[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. 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. Italy fared poorly from the outset, with ignominious defeats in North Africa, Greece, and the Soviet Union. Now, Mussolini was in deep. We want this, even though we think an execution platoon is too much of an honour for this man. [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. Eventually, in 1957, his remains were allowed to be interred in the Mussolini family crypt in his home town of Predappio. Benito Mussolini, second from left, hanging upside-down in Milans public square. From today onward we are all Italians and nothing but Italians, he once said. Ia menjabat sebagai Perdana Menteri Italia pada periode 1922-1943 dan bersahabat dengan Adolf Hitler selama Perang Dunia II untuk menopang kepemimpinannya. [20][75] At least 12 different individuals have been identified at various times as being responsible for carrying out the shooting. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. WebThe death of Benito Mussolini on April 28, 1945 was one of those latter occasions. When the Allies touched down in Sicily in 1943, Mussolinis own government arrested him. [30], Although several conflicting versions and theories of how Mussolini and Petacci died were put forward after the war, the account of Walter Audisio, or at least its essential components, remains the most credible and is sometimes referred to in Italy as the "official" version. Known For: Mussolini was a fascist dictator who ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943. 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. Audisio presented Mussolini as acting in a cowardly manner immediately prior to his death whereas Lampredi did not. No autopsy was carried out on Petacci. [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. Modern mechanized armies need a robust logistics chain to provide fuel, ammunition, and other sinews of war to sustain combat operations. While working for various labour organizations in Switzerland, Benito Mussolini made a name for himself as a charismatic personality and a consummate rhetorician. In 1966, the U.S. military turned over a slice of Mussolinis brain to his family. By 1945, Germany was [35][36] Audisio used the nom de guerre of "Colonnello Valerio" during his mission. 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. After the defeat of the Italian Army in Russia, Mussolini was removed as head of state and imprisoned. Keystone/Getty ImagesBenito Mussolini lies dead in Milans Piazza Loroto with his mistress, Clara Petacci. By 1925 Mussolini had dismantled Italys democratic institutions and assumed his role as dictator, adopting the title Il Duce (The Leader). In his 20s, he ran a series of newspapers that amounted to propaganda sheets for his increasingly extreme political views. [26], Fighting was still going on in the area around Dongo. Initially, Mussolini was buried in an unmarked grave but, in 1946, his body was dug up and stolen by fascist supporters. Additionally, it was better placed for an escape to the Swiss border. On Easter Sunday 1946, Mussolini's body was located and dug up by a young fascist, Domenico Leccisi, and two friends. 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. The documentary included an interview with Dorina Mazzola who said that her mother had seen the shooting. The opposition then kept him locked away in a remote hotel in the mountains of Abruzzi. 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. The generally accepted version of events is that Mussolini was shot by Walter Audisio, a communist partisan. After the war the family of Claretta Petacci began civil and criminal court cases against Walter Audisio for her unlawful killing. These have included Luigi Longo and Sandro Pertini who subsequently became general secretary of the Italian Communist Party and President of Italy respectively. After a lengthy legal process, an investigating judge eventually closed the case in 1967 and acquitted Audisio of murder and embezzlement on the ground that the actions complained of occurred as an act of war against the Germans and the fascists during a period of enemy occupation. Even worse, Great Britain now sent forces to Greece to oppose him. The Republic was also a shrinking asset, as the grinding Allied march northwards steadily reduced its influence and the territory it controlled. In 1940, Mussolini took his country into World War II on the side of Nazi Germany but soon was met with military failure. At one time, he had been one of the most celebrated statesmen in the world. His father was a blacksmith. Order was restored to Italian economic life, and old days of strikes and factory occupations were ended. On 27 April 1945, a group of local communist partisans attacked the convoy in which Mussolini and Petacci were travelling, near the village of Dongo on the north western shore of Lake Como and forced it to halt. Lets take a look at the circumstances that led to his demise. British war plans in the 1930s, in fact, flirted with abandoning the entire Mediterranean to Mussolini in the event of a conflict, so worried were the British that they could not resist his attacks. The convoy included a number of other Italian fascist leaders. On 25 April he fled Milan, where he had been based, and headed towards the Swiss border. 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. [29] Longo subsequently gave a different story: he said that when he and Fermo Solari[it], a member of the Action Party (which was part of the CLNAI), heard the news of Mussolini's capture they immediately agreed that he should be summarily executed and Longo gave the order for it to be carried out. [82], They took them out of the house and, at the corner of a nearby lane they were stood against a fence and shot. Enter Rachele Mussolini or Donna Rachele, as she became known to the world. It was very barbarous. ", "Mussolini's brain 'stolen for sale on eBay', Fabrizio Ciano, 3rd Count of Cortellazzo and Buccari, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Death_of_Benito_Mussolini&oldid=1149485213, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles containing Italian-language text, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 12 April 2023, at 14:55. [57] Samples of Mussolini's brain were taken and sent to the United States for analysis. The documentary went on to claim that the later shootings at the Villa Belmonte were subsequently staged as part of the "cover up". WebMussolini - Key takeaways. Mussolini named the fasci di combattimentoparamilitary groups which were largely under his control and from which his movement derived its own name, fascismoafter the Latin word fasces, which was the bundle of wooden sticks topped with an axe-head that ancient Roman authority figures attendants would carry to distinguish their rank. These lands, he said, were Italia irredentaunredeemed Italy.. [56], On 30 April, an autopsy was carried out on Mussolini at the Institute of Legal Medicine in Milan. Accounts vary as to how he died: Some say he was killed with coma-inducing injections, others say it was from electric shock treatments. He once more became a schoolmaster, this time in the Venetian Alps, north of Udine, where he lived, so he confessed, a life of moral deterioration. But soon tiring of so wasteful a life, he returned to trade-union work, to journalism, and to extreme politics, which led yet again to arrest and imprisonment. In another eight months, the people of Milan would get their revenge on Mussolini in an act that was equally as savage. And like his mother, he was arrested and locked away in a mental hospital, where he died in July 1942 at the age of 27. Benito Mussolinis fascist regime was often depicted as inept and ridiculed for its comic appearances. For all these reasons it was seen as significant that he largely confirmed Audisio's account. He would deserve to be killed like a mangy dog.[28]. [6] Although each of these accounts vary in detail, they are consistent on the main facts. Others have claimed that Mussolini (or Mussolini and Petacci together) committed suicide with cyanide capsules.[92]. Even in death, his mouth couldnt be shut. On April 25, 1945, Benito Mussolini agreed to meet with anti-Fascist partisans in the palace of Milan. [23], The partisans arrested Mussolini and took him to Dongo, where he spent part of the night in the local barracks. 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. Differing accounts exist of who made the decision that Mussolini should be summarily executed. Word of Benito Mussolinis death spread quickly. They took the bodies to the local morgue, where a U.S. Army photographer captured the macabre remains of Mussolini and Petacci. 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. Mussolini sold the invasion to the Italian people as a method to get jobs to Fascists dug up Il Duces body on Easter Sunday of 1946. Mussolini then took matters into his own hands. I read utter exhaustion, but not fear Mussolini seemed completely lacking in will, spiritually dead. [74], Outside of Italy, Audisio's version of how Mussolini was executed has largely been accepted and is uncontroversial. However, to reflect this lack of governmental or judicial authority, sources on the subject have used the term with quotation marks. [46][note 4], During his dictatorship, representations of Mussolini's bodyfor example pictures of him engaged in physical labour either bare-chested or half-nakedformed a central part of fascist propaganda. Parents: Alessandro Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. In late 1914, with World War I newly underway, he founded a newspaper called The People of Italy. Duce! He built up an elaborate cult of personality around himself. Site of execution: entrance to the Villa Belmonte. 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. A restless child, Mussolini was disobedient, unruly, and aggressive. Like the other Great Powers, he also wanted to create a colonial empire in Africa, looking especially to the East African kingdom of Ethiopia. See. Because the teachers at the village school could not control him, he was sent to board with the strict Salesian order at Faenza, where he proved himself more troublesome than ever, stabbing a fellow pupil with a penknife and attacking one of the Salesians who had attempted to beat him. This reign of terror came to a head on Aug. 13, 1944. What were Benito Mussolinis political beliefs? Then came actual invasion, of Sicily in July 1943 and the Italian mainland in September. 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 story might well have ended here, but in September 1943 the Germans staged a daring commando raid on Mussolinis prisonactually the Hotel Campo Imperatore on the Gran Sasso massif. WebIn 1924 Mussolinis henchmen kidnapped and murdered the Socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti, who had become one of fascisms most effective critics in parliament. Higher! 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. What was Benito Mussolinis personal life like? For the next few months, according to his own account, he lived from day to day, jumping from job to job. Repeatedly, he called for a day of vengeance. There were differences in Lampredi's account and that of Audisio. [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. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. The fascist dictatorship in Italy differed from the one in Nazi Germany or Stalins Russia. Mussolini went to fight in the war. Though he tried to flee the country dressed as a German officer, Mussolini was killed, desecrated, and strung up at a gas station in Milan. Italian fascism was a right-wing nationalist ideology that many, including Hitler, considered the big brother of Nazism. William DeLong is a freelance wordsmith. In fact, he first set out to be a teacher but soon decided that career wasnt for him. To be sure, Italy paid a steep price for Mussolini. He was the youngest to ever hold the office and now had a wider audience for his speeches, policies, and worldview than ever before. She also said that she herself had heard the shots and that she "looked at the clock, it was almost 11". Mussolinis road to Milan was a long one, filled with strange twists and turns. By the autumn of 1943, he was reduced to being the leader of a German puppet state in northern Italy and was faced with the Allied advance from the south and an increasingly violent internal conflict with the partisans. Keystone/Getty ImagesBenito Mussolini lies dead in Milans Piazza Loroto with his mistress, Clara Petacci too... 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