Benito Mussolini was Europes first 20th-century fascist dictator, and the word fascism comes from the far-right movement he led in Italy. Wikimedia CommonsA macabre autopsy photo of Benito Mussolini and his mistress in a Milan morgue. What was Benito Mussolinis personal life like? [76] The discrepancies and obvious exaggerations, coupled with the belief that the Communist Party had selected him to claim responsibility for their own political purposes, led some in Italy to believe that his story was wholly or largely untrue.[76]. [65] Alan Bullock said that news of Mussolini's fate had presumably increased Hitler's determination to avoid capture[66] and William L. Shirer thought that knowledge of the events surrounding Mussolini's death may have strengthened Hitler's resolve not to risk his downfall being turned into a public humiliation. [1] Following the Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943, Mussolini was deposed and put under arrest; Italy then signed the Armistice of Cassibile with the Allies in the following September. In it, Lampredi confirmed the key facts of Audisio's story but without the embellishments. The bodies of Mussolini and Petacci were taken to Milan and left in a suburban square, the Piazzale Loreto, for a large angry crowd to insult and physically abuse. Rachele Mussolini recalled that Il Duces excruciating silence hit her the hardest when the couple found out about Brunos accident. He read widely and voraciously, if not deeply, plunging into the philosophers and theorists Immanuel Kant, Benedict de Spinoza, Peter Kropotkin, Friedrich Nietzsche, G.W.F. On 28 April 1945, Benito Mussolini died. Joseph Stalins death in March 1953 ended his long and brutal reign as leader of the Soviet Union. The country was battered, and it was, many thought, all Il Duces fault. The tomb has become a neo-fascist place of pilgrimage. At noon, given a lunch of polenta in their upstairs bedroom, Mussolini told Petacci that he had lost his appetite; suspense over their fate was getting to him. Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy, Operation FLAX, April 1943: Severing the German, General William H. Simpsons Ninth US Army and the Crossing of the Rhine, Black Volunteer Infantry Platoons in World War II, Kasserine Pass: German Offensive, American Victory, Gallantry against Great Odds: LTC George Marshall and Operation RESERVIST, Prelude to Liberation: Genesis of American Amphibious Assault in the ETO. The south was in ruins as Allied troops advanced. 504-528-1944. He needed more than just fiery speeches and violent rhetoric. Repeatedly, he called for a day of vengeance. In 1996, a previously unpublished private account written in 1972 by Aldo Lampredi for the Communist Party's archives, appeared in L'Unit. I said I could not shoot Petacci, so John said he would shoot her himself, while making it quite clear that Mussolini however, had to be killed by an Italian. The crowd yelled, Higher! Some writers believe that Mussolini's death was part of a British special forces operation, with the supposed aim of retrieving compromising "secret agreements" and correspondence with Winston Churchill that Mussolini had allegedly been carrying when he was captured. She added, it was as if he had turned to stone. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Italy fared poorly from the outset, with ignominious defeats in North Africa, Greece, and the Soviet Union. In June 1940, with German armies running riot all over Europe, the Duce decided to strike. People got ropes, tied them to the feet of the corpses, and strung them upside-down from the iron girders of a gas station. One woman felt Il Duce wasnt dead enough. Four bullets near the heart were given as the cause of death. His father was a blacksmith. Some Fascists came along and disinterred him a year later, absconding with it to a convent in the region of Lombardy, but the government was able to recover it and bury it at a Milan monastery. Whatever the case, his family was told that he died in the war. [17][18] That evening,[19] with the German army in northern Italy about to surrender and the CLNAI taking control of Milan, Mussolini decided to flee the city. [59], On the afternoon of 29 April, Adolf Hitler learned of Mussolini's execution, although it is unknown how much of the detail was communicated to him. World War II broke out between Germany and the rest of Europe later that year, but Italyits resources already stretched thin by preexisting economic issues and Mussolinis Ethiopian conquest in 1935was hesitant to join. Hitler, for one, heard the news on the radio and vowed to not have his corpse desecrated in the same fashion as Mussolinis. And to understand why Mussolinis death and its aftermath were so brutal, we must first understand the brutality that fueled his life and reign. The death of the gassed Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini took place on April 28, 1945, in the last days of World War II in Europe, when he was executed by an Italian partisan in the small village of Giulino di Mezzegra in northern Italy. Like the other Great Powers, he also wanted to create a colonial empire in Africa, looking especially to the East African kingdom of Ethiopia. Lets take a look at the circumstances that led to his demise. By 1945, Germany was [6], Before long, it was noted that there were discrepancies between Audisio's original story published in L'Unit, subsequent versions that he provided and the versions of events provided by others. The whereabouts of the body was kept a secret, even from Mussolini's family. