[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. Word of Benito Mussolinis death spread quickly. At other times, howeverand we have to be honest about thisit can make us feel contented, perhaps even happy. Some journalists, politicians and historians, doubting the veracity of Audisio's account, have advanced a wide variety of theories and speculation as to how Mussolini died and who was responsible. During World War I, he renounced socialism and adopted fascism. When he returned to Italy in 1904, even the Roman newspapers had started to mention his name. Togliatti said he had done so by a radio message on 26 April 1945 with the words: Only one thing is needed to decide that they [Mussolini and the other fascist leaders] must pay with their lives: the question of their identity. Fearing another rescue attempt of Mussolini by the Nazis, partisans whisked Mussolini and Petacci away to a remote farmhouse. German forces initially decided there would be no rescue before soon changing their minds. By April 1945 as Mussolini sensed the defeat of the Germans, he planned to escape to Switzerland with his mistress. In fact, he first set out to be a teacher but soon decided that career wasnt for him. 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. Life in Mussolinis Italy. Italy fared poorly from the outset, with ignominious defeats in North Africa, Greece, and the Soviet Union. As a post-script, in 1966 Mussolini's brain tissue samples, taken at the autopsy, were returned to his widow by, Newspaper articles, journals and websites, John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories, "Historic figures: Benito Mussolini (18831945)", "Urbano Lazzaro, The partisan who arrested Mussolini", "Mussolini killed 'on Churchill's orders by British agents', "Winston Churchill 'ordered assassination of Mussolini to protect compromising letters', "Did the Brutal Death of Mussolini Contribute to Hitler's Suicide? Faces of European History: Fact or Fiction? Zoli, who also came from Predappio and knew Mussolini's widow, Rachele, was reliant on the far right to support him in Parliament. Furthermore, he had had a reputation for being reliable and trustworthy; he was also known to have disliked Audisio personally. Mussolini had formed an alliance with Hitler in 1939, and this ultimately brought about his downfall. But arresting Il Duce was no longer a viable course of action. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. All of those propaganda posters and photos had now truly come back to haunt him. info@nationalww2museum.org Despite Italy becoming the first ally of the Fhrer, this fact was downplayed when they surrendered to the Allies at the end of 1943. There were differences in Lampredi's account and that of Audisio. [82], They took them out of the house and, at the corner of a nearby lane they were stood against a fence and shot. The Italian masses greeted Mussolini's death without regret. Growing closeness to Hitler was a kind of fatal embrace for Mussolini. His tomb has become a place of pilgrimage for neo-fascists and the anniversary of his death is marked by neo-fascist rallies. [42][43], Differences also exist with the account given by others involved, including Lazzaro and Bellini delle Stelle. Others have claimed that Mussolini (or Mussolini and Petacci together) committed suicide with cyanide capsules.[92]. 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. The Allies had re-taken northern Africa away from Italy and Sicily was now in Allied hands as they prepared to invade Italy itself. Anxious that he would lose claim to conquered European lands as Hitler advanced, Mussolini entered the war in 1940. [23] Lazzaro later said that: His face was like wax and his stare glassy, but somehow blind. People began hurling rotten vegetables at the dictators corpse. In 1940, Mussolini took his country into World War II on the side of Nazi Germany but soon was met with military failure. Early life Then, in September, an Italian army of 130,000 men under Marshal Rodolfo Graziani invaded Egypt from the Italian colony of Libya. Fascists dug up Il Duces body on Easter Sunday of 1946. A woman stepping forward and pumping five bullets into his bodyfor my five dead sons, she said. Now that steel has met steel, one single cry comes from our heartsViva lItalia! Benito Mussolini was the creator of fascism. 