[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. The military had cut out a portion of his brain to test for syphilis. Mussolini was laid to rest in a large stone sarcophagus. Mussolini sold the invasion to the Italian people as a method to get jobs to The whereabouts of the body was kept a secret, even from Mussolini's family. [74], Outside of Italy, Audisio's version of how Mussolini was executed has largely been accepted and is uncontroversial. Robert Citino, PhD, is the Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian in the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. His father was a blacksmith who wrote part-time as a socialist journalist, and his mother was a staunchly Catholic schoolteacher. Throughout the 1920s, Mussolini remade Italy in his image. It was very barbarous. Initially, Mussolini was buried in an unmarked grave but, in 1946, his body was dug up and stolen by fascist supporters. Many historians have written about the famous Buffalo Soldiers of the all-Black 92nd Infantry Division, who fought with distinction during World War II. Mussolini had come incredibly close to reaching Switzerland; the resort town of Como literally shares a border with it. [4], Slowly fighting their way up the Italian Peninsula, the Allies took Rome and then Florence in the summer of 1944 and later that year they began advancing into northern Italy. His tomb has become a place of pilgrimage for neo-fascists and the anniversary of his death is marked by neo-fascist rallies. The next month, in November 1940, the Italian fleet was caught at anchor at Taranto by British torpedo bombers. The Fhrer convinced Il Duce to set up a Fascist state in northern Italy where it all began with Milan as its headquarters. But while Mussolini died in 1945, the ideas he put a name on did not. [35][36] On arrival in Dongo, they met Pier Luigi Bellini delle Stelle, who was the local partisan commander, to arrange for Mussolini to be handed over to them. Additionally, it was better placed for an escape to the Swiss border. In the afternoon of the desecration of the corpses, both American troops arrived and a Catholic cardinal arrived. German troops worked alongside the blackshirts to maintain order. He was placed in charge of a newly established Italian Social Republic in the north (sometimes, for the small town on Lake Garda that was its seat of government, called the Republic of Sal). However, the reason given by those involved in hanging Mussolini and the others in this way was to protect the bodies from the mob. [48] Eventually, in August, the body (with a leg missing) was tracked down to the Certosa di Pavia, a monastery not far from Milan. Fast Facts: Benito Mussolini. There it stayed for eleven years, until Italian Prime Minister Adone Zoli turned over the bones to Mussolinis widow. With German SS soldiers looking on, Mussolinis men opened fire and killed them. 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. [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. But arresting Il Duce was no longer a viable course of action. On 25 April he fled Milan, where he had been based, and headed towards the Swiss border. 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. Inside Benito Mussolinis Death And His Panicked Final Hours. In it, Lampredi confirmed the key facts of Audisio's story but without the embellishments. [30] Longo asked another partisan, Aldo Lampredi[it], to go as well because, according to Lampredi, Longo thought Audisio was "impudent, too inflexible and rash". "John" took me outside and told me his orders were to eliminate them both, because Petacci knew many things. 2 In May 1939, Mussolini signed the Pact of Steel with Adolf Hitler. Still, he voraciously read the works of great European philosophers like Immanuel Kant, Georges Sorel, Benedict de Spinoza, Peter Kropotkin, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Karl Marx. A Tale of Two Lebanons: Stuck Between Hezbollah and a Republic. With the Spring 1945 offensive in Italy bringing a final collapse of the German army's Gothic Line in April, total defeat for the Sal Republic and its German protectors was imminent. [29], He also claimed that he had given the order as deputy prime minister of the government in Rome and as leader of the Communist Party. In general, it was this loss of freedom that best describes the bargain the Italian people had made with Mussolini. It was the same square where, a year earlier, Mussolinis men had gunned down 15 anti-Fascists in a brutal execution. The numbers signing the tomb's register range from dozens to hundreds per day, with thousands signing on certain anniversaries; almost all the comments left are supportive of Mussolini. Rather than Fascism, its probably better to think of Italy in those days as being under the rule of mussolinismo: Mussolini-ism.. [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. [23] Lazzaro later said that: His face was like wax and his stare glassy, but somehow blind. The death of Benito Mussolini on April 28, 1945 was one of those latter occasions. [91], Other theories have been published, including allegations that not only Luigi Longo, subsequently leader of the Communist Party in post-war Italy, but also Sandro Pertini, a future President of Italy, carried out the shootings. WebBenito Mussolini began his political life as a committed socialist. He declared war on France and Britain in June 1940. In the early morning, an end-run round the Italian southern flank by the 4th Indian Division achieved total surprise, catching