Benito Mussolini, second from left, hanging upside-down in Milans public square. At the same time, the corporative structure allowed the Mussolini regime to direct the nation's economic life and make decisions about production and distribution that were normally in the hands of the industrialists. Facing pressure on the home front due to increasingly stressful wartime conditions and rebelliousness from within his own ranks, Benito Mussolini was removed from office by the king and the Grand Council in July of 1943. Virtually every land on earth has a creator figure, a father of his country: Charlemagne for the French, Peter the Great for the Russians, George Washington for the Americans. On April 25th, he, his paramour Petacci, a small convoy of bitter-enders, and a handful of German guards left Milan and headed north towards Lake Como on the Swiss border. [82], Some, including most persistently the fascist journalist Giorgio Pisan, have claimed that Mussolini and Petacci were shot earlier in the day near the De Maria farmhouse and that the execution at Giulino de Mezzegra was staged with corpses. Mussolini abandoning the Prefecture in Milan on 25 April 1945 (believed to be the last photograph of him alive). No!. The corpses were pelted with vegetables, spat at, urinated on, shot at and kicked; Mussolini's face was disfigured by beatings. 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. In this case, its hard to argue with the New York Times: a fitting end to a wretched life.. The Frenchdisintegrating all over the mapstopped the Italians cold. [91], Other theories have been published, including allegations that not only Luigi Longo, subsequently leader of the Communist Party in post-war Italy, but also Sandro Pertini, a future President of Italy, carried out the shootings. Palmiro Togliatti, the Secretary-General of the Communist Party, claimed that he had ordered Mussolini's execution prior to his capture. The south was in ruins as Allied troops advanced. She buried her husband properly at his family crypt in Predappio. He had a party behind him, of course, the Fascists, and he could call on squads of tough guys in blackshirt uniform (Camicie Nere) to beat down his opponents. The tomb has become a neo-fascist place of pilgrimage. Fifteen partisans had been shot there in August 1944 in retaliation for partisan attacks and Allied bombing raids, and their bodies had then been left on public display. A macabre autopsy photo of Benito Mussolini and his mistress in a Milan morgue. Benito Mussolini was the less dominant half of the Rome-Berlin axis, formalized by the 1939 Pact of Steel between Adolf Hitler and himself. [8], Over the week following his arrival in Milan, and with the military situation deteriorating, Mussolini vacillated between a number of options including making a last stand in the Valtellina, a valley in the Italian Alps (the so-called Ridotto Alpino Repubblicano), fleeing to Switzerland, or attempting to negotiate a peaceful handover to the partisan leadership, the CLNAI,[note 2] or to the Allies. [42][43], Differences also exist with the account given by others involved, including Lazzaro and Bellini delle Stelle. [75] Comparisons have been made with the John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories,[20] and it has been described as the Italian equivalent of that speculation. At one time, he had been one of the most celebrated statesmen in the world. When Benito Mussolini, the tyrannical ruler of Fascist Italy before and during World War II, was executed on April 28, 1945, it was only the beginning. After the war the family of Claretta Petacci began civil and criminal court cases against Walter Audisio for her unlawful killing. A strongman who had seized power in Italy in 1922, then in the midst of its post-World War I troubles, he had restored order, ended partisan squabbling, and built Italy up into a respected military power. For some time after his return little was heard of him. [30] Longo asked another partisan, Aldo Lampredi[it], to go as well because, according to Lampredi, Longo thought Audisio was "impudent, too inflexible and rash". [72], The anniversary of Mussolini's death on 28 April has become one of three dates neo-fascist supporters mark with major rallies. In Audisio's account, Mussolini said nothing immediately prior to or during the execution. When 30,000 Fascist troops did indeed enter the capital calling for revolution, it wasnt long before Italys reigning leaders had no choice but to cede power to the Fascists. The documentary went on to claim that the later shootings at the Villa Belmonte were subsequently staged as part of the "cover up". They took the bodies to the local morgue, where a U.S. Army photographer captured the macabre remains of Mussolini and Petacci. That still wasnt enough. His political beliefs took a hairpin turn to the right