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Dictator Benito Mussolini

Mussolini can be seen as the founder of fascism. He came to power in Italy in the 1920s and disastrously led his country into the Second World War. The Italian population was oppressed and impoverished under his leadership, and the Second World War dealt the final blow to the country.

Mussolini as Socialist

Mussolini was born on July 29, 1883 in Dova di Predappio in northern Italy. He came from a poor family and his father was a socialist. Mussolini himself was also a socialist as a young man. He did poorly at school and was eventually expelled because he stabbed a classmate with a pocket knife. In 1901 he obtained a diploma and briefly taught himself. In 1900 he joined the Socialist Party and quickly became admired as a smooth politician. In 1902 he went to Switzerland to avoid conscription, but he returned in 1904 and enlisted anyway. He remained active in the Party and even became editor of the party newspaper Avanti. His articles aroused enthusiasm, Mussolini called for revolution, something that greatly appealed to his readers. In 1914, however, Mussolini defected to the ‘enemy’, the Italian middle class. From this moment on he was a traitor to the Italian left. This decision was related to the First World War, he felt that it brought an end to Europe as it had been known.

The Birth of Fascism

Benito Mussolini / Source: Hulton Archive, Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)

He founded a new newspaper Popolo d’Italia and supported it with his own new party, the Autonomous Fascists. In 1917 he was injured during military training, but he soon returned to the political arena. He founded a new political organization, the Revolutionary Fascists. After the First World War his political career came to a standstill, but he founded a third party, the Constituent Fascists. In 1919, Mussolini participated in the parliamentary elections, but was not elected. Once again he founded a new party, the Fighting Fascists, and this party did well among young people. In 1921, Mussolini entered parliament with 35 fellow fascists. A new party was born: the National Fascist Party, with more than 250,000 members and with Mussolini as leader. In October 1922, Mussolini seized power with the cooperation of King Victor Emmanuel III, who feared a communist coup. Mussolini now had the support of several important groups in Italian society, such as the church, major industry and agriculture. He started by reintroducing ‘law & order’ and cracked down on the workers. His boyhood dream of socialism had
completely changed. By 1929, Italy had effectively become a one-party state.

The Dux

From the moment he came to power, Mussolini began to secure his power. In 1925 he took the name ‘ Il Duce ‘, which means the leader. Mussolini ensured that the outcome of elections was certain. The murder of the socialist Giacomo Matteotti by fascists endangered Mussolini’s position, but he managed to stay in power. He suspended all civil rights and silenced the opposition. He made use of his journalistic experience and was a master of propaganda. Mussolini improved relations with the Vatican and Pope Pius Xl called Mussolini ‘sent by God’. Mussolini himself was not religious, but in Catholic Italy he did not flaunt that fact. In the 1930s his position was stable, those who had helped him to power benefited from his power. But the position of the workers in Italy had deteriorated sharply.

Wars

In the 1930s, the crisis years also began for Italy and Mussolini initially responded by introducing public works, but soon realized that this had little effect. That was one of the reasons for starting the war in Ethiopia. With this war he was able to divert attention from the problems in Italy. Italy already had colonies in Somalia and Eritrea, but had not yet gained a foothold in Ethiopia. The Italian troops rolled over the Ethiopians. In 1936 Mussolini founded the Italian Empire. In 1936, Mussolini supported Franco during the Spanish Civil War, but this yielded little for Italy. Mussolini then aimed his arrows at Adolf Hitler. Hitler was initially inspired by Mussolini and the two countries signed a non-military alliance. In 1938, the persecution of Jews in Italy began in the wake of Nazi Germany. In 1939, Italy invaded Albania and Germany and Italy entered into a defensive alliance: the Pact of Steel.

WWII

Mussolini was a relatively unimportant political figure internationally at the outbreak of the Second World War, but the fact that he followed Hitler and led Italy into the Second World War was fatal. Italy was not at all ready for war and its people did not support it. In October 1940, Italy invaded Greece, but the invasion did not go as expected. It was thanks to the help of Hitler’s Germany that the Italian troops in North Africa were quickly neutralized by the Allies. Italy had troops in Libya, but on January 22, 1941, the British had already captured Tobruk in Libya. In 1943, on July 10, the Allies invaded Sicily and quickly took control of it. The loss of Sicily caused Mussolini major problems, everyone was convinced that the invasion of Italy was being planned from Sicily. A meeting was held by the fascist leaders and it was agreed that Italy should conclude its own peace agreement with the Allies. On July 25, 1943, King Victor Emmanuel III told Mussolini to resign from office. Pietro Badoglio became his successor and he placed Mussolini under arrest. However, Hitler decided that Mussolini was a valuable ally and helped him escape. He installed Mussolini as his puppet in 1943 in the north of Italy, which was called the Salo Republic and was de facto in the hands of the Germans. In doing so, Mussolini only caused his country bigger problems. As Allied forces approached, Mussolini tried to escape to Switzerland with his mistress, but was captured by partisans on April 27, 1945 in Dongo, Como. A day later he was killed and his body was put on public display in Milan.