Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini. Italian military and politician. Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Italy with all powers from 1922 to 1943 , when he was deposed and briefly imprisoned. He escaped with the help of Nazi Germany , and received the President of the Republic Social Italian from September of 1943 until he was overthrown in 1945 , and subsequent death by execution.
Mussolini, -also known as the Duce- went from being number 3 in the ranks of the Italian Socialist Party and directing his Avanti! Newspaper, to promoting Fascism within Italy. During his tenure, he established a regime whose characteristics were nationalism, militarism, and the fight against liberalism and against communism, combined with strict censorship and state propaganda. Mussolini became a close ally of the German chancellor Adolfo Hitler, leader of Nazism, whom he had influenced. Under his government, Italy entered World War II in June of 1940, as an ally of Nazi Germany. Three years later, the allies invaded the Kingdom of Italy and occupied most of the south of the country. In April 1945 , he tried to escape to Switzerland , but was captured and shot, near Lake Como, by Communist partisans. His body was taken to Milan where he was outraged.
Summary
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- 1 Biography
- 1 Early years
- 2 Political trajectory
- 3 World War I
- 4 Fascism
- 5 Death
- 2 Filmography
- 3 See also
- 4 Sources
Biography
Early years
He was born in Dovia di Predappio , in the province of Forlì , Emilia Romagna region on July 29 , 1883 . Her father, Alessandro, was a blacksmith; Her mother, Rosa Maltoni, was a teacher who firmly believed in the importance of education. The name “Benito Amilcare Andrea” was decided by his father, who was a socialist of the extreme anarchist wing, since he wanted to pay tribute to the memory of Benito Juárez , reformist hero and former president of Mexico , of Amilcare Cipriani , Italian and socialist patriot, and Andrea Costa , the first socialist deputy elected in the Italian parliament.
He received basic education at Dovia and then at Predappio (from 1889 to 1891 ). He then entered the Salesian school in Faenza but was expelled due to a fight with a partner. He continued his studies at school Carducci Forlimpopoli where obtained in September of 1898 the technical license inferior. From October of that year, due to a fight he had with another classmate, he was forced to attend as an external student (until 1901 ).
Political trajectory
In Forlimpopoli, by paternal influence, Mussolini approaches militant socialism and in 1900 he joined the Italian Socialist Party . Meanwhile, he finishes his studies and obtains the Maturità (baccalaureate degree). The 13 of February of 1902 he was appointed deputy for elementary school Pieve Saliceto , division of Gualtieri Emilia.
The 9 of July of 1902 , after concluding the scholastic year, moved to Lausanne where he enrolled in the union bricklayers and laborers. Then he was appointed secretary and published his first article in the newspaper “L’Avvenire del lavoratore”.
First World War
When Italy entered the First World War alongside the Entente, Mussolini expressed his full support for the Italian war effort and volunteered in the army; Thus, in August of 1915 he was assigned to the 11th Division and September 2 went to the front. He wrote a war diary where he narrates his life in the trenches and sees himself as the charismatic hero of a national, warlike, socially hierarchical, and obedient community.
In March of the following year Mussolini was promoted out of war merit. In his military report it reads: “Exemplary activity, battling, serenity of mind, does not take into account the discouragements, jealous, regular in the fulfillment of the duty, first in any company that requires work and courage”. On 23 February as as 1917 was wounded in a mortar exploding during an exercise. He was immediately decommissioned. Although some have maintained that the reason for his discharge was an infectious disease, the presence of such pathologies has not been verified with the data that emerged from the autopsy that was performed. In this year, and as it has been discovered, he worked as a spy for the British secret services
Upon returning from the front, he published in “Il Popolo d’Italia” the article Trincerocrazia, where he claimed for the Italian soldiers who had fought in the trenches the right to rule Italy after the war.