midway through World War I, when he stopped decrying the war effort and began advocating for it. He called himself the Duce, from the old Latin word dux (chief or boss). Fighting the Allies during the North African campaign of 1942-1943, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommels Afrika Korps (DAK) was resupplied by a concerted air and sea lift effort. In June 1940, he took the country into World War II on the side of Nazi Germany led by Adolf Hitler. Soon after the marriage, Mussolini was imprisoned for the fifth time; but by then Comrade Mussolini had become recognized as one of the most gifted and dangerous of Italys younger socialists. They were then hung upside down from a metal girder above a service station on the square. Sometimes the death of a man has the power to move us, to make us stop what were doing, and to contemplate our common humanity and the cruelty of fate. His bald head, deeply set jaw, and piercing brown eyes gave him away. WebThe death of Benito Mussolini on April 28, 1945 was characterized A fitting end to a wretched life, by The New York Times. [29] According to Leo Valiani, the Action Party representative on the CLNAI, the decision to execute Mussolini was taken on the night of 27/28 April by a group acting on behalf of the CLNAI comprising himself, Sandro Pertini, and the communists Emilio Sereni and Luigi Longo. [21], By some accounts, on 26 April, Mussolini, now joined by his mistress Claretta Petacci, made several failed attempts to cross the border into Switzerland. Inside The Mysterious Death Of The 'Godfather Of Soul', How Did Joseph Stalin Die? [69][70], The authorities then arranged for the body to be hidden at a Capuchin monastery in the small town of Cerro Maggiore where it remained for the next eleven years. Faces of European History: Fact or Fiction? [56], On 30 April, an autopsy was carried out on Mussolini at the Institute of Legal Medicine in Milan. All of those propaganda posters and photos had now truly come back to haunt him. OConnor had only 30,000 men, but he planned his attacks skillfully. Mussolini and Petacci were executed the following afternoon, two days before Adolf Hitler's suicide. The night after Benito Mussolinis death, a cargo truck roared into Milans Square of the Fifteen Martyrs. Upon Mussolinis death, the final words he uttered were No! Learn More. So successful was this paper that in 1912 he was appointed editor of the official Socialist newspaper, Avanti! Spitting on the corpses. He obtained a teaching diploma and for a time worked as a schoolmaster but soon realized that he was totally unsuited for such work. The event usually attracts supporters in the thousands and includes speeches, songs and people giving the fascist salute. With Allied armies driving north into the Lombard plain and with well-armed partisan bands active everywhere, Mussolini tried to make a run for it. Still, he voraciously read the works of great European philosophers like Immanuel Kant, Georges Sorel, Benedict de Spinoza, Peter Kropotkin, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Karl Marx. Il Duce allied himself with fellow fascist Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany in World War II, but his outdated Italian military was badly outclassed. Five years after the Ethiopian invasion, Benito Mussolini watched from the sidelines as Hitler invaded France. [52][53][54] This mode of hanging had been used in northern Italy since medieval times to stress the "infamy" of the hanged. The country was battered, and it was, many thought, all Il Duces fault. Finally, the pair were buried in an unmarked grave in a Milan cemetery. He was expelled and sent to the Giosu Carducci School at Forlimpopoli, from which he was also expelled after assaulting yet another pupil with his penknife. This invigorated the crowd even more. Some historians go as far as claiming that this marked the start of World War II. It was the same square where, a year earlier, Mussolinis men had gunned down 15 anti-Fascists in a brutal execution. At least this way, Mussolini believed, he could live out his days in exile. No autopsy was carried out on Petacci. At the time, Mussolini is said to have remarked "for the blood of Piazzale Loreto, we shall pay dearly". Hitler, for one, heard the news on the radio and vowed to not have his corpse desecrated in the same fashion as Mussolinis. And by the mid-1930s, he began truly looking to assert his power beyond Italys borders. 