the Italians in their beds. In his own mind, Il Duce felt it should be Italy fighting the French. Then came actual invasion, of Sicily in July 1943 and the Italian mainland in September. We want this, even though we think an execution platoon is too much of an honour for this man. Even worse, Great Britain now sent forces to Greece to oppose him. Italy soon used its military might to invade Greece, but the campaign was unsuccessful and unpopular at home. Another few miles and Mussolini would have been free. He advocated violence as a way to effect change, particularly when it came to the advancement of trade unions and safety for workers. The country was battered, and it was, many thought, all Il Duces fault. One woman felt Il Duce wasnt dead enough. Lets take a look at the circumstances that led to his demise. Hitler, for one, heard the news on the radio and vowed to not have his corpse desecrated in the same fashion as Mussolinis. [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. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. In Audisio's account, Mussolini said nothing immediately prior to or during the execution. [6][7] The purpose of the move appears to have been to prepare for final defeat. After writing in a wide variety of socialist papers, he founded a newspaper of his own, La Lotta di Classe (The Class Struggle). Two Franciscan friars were charged with assisting Leccisi to hide the body. They took the bodies to the local morgue, where a U.S. Army photographer captured the macabre remains of Mussolini and Petacci. 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. The death of Benito Mussolini on April 28, 1945 was characterized A fitting end to a wretched life, by The New York Times. Bellini delle Stelle said he challenged Audisio as to why Petacci should be executed. Benito Mussolini served as the Prime Minister of Italy from 1922 to 1943, and his death marked the end of a brutal era in Italian history. In fact, he first set out to be a teacher but soon decided that career wasnt for him. And Il Duce was also beginning to realize that Italys military was woefully under-classed. WebIn all, a dozen people died, but after the march the Fascists inflated that death toll to a whopping and false 3,000 to make their struggle appear all the more heroic. [28] The CLNAI subsequently announced, on the day after his death, that Mussolini had been executed on its orders. The tomb has become a neo-fascist place of pilgrimage. Born: July 29, 1883 in Predappio, Italy. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. A note left behind said the Fascist Party would no longer tolerate the cannibal slurs made by human dregs organized in the Communist Party.. Some historians believe that what happened to Mussolini was a factor in Hitler's decision to take his own life and have his body burned. [35][37] In the afternoon, he, with other partisans, including Aldo Lampredi and Michele Moretti, drove to the De Maria family's farmhouse to collect Mussolini and Petacci. World War II broke out between Germany and the rest of Europe later that year, but Italyits resources already stretched thin by preexisting economic issues and Mussolinis Ethiopian conquest in 1935was hesitant to join. At one time, he had been one of the most celebrated statesmen in the world. The opposition then kept him locked away in a remote hotel in the mountains of Abruzzi. [53] After a while, the bodies were hung by their feet from the metal girder framework of a half-built Standard Oil service station. Mussolini spoke incessantly about recreating the Roman Empire. But arresting Il Duce was no longer a viable course of action. In fact, Mussolinis decision to join Hitlers war led Italy into an unprecedented series of military disasters. The exact story of Mussolinis death seems to be blurry. Mussolini had formed an alliance with Hitler in 1939, and this ultimately brought about his downfall. But just like that, Mussolinis violent life had come to a violent end. His body remained a potent symbol after his death, causing it to be either revered by supporters or treated with contempt and disrespect by opponents, and assuming a broader political significance. Benito Mussolinis fascist regime was often depicted as inept and ridiculed for its comic appearances. The farmhouse in northern Italy where Benito Mussolini would be last seen alive. 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. Benito Mussolinis reaction to Brunos death Family close to Benito Mussolini reported that the dictator was heartbroken at the loss of his second son. Death of Benito Mussolini - Wikipedia. The calibres of the bullets were not identified. WebThe death of Benito Mussolini on April 28, 1945 was characterized A fitting end to a wretched life, by The New York Times. [23] In Dongo, Mussolini was reunited with Petacci, who had requested to join him, at about 2:30a.m. on 28 April. During a period of freedom in 1909, he fell in love with 16-year-old Rachele Guidi, the younger of the two daughters of his fathers widowed mistress; she went to live with him in a damp, cramped apartment in Forl and later married him. 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 lived in two crowded rooms on the second floor of a small, decrepit palazzo; and, because Mussolinis father spent much of his time discussing politics in taverns and most of his money on his mistress, the meals that his three children ate were often meagre. At 3:00 am, the corpses were dumped on the ground in the old Piazzale Loreto. [note 5] The tomb is decorated with fascist symbols and contains a large marble head of Mussolini. [10][11][12] As the German forces retreated, the CLNAI declared a general uprising in the main northern cities. The campaign in North Africa began with a daring Anglo-American commando raid code-named Operation RESERVIST. The Week How Did Italys Fascist Dictator Benito Mussolini Die? 