Fascism
Later, he wanted to capitalize on the feeling of dissatisfaction that seized Italian society after the end of the war, because Italy had obtained very little territorial and economic advantages in the Treaty of Versailles , despite the great promises of France and Great Britain. with which the Italian participation in the contest had been stimulated. That discontent manifested itself in continuous strikes and protests by workers and peasants who were joined by returned veterans of the war front, before which Mussolini began by calling for the fight against the left-wing parties, whom he pointed out as guilty of the disaster. Social. For this Mussolini created in Milanthe 9 of October of 1919 the “Fasci Italiani di Combattimento” agitation armed groups that constituted the initial germ of the future Party National Facist in 1920 . On November 18, he was arrested again for illegal possession of weapons and explosives but was released thanks to the intervention of liberal senator Luigi Albertini .
24 and 25 of maypole of 1920 Mussolini participated in the second Congress of the Fasci di Combattimento, held at the Teatro Lirico in Milan . In November , with the article Rapallo, he commented favorably on the Italian-Yugoslav treaty signed by Giovanni Giolitti by which the city of Fiume is free.
The 28 of March of 1921 Mussolini marches in Milan with its columns of black shirts on the occasion of the funeral of the victims of the anarchical terrorism Teatro Diana. By showing himself as an enemy of socialists and communists, fascism managed to win the favor of large landowners and industrialists and Mussolini managed to be elected deputy in the elections of May 1921, also thanks to the support of Giolitti (already located in the “national anti-socialist blocs” ).
Death
The decision to execute Mussolini was made in the course of a few hours, in a context in which it was very difficult for the partisans to communicate with Rome and immediately convene the National Liberation Committee (CLN). The partisans who had conducted the capture operation only managed to inform the Milan command , which immediately sent a group of partisans and some political emissaries such as Aldo Lampredi , Pietro Vergani and the communist militant Walter Audisio , known as “Colonel Valerio”, the latter came with instructions to give Mussolini a violent death.
According to later versions that became official, Clara Petacci was authorized to meet Mussolini at Dongo. They were awakened, driven in a vehicle through winding curves near Lake Como and dropped off at the gates of a country villa in Giulino di Mezzegra . Once they got out of the vehicles, Audisio read a short sentence on behalf of the Italian people and then raised his machine gun to kill Mussolini, but her lover Clara Petacci tried to intervene and Audisio ordered her to withdraw. The machine gun jammed and Audisio immediately pulled out his pistol, but again Petacci came between the executor and his victim. The pistol did not work and Audisio, in an act of nervousness, asked another of his companions for another machine gun, this time a blast that hit Clara Petacci escaped from the gun and killed her at that moment, the same blast hit Mussolini who fell to the dying ground and was killed by a partisan with an accurate shot to the heart.
The execution was carried out on April 28 , 1945 ; according to the official version, Mussolini was shot, together with Clara Petacci, in Giulino di Mezzegra, near Dongo. The almost secret and expeditious method of execution was decided by the Allies’ alleged intention to capture Mussolini alive and prosecute him before an international tribunal (with the possibility that he would be sentenced to a lesser sentence or acquitted), while many partisans demanded for the Contrary to the death penalty being applied to the Duce as had been decreed by the Italian CLN.
The bodies were transferred in the afternoon of April 28 in a truck to Milan, on the way no one was allowed to approach the bodies and they were left on the 29th in the Loreto Squareof that city. There they were subjected to all kinds of outrages by the crowd. The police service, made up of partisans and firefighters, then hung the bodies upside down at a gas station in the plaza. This was done to publicly confirm his death, and as a gesture of humiliation and partisan revenge, since in that same place the bodies of some partisans had been hung months before. Mussolini’s [[corpse] was beaten to such an extent that his face was almost unrecognizable, much less happened with Petacci. Still dead, they were cruelly mocked and were even placed next to each other to be photographed in the morgue. Hours later, local CLN leaders decided to cease the exhibition and remove the bodies,
Shortly after the end of the war, Mussolini’s remains were stolen from the Musocco cemetery by a group of fascists calling themselves “SAM-Squadre d’Azione Mussolini” and captained by Domenico Leccisi. Mussolini’s body was missing for several months. After restitution to the family, his body was transferred to the Predappio chapel.
On the same April 29, Adolfo Hitler learned in detail what had happened to Mussolini and his lover and made arrangements so that the same did not happen to his body after his death, consequently he ordered that his body and that of Eva Braun be subsequently burned.