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). On Oct. 29, 1922, King Victor Emmanuel III appointed Mussolini prime minister. Robert Citino, PhD, is the Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian in the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. The next morning, the partisans ordered the pair to stand against a brick wall near the entrance of Villa Belmonte, near Italys Lake Como and a firing squad shot the couple down in a barrage of gunfire. Please select which sections you would like to print: Alternate titles: Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini, Il Duce, Professor of Modern Italian History, Department of Italian, University College London, London, England. Joseph Stalins death in March 1953 ended his long and brutal reign as leader of the Soviet Union. 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. Mussolini was the first child of the local blacksmith. 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. In 1940, Mussolini took his country into World War II on the side of Nazi Germany but soon was met with military failure. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. [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. [75], Until 1947, Audisio's involvement was kept a secret, and in the earliest descriptions of the events (in a series of articles in the Communist Party newspaper L'Unit in late 1945) the person who carried out the shootings was only referred to as "Colonnello Valerio". His claims extended to all lands inhabited by Italians, for example in the French districts of Nice, Savoy and Corsica, or the South Tyrol in Austria. As panic spread in their ranks, OConnor now launched a frontal assault by 7th Armoured Division, the famed Desert Rats. Graziani's entire army was routed, sent into headlong retreat across the desert, pursued, caught, and destroyed at Beda Fomm in February 1941. They lived in two crowded rooms on the second floor of a small, decrepit palazzo; and, because Mussolinis father spent much of his time discussing politics in taverns and most of his money on his mistress, the meals that his three children ate were often meagre. He had one child with his first wife, Ida Dalser, but would eventually abandon them and seek to hide them from the public eye. After Lampredi's account was published, most, but not all, commentators were convinced of its veracity. Born July 29, 1883, in Dovia di Predappio, Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was intelligent and inquisitive from an early age. His body remained a potent symbol after his death, causing it to be either revered by supporters or treated with contempt and disrespect by opponents, and assuming a broader political significance. As for Benito Mussolinis death, that story wasnt over yet. by Adnan Nasser L April 3, 2023. [10][11][12] As the German forces retreated, the CLNAI declared a general uprising in the main northern cities. Italian fascism was a right-wing nationalist ideology that many, including Hitler, considered the big brother of Nazism. [81][82] Proponents of this theory have included historians such as Renzo De Felice[83] and Pierre Milza[84] and journalists including Peter Tompkins[82] and Luciano Garibaldi[it];[85] however, the theory has been dismissed by many.[81][82][83]. Fairly or unfairly, the Italian military has come to be synonymous with wartime ineptitude. [4], Slowly fighting their way up the Italian Peninsula, the Allies took Rome and then Florence in the summer of 1944 and later that year they began advancing into northern Italy. It worked, and Mussolini was appointed prime minister that same year. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. While earning a reputation as a political journalist and public speaker, he produced propaganda for a trade union, proposing a strike and advocating violence as a means of enforcing demands. After returning to Italy, he amassed a large following while working as an editor for the socialist magazine Avanti!. [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. While these blackshirt squads cropped up all over northern Italy setting fire to government buildings, killing opponents by the hundreds Mussolini himself called for a general workers strike in 1922, as well as a march on Rome. 2. Benito Mussolini served as the Prime Minister of Italy from 1922 to 1943, and his death marked the end of a brutal era in Italian history. From today onward we are all Italians and nothing but Italians, he once said. Despite Italy becoming the first ally of the Fhrer, this fact was downplayed when they surrendered to the Allies at the end of 1943. She fired five shots into his head at close range; one bullet for each son she lost in Mussolinis failed war. The convoy included a number of other Italian fascist leaders. Movie footage of what happened appears to confirm that to be the case. Your leisure time was overseen by a party organization called the Dopolavoro, and your children had no choice but to join the Young Fascists. He needed more than just fiery speeches and violent rhetoric. He worked all night in his office (and the office lights were cleverly left on so that Italians could imagine him hard at work at 4:00am). [CDATA[/* >
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