And that brings us back to where we started: that ill-fated gas station in the Piazzale Loreto. Among those who had him ousted and arrested was his own son-in-law Gian Galeazo Ciano. 945 Magazine Street, New Orleans, LA 70130 The intention was to prove the hypothesis that syphilis had caused insanity in him, but nothing resulted from the analysis;[58] no evidence of syphilis was found on his body either. Indeed, worry about Mussolini was one of the principal stumbling blocks that kept the British and French from taking a harder line against Hitler in the 1930s. They took the bodies to the local morgue, where a U.S. Army photographer captured the macabre remains of Mussolini and Petacci. 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. [78][79][80], There have been several claims that Britain's wartime covert operations unit, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), was responsible for Mussolini's death, and that it may have even been ordered by the British prime minister, Winston Churchill. [71] This remained the position until May 1957, when the newly appointed Prime Minister, Adone Zoli, agreed to Mussolini's re-interment at his place of birth in Predappio, in Romagna. At the age of 19, a short, pale young man with a powerful jaw and enormous, dark, piercing eyes, he left Italy for Switzerland with a nickel medallion of Karl Marx in his otherwise empty pockets. 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. At the Arcadia Conference, held in Washington, DC, from December 24, 1941 to January 14, 1942, the Western Allies agreed to a Germany First policy to govern global strategy, but the question where to engage Germany, and when, remained unsettled. They surrendered their liberty in return for the appearance of stability and order. Benito Mussolini, in full Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini, byname Il Duce (Italian: The Leader), (born July 29, 1883, Predappio, Italydied April 28, 1945, near Dongo), Italian prime minister (192243) and the first of 20th-century Europes fascist dictators. He resigned from Avanti! Like the other Great Powers, he also wanted to create a colonial empire in Africa, looking especially to the East African kingdom of Ethiopia. A detailed structure of fascist rule existed on paper, with a Grand Council to which the government was supposed to report and a Chamber of Deputies which made law, but in fact Italy was Mussolini's personal playground, and his own power nearly absolute. Then, they took to beating and kicking it. Here are 13 facts about one of the darkest political figures of the 20th century. Mussolini led Italy, alright: he led it straight into disaster. By 1925 Mussolini had dismantled Italys democratic institutions and assumed his role as dictator, adopting the title Il Duce (The Leader). This generally accepted version is often termed the "official version", nevertheless. She fired five shots into his head at close range; one bullet for each son she lost in Mussolinis failed war. The documentary went on to claim that the later shootings at the Villa Belmonte were subsequently staged as part of the "cover up". [35][40][41] Audisio then shot them at 4:10p.m. with a submachine gun borrowed from Moretti, his own gun having jammed. Italy soon used its military might to invade Greece, but the campaign was unsuccessful and unpopular at home. WebThe death of Benito Mussolini, the deposed Italian fascist dictator, occurred on 28 April 1945, in the final days of World War II in Europe, when he was summarily executed by an Italian partisan in the small village of Giulino di Mezzegra in northern Italy.The generally accepted version of events is that Mussolini was shot by Walter Audisio, a communist And Il Duce was also beginning to realize that Italys military was woefully under-classed. A maddened crowd howling epithets of hatred and derision. Yes, there were achievements of a sort. 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. At least twelve different individuals have, at various times, been claimed to be the killer. On 28 April 1945, Benito Mussolini died. [35][39][42] Backed by increasing numbers of supporters and strongarm paramilitary squads dressed in black, the Fascist leader calling himself Il Duce soon became known for fiery speeches fueled by his ever more violent political worldview. 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. [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. Word of Benito Mussolinis death spread quickly. [69] Over a period of sixteen weeks it was moved from place to place the hiding places included a villa, a monastery and a convent while the authorities searched for it. Then, in September, an Italian army of 130,000 men under Marshal Rodolfo Graziani invaded Egypt from the Italian colony of Libya. These lands, he said, were Italia irredentaunredeemed Italy.. It was the same square where, a year earlier, Mussolinis men had gunned down 15 anti-Fascists in a brutal execution. Enter Rachele Mussolini or Donna Rachele, as she became known to the world. 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. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). After this look at Benito Mussolinis death, read about Gabriele DAnnunzio, the Italian writer who inspired Mussolinis rise to fascism. To be sure, Italy paid a steep price for Mussolini. According to Bellini delle Stelle no other discussion or formalities concerning the decision to execute them took place.[44]. Fairly or unfairly, the Italian military has come to be synonymous with wartime ineptitude. Benito Mussolini was born to a poor family in Predappio, a town in northeastern Italy. Hed declared war against the rest of the world with only Germany to back him up. [20], In any event, Longo instructed a communist partisan of the General Command, Walter Audisio, to go immediately to Dongo to carry out the order. Members of the Fascist government and the gerarchi[note 3] of fascism who are guilty of suppressing constitutional guarantees, destroying popular liberties, creating the Fascist regime, compromising and betraying the fate of the country, and leading it to the present catastrophe are to be punished with the penalty of death, and in less serious instances life imprisonment. Angry crowds strung up his corpse, spat on it, stoned it, and otherwise desecrated it before finally laying it to rest. [81][88] Commenting on the RAI television documentary in 2004, Christopher Woods, researcher for the official history of the SOE, dismissed these claims saying that "it's just love of conspiracy-making". His father was a blacksmith. [63] In accordance with Hitler's prior instructions, his body was immediately burned with petrol, leaving virtually no remains.