The Concordat was a popular move in Catholic Italy, and a plebiscite in May gave Mussolini 98% of the vote. [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. Rather than Fascism, its probably better to think of Italy in those days as being under the rule of mussolinismo: Mussolini-ism.. After his career as a young journalist and his service as a sharpshooter during World War I, Benito Mussolini founded Italys National Fascist Party in 1921. He was still 80 miles away from the main British position at Mersa Matruh! 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. Angry crowds strung up his corpse, spat on it, stoned it, and otherwise desecrated it before finally laying it to rest. A fitting end to a wretched life, the New York Times declared, and there were few, either inside or outside of Italy, who disagreed. He must be handed over to a tribunal of the people so it can judge him quickly. The whereabouts of the body was kept a secret, even from Mussolini's family. Mussolinis road to Milan was a long one, filled with strange twists and turns. [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. See. 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. [50][51] The choice of location was deliberate. Order was restored to Italian economic life, and old days of strikes and factory occupations were ended. Your leisure time was overseen by a party organization called the Dopolavoro, and your children had no choice but to join the Young Fascists. [77], In his 1993 book Dongo: half a century of lies, the partisan leader Urbano Lazzaro repeated a claim he had made earlier that Luigi Longo and not Audisio, was "Colonnello Valerio". His father was a blacksmith who wrote part-time as a socialist journalist, and his mother was a staunchly Catholic schoolteacher. [20], In any event, Longo instructed a communist partisan of the General Command, Walter Audisio, to go immediately to Dongo to carry out the order. Surrendered Italy would experience twenty more months of high intensity combata war that devastated countryside, cities, and civilian population alike. 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. [Long live Italy! [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. 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. Mussolini had been Italy's fascist leader since 1922, first as prime minister and, following his seizure of dictatorial powers in 1925, with the title Il Duce. by Adnan Nasser L April 3, 2023. [28] The CLNAI subsequently announced, on the day after his death, that Mussolini had been executed on its orders. They were then hung upside down from a metal girder above a service station on the square. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. [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. [6] Although each of these accounts vary in detail, they are consistent on the main facts. The Allied victory against the Axis was a long journeyone that actually took much longer than the war itself. Born July 29, 1883, in Dovia di Predappio, Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was intelligent and inquisitive from an early age. Word of Benito Mussolinis death spread quickly. He obtained a teaching diploma and for a time worked as a schoolmaster but soon realized that he was totally unsuited for such work. General William H. Simpson, commander of Ninth Army, has received little attention in the historiography of World War II. On the evening of Mussolini's capture, Sandro Pertini, the Socialist partisan leader in northern Italy, announced on Radio Milano: The head of this association of delinquents, Mussolini, while yellow with rancour and fear and trying to cross the Swiss frontier, has been arrested. Fast Facts: Benito Mussolini. The test was inconclusive. That still wasnt enough. Now, Mussolini was in deep. 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. [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. 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. 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