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. A simple slogan summed it up: Il DUCE, the Italian people were told, ha sempre ragione! (The Duce is always right!). Mussolini went to fight in the war. Five years after the Ethiopian invasion, Benito Mussolini watched from the sidelines as Hitler invaded France. He obtained a teaching diploma and for a time worked as a schoolmaster but soon realized that he was totally unsuited for such work. [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. [31][32][33], It was largely confirmed by an account provided by Aldo Lampredi[34] and the "classical" narrative of the story was set out in books written in the 1960s by Bellini delle Stelle and Urbano Lazzaro, and the journalist Franco Bandini (it). [44] Urbano Lazzaro later denied that such a tribunal had been convened and said: I was convinced Mussolini deserved death but there should have been a trial according to law. The man who had once strutted across the world stage now dangling by his heels, next to his mistress. And when it did start, Mussolini took his place on the world stage like never before. One of the new regime's primary goals was to win military glory for Italy, to restore Italy to the grandeur of ancient times. His political beliefs took a hairpin turn to the right midway through World War I, when he stopped decrying the war effort and began advocating for it. This was taken after the mob desecrated their bodies. I read utter exhaustion, but not fear Mussolini seemed completely lacking in will, spiritually dead. Here are 13 facts about one of the darkest political figures of the 20th century. 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. These groups began waging campaigns of terrorism and intimidation against Italys leftist institutions at his behest. The generally accepted version of events is that Mussolini was shot by Walter Audisio, a communist partisan. Corrections? [75] However, within Italy, the subject has been a matter of extensive debate and dispute since the late 1940s to the present and a variety of theories of how Mussolini died has proliferated. [67] Ian Kershaw notes that while it is uncertain whether Hitler was told the details of Mussolini's death: if he did learn of the full gory tale, it could have done no more than confirm his anxiety to take his own life before it was too late, and to prevent his body from being seized by his enemies. The corpse turned up four months later in a monastery near Milan. Facing pressure on the home front due to increasingly stressful wartime conditions and rebelliousness from within his own ranks, Benito Mussolini was removed from office by the king and the Grand Council in July of 1943. Whatever he might once have been, he was now a German puppet, beholden to Hitler for his very life. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Benito-Mussolini, Jewish Virtual Library - Biography of Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - Biography of Benito Mussolini, The National WWII Museum - Death of the Duce, Benito Mussolini, History Learning Site - Biography of Benito Mussolini, Benito Mussolini - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11), Benito Mussolini - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up). Eventually, in 1957, his remains were allowed to be interred in the Mussolini family crypt in his home town of Predappio. At least this way, Mussolini believed, he could live out his days in exile. Differing accounts exist of who made the decision that Mussolini should be summarily executed. Whatever the case, his family was told that he died in the war. [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". 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. KOMPAS.com - Benito Mussolini adalah seorang politisi yang dikenal sebagai diktator fasis Italia antara 1925-1945. The documentary included an interview with Dorina Mazzola who said that her mother had seen the shooting. As an adult, Benito Mussolini would have two wives and many mistresses. Undoubtedly, however, the German military was bigger, better equipped, and had better leaders. [6] Although each of these accounts vary in detail, they are consistent on the main facts. Italy entered the conflict in June 1940, declaring war on an already beaten France and launching an invasion of the Savoy region. [89][90] The first to put this forward was Franco Bandini in 1978. Poorly trained and outfitted, these men would likely have lost a battle with Italys army. In late 1914, with World War I newly underway, he founded a newspaper called The People of Italy. Life in Mussolinis Italy was somewhat different from other dictatorships. Benito Mussolini was Europes first 20th-century fascist dictator. William DeLong is a freelance wordsmith. The Allied victory against the Axis was a long journeyone that actually took much longer than the war itself. The list of those who wrecked their homeland is shorter. In June 1940, with German armies running riot all over Europe, the Duce decided to strike. By the spring of 1945, the war in Europe was over and Italy was broken. 