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. The Pact committed Italy and Germany to provide military and economic support in event of war. The south was in ruins as Allied troops advanced. The tomb has become a neo-fascist place of pilgrimage. It was during this period, and after, that the nationalist and anti-Bolshevik strands of thought that would characterize his later politics began to emerge. ]]>*/ Mussolini is on it, somewhere near the top, rivaled , perhaps, only by Hitler. KOMPAS.com - Benito Mussolini adalah seorang politisi yang dikenal sebagai diktator fasis Italia antara 1925-1945. Audisio replied that she had been Mussolini's adviser, had inspired his policies and was "just as responsible as he is". MUSSOLINI WAS EXPELLED FROM SCHOOL. See. At 3:00 am, the corpses were dumped on the ground in the old Piazzale Loreto. Four months later it was recovered by the authorities who then kept it hidden for the next eleven years. The former led to Mussolinis overthrow and imprisonment; the latter to the surrender of Italy, even though German troops soon occupied the entire country and carried on the fight against the Allies from Italian soil. Poorly trained and outfitted, these men would likely have lost a battle with Italys army. Mussolini sold the invasion to the Italian people as a method to get jobs to The two were executed in 1943 by Italian partisans as they tried to escape to Switzerland, and their bodies were hung upside down in Milan. After returning to Italy, he amassed a large following while working as an editor for the socialist magazine Avanti!. 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 According to Lonati, he and "John" went to the De Maria farmhouse in the morning of 28 April and killed Mussolini and Petacci at about 11:00a.m.[82][87] In 2004, the Italian state television channel, RAI, broadcast a documentary, co-produced by Tompkins, in which the theory was put forward. He had one child with his first wife, Ida Dalser, but would eventually abandon them and seek to hide them from the public eye. People in Hitlers inner circle reported that he said, This will never happen to me.. General William H. Simpson, commander of Ninth Army, has received little attention in the historiography of World War II. At one time, he had been one of the most celebrated statesmen in the world. The Matteotti crisis shook Mussolini, but he managed to maintain his hold on power. In the aftermath of the Battle of Kasserine Pass, US II Corps passed to the command of General Harold Alexanders 18th Army Group. They were then hung upside down from a metal girder above a service station on the square. [6], Before long, it was noted that there were discrepancies between Audisio's original story published in L'Unit, subsequent versions that he provided and the versions of events provided by others. But of course, almost all of this was mythologicalunreal! This reign of terror came to a head on Aug. 13, 1944. Benito Mussolini was Europes first 20th-century fascist dictator, and the word fascism comes from the far-right movement he led in Italy. That still wasnt enough. The opposition then kept him locked away in a remote hotel in the mountains of Abruzzi. His father was a blacksmith. According to the latter, when he met Audisio in Dongo, Audisio asked for a list of the fascist prisoners that had been captured the previous day and marked Mussolini's and Petacci's names for execution. [35][36] Audisio used the nom de guerre of "Colonnello Valerio" during his mission. 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. 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. But arresting Il Duce was no longer a viable course of action. The campaign in North Africa began with a daring Anglo-American commando raid code-named Operation RESERVIST. Forces loyal to the Italian king arrested Mussolini and imprisoned him. Lets take a look at the circumstances that led to his demise. William DeLong is a freelance wordsmith. The documentary went on to claim that the later shootings at the Villa Belmonte were subsequently staged as part of the "cover up". WebDuring the Second World War, there was one man who was idolised and best friends with Adolf Hitler. 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. On Easter Sunday 1946, Mussolini's body was located and dug up by a young fascist, Domenico Leccisi, and two friends. "John" took me outside and told me his orders were to eliminate them both, because Petacci knew many things. A Tale of Two Lebanons: Stuck Between Hezbollah and a Republic. [35][40][41] Audisio then shot them at 4:10p.m. with a submachine gun borrowed from Moretti, his own gun having jammed. [6] Although each of these accounts vary in detail, they are consistent on the main facts. The man who had once strutted across the world stage now dangling by his heels, next to his mistress. [24][25] In all, over fifty fascist leaders and their families were found in the convoy and arrested by the partisans. But how exactly did Mussolini die? In his initial overtures into politics, Mussolinis beliefs took after his fathers: he spent time organizing with trade unions and writing for socialist publications in both Switzerland and Italy. 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. Mussolini then took matters into his own hands. Benito Mussolini was the fascist leader of Italy, appointed as prime minister after his march on Rome in 1922. The Allied victory against the Axis was a long journeyone that actually took much longer than the war itself. 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. In June 1940, with German armies running riot all over Europe, the Duce decided to strike. 