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. Upon concluding Marx was correct on revolution following the war he began to make moves to become a dictator and enact widespread change. During World War I, he renounced socialism and adopted fascism. The man who once boasted that he was going to restore the glories of ancient Rome, wrote the Times, "is now a corpse in a public square in Milan, with a howling mob cursing and kicking and spitting on his remains. Indeed, the scene was grisly: the bodies of Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci dangling upside down by their heels in front of a gas station in Milans Piazzale Loreto. And by the mid-1930s, he began truly looking to assert his power beyond Italys borders. [3] By 1944, the "Sal Republic", as it came to be called, was threatened not only by the Allies advancing from the south but also internally by Italian anti-fascist partisans, in a brutal conflict that was to become known as the Italian Civil War. He would strip to the waist to address farmers in the hot sun or pose wrestling with a lion cub. The truth is now unmistakably clear. At the same time, however, he was gaining a reputation as a young man of strange magnetism and remarkable rhetorical talents. [32], Audisio and Lampredi left Milan for Dongo early on the morning of 28 April 1945 to carry out the orders Audisio had been given by Longo. [26], Fighting was still going on in the area around Dongo. A cadre of 10 men unceremoniously dumped 18 bodies out of the back. Surrendered Italy would experience twenty more months of high intensity combata war that devastated countryside, cities, and civilian population alike. Mussolinis politics took a turn to the right midway through World War I, when he became a proponent for the war effort. The Matteotti crisis shook Mussolini, but he managed to maintain his hold on power. Without Hitlers military intervention, a coup surely would have toppled Mussolini in 1941. [57] Samples of Mussolini's brain were taken and sent to the United States for analysis. Eventually Mussolini was discovered slumped in one of the convoy vehicles. These lands, he said, were Italia irredentaunredeemed Italy.. The numbers signing the tomb's register range from dozens to hundreds per day, with thousands signing on certain anniversaries; almost all the comments left are supportive of Mussolini. Benito Mussolinis reaction to Brunos death Family close to Benito Mussolini reported that the dictator was heartbroken at the loss of his second son. In 1966, the U.S. military turned over a slice of Mussolinis brain to his family. For some time after his return little was heard of him. The Allies had re-taken northern Africa away from Italy and Sicily was now in Allied hands as they prepared to invade Italy itself. The economy was based on a system he called corporatism: Italian economic life was organized into 22 corporations, representing all industries in a major area of production, like agriculture or metallurgy, from raw materials through production to distribution. To the hooks, like pigs!. Life in Mussolinis Italy. Yes, there were achievements of a sort. Another few miles and Mussolini would have been free. In fact, Mussolinis decision to join Hitlers war led Italy into an unprecedented series of military disasters. This article is part of an ongoing series commemorating the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II made possible byBank of America. Aside from Mussolini and Petacci, sixteen of the most prominent of them would be summarily shot in Dongo the following day and a further ten would be killed over two successive nights. Although his account most probably is built around the facts, it was certainly embellished. To be sure, Italy paid a steep price for Mussolini. He was also intelligent, and he passed his final examinations without difficulty. These politics included the themes of racial superiority, xenophobia, and imperialism that defined his actions as a dictator. From that moment onward, partisans called this place the Square of the Fifteen Martyrs.. Anxious that he would lose claim to conquered European lands as Hitler advanced, Mussolini entered the war in 1940. [5], On 18 April 1945, Mussolini left Gargnano, a village near Sal where he had been residing, and moved, with his entire government, to Milan and based himself in the city's prefecture. Not only did they fail to conquer tiny Greece, the Greeks counterattacked, drove the Italians back across the Albanian border, and for a time threatened to destroy Mussolinis army altogether. He was placed in charge of a newly established Italian Social Republic in the north (sometimes, for the small town on Lake Garda that was its seat of government, called the Republic of Sal). [29], A senior communist in Milan, Luigi Longo, said that the order came from the General Command of the partisan military units "in application of a CLNAI decision". He began adult life as a staunch socialist opposed to the war in the footsteps of his father. World War II began later that year in September. Italy entered the conflict in June 1940, declaring war on an already beaten France and launching an invasion of the Savoy region. With the Spring 1945 offensive in Italy bringing a final collapse of the German army's Gothic Line in April, total defeat for the Sal Republic and its German protectors was imminent. Fiery speeches and violent rhetoric but without the embellishments superiority, xenophobia, and population. 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