylor Trade Publications, 2004. P. 39
- Sharma, Urmila. Western Political Thought. Atlantic Publishers
and Distributors (P) Ltd, 1998. P. 66
- Sharma, Urmila. Western Political Thought. Atlantic Publishers
and Distributors (P) Ltd, 1998. P. 66-67.
- The Times, Thursday, 8 April 1926; pg. 12; Issue 44240; col
A
- Arrigo Petacco, L'uomo della provvidenza: Mussolini, ascesa
e caduta di un mito, Milano, Mondadori, 2004, p. 190
- The
Vampire Economy: Italy, Germany, and the US, Jeffrey Herbener,
Mises Institute, October 13, 2005
- Comic escapes prosecution for insulting pope(Oddly
Enough) Reuters, (Friday September 19, 2008 1:15 p.m. EDT) By
Phil Stewart
- Speech delivered by Premier Benito Mussolini. Rome, Italy, 23
February 1941
- Time
Magazine, April 5, 1937
- Rocker Rudolf (1998) "Nationalism and Culture" New York ISBN
1551640945, 9781551640945
- Denis Mack Smith wrote that in 1938 Mussolini: "Sometimes he
now acknowledged that he was an outright disbeliever, and once told
a startled cabinet that Islam was perhaps a more effective religion
than Christianity. The papacy was a malignant tumour in the body of
Italy and must be 'rooted out once and for all', because there was
no room in Rome for both the Pope and himself." Smith DM (1982).
Mussolini: a biography. New York: Knopf
- Neville P (2004). Mussolini. Routledge ISBN
9780415249898 at 84
- Mencken
HL (1942). A new dictionary of quotations on historical
principles from ancient and modern sources. (Knopf)
- Smith DM (1982). Mussolini: a biography. New York:
Knopf ISBN 9780394506944
- Toland, John. (1966). The Last 100 Days Random
House,
- Time
Magazine, May 7 1945
- Quoted in "Mussolini: A New Life" - Page 276 - by Nicholas
Burgess Farrell – 2004
Bibliography
- Mussolini. Bosworth, R.J.B., London, Hodder, 2002
(hardback ISBN 0340731443); (paperback ISBN 0340809884).
- "Mussolini's Italy: Life Under the Dictatorship
1915-1945". Bosworth, R.J.B., London, Allen Lane, 2006
(hardback ISBN 0713996978, paperback 2006 ISBN 0141012919).
- The Birth of Fascist Ideology, From
Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution, Zeev Sternhell, with Mario Sznajder and Maia
Asheri, trans. by David Maisel, Princeton
University Press
, NJ, 1994. pg 214.
- Mussolini's Cities: Internal Colonialism in Italy,
1930-1939, Cambria Press: 2007
- Mussolini's Rome: rebuilding the Eternal City, Borden
W. Painter, Jr., 2005
- Mussolini: A biography, Denis Mack Smith, New York:
Random House 1982
- Mussolini, Renzo De
Felice, Torino: Einaudi, 1995.
- Mussolini: A New Life, Nicholas Farrell, London:
Phoenix Press, 2003, ISBN 1842121235.
- Mussolini: The Last 600 Days of Il Duce, Ray Moseley,
Dallas: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2004.
- Mussolini in the First World War: The Journalist, the
Soldier, the Fascist. O'Brien, Paul. Oxford: Berg Publishers,
2004 (hardback, ISBN 1-84520-051-9; (paperback, ISBN
1-84520-052-7).
- Mastering Modern World History by Norman Lowe "Italy,
1918-1945: the first appearance of fascism.
- Europe 1870-1991 by Terry Morris and Derrick
Murphy
- Il Duce - Christopher Hibbert
- The Last Centurion by Rudolph S.Daldin
www.benito-mussolini.com ISBN 0-921447-34-5
- Hitler and Mussolini. The Secret Meetings by
Santi Corvaja translated by Robert L. Miller Enigma 2001
ISBN1-929631-00-6
- Mussolini. The Secrets of his Death by
Luciano Garibaldi Enigma 2004 ISBN1-929631-23-5
- L'archivio segreto di Mussolini, Arrigo Petacco (ed.),
Mondadori, 1998, ISBN 8804449144
Writings of Mussolini
- Giovanni Hus, il Veridico(Jan Hus,
True prophet), Rome (1913). Published in America as John
Hus (New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1929). Republished by
the Italian Book Co., NY (1939) as John Hus, the
Veracious.
- The Cardinal's Mistress (trans. Hiram Motherwell, New
York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1928)
- There is an essay on "The Doctrine of Fascism" credited to
Benito Mussolini but ghost written by Giovanni Gentile that appeared in the 1932
edition of the Enciclopedia
Italiana, and excerpts can be read at Doctrine of Fascism. There are also
links to the complete text.
- La Mia Vita ("My Life"), Mussolini's autobiography
written upon request of the American Ambassador in Rome (Child).
Mussolini, at first not interested, decided to dictate the story of
his life to Arnaldo Mussolini, his brother. The story covers the
period up to 1929, includes Mussolini's personal thoughts on
Italian politics and the reasons that motivated his new
revolutionary idea. It covers the march on Rome and the beginning
of the dictatorship and includes some of his most famous speeches
in the Italian Parliament (Oct 1924, Jan 1925).
- From 1951 to 1962 Edoardo and Duilio Susmel worked for the
publisher "La Fenice" in order to print opera omnia (the
complete works) of Mussolini in 35 volumes.
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