He was the youngest to ever hold the office and now had a wider audience for his speeches, policies, and worldview than ever before. [75] Comparisons have been made with the John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories,[20] and it has been described as the Italian equivalent of that speculation. [6] Although each of these accounts vary in detail, they are consistent on the main facts. ]]>*/ The tee-totaling, vegetarian Hitler had a quiet last lunch, shook hands with the remaining staff, and that afternoon committed suicide with his wife on a couch in his private sitting room. In his 20s, he ran a series of newspapers that amounted to propaganda sheets for his increasingly extreme political views. This was taken after the mob desecrated their bodies. 2 In May 1939, Mussolini signed the Pact of Steel with Adolf Hitler. Joseph Stalins death in March 1953 ended his long and brutal reign as leader of the Soviet Union. Without Hitlers military intervention, a coup surely would have toppled Mussolini in 1941. WebIn 1924 Mussolinis henchmen kidnapped and murdered the Socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti, who had become one of fascisms most effective critics in parliament. His bald head, deeply set jaw, and piercing brown eyes gave him away. The farmhouse in northern Italy where Benito Mussolini would be last seen alive. In later years he expressed pride in his humble origins and often spoke of himself as a man of the people. The Mussolini family was, in fact, less humble than he claimedhis father, a part-time socialist journalist as well as a blacksmith, was the son of a lieutenant in the National Guard, and his mother was a schoolteacherbut the Mussolinis were certainly poor. Wikimedia CommonsA macabre autopsy photo of Benito Mussolini and his mistress in a Milan morgue. The campaign in North Africa began with a daring Anglo-American commando raid code-named Operation RESERVIST. In 1935, Mussolini used a border dispute between Abyssinia and neighboring Somaliland as a public excuse to invade the country. WebMussolini - Key takeaways. Angry crowds strung up his corpse, spat on it, stoned it, and otherwise desecrated it before finally laying it to rest. In June 1940, with German armies running riot all over Europe, the Duce decided to strike. The Concordat was a popular move in Catholic Italy, and a plebiscite in May gave Mussolini 98% of the vote. The next morning, the partisans ordered the pair to stand against a brick wall near the entrance of Villa Belmonte, near Italys Lake Como and a firing squad shot the couple down in a barrage of gunfire. In Predappio, a march takes place between the centre of town and the cemetery. In 1940, Mussolini took his country into World War II on the side of Nazi Germany but soon was met with military failure. The crowd yelled, Higher! His neighbors, even Great Powers like France and Britain, took both Mussolinis new force and his constant warlike posturing very seriously, indeed. Joseph Stalin died on March 5, 1953, after apparently suffering a stroke but some suspect that he was actually poisoned. Soon, however, he changed his mind about intervention. He was also intelligent, and he passed his final examinations without difficulty. [23] Lazzaro later said that: His face was like wax and his stare glassy, but somehow blind. 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. Mussolini may have been wearing German Luftwaffe kit, but there was no more recognizable face in all of Italy. As that adventure ground to a halt, in October 1940, the Italian army invaded Greece from the Italian colony of Albania. Initially, Mussolini was buried in an unmarked grave but, in 1946, his body was dug up and stolen by fascist supporters. [51], Their bodies were left in a heap, and by 9:00a.m. a considerable crowd had gathered. His inner circle burned his corpse as Soviet forces closed in. Among those who had him ousted and arrested was his own son-in-law Gian Galeazo Ciano. 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). Like the other Great Powers, he also wanted to create a colonial empire in Africa, looking especially to the East African kingdom of Ethiopia. The Matteotti crisis shook Mussolini, but he managed to maintain his hold on power. One version of the subsequent report indicated that he had been shot with nine bullets, while another version specified seven bullets. How Did James Brown Die? He worked all night in his office (and the office lights were cleverly left on so that Italians could imagine him hard at work at 4:00am). [20][75] At least 12 different individuals have been identified at various times as being responsible for carrying out the shooting. Learn More. 2. After World War I he began organizing fasci di combattimentonationalist paramilitary forces known for wearing black shirts. People in Hitlers inner circle reported that he said, This will never happen to me.. Benito Mussolinis reaction to Brunos death Family close to Benito Mussolini reported that the dictator was heartbroken at the loss of his second son. Differing accounts exist of who made the decision that Mussolini should be summarily executed. [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. He also claimed that Mussolini was inadvertently wounded earlier in the day when Petacci tried to grab the gun of one of the partisans, who killed Petacci and Michele Moretti then shot dead Mussolini. [37] Other versions of the story were also published, including, in the 1960s, two books setting out the "classical" account of the story: Dongo, la fine di Mussolini by Lazzaro and Bellini delle Stelle and Le ultime 95 ore di Mussolini by Franco Bandini. 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. I read utter exhaustion, but not fear Mussolini seemed completely lacking in will, spiritually dead. Italian fascism was a right-wing nationalist ideology that many, including Hitler, considered the big brother of Nazism. Inside Benito Mussolinis Death And His Panicked Final Hours. [76] The discrepancies and obvious exaggerations, coupled with the belief that the Communist Party had selected him to claim responsibility for their own political purposes, led some in Italy to believe that his story was wholly or largely untrue.[76]. 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. After this look at Benito Mussolinis death, read about Gabriele DAnnunzio, the Italian writer who inspired Mussolinis rise to fascism. The man who once boasted that he was going to restore the glories of ancient Rome, wrote the Times, "is now a corpse in a public square in Milan, with a howling mob cursing and kicking and spitting on his remains. Indeed, the scene was grisly: the bodies of Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci dangling upside down by their heels in front of a gas station in Milans Piazzale Loreto. What were Benito Mussolinis political beliefs? The Italian masses greeted Mussolini's death without regret. But the location wasnt a secret for too long. Some historians go as far as claiming that this marked the start of World War II. Updates? Sometimes the death of a man has the power to move us, to make us stop what were doing, and to contemplate our common humanity and the cruelty of fate. [82], Some, including most persistently the fascist journalist Giorgio Pisan, have claimed that Mussolini and Petacci were shot earlier in the day near the De Maria farmhouse and that the execution at Giulino de Mezzegra was staged with corpses. These lands, he said, were Italia irredentaunredeemed Italy.. Death of Benito Mussolini - Wikipedia. A simple slogan summed it up: Il DUCE, the Italian people were told, ha sempre ragione! (The Duce is always right!). 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. [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]. 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. Even worse, Great Britain now sent forces to Greece to oppose him. There it stayed for eleven years, until Italian Prime Minister Adone Zoli turned over the bones to Mussolinis widow. Mussolini had come incredibly close to reaching Switzerland; the resort town of Como literally shares a border with it. A fitting end to a wretched life, the New York Times declared, and there were few, either inside or outside of Italy, who disagreed. In any event, on 27 April, he joined a Luftwaffe column travelling in convoy and retreating northwards to Germany.[22]. Higher! These groups began waging campaigns of terrorism and intimidation against Italys leftist institutions at his behest. [note 5] The tomb is decorated with fascist symbols and contains a large marble head of Mussolini. Known For: Mussolini was a fascist dictator who ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943. A Tale of Two Lebanons: Stuck Between Hezbollah and a Republic. And if you failed to look enthusiastic enough or failed to conform in any number of ways, there was an all-seeing secret police force, called the OVRA, lurking in the background, arresting, beating, and killing opponents of the regime. 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