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. Learn More. [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. Mussolini abandoning the Prefecture in Milan on 25 April 1945 (believed to be the last photograph of him alive). The illusions of the new Roman Empire and Mussolinis ambition of creating a state that would encircle the Mediterranean, calling it Mare Nostrum, were shattered when poorly equipped and led Italian army started suffering defeat after defeat He was the youngest to ever hold the office and now had a wider audience for his speeches, policies, and worldview than ever before. Mussolinis booking file following his arrest by the police on 19 June 1903, Bern, Switzerland. The generally accepted version of events is that Mussolini was shot by Walter Audisio, a communist partisan. The calibres of the bullets were not identified. Mussolini was laid to rest in a large stone sarcophagus. American razor blades, it was said, were inadequate to cut his tough beard. They took the bodies to the local morgue, where a U.S. Army photographer captured the macabre remains of Mussolini and Petacci. Even in death, his mouth couldnt be shut. Wikimedia CommonsBenito Mussolini, pictured before his brutal death. 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. For some time after his return little was heard of him. Audisio himself did not speak publicly about it until he published his account in a series of five articles in L'Unit later that month (and repeated in a book that Audisio later wrote which was published in 1975, two years after his death). 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. No!. In the end, the once-free citizen now had no choice but to follow the regimes slogan: Credere, Obbedire, CombattereBelieve, obey, fight to defend the state!, It was in the realm of foreign policy that Mussolini eventually met his doom. She also said that she herself had heard the shots and that she "looked at the clock, it was almost 11". Life in Mussolinis Italy was somewhat different from other dictatorships. He would have five childrenthree boys and two girlsby another wife, Rachele Guidi. In fact, Mussolinis decision to join Hitlers war led Italy into an unprecedented series of military disasters. But the location wasnt a secret for too long. 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. Benito Mussolini, pictured before his brutal death. Fearing that Mussolini and Petacci might be rescued by fascist supporters, the partisans drove them, in the middle of the night, to a nearby farm of a peasant family named De Maria; they believed this would be a safe place to hold them. 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. A group of local communist partisans led by Pier Luigi Bellini delle Stelle. [72], The anniversary of Mussolini's death on 28 April has become one of three dates neo-fascist supporters mark with major rallies. [55], At about 2:00p.m. on 29 April, the recently arrived American military authorities ordered that the bodies be taken down and delivered to the city morgue for autopsies to be carried out. Mussolinis politics took a turn to the right midway through World War I, when he became a proponent for the war effort. [5], On 18 April 1945, Mussolini left Gargnano, a village near Sal where he had been residing, and moved, with his entire government, to Milan and based himself in the city's prefecture. 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. No autopsy was carried out on Petacci. [13] It also issued a decree establishing popular courts, which included in its provisions what, in practice, would constitute a death sentence for Mussolini:[14]. The Duce, it was said, could recite cantos of Dante from memory. [75], Audisio was first named in a series of articles in the newspaper Il Tempo in March 1947 and the Communist Party subsequently confirmed Audisio's involvement. On 28 April 1945, Benito Mussolini died. [35][39][42] Finally, in December, a British force under General Richard OConnor attacked Graziani at Sidi Barrani. From that moment onward, partisans called this place the Square of the Fifteen Martyrs.. Spitting on the corpses. And by the mid-1930s, he began truly looking to assert his power beyond Italys borders. Claras eyes stared blankly into the distance. 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. Benito Mussolinis reaction to Brunos death Family close to Benito Mussolini reported that the dictator was heartbroken at the loss of his second son. Upon Mussolinis death, the final words he uttered were No! The death of Benito Mussolini on April 28, 1945 was characterized A fitting end to a wretched life, by The New York Times. No more posturing now: this was the real thing, when all that hard work and money he had lavished on the Italian military would bear fruit and show the world that he had created a new kind of Italian: a warrior as of old. In Audisio's account, Mussolini said nothing immediately prior to or during the execution. Differing accounts exist of who made the decision that Mussolini should be summarily executed. 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