Italian Dictator

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (1883 - 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. Known as He was Prime Minister of Italy from the coup d'état in 1922 until his deposition in 1943, and il Duce ("Leader") of Italian Fascism from 1919 until his execution in 1945.

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Mussolini was originally a socialist politician and a journalist at the Avanti! newspaper. In 1912, he became a member of the National Directorate of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), but was expelled from the PSI for advocating military intervention in World War I. He served in the Royal Italian Army during the war until he was wounded and discharged in 1917.

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Mussolini denounced the PSI and founded the fascist movement which came to oppose social equality and class conflict, instead advocating "revolutionary nationalism" transcending class lines.

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In 1922 Mussolini was appointed prime minister by King Victor Emmanuel III, the youngest to hold the office up to that time. After removing all political opposition through his secret police and outlawing labour strikes, Mussolini and his followers consolidated power through a series of laws that transformed the nation into a one party dictatorship. Within five years, Mussolini had established dictatorial authority by both legal and illegal means and aspired to create a totalitarian state. In 1929, Mussolini signed the Lateran Treaty with the Vatican, ending decades of struggle between the Italian state and the Papacy, and recognized the independence of Vatican City.

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Mussolini's foreign policy aimed to expand the sphere of influence of Italian fascism. In 1923, he forcibly colonised Libya and ordered the bombing of Corfu in retaliation for the murder of an Italian general. In 1936, Mussolini formed Italian East Africa (AOI) by merging Eritrea, Somalia and Ethiopia.

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In 1939, Italian forces occupied Albania. Between 1936 and 1939, Mussolini ordered the successful Italian military intervention in Spain in favour of General Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War.

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Mussolini's Italy initially tried to avoid the outbreak of World War 2 and signed the Munich Agreement. When Germany invaded Poland, resulting in declarations of war by France and the UK, Mussolini decided to enter the war on the Axis side. Despite initial success, the subsequent Axis collapse on multiple fronts and eventual Allied invasion of Sicily made Mussolini lose the support of the population and members of the Fascist Party. As a consequence, on 25th July 1943, the Grand Council of Fascism passed a motion of no confidence in Mussolini; later that day King Victor Emmanuel III dismissed him as head of government and had him placed in custody, appointing Pietro Badoglio to succeed him as Prime Minister.

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When Italy accepted the terms of secret peace talks with the Allies, Hitler ordered German forces into Italy, which resulted in two Italian nations, one occupied by Germans. On the 12th September 1943 Mussolini was rescued from captivity in the Gran Sasso raid by German paratroopers and Waffen-SS commandos led by Major Otto-Harald Mors. Hitler, after meeting with the rescued former dictator, then put Mussolini in charge of a puppet regime in northern Italy, the Italian Social Republic (Italian: Repubblica Sociale Italiana, RSI), informally known as the Salò Republic, causing a civil war.

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In late April 1945, in the wake of near total defeat, Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci attempted to flee to Switzerland, but both were captured by Italian communist partisans and summarily executed by firing squad on 28th April 1945 near Lake Como. The bodies of Mussolini and his mistress were then taken to Milan, where they were hung upside down at a service station to publicly confirm their demise.

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Mussolini had "proclaimed himself to be an atheist and several times tried to shock an audience by calling on God to strike him dead." He believed that science had proven there was no god, and that the historical Jesus was ignorant and mad. He considered religion a disease of the psyche, and accused Christianity of promoting resignation and cowardice.

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Mussolini was also superstitious; after hearing of the curse of the Pharaohs, he ordered the immediate removal from the Prime

Ministers Residence of an Egyptian mummy he had accepted as a gift!

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Source: Wikipedia.org

Photo: Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R99301 • Licensed for reuse under CC BY-SA 3.0

Mussolini with Hitler on 25 October 1936, when the axis between Italy and Germany was declared.