2. People got ropes, tied them to the feet of the corpses, and strung them upside-down from the iron girders of a gas station. After World War I he began organizing fasci di combattimentonationalist paramilitary forces known for wearing black shirts. In 1922 Mussolini and other fascist leaders organized a march on Rome with the intention of forcing the king to yield the government to Mussolini. At the same time, the corporative structure allowed the Mussolini regime to direct the nation's economic life and make decisions about production and distribution that were normally in the hands of the industrialists. [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. Mussolini sold the invasion to the Italian people as a method to get jobs to Another few miles and Mussolini would have been free. Lampredi was undoubtedly an eyewitness and, because he prepared his narrative for the private records of the Communist Party and not for publication it was perceived that he had no motivation other than to tell the truth. The Week How Did Italys Fascist Dictator Benito Mussolini Die? That connection was not lost on the residents of Milan, who then took out 20 years of frustration and fury on the corpses. [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. [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). Soon after the marriage, Mussolini was imprisoned for the fifth time; but by then Comrade Mussolini had become recognized as one of the most gifted and dangerous of Italys younger socialists. At 3:00 am, the corpses were dumped on the ground in the old Piazzale Loreto. In fact, Mussolinis decision to join Hitlers war led Italy into an unprecedented series of military disasters. His neighbors, even Great Powers like France and Britain, took both Mussolinis new force and his constant warlike posturing very seriously, indeed. British war plans in the 1930s, in fact, flirted with abandoning the entire Mediterranean to Mussolini in the event of a conflict, so worried were the British that they could not resist his attacks. For the next few months, according to his own account, he lived from day to day, jumping from job to job. Life in Mussolinis Italy. [68], After his death and the display of his corpse in Milan, Mussolini was buried in an unmarked grave in the Musocco cemetery, to the north of the city. Parents: Alessandro After writing in a wide variety of socialist papers, he founded a newspaper of his own, La Lotta di Classe (The Class Struggle). Mussolinis road to Milan was a long one, filled with strange twists and turns. [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. The farmhouse in northern Italy where Benito Mussolini would be last seen alive. After returning to Italy, he amassed a large following while working as an editor for the socialist magazine Avanti!. 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. On 29 April 1945, the bodies of Mussolini, Petacci and the other executed Fascists were loaded into a van and moved south to Milan. After the defeat of the Italian Army in Russia, Mussolini was removed as head of state and imprisoned. Death of Benito Mussolini - Wikipedia. [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. 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. A simple slogan summed it up: Il DUCE, the Italian people were told, ha sempre ragione! (The Duce is always right!). The treaty that Hitler hated even more than the Treaty of Versailles and one of the most important treaties you have probably never heard of. Inside Benito Mussolinis Death And His Panicked Final Hours. [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. In Predappio, a march takes place between the centre of town and the cemetery. At least this way, Mussolini believed, he could live out his days in exile. WebBenito Mussolini began his political life as a committed socialist. Wikimedia CommonsA macabre autopsy photo of Benito Mussolini and his mistress in a Milan morgue. He was wrong. 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 Hitler, for one, heard the news on the radio and vowed to not have his corpse desecrated in the same fashion as Mussolinis. 3. Italy fared poorly from the outset, with ignominious defeats in North Africa, Greece, and the Soviet Union. Then, the final indignity: the posthumous desecration. German commandos crash-landed gliders into the side of the mountain behind the hotel before freeing Mussolini and airlifting him back to Munich, where he could confer with Hitler. 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? From that moment onward, partisans called this place the Square of the Fifteen Martyrs.. Rachele Mussolini recalled that Il Duces excruciating silence hit her the hardest when the couple found out about Brunos accident. She fired five shots into his head at close range; one bullet for each son she lost in Mussolinis failed war. 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. At the same time, however, he was gaining a reputation as a young man of strange magnetism and remarkable rhetorical talents. In the afternoon of 25 April,[16] Cardinal Schuster hosted peace negotiations at his residence between Mussolini and representatives of the CLNAI, which were unsuccessful. World War II began later that year in September. 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. A macabre autopsy photo of Benito Mussolini and his mistress in a Milan morgue. Now that steel has met steel, one single cry comes from our heartsViva lItalia! [74], Outside of Italy, Audisio's version of how Mussolini was executed has largely been accepted and is uncontroversial. 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. He rattled sabers against his neighbors constantly, but he also did more than talk, greatly expanding the army, building up a gigantic fleet (the Regia Marina), and equipping a powerful air force (the Regia Aeronautica), hugely expensive projects for a land like Italy, which was almost totally devoid of the necessary raw materials. These have included Luigi Longo and Sandro Pertini who subsequently became general secretary of the Italian Communist Party and President of Italy respectively. A third son, Bruno, was killed in an air accident while flying a Piaggio Five years after the Ethiopian invasion, Benito Mussolini watched from the sidelines as Hitler invaded France. Not only did they fail to conquer tiny Greece, the Greeks counterattacked, drove the Italians back across the Albanian border, and for a time threatened to destroy Mussolinis army altogether. Now that steel has met steel, one single cry comes from our hearts Viva lItalia! Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. 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. For some time after his return little was heard of him. All of those propaganda posters and photos had now truly come back to haunt him. 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. Despite Italy becoming the first ally of the Fhrer, this fact was downplayed when they surrendered to the Allies at the end of 1943. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. No!.