[64]. Benito Mussolini, pictured before his brutal death. It is unclear whether his objective was to attempt to cross the Swiss border or to go to the Valtellina; if it were the latter, he left the city without the thousands of supporters gathered in Milan intended to be his escort to the last stand in the Alps. [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 rattled sabers against his neighbors constantly, but he also did more than talk, greatly expanding the army, building up a gigantic fleet (the Regia Marina), and equipping a powerful air force (the Regia Aeronautica), hugely expensive projects for a land like Italy, which was almost totally devoid of the necessary raw materials. Indeed, the human corpses now looked like meat hanging in a slaughterhouse. The Frenchdisintegrating all over the mapstopped the Italians cold. 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. Mussolini and Petacci spent the rest of the night and most of the following day there.[27]. 2. [2], Shortly after the Armistice, Mussolini was rescued from prison in the Gran Sasso raid by German special forces, and Hitler installed him as leader of the Italian Social Republic, a German puppet state set up in northern Italy and based at the town of Sal near Lake Garda. Mussolini was the first child of the local 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. [44], In a book he wrote in the 1970s, Audisio argued that the decision to execute Mussolini taken at the meeting in Dongo of the partisan leaders on 28 April constituted a valid judgment of a tribunal under Article 15 of the CNLAI's ordinance on the Constitution of Courts of War. Members of the Fascist Party tortured anyone with opposing views, deported anyone with a non-Italian name, and maintained an iron grip in the north. The assassination marked a serious crisis for Mussolinis regime.After Matteottis sudden disappearance, he first denied having anything to do with it. Mussolinis road to Milan was a long one, filled with strange twists and turns. Your leisure time was overseen by a party organization called the Dopolavoro, and your children had no choice but to join the Young Fascists. 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. Allegedly, it was part of a "cover up" to retrieve "secret agreements" and compromising correspondence between the two men, which Mussolini was carrying when he was captured by partisans. The Italian masses greeted Mussolini's death without regret. [50][51] The choice of location was deliberate. Site of execution: entrance to the Villa Belmonte. "John" took me outside and told me his orders were to eliminate them both, because Petacci knew many things. The Italians convinced the West that their former pact with the Nazis was water under the bridge. Mussolini and Petacci were executed the following afternoon, two days before Adolf Hitler's suicide. Fascist Italy was, or at least claimed to be, a totalitarian society, in which the state had complete control over the lives of its citizens. A group of local communist partisans led by Pier Luigi Bellini delle Stelle. After the Allies invaded North Africa in late 1942, war came to Italys doorstep. The truth is now unmistakably clear. But when considering a man of Benito Mussolinis character type, who regularly consumed approximately 98% of the oxygen in the room in order to fuel his ego and oratory style, it was an absolute necessity. Another few miles and Mussolini would have been free. and was expelled from the Socialist Party. [28] The CLNAI subsequently announced, on the day after his death, that Mussolini had been executed on its orders. Hegel, Karl Kautsky, and Georges Sorel, picking out what appealed to him and discarding the rest, forming no coherent political philosophy of his own yet impressing his companions as a potential revolutionary of uncommon personality and striking presence. Wikimedia CommonsA macabre autopsy photo of Benito Mussolini and his mistress in a Milan morgue. Benito Mussolini took control of Italy thanks to the pen just as much as the sword. It was even forbidden to publish a picture of him smiling or to print the word DUCE in anything but uppercase letters. Movie footage of what happened appears to confirm that to be the case. The next month, in November 1940, the Italian fleet was caught at anchor at Taranto by British torpedo bombers. However, just because Mussolinis death was now over, doesnt mean the story was. Mussolini had developed a cult-like following and instant recognizability over the past 25 years due to his face being plastered all over propaganda nationwide and now it had come back to haunt him. He referred to the Mediterranean Sea, as the Romans had, as Mare Nostrumour sea. He reminded Italians of their imperial destiny and revived the old stiff-armed Roman salute. Inside Benito Mussolinis Death And His Panicked Final Hours. Five years after the Ethiopian invasion, Benito Mussolini watched from the sidelines as Hitler invaded France. [68], After his death and the display of his corpse in Milan, Mussolini was buried in an unmarked grave in the Musocco cemetery, to the north of the city. Also Known As: Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini. The death of Benito Mussolini in Lombardy. Consequenses For the Mussolini Regime. Bellini delle Stelle said he challenged Audisio as to why Petacci should be executed. The tribunal condemned Mussolini and Petacci to death. Wikimedia CommonsAdolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in Munich, Germany, circa June 1940. Cursing. Consider this quick summary. They made the Germans hand over all the Italians in exchange for allowing the Germans to proceed. This was taken after the mob desecrated their bodies. [72], The anniversary of Mussolini's death on 28 April has become one of three dates neo-fascist supporters mark with major rallies. 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. Wikimedia CommonsBenito Mussolini, pictured before his brutal death. The military had cut out a portion of his brain to test for syphilis. Fast Facts: Benito Mussolini. In another eight months, the people of Milan would get their revenge on Mussolini in an act that was equally as savage. We cant see! [51], Their bodies were left in a heap, and by 9:00a.m. a considerable crowd had gathered. In fact, he first set out to be a teacher but soon decided that career wasnt for him. So, how did Mussolini die? News photos regularly showed him in a position of command, riding on horseback, flying an airplane, or driving a high-performance race car. Benito Mussolini lies dead in Milans Piazza Loroto with his mistress, Clara Petacci. /*--> Whatever you call him, Mussolini cut an incredible public figure in the 1930s: strutting on the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia in comic opera style in front of 100,000s of people chanting Duce! In any event, on 27 April, he joined a Luftwaffe column travelling in convoy and retreating northwards to Germany.[22]. If they couldn't, they submitted to binding government arbitration. 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