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. The death of Benito Mussolini in Lombardy. Your leisure time was overseen by a party organization called the Dopolavoro, and your children had no choice but to join the Young Fascists. They made the Germans hand over all the Italians in exchange for allowing the Germans to proceed. MUSSOLINI WAS EXPELLED FROM SCHOOL. However, since the end of the war, the circumstances of Mussolini's death, and the identity of his executioner, have been subjects of continuing dispute and controversy in Italy. Still not satisfied, partisans rounded up 15 suspected Fascists and executed them in the same fashion. Growing closeness to Hitler was a kind of fatal embrace for Mussolini. In 1994 Bruno Lonati, a former partisan leader, published a book in which he claimed that he had shot Mussolini and he was accompanied on his mission by a British army officer called "John", who shot Petacci. By the spring of 1945, the war in Europe was over and Italy was broken. His new location would put him in closer proximity to the Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Schuster, whom he hoped to use as an intermediary to negotiate with the Allies and the partisans. [72], The anniversary of Mussolini's death on 28 April has become one of three dates neo-fascist supporters mark with major rallies. When the Allies touched down in Sicily in 1943, Mussolinis own government arrested him. [40] The vehicle pulled up at the entrance of the Villa Belmonte on a narrow road known as via XXIV maggio and Mussolini and Petacci were told to get out and stand by the villa's wall. They surrendered their liberty in return for the appearance of stability and order. He had one child with his first wife, Ida Dalser, but would eventually abandon them and seek to hide them from the public eye. [1] Following the Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943, Mussolini was deposed and put under arrest; Italy then signed the Armistice of Cassibile with the Allies in the following September. WebDuring the Second World War, there was one man who was idolised and best friends with Adolf Hitler. Ia menjabat sebagai Perdana Menteri Italia pada periode 1922-1943 dan bersahabat dengan Adolf Hitler selama Perang Dunia II untuk menopang kepemimpinannya. That connection was not lost on the residents of Milan, who then took out 20 years of frustration and fury on the corpses. Consider this quick summary. 504-528-1944. [Long live Italy!]. 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! 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. He was still 80 miles away from the main British position at Mersa Matruh! Mussolini and Petacci spent the rest of the night and most of the following day there.[27]. Benito Mussolini was the creator of fascism. 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. Los Angeles Times Urbano Lazzaro, 81; Resistance Fighter Captured Mussolini. His father was a blacksmith. Then, the final indignity: the posthumous desecration. Some historians go as far as claiming that this marked the start of World War II. Benito Mussolini took control of Italy thanks to the pen just as much as the sword. People got ropes, tied them to the feet of the corpses, and strung them upside-down from the iron girders of a gas station. Among those who had him ousted and arrested was his own son-in-law Gian Galeazo Ciano. [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. The New York Times MUSSOLINI ON ISLE TORE OFF HIS SHIRT; But The Ousted Dictator As A Prisoner On Ponza Soon Wearied Of Tragic Role. Like the other Great Powers, he also wanted to create a colonial empire in Africa, looking especially to the East African kingdom of Ethiopia. That still isnt the end of the story of Mussolinis death. 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. The Frenchdisintegrating all over the mapstopped the Italians cold. The convoy included a number of other Italian fascist leaders. Furthermore, he had had a reputation for being reliable and trustworthy; he was also known to have disliked Audisio personally. [60] However, Hugh Trevor-Roper believed that this was improbable as it was unlikely that the details would have been reported to Hitler and, in any event, he had already decided on his course of action. But how exactly did Mussolini die? [50][51] The choice of location was deliberate. He would have five childrenthree boys and two girlsby another wife, Rachele Guidi. He and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, were captured on 27 April by local partisans near the village of Dongo on Lake Como. These politics included the themes of racial superiority, xenophobia, and imperialism that defined his actions as a dictator. 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. According to Longo, he did so with the words "go and shoot him". info@nationalww2museum.org On 27 April 1945, Benito Mussolin i and his mistress Clara Petacci , together with other fascist leaders, were travelling in a German convoy near the village of Dongo on the north western shore of Lake Como. Mussolini had promised his people Roman glory, but his megalomania had overcome his common sense, In June 1940, he took the country into World War II on the side of Nazi Germany led by Adolf Hitler. Modern mechanized armies need a robust logistics chain to provide fuel, ammunition, and other sinews of war to sustain combat operations. Repeatedly, he called for a day of vengeance. Fascists rounded up 15 suspected anti-Fascist partisans, or people loyal to the new Italy, in Milans Piazzale Loreto. That still wasnt enough. [35][39